Portage County’s commissioners have the authority to designate all 18 townships off-limits to large wind and solar installations, but they’ve decided not to act alone.
Instead, they’ve asked each township’s elected officials to indicate if they want economically significant wind farms, large wind farms or large solar facilities in their townships.
The issue is by no means new. In 2023,...
Read moreIt would be interesting to know the impact on property taxes from these large installations. Presumably taxes paid by the commercial operators might help mitigate homeowner tax increases.
Wind farms and solar are two very different things.
Solar is basically neutral in its impact on the environment so it is “better” than a wind farm.
A wind farm takes physical land to hold the towers, it (probably) requires leases and restricted use of that land for other purposes, and it does impact birds.
Solar, on the other hand, once installed, can have very little, if any, impact on its surroundings. BUT. We cannot afford to take valuable land away from farming, houses, native ecosystems, etc. We CAN, however, put solar panels on the roofs of all businesses in a town, we can cover parking lots with solar panels, and there are likely other already-available locations for solar, if we would just use common sense. These ideas are not mine; they have been proposed multiple times by others. My question is: Why are good ideas rejected because “I didn’t think of it.”? Come on, Commissioners: be forward thinkers not stick-in-the-muds!
This article brings some interesting perspectives. For some places it has been a huge economic resource Wind energy is bringing major dollars to some Ohio counties. Others aren’t blown away | The Statehouse News Bureau . I think it is important too, to consider the health impacts of non-renewable forms of energy generation as well as the impact on the climate.