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New target for NIMBY nuttiness: Huge clean energy project sparks nasty legal battle
Checked out home prices lately? Do you like what the anti-development whiners have done to the Massachusetts housing market?
If so, then you are just going to love their latest antics, which involve throwing fits over one of the most smoke-stack-belching, environmentally ruinous forms of energy known to the human race: solar power.
And the stakes are as high, if not higher, with buildout of solar panel farms a crucial piece in the battle against climate change, not just here in Massachusetts, but across the country.
In the latest spat, a group of would-be solar energy developers has filed a lawsuit against tiny Shutesbury after the largely forested Western Massachusetts town passed new rules the companies contend would block any large scale solar panel installations.
The now Denver-based AMP two years ago unveiled plans for five different solar projects spread out over up to 190 acres in town, and has been slogging through the town approval process.
However, Shutesbury’s new rules would cap any new solar installation at 15 acres, too small to make it commercially viable, contend the AMP and local land owner, W.D. Cowls, who filed a complaint in Massachusetts Land Court on April 3.
That’s not all. The solar farm operator would have to acquire and preserve another 60 acres of woodland to offset the supposed damage caused by the 15-acre solar panel installation.
Oh yeah, and construction vehicles would have to stick to paved roads. Um, given only quarter of the byways and highways in the town of roughly 1,800 actually fit that description, that could be a problem.
For its part, the town has couched its rules in deceptively welcoming language, talking about the “pressing need” for solar power given the climate crisis.
But comments by local opponents point to a less friendly attitude, with a retired BU professor warning the project could “threaten the very existence of the town.”
Wow, a whole town wiped off the map by a renegade solar farm. Who knew?
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