Municipal Board ends anti-solar farm bylaw

© AgMedia Inc.

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

The Ontario Municipal Board has repealed East Hawkesbury Township’s bylaw suspending solar farm development within its boundaries.

Linda Rozon, the township’s CAO and clerk-treasurer, says she received the order Friday afternoon, too late for it to be added to council’s meeting agenda Monday night.

“I will tell (the council) what happened,” she says, noting the municipality’s next steps will be to prepare for another, related, Board hearing in June.

Last August the municipality introduced a one-year moratorium on solar farm developments.  Solaris Energy Partners Inc. had proposed to build a solar farm on 300 acres of prime agricultural land to generate 30 megawatts of electricity. Solaris appealed the township’s bylaw to the Board.

In a written decision, Board member Marc Denhez stated that the bylaw gave the township council necessary breathing room to study the issue. The study is now complete and Denhez has repealed the bylaw because it “has no further practical purpose.”

Shawn Wylie, who owns a dairy farm neighbouring the proposed solar development, says neither the municipality nor Solaris stand to gain from the decision.

He points out that Solaris can’t proceed until it has obtained rezoning and site plan approvals. The Board will hear Solaris’ appeal of the township’s decision not to issue these over three days, beginning June 22.

Wylie says solar farms have no place on prime farmland. “There’s enough urban sprawl as it is.”

He’s concerned the development may generate stray voltage, which can cause health problems in cows and ultimately reduce milk production. Wylie milks 120 cows.

He says Solaris has assured stray voltage is a “non-issue,” and therefore won’t introduce monitors that might help to signal a problem if it were to occur.

Solaris says the project would inject $10 million into the local economy and generate 100 jobs, 10 of them permanent.  

It maintains the municipality’s bylaw violates provincial planning acts and the proposed Green Energy Act, which directs planners to promote solar energy.

Neither East Hawkesbury Mayor Robert Kirby nor Greg Pruner, Solaris president and CEO, could be reached for comment.

In an article in Better Farming magazine’s April issue, Kirby estimated the two hearings could cost the municipality as much as $80,000.

Pruner noted in the same article that the municipality initially was positive about the project. “We actually met with the mayor and council. We got their blessing . . . They were quite excited about the economic development.”

Rozon says the municipality has not received any other applications for solar farms. BF