HERE COMES THE SUN
900-acre solar project raises questions about Chesapeake’s direction
CHESAPEAKE — Martin Wright stood in the driveway of his family’s home in southern Chesapeake, looking out at the field they’ve farmed since the late 1940s when it was part of Norfolk County. Over the years, their roughly 120-acre corner of the city has grown corn, soybean and wheat.
When he was a boy, Wright worked these fields and remembers his grandfather coming home after a full day of work at United Airlines in Norfolk to hop on the tractor and tend to the rows of crops. Wright’s father farmed the land until about 1970, when they started leasing it to a family member and, up until today, other farmers.
Soon, though, the sun could no longer be growing crops. Instead, it could be powering 200,000 solar panels. And the Wrights are on board.
NextEra Energy Resources, the world’s largest producer of wind and solar energy, wants to turn the Wright farm and other nearby properties into a $100 million, 900-acre solar farm.
Such proposals are likely to become more common, here and nationally, as the country shifts from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
But some in Chesapeake who
want to preserve the rural character of its southern end worry such projects could chip away at that area’s agricultural heritage.
The debate over the Wright farm’s fate foreshadows one over Chesapeake’s future, highlighting how a sprawling, 353-square-mile city grapples with population growth and increased development, at once trying to create an urban-feeling downtown in Greenbrier and preserve the more rural, small-town aspects some parts of the city are known for
Experts say such tensions could increase with new state and federal pushes toward clean energy. In Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam signed the Clean Economy Act, which in part requires Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power to be carbon-free by 2045 and 2050, respectively. It also requires nearly all coal-fired plants to close by the end of 2024.
If approved, the new solar farm that includes the Wright land would be about the same size as all three the city already has green-lit put together. And it would generate enough electricity to power about 20,000 homes.
Heather Barlow, a planning commissioner and resident of southern Chesapeake, said during the April 14 vote on the project she worries at some point, the city won’t be able to sustain farming as a major economic driver. She said there’s a place for solar and other uses of agricultural land, but worries whether those will soon dominate the rural landscape.
“If we continue doing this the way that we have been doing this, agriculture will die and with it the rural community that we have,” Barlow said before voting to recommend the City Council reject the project.
Landowner rights
The so-called Chesapeake Solar Project would along Shillelagh Road near the city’s Great Bridge planning area, close to the regional airport. (Plans to eventually expand a runway there could raise issues with the solar farm, but it’s not clear when that expansion would happen.)
NextEra, which operates 40 large-scale solar projects in 27 states, including Virginia, says the site would produce 118 megawatts of renewable energy.
Now that solar has become cheaper, it makes more sense to build it in states along the East Coast that might not get as much sun as Arizona, said Daniel Breslau, associate professor and chair of the Department of Science, Technology and Society at Virginia Tech.
“You have to build it close to where people are using it,” Breslau said. “With our existing transmission grid, it’s not economical to import (solar energy).”
If approved by the City Council, the Chesapeake Solar Project would be the fourth solar farm in Chesapeake: Grassfield Sun Farm (234 acres), Bedford Solar Center (566 acres) and
Hickory Solar Farm (154 acres) already have been approved. Each is in various stages of development, but none is yet in operation, according to the city.
The new one would use a substation to deliver the power to a Dominion Energy transmission line, meaning the power would be distributed across the grid. The substation would be behind a fence, almost 2,000 feet off Shillelagh Road, said Winston Kutte, a project director for NextEra.
As part of its conditional use permit, NextEra would decommission the solar panels after 35 years and return the land to agriculture.
But some question whether there will be an agricultural economy left by then.
Byron Stonecypher, the president of the Chesapeake Farm Bureau and a lifelong farmer, says land in the city’s southern end has been gobbled up over the years, including for development.
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows there were 51,861 acres of cropland in 1997. By 2017, that dropped to 32,325.
Farmers are getting older and it’s more expensive to buy and maintain equipment such as tractors and combines. It’s hard to turn a profit if you’re not operating a large-scale farm.
“Everything is going up, but the farmer is not getting much more money,” Stonecypher said.
A few years back, Stonecypher appeared before City Council members to talk about another proposed solar project. He said his group believes more studies should be done on the impact the large projects have on agriculture.
“The Farm Bureau is walking a fine line when addressing this issue, as we place a farmer’s property rights in very high regard,” Stonecypher said at that 2017 meeting. “At the same time losing prime agricultural land to solar panel farms changes the entire community and landscape.”
In an April interview, Stonecypher said he has no plans to speak at the next council meeting about the Chesapeake Solar Project. He’s all for solar but just wished the projects didn’t have to take up prime agricultural land, which is a USDA term meaning the land has the right physical and chemical makeup to grow a variety of crops.
“I don’t see why there can’t be a better solution,” he said.
But, he admits, if he were offered enough money for his land from an energy company, he’d be “hard pressed to turn them down.”
At the April 14 meeting, planning commissioner Marty Williams voiced a similar sentiment.
“If a landowner wants to not farm corn or soybeans and instead wants to farm electrons, I think it’s their right to do that,” Williams said before casting a vote in support of the project.
Planning commissioners
voted 5-3 to recommend approval. It now heads to the City Council next month for a final vote.
No ‘mere buffer zone’
Read Chesapeake planning documents or listen to city officials, and you’ll hear how important agriculture is.
In his recent state of the city address, Mayor Rick West spoke about making Chesapeake a great place to “live, learn, work, farm and play.”
Since 2003, the city has protected about 404 acres from any future residential development through its Open Space and Agricultural Preservation Program, in which the government buys development rights from landowners.
The comprehensive plan, a guiding, 200-page document for development, states that the city will keep a well-defined and protected belt of rural landscape around more developed parts. This rural area will not be a “mere buffer
zone,” the plan states, “but a thriving working landscape, with programs that encourage new farming economy enterprises and rural industries that are compatible with the preserved rural character of the area.”
Nearly half of the land in Chesapeake, or 167 square miles, is zoned agriculture, according to the planning department. But that doesn’t mean all of it is used for farming.
Drive around southern Chesapeake and you’ll see plenty of homes with chickens and horses on 3-acre lots. City zoning ordinances don’t permit major residential developments on agricultural land but do allow “minor subdivisions,” involving small numbers of homes.
Barlow said she has a similar setup — a home with some chickens, horses and a lot of open space. People seek that out in Chesapeake, she said, but more as a lifestyle than because they want to farm as a business.
As long as this “by-right” development on zoned agricultural land meets the
building codes, city staff has to approve it. There is no discussion at the City Council or Planning Commission about what impacts the new homes could have on roads, schools and other services.
That means such development can happen quickly, sometimes forcing developers who are seeking approval for large residential projects elsewhere in the city to wait longer.
It ’s a balancing act, Barlow said, as the city tries to allow development but ensure schools, roads and other services aren’t overburdened.
‘Time for a change’
NextEra would like to break ground on construction in December. It would take about a year to finish installing the panels and start generating power, said Kutte, the project director.
When asked about concerns raised over agriculture preservation, Kutte said the project will work to make the land more nutrient rich by planting grass and pollinator plants to benefit birds and bees and other insects. Having solar panels also will mean fewer impacts on the land than some kinds of farming, he said: no fertilizer, no tilling, no herbicides.
Over the life of the project, NextEra will contribute about $2 million to the Open Space and Agricultural Preservation Program.
Wright, the only landowner The Virginian-Pilot could reach for this article, said that it doesn’t pay to farm the land anymore. The project would prevent any future housing development there, which has been creeping up nearby and would put additional burden on roads and other services.
“It’s time for a change,” Wright said.