CALLAWAY COUNTY — The commissioners of Callaway County hosted a community meeting Monday with dozens of residents concerned with the development of large-scale solar panel facilities and other electrical infrastructure projects.
Those projects include NextEra Energy Solutions’ proposed Guthrie Solar farm near New Bloomfield, Ranger Power’s proposed Show-Me State Solar farm near Kingdom City, Savion’s proposed solar farm near Hatton, Invenergy’s Tiger Connector addition to the Grain Belt Express transmission line, and the Cordelio Power-Tenaska wind turbine plans.
Last summer, residents held multiple meetings with the Callaway County Commission, which included initial talks with representatives from NextEra and Ranger Power. But after community backlash left commissioners hesitant to move forward with any plans, presiding commissioner Gary Jungermann said he now wishes more progress would’ve been made ahead of a meeting on Wednesday, March 15 at 7 p.m. with state Sen. Travis Fitzwater (R-Holts Summit).
“We, as a commission, need to sit down with them and have conversations,” Jungermann said. “I asked them about a lot of different things. One of them was working with a third-party… because I wanted soil samples and studies done to see what things were like. We never really advanced from there because that’s when things started going crazy, and I decided it didn’t seem like we should be talking because we were getting a lot from them, no matter which way we turned. So here we were stuck in the middle.”
Jungermann encouraged signing a joint contract with energy companies once terms are agreed upon so that companies are legally bound to their commitments. Many residents spoke about the need for road and decommission agreements, soil tests, fire plans and environmental impact statements.
“It’s a possible public health risk, and I feel like the companies that have come in just really haven’t addressed that,” New Bloomfield resident Kathy South said. The former registered nurse and her husband, a doctoral chemist, live a few acres away from the proposed NextEra Guthrie Solar project.
“At the last commissioners’ meeting that I spoke with them, I was emphatic about the fact that they needed to have an environmental impact statement, and they assured me that that would happen. But yet when I speak to my state representative or anyone else with the state or our county commissioners, they’ve heard absolutely nothing about an environmental impact statement.
“They were also supposed to tell them about what panels they were going to use. They said there were three possibilities for the panels and that they would come back to us with what panel they chose to be used in New Bloomfield. They’ve heard absolutely nothing. It’s almost like they don’t have to cooperate with the county.”
Susan Burns, her husband John and their son Joe have spearheaded the opposition to solar farm developments in Callaway County. They handed out a personally-drafted proposed conditional use ordinance at this afternoon’s meeting.
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They say Callaway County commissioners could use the eleven-section document, which addresses concerns such as taxes, location limits and water runoff compliance, among others, in negotiations with solar energy companies. They presented the document to the commissioners in October.
“We’re trying to do as much work as we can to help you,” Joe Burns said to the Commission, “but then, what we get is, ‘we haven’t read it. We don’t know. We don’t have any plans. We haven’t talked to anybody.’ At what point can we expect something to be known?”
The Commission defended criticism from community members by saying such virulent backlash is an issue unique to the county. Eastern District Commissioner Randall Kleindienst said he spoke with an Illinois county who is negotiating with Ranger Power, noting that the county has had zero problems in its relationship with the solar company.
But, Kleindienst clarified to say that each situation is different and that one positive experience can’t be the universal expectation. However, the commissioners made it clear that they expect to be informed regarding each facet of development moving forward.
“We have a specific set of rules which we lay out,” Western District Commissioner Roger Fischer said. “And it allows developers to introduce county roads that they develop, as long as they bring it up to our specifications and the commissioners approve it. And I don’t see where solar should be any different.”
The Burns family also handed out Ralls County’s utility permit application, which it used to push Invenergy away from establishing a converter station in the county. However, Callaway County does not have a planning and zoning division, which makes placing restrictions on private business operations difficult.
The Missouri Public Service Commission will hold three meetings early next week from March 6-8 to address the Grain Belt Transmission line project. One meeting will be in-person at Mexico’s Elks Lodge on March 7 at noon.
Fitzwater’s meeting to discuss SB 549, which would restrict solar developments by requiring them to gain county permits before meeting with the Public Service Commission, will take place on March 15 at Callaway Electric Company in Fulton at 7 p.m.