The Shelby County Commissioners Monday revised a provision of the Unified Development Ordinance that would change the process by which developers request and the county approves commercial solar energy projects.
This comes will 6-1 favorable recommendation from the October Plan Commission meeting, Plan Director Desiree Calderella said. The biggest change is that developers will no longer go to the Board of Zoning Appeals for a variance to allow for a solar project.
“This ordinance does repeal the ordinance that allowed solar facilities through a special exception process, and now will have this as a zoning overlay process, which will go through the Plan Commission and County Commissioners versus the BZA as far as approval,” Calderella said.
The revision also imposes more restrictions on the project with the intent of protecting neighboring landowners.
“Setbacks were increased, there was a fencing standard added, a standard for noise, standards for outdoor storage, a road use agreement,” she said. “It increased the review of the bond from three to five years. There was a restriction on the size of all solar projects in the county, which is one percent of the cropland in Shelby County by the U.S. Census of Agriculture.”
Adjoining landowners will have the ability to waive their setback requirement right if they chose, she added.
In addition to the size requirement, the revision also includes a restriction on how many projects the county can approve at one time – once every ten years from the time the zoning is approved for a facility. This came at the request of Plan Commission Member Megan Hart.
“Her idea behind that was when you have a project like that under construction, there’s so many county resources going to manage that project that we would not want to approve another project while that’s being built, and it takes so much time to build a project,” Calderella said.
Commissioner Kevin Nigh expressed disapproval of this provision, and made a motion to approve the revisions striking the provision that only allows the county to approve one solar project per ten years, but it was not seconded.
“I’ve never heard a stipulation like that that would strap everyone involved in this for ten years,” he said.
It has been six years since the BZA originally approved the ordinance allowing the Speedway Solar project, and the county hasn’t approved any more.
Commissioner Don Parker responded that if they needed to change it, the county could amend the ordinance again in the future.
None of these new arrangements apply to the current solar project near Morristown. In fact, many of these new restrictions come as a result of issues the county ran into with that Speedway Solar project, including loud work outside of business hours, tearing up the county roads, and poor drainage, as many adjoining landowners have said time and time again.
“Since this was a first time project for our community, we are all learning from it,” Parker said. “That’s why we’re trying to look forward with this ordinance in the future to stop these problems that [adjoining landowners] have experienced.”
The commissioners approved the project 2-1, with Nigh voting against it.
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