NORTH LIBERTY — St. Joseph County officials are pursuing more restrictions for solar farms, this time requiring a larger buffer zone between the glass-and-metal panels and their rural neighbors.
Meanwhile, a recently filed building permit application by Hexagon Energy has renewed suspicions among several North Liberty residents about what company officials say will only be 2,500 acres of solar farms there on agricultural land.
Some residents suspect that Hexagon wants to use more land than that. The building application shows a map with “Phase I” and “Phase II” parcels covering a total of about 7,000 acres.
Residents protest the solar farms that Hexagon Energy is planning as they line up by the County-City Building in South Bend on June 11, 2024.
But Jordan Burke, a senior project developer for the Virginia-based company, said he now regrets these labels that an engineer wrote on the map. He said that it has led to an unfortunate misconception by those in the public who’ve seen the map.
Phase II, he said, represents land that the company might consider as alternatives if there are issues with the Phase I parcels. Phase I is generally where it has signed contracts with landowners to lease their land.
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