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ESCANABA -- Despite the objections of a commissioner who plans to use his land for a solar farm, the Delta County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to approve a resolution in support of a ballot initiative that would repeal the state law that gave control over green energy development to the Michigan Public Service Commission late last year.
"Just because we support this initiative, it's just to say, 'Alright, did the state make a mistake? Let's find out what the people think about it,'" said Commissioner Steve Viau, who initially brought the issue to the commission with Commissioner John Malnar.
Citizens for Local Choice, the coalition circulating petitions for the ballot initiative, aims to collect 550,000 valid signatures from voters across Michigan. If signatures can be submitted to the state by May 29 and validated, the initiative to repeal the new law would be on the November ballot.
Public Act 232 of 2023, which takes effect Nov. 29 of this year, does not automatically give control to the MPSC. Instead, municipalities are encouraged to adopt their own ordinances that are in line with the state law, and if any permit for a development is rejected that falls within those parameters, the MPSC can authorize the project.
Critics of the law have argued the rules are too lenient and, because municipalities have no option to enact more restrict rules for their communities, the law amounts to stripping local control. They say local municipalities are best equipped to make decisions for their residents.
Other arguments against the law often rely on the belief that the production of energy from wind turbines or solar solar panels is hazardous, unsightly, damages the character of communities or reduces available farm land.
Those in favor of the law have largely argued that communities have been unfairly denying proposals due to "not-in-my-backyard" mentalities, hindering efforts to reach green energy milestones and preventing landowners from using their properties in a way that is typically much more profitable than using land for agriculture. They argue that environmental concerns about solar panels or wind turbines are based on anti-green energy pseudoscience, and that personal property rights are more important than leaving control with local elected officials.
"It did not take away local control. It only restricted the amount of regulatory power that the locals had. I live in Escanaba Township, the Flat Rock area, and they're a poster boy for massive abuse by local control for the state," Commissioner Bob Barron said during Tuesday's meeting.
Delta County has been a hotspot for controversies over green energy since wind turbines were installed on the Garden Peninsula in 2016. However, Delta County -- and, more specifically, Escanaba Township -- have arguably become the epicenter of the debate.
In 2017, a group of landowners in Escanaba Township were approached by a developer that sought to lease their land for a utility-scale solar development. Initially, the township was receptive, calling solar a "goal" or "opportunity" six separate times in its 2019 master plan. It adopted a stand-alone solar ordinance that would have permitted the development, but, following public outcry from residents opposed to the development, that ordinance was found to be insufficient by the township's then-attorney, Terry Burkhart.
After a major shift in the make up of the township's board and planning commission, an ad hoc committee that produced a 500-page report on potential solar development and its impacts on the township, and the hire of a new attorney who specialized in solar ordinances, the township approved a 13-page amendment to the zoning ordinance in November of 2022.
The amendment uses an overlay district to restrict utility-scale solar development to an area of less than 400 acres bordering Brampton Township, east of the Escanaba River, the vast majority of which is contained in a single parcel. It was further restricted in the ordinance that solar developments not use more than 20% of a single parcel, are only installed on parcels of 20 acres or more, and are subject to 500-foot setbacks from lotlines -- limiting the area of land available for solar development in the entire township to less than 80 acres.
None of the 1,250 acre solar farm initially proposed by Orion Energy included land east of the Escanaba River, and the amendment barred the landowners from using their land to produce solar power.
One of those landowners was Barron, who launched a ballot drive to activate a forgotten portion of state law enabling county boards to redraw township borders. The plan, which would have moved roughly 19,000 acres of Escanaba Township to neighboring Cornell Township, would have allowed a solar development similar to Orion's proposal to move forward, but the rest of the county commissioners voted to reject the boundary change at their July 20, 2023 meeting.
It is likely that Governor Gretchen Whitmer was aware of the dispute between Barron and Escanaba Township -- or at least the reluctancy of Escanaba Township officials to allow solar development, which had gained some notoriety among other communities in Lower Michigan even before the annexation attempt -- when she was in Delta County on Aug. 17, 2023 for the annual Governor's Day at the Upper Peninsula State Fair. Only three days later, on Aug. 20, she announced that giving control of site plan approval for solar and wind projects to the Michigan Public Service Commission was one of her legislative priorities. Bills doing just that passed the state House and Senate in early November, and the legislation was signed into law Nov. 28, 2023.
Escanaba Township has openly rejected the new rules -- which are far less restrictive to developers than what Orion had offered during negotiations -- and has taken no action on drafting a new ordinance or revising its current one. Officials have cited the opportunity to join in on potential litigation against the state as reasons for the lack of action.
The resolution adopted by the county Tuesday follows a boiler plate originally written for townships. Most of the points in the resolution are directly related to restoring local control over green energy projects.
However, not all of the points are limited to local control. While nearly all of the commissioners have stated they do not oppose utility scale solar generation facilities in general -- with the exception of Malnar, who has never made blanket statements opposing solar during meetings but has often repeated arguments against solar on the basis of purported hazards or lost farmland -- the resolution does include a provision opposing "corporation-prioritized actions such as building utility-scale wind and solar projects in our community."
The resolution also included support of Citizens for Local Choice's work to amend the Clean and Renewable Energy and Energy Waste Reduction Act "to, among other things, repeal Part 8 as added by Public Act 233 of 2023." There is no indication what other changes Citizens for Local Choice supports beyond restoring local control in the resolution.
When it came to a vote, the board was split 3-2, with commissioners Viau, Malnar, and Bob Petersen supporting the resolution and Barron and Commission Chair Dave Moyle opposing it. Moyle was not given an opportunity to voice the reasoning for his opposition to the resolution, as the questions was called before he had time to do so.