Twenty-six thousand panels were recently approved on Pine Meadow Road in Northfield and are scheduled to be installed in our residential/agricultural-zoned neighborhood. It was appealed and argued over for the last couple of years, but ultimately it was shown that our bylaws weren’t clear enough to stop it.

So now we are faced with a new proposal by the same solar company, BlueWave, and also on Pine Meadow Road. How much industrial solar can our residential neighborhood take? This new one is for a 30-acre field along the Connecticut River — active farmland, on the river, in the floodplain, and across the street from one of the other proposed arrays.

The panels will be less than 150 feet away from my living room. If approved, that would be the fourth energy production facility on our road. That’ll be 30,000 panels! A big difference is, on this most recent project, the solar company isn’t leasing the land to share with a farmer, but buying it outright as part of its more recent mission to own its assets.

As an abutter, I asked BlueWave about our solar overlay district and they said that they are not interested in that area because it’s too limited and too small; it would be “a drop in the bucket.”

Big solar is not interested in my town’s solar overlay district. They want to build on farmland. The state pays them more money to do so through the SMART program and they have other farmland in Northfield already in their queue and are lining up more and more of these installations.

Yikes! Sounds like we need to clarify our bylaws before it’s too late and our town becomes an energy plant.

Well, good news! Our Open Space Committee submitted a request to the Planning Board for a moratorium on large-scale solar and a citizens petition was submitted for the same — a 15-month moratorium on large-scale ground-mounted solar to be put to vote at the May 6 Town Meeting. It won’t pause any rooftop or personal use solar, just the industrial-size arrays.

We need to put a hold on the industrial-size installs that we are already overwhelmed with and allow us time to debate and create crystal clear bylaws. Any Northfield resident can go, and listen, and vote: Monday, May 6, at 7 p.m. at Pioneer High School.

John Buxton lives in Northfield.