There are positive ways to satisfy our needs for renewable energy, food, and forest carbon sequestration.

Just as it is counter-productive to attempt to reduce climate change by logging carbon-sequestering forests, in order to build large solar arrays, we also reduce our ability to grow food by plunking down solar arrays on prime farmland.

Connecticut River Valley farmland rates among the most fertile in the world. “Dual use” (solar plus farming) solar projects, with sheep grazing here and there once in awhile, like the one proposed on farmland in Northfield, is a counterproductive idea. After a big industrial project like this gets built and later decommissioned, the land will likely not be prime farmland for a long long time, if ever again.

To make these projects financially viable, an ill-advised recent change in Massachusetts law, led by eastern state lawmakers, allows multi-million-dollar farmland-based solar projects to keep their agricultural tax exemptions! Solar developers hope this also means no local zoning restrictions for these lucrative large projects, usually owned by out-of-state companies.

Instead we should install solar on city/town rooftops and parking lots throughout all of Massachusetts. Large forest owners should install solar on their commercial buildings and parking lots rather than in the middle of forested land. Decentralization is also key to protecting our power sources from being sabotaged, and it would reduce the decrease in power that occurs when electricity travels longer distances on utility lines. Farms should stay as farms, growing food not lights, providing a local source of healthy food that we will need more of as the climate crisis worsens.

Gloria Kegeles

Wendell

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