Of all the approved solar projects in Chautauqua County, officials with the Industrial Development Agency say they’re using up only 2% of available farmland.

The legislature’s Planning and Economic Development Committee met with Mark Geise and Richard Dixon, both with the county IDA, to discuss solar projects in the county.

According to Geise, the county IDA has given Payment In Lieu Of Taxes agreements with 21 projects. The major Ripley solar project is for 270 megawatts. The remaining 20 projects are all 5 megawatts or smaller and total 111.75 megawatts combined.

He said a developer does not need a PILOT in order to construct a solar project. Those tax breaks are optional to apply for.

Geise said the IDA won’t consider a tax break if the solar project doesn’t have support from the local town board.

“With solar projects, we tell them, ‘you go to the municipality. You get their approvals at the local level. If they don’t want to do it, we’re not going to help you. If they want to do it, we’re here to help,” he said.

Dixon said the IDA will offer assistance to municipalities who need it. They’ve done environmental studies when requested.

One common question is what happens to the solar projects when they have reached the end of their useful life, usually 25 to 35 years after construction. To address this, the county Department of Planning put together a decommissioning template for municipalities to use.

The Department of Planning also put together a countywide map that shows where the solar projects are being placed. According to the map, there’s 678,400 total acres of land in Chautauqua County. Of that amount, about one third, or 223,000 acres is farmland. The total estimated acres to be converted to solar is 2,358.

“That’s about one third of 1 percent of all land in the county,” Geise said.

He further went on to say that the panels themselves take up about 1 percent of all farmland in the county. Including the entire parcels that the solar projects are sitting on equals about 2% of farmland.

“So with all these projects, all 21 of these projects, we estimate, and this isn’t perfect, but about 2 percent of the farmland is being used for solar,” he said.

Geise also noted that the county’s Agriculture and Farmland Protection Board reviews all the proposed solar projects. The board does not have the authority to stop solar projects, but it does make recommendations to the developer, the county IDA and the local municipality, specifically when good soil is being affected.

Geise said of the solar projects that are being proposed on farmland, the majority of those projects are not on good soils.

FINANCIAL INCENTIVES

Geise said although the county has approved PILOT agreements for the solar project developers, those companies still are making payments. “In almost every case now, there’s a (financial) host agreement that goes to the local community,” he said.

Geise said usually the host agreements call for the developer to pay $5,500 per megawatt, with the local municipality getting 35% of that. For a 5 megawatt project, the local municipality can get $10,000 annually.

In Ripley, where the 270 megawatt project is proposed, the town and the fire district will get about $1 million a year over a 25-year period.

Legislator John Penhollow, R-Stockton, was impressed. “That changes lives, that kind of money, in these municipalities and these local taxpayers,” he said.

Geise also noted that the developers also have contracts with the landowners. Some of those, he said, are on farmland that isn’t usable, so these projects help them find a use for their land.

FUTURE PROJECTS

At this point, Geise said more solar projects are still coming but not as many as in the past. “Is it because they’re having a harder time getting their interconnects or is it something else, I don’t really know. But what I do know is from our end, they’ve slowed down significantly,” he said.

Dixon agreed. “There’s only so many transmission lines. The further you get away from the transmission lines it then becomes cost prohibitive to hook up to it. That’s what people are finding out,” he said.

According to the map, five of the 21 approved projects have been constructed. Those are in Sheridan, Pomfret, Villenova, Portland and Stockton.

There are additional projects that are under investigation that have yet come to the county Industrial Development Agency, including in the towns of Busti and Chautauqua.

Some of the projects may have received their Special Use Permits from the local municipality and PILOT agreements from the county IDA but still have not applied for the building permit.

The large solar project in Ripley still needs New York state to give final approval for construction. Larger solar projects require state approval, while solar projects 5 megawatts or smaller get approval from local municipalities.