State Sen. George Borrello is considering proposing tougher consumer protections against solar companies and local governments that approve solar and wind laws.

There are 43 pending solar projects in Chautauqua County, according to Borrello. The Sunset Bay Republican asked agricultural organizations during a recent legislative budget hearing if they would back limitations on wind and solar projects that Borrello said would border on anti-corruption measures.

“We have a lot of consumer protections here in New York state,” Borrello said. “We stop bad actors that are doing things when they solicit people. I hear from farmers all the time and people about a lot of bad actors in the solar field, in the solar area. Would you both support legal limitations on some of these solar projects and wind also? I can tell you there’s a lot of corruption going on in this. You’ve got members of municipal boards that have contracts with wind and solar contracts that are voting on these things. It’s not right. Would you support limitations and really, I guess, an anti-corruption campaign for these wind solar projects.”

Borrello specifically asked Jeff Williams, New York Farm Bureau public policy director, if he thinks a voting member of a municipal government — as happened in a couple of Chautauqua County cases — should accept private payment from wind or solar companies when they are creating guidelines for wind and solar developments. Williams said they should not, but cautioned against going too far because many farmers are also trying to diversify their operations by using some of their farm for wind and solar projects.

“An anti-corruption campaign — that’s a big question,” Williams said. “Sure. It’s a delicate balance. Some farmers want to use it, they want to put solar in to diversify their operation and continue it for the next generation. Some landowners and farmers get taken advantage of. It’s not really a one-size-fits-all thing. But as commissioner Ball said, it needs to be addressed and thought through from a mitigation perspective. So if it’s not farmland, maybe brownfields, so it’s not taking land out of production.”

Williams also noted a situation that isn’t being talked about enough – the construction of transmission lines to get power generated in rural areas to the cities that need additional power from the electric grid. At least one farmer in Chautauqua County is being impacted by a proposed transmission line project, according to the Farm Bureau official.

“One last thing — it’s not just the solar panels,” Williams said. “It’s been mentioned — it’s transmission lines. I was talking to a farmer from Chautauqua County and there’s a transmission line that’s being planned that would take tens of acres of grapes out of production against his will. That’s also a problem.”

According to the American Farmland Trust, the state has invested in the Farmland Protection Program in the Environmental Protection Fund since 1996, purchasing agricultural conservation easements from farmers so that

land can remain in farming forever. While the state has permanently protected more than 100,000 acres of farmland through this voluntary grant program since its inception, organization officials said in written testimony to state legislators that New York has lost over a quarter of a million acres of farmland — more than three times the

amount protected — between 2001 and 2016.

“I cannot say whether we’d support legal limitations,” said Mikaela Perry, American Farmland Trust New York policy manager. “What we do support is much higher mitigation fees and incentives for agrivoltaics.”