Dunkirk’s Town Board decided against solar panel on a parcel of land on Williams Street. Now, it faces a legal challenge.

Last week, Solar Liberty Energy Systems and John Dach filed suit in state Supreme Court this week. The filing calls the board’s denial of a solar farm project permit “arbitrary, capricious, irrational, without any rational basis, and affected by error of law because the record … clearly established that petitioners were entitled to approval of a special use permit.”

The parcels are in a residential district and the town of Dunkirk’s zoning board granted the project a variance to proceed. However, town boards outrank zoning boards in municipal hierarchy, and the Dunkirk Town Board voted, 3-1, to reject the plans.

The project’s plans call for a 3.75-megawatt solar energy system with 14,580 panels on three parcels owned by Dach. The address of the solar array would be 3751 Williams Street East.

How this moves forward will be important to other municipalities that deal with renewable projects. Arkwright, readers may recall, was one of the first.

At that time, state regulations created headaches in the placing of turbines in the early 2000s. Today, wind energy and solar is embraced by the state.

That is a very different landscape than 20 years ago. That solar lawsuit is definitely worthy of attention.