By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
As most real estate or business people know, it's all about location. When Acciona Energy first approached the Barton County Commission about a proposed solar farm in the county in January, information about the location of the project was left intentionally vague. Thursday morning, Acciona representatives returned to provide the Barton County Planning Commission updates during a meeting at the Hoisington Activity Center. Planning Commissioner JC Bosch said he's for green energy, just not the location revealed during Thursday's meeting.
"We heard from the Kansas Ornithological Society, Nature Conservancy," he said. "Their map for a critical corridor is, like, smack in the middle of this. All these organizations that have done the research and that care about this area, we've done the research. Is there any other area you're looking at?"
The map originally presented by Acciona was a large rectangular region to the northwest of Great Bend. The proximity to Cheyenne Bottoms, in part, prompted the planning commission to implement a moratorium on commercial solar farm development in the county until the end of the year. A map revealed Thursday shows leases along Northeast 40 Road, just one mile from the south edge of Cheyenne Bottoms. Nearly one-third of the project falls within three miles of Great Bend city limits that would fall in that jurisdiction.
Adam Stratton, Acciona's director of solar development, said the location is byproduct of access to the power grid and leasing land from property owners. Bosch said there may be bigger considerations.
"I love the landowners in this area," he said. "I love them. They're some of my best friends. They signed the leases, great. I don't fault anybody for doing what they think is the right thing to do. And I don't want to take rights away from individual landowners. The last thing I want to do is take anyone's right to do what they want to do on their land. That's not at all what I'm saying.
"What I'm saying is we have an obligation and a duty to the nation's largest inland marsh and the most crucial migration stop in the northern hemisphere."
Josh Svaty, representing Acciona, said there are two sides to the issue, and the landowners have the right to do as they see fit on their land as long as laws are followed.
"As much as some of you may not like the original map and the original location, those are human beings, some of them definitely residents of the county, that said, 'I want this project.' It's not for us to decide whether or not they're worthy. It's their property and they entered into it."
A key piece of the locational puzzle and why this area was targeted over others is an electrical interconnection point located just east of Northeast 30 Road and Northeast 40 Avenue, or approximately two miles east of Barton Community College. Acciona will use that substation to load its solar energy into the power grid. Tenaska, another energy company, did the original research in the area in 2018. Acciona purchased those leases in 2019 and was unaware of the importance of Cheyenne Bottoms.
"That information is actually not published on maps that we use for citing, national databases that you can get like desktop databases," Stratton said. "We use something we like to call critical issues analysis. It pulls all this nationally-published data that is supposedly the most sensitive and important data about an area."
Thursday's meeting was an opportunity for Acciona to present information to the Barton Planning Commission, though the group did take questions from patrons at the close of the meeting.
"If you have comments that need to be addressed on this specific issue, the opportunity to get those on the record will be at the public hearing," said Planning Commissioner Mary Anne Stoskopf. "I know people are passionate about this specific project. They asked to come and present to us, and we agreed to do that to learn more about it.
"The people that are in this room, you guys are divided," said Planning Commissioner Junior Welsch. "Not everybody is for this, and some are for it. We need to respect everybody's opinion in here because some of these landowners could benefit hugely from it. I see both ways and that's what we're all here for."
One patron asked the commission how Acciona could be kept out of Barton County. Stoskopf further reminded everyone of the policies in play. Presently, the zoning commission is revising the county's solar energy conversion system regulations. The Barton County Board of Commissioners will vote to continue or not continue the moratorium at the regular meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 12.
"Assuming, at some point, the new regulations are accepted in whatever form, then there will probably be, as there is under the current regulations, a conditional-use permit process," said Stoskopf. "That's when the details of a specific project have to be addressed. It goes through the same process of having public notification, public hearing with comments on the record, and documentation submitted. Same process, the planning commission makes a recommendation to the county commission and the final action is up to the county commission. That's the procedure that's already on the books. It's under state statutes.
"I would remind you, there are only 40-something counties in the state of Kansas that have zoning regulations and have this kind of process. If you lived in a county that did not have this, then you would have no say."