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DENTON – The Caroline County Commissioners have asked Gov. Wes Moore to veto a controversial energy bill that has the potential to dramatically increase the number of agricultural acres energy companies could lease for solar projects.
The unanimous decision by President Travis Breeding, Vice President Larry Porter and Commissioner Frank Bartz resulted following an April 15 discussion with Jay Falstad of the Queen Anne’s Conservation Association and Kent County farmer Rob Davis. They are founders of Farmers Alliance for Rural Maryland (F.A.R.M.), a grass-roots group opposed to solar sprawl on prime agricultural land on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
In just the few weeks since its founding, the F.A.R.M. Facebook page has garnered nearly 800 followers from across the state.
The legislation, Senate Bill 931, also known as the Renewable Energy Certainty Act (RECA) and part of a 3-bill energy package, was passed by the Maryland General Assembly April 7. The Commissioners have opposed it, with Breeding and Porter testifying against it Feb. 28 in Annapolis. It has been sent to Moore for his signature.
Their concerns are the same as those of F.A.R.M., which, according to its website, states the legislation would:
• Remove local zoning control over solar projects, allowing the state to override county land-use plans,
• Make it easier for large, unregulated solar companies to convert farmland into industrial solar fields, and
• Permanently take productive farmland out of agricultural use, threatening Maryland’s largest economic sector.
In addition to its request for a veto, F.A.R.M. is asking Moore to “advance an executive order that protects Eastern Shore counties from being disproportionately targeted for solar projects,” Falstad said. He also warned of the legislation’s risks at the Commissioners’ March 25 meeting.
Instead of focusing solar efforts on Eastern Shore prime farmland, F.A.R.M. is encouraging Moore to prioritize other sites.
“If solar is such a high priority for the state of Maryland, then how about we start with every single government building in Maryland, including parking lots,” Falstad said. “Let's start there first. And once we've exhausted all those opportunities, then we can start looking at other options, but not before we start utilizing brown fields or old mining sites in western Maryland.”
Opponents to SB 931, crossfiled with House Bill 1036, originally urged a cap of 2% of designated farm or forest land for solar projects; instead, the final legislation increased the cap to 5%, or about 100,000 Maryland acres.
Depending on one’s viewpoint, however, the “state is giving up 95% of its preemption ability, and equated it to other states,” Breeding said.
Based on his understanding of Sen. Steve Hershey’s comments during testimony against the bill, Breeding said legislation from the mid-20th century dealing “with natural gas, coal fire plants, traditional power plants, to prevent local governments from zoning them out, and now (preemption has) been extended to solar developments which cover large swaths of the counties, as opposed to a power plant that may just take up 200 acres somewhere.”
“The large utilities that you're talking about – a coal fired power plant or a liquid natural gas plant – those are genuine public utilities, highly regulated businesses, regulated for the benefit of all of us, so that rates are kept low and so on,” Falstad said. “The difference between them and these solar projects is all of these solar projects are private companies. They are not public utilities. … They're really land speculators that are masking themselves as solar companies. Often what they'll do is … find a willing leaseholder to sign a lease, and that thing can be flipped before the end of the week.”
According to the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, historically at odds with farmers on many issues, the Eastern Shore of Maryland is only one third of the land mass of the state, but the “region’s Priority Protection Areas comprise over half of Maryland’s PPA acreage.”
“We don’t always agree with groups like the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy (ESLC) -- but on SB 0931/HB 1036, we’re in lockstep: This bill is bad for the land, bad for agriculture, and bad for the Eastern Shore,” Davis posted on the F.A.R.M. Facebook page March 31.
PPAs are designated by local jurisdictions to prioritize the preservation of the community’s most essential farmland. “In Caroline County, at 5% that could be up to 4,500 acres on projects over two megawatts,” Falstad said. “That does not include the community solar projects for which you all have a few already in your pipeline.”
One of those commercial community scale projects, the 85-acre Preston Community Energy Initiative LLC, was reviewed by the Caroline County Board of Zoning Appeals April 15. Currently under construction is the 740-acre solar project by NextEra Energy Resources between Goldsboro and Greensboro on State Route 313. Caroline County’s cap on commercial solar is 2,000 acres.
In an April 6 Facebook post, Porter estimated that 5% of Caroline’s 176,000 acres of PPAs would number 8,800 acres, and be under the control of the Maryland Public Service Commission, “a group of unelected bureaucrats appointed by the Governor, approved by the Senate,” Porter stated.
“Why the need for the PSC to control so much land?” Porter posted. “1% would have gotten them control of much more land than the highest estimate of need.”
“This legislation, which was pretty much put together by the solar companies and for the solar companies, definitely is the worst threat that we have right now,” Davis said. “Since the legislation passed, the number of people that have reached out to me has probably doubled, because all of a sudden they're realizing that Annapolis is not listening to the people on Eastern Shore.”
“That type of impact will surely have implications to our agricultural community and the ancillary businesses that they support,” Falstad said
The ESLC claims “the outsized role of Eastern Shore agriculture is even more pronounced when it comes to the economy, contributing 74% of the agricultural market sales in the state.”
Despite his opposition to solar sprawl, Porter said he understands why farmers would want to option of doing what they want with their farmland, including leasing it to solar developers. “I’m not vilifying farmers because people are in different financial situations,” he said.
One person Porter does fault is Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-46), who, as a lawyer, has represented “CI Renewables, a company that finances and develops large-scale solar projects in Maryland and along the East Coast” since June 2024, according to the Daily Caller.
Falstad thanked the Commissioners for their support “because a lot of this (opposition) originated in Caroline County.”
“Things did not end back on April 7 when the legislative session ended,” Falstad said. “This is just the beginning, and we've got a lot more to fight for.”
