Stealing home

DENTON – Caroline County comprises about 200,000 acres, but less than one-tenth of 1% of those acres are available for residential development, making it a relatively rare resource for meeting housing needs that comply with the county’s comprehensive plan – and the state’s purported housing goals.

However, vying for that precious land resource are solar companies shopping for relatively low-acreage footprints to establish smaller scale community solar projects bordering small towns, while promising residents lower electricity bills.

According to the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC), “…community solar is shared by two or more utility customers in a utility’s service territory. In Maryland, the community solar program will allow customers to buy a share of the electrical output of the community solar energy generating system.”

Solar companies are required to apply for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN), which grants an applicant the authority to construct an energy generating station in Maryland.

While the Caroline County Commissioners had originally set a cap of 2,000 acres for solar development in the county, the 2025 Maryland General Assembly passed legislation that overrode the Commissioners’ limit, increasing it to 8,800 acres.

Testifying at a June 12, 2025, public hearing on the Chaberton 3-megawatt photovoltaic generating facility just outside Federalsburg, Caroline County Planning and Codes Director Crystal Dadds explained how the county’s Comprehensive Plan “specifically seeks to preserve these limited R1 areas for their intended purpose” – not for solar arrays.

“Let me underscore just how rare this zoning is in Caroline County,” she said at the hearing. “Out of roughly the 205,000 acres countywide, only about 3,600 acres are zoned R1. Of that, fewer than 780 acres remain undeveloped and are located near a town with public water and sewer. That is less than one-tenth of 1% of the county's total land area. And in stark contrast, over 187,000 acres – more than 91% of the county’s land – is zoned in a manner that would allow for solar development as a permitted or conditional use.”

According to the Caroline County Code, Chapter 175 states that R-1 zoning is designated as a Single-Family Residential District. “This zoning district is intended to provide the principal location for single-family residential development of medium density. R-1 Districts should be located in the vicinity of the incorporated towns, in and immediately contiguous to the unincorporated villages and in established residential areas.”

The R-2, or Single-Family and Two-Family Residential Districts, are specifically restricted to an area of “high density where public water and sewerage facilities are available.”

Dadds reminded Christine Burke, a PSC public utility law judge, that “the state has directed counties and municipalities for years to concentrate growth within and around the towns for precisely this reason: they are best suited to support it.”

Lauren Barchi, community engagement manager with Maryland-based Chaberton Energy, described the Chaberton community solar project as occupying 40 acres or fewer. The residential-zoned property on Idlewild Road is 42 acres, but the fixed-tilt solar panels would occupy about 20 acres.

But according to Dadds, the Idlewild property is “an ideal location for future residential growth, especially the kind of higher density, affordable housing that the state of Maryland has long urged local governments to promote near these municipalities with infrastructure capacity.”

Barchi pitched the project as one that would “benefit local communities in many ways, including tax revenue to the state and county and annual savings of about $290 for market rate subscribers, and over $550 for low to moderate-income subscribers,” she said.

A similar enticement was offered to Marydel residents on Aug. 20, 2025, when solar project planners from Denver-based Pivot Energy presented their proposal for a community “solar garden” occupying a 10-acre parcel of land straddling the Marydel-Caroline County line.

Subscribers could receive a 10% to 20% discount on their electric bills, project promoters said. The 1-megawatt project would serve 250 to 300 homes or businesses. At least 40% of community solar residential subscribers are required to be low-income.

Dadds, who attended the meeting, advised the three Marydel town commissioners to consider the residential and commercial zoning of the vacant property, which is in the town’s growth area as well as in the county’s priority funding area.

“Most of your parcels within the town are already developed,” Dadds said. The 10-acre property across from the post office could be instrumental in “growing your town and having your town survive.”

“Obviously, right now you have limitations due to not having sewer, but that is in your growth area,” Dadds said.

The vast majority of Caroline County is zoned agricultural, but smaller community solar projects are being built on agricultural land adjacent to towns, limiting a town’s ability to annex that land for future residential growth.

On April 15, 2025, the Caroline County Board of Zoning Appeals, voted 2-1 to approve a request for a special use exception for the construction of a 2.0-megawatt commercial community scale solar energy facility on 12.45 acres of an agricultural-zoned property adjacent to the town at 22945 Dover Bridge Road.

Preston Community Energy Initiative LLC based in Waltham, Massachusetts, presented plans to build the facility. A company representative said subscribers would “receive a guaranteed 10% discount on the credits produced by their share of the solar farm.”

The County Planning Commission approved the Preston community solar final site plan with conditions on Aug. 13, 2025.

“Caroline County is not opposed to solar development,” Dadds said on June 12. “In fact, we have approved more than 1,600 acres for solar projects that were consistent with our zoning regulations and our Comp Plan. We are also currently working with the same applicant Chaberton on a separate site elsewhere in the county, which is appropriately zoned for solar and has not met any restrictions or resistance from our office.”

That Chaberton Solar Jabal LLC project is a new 2.0-megawatt small-scale commercial solar energy system on Clark Canning House Road in Federalsburg. The 63.3 acre agricultural-zoned parcel will contain a 23-acre solar array. The Board of Zoning Appeals unanimously approved the Special Use Exception on May 20, 2025.

In Marydel, County Commission Vice President Larry Porter summarized the work the County Commissioners and county staff has done since 2017 to plan for and limit solar sprawl. However, the 2025 Renewable Energy Certainty Act placed control of utility scale solar siting in the hands of the Public Service Commission, “made up of five Governor appointees, none of whom are from the Eastern Shore,” he said.

The three county commissioners have been critical of both the process prior to enacting the legislation, as well as the resulting bill playing out in the county.

Most recently, a planned 4.5-megawatt solar generating facility north of Greensboro to be built by Michigan-based Halo Greensboro Property LLC was given the green light to go ahead with its project on a 3.73-acre property at 720 Sunset Avenue.

The Caroline County Circuit Court reversed the Greensboro Board of Zoning Appeals’ decision to deny a special exception request from the solar company on Sept. 23. The ruling allows Halo to move forward with plans to construct a solar energy facility within town limits.

Concerning yet another Halo project, also proposed in January 2025, public hearings were set for Sept. 25 in Goldsboro and virtually on Oct. 9 on the company’s CPCN application to build a solar array on approximately 34 acres of an 83-acre agricultural- zoned property at 16049 Henderson Road in Goldsboro. The property is located across from historic Castle Hall on State Route 311.

What the county will look like when solar development reaches its legal limit in the county remains to be seen. But at their Oct. 7, 2025, meeting the County Commissioners refined legislation that would at least tap the brakes on solar encroachment.

Legislative Bill 2025-011 had a second reading and public hearing Oct. 7. The bill was introduced Sept. 23, but numerous changes were discussed, prompting additional refinement by Planning and Zoning staff.

The legislation is “an act for the purpose of creating a fund to receive payments of compensatory preservation contributions to Caroline County when solar energy generating stations and energy storage devices are developed on agricultural land,” among other provisions.

The Commissioners amended the draft legislation “to change the compensatory preservation contribution sum equivalent to 100% and also change that the fee will be charged on the entire project area if it contains any vital farmland,” Commission President Travis Breeding’s motion stated.

Agriculture is the biggest industry in the county. The extra cost and restrictions based on soil type are designed to discourage solar developers from building projects on valuable farmland in Caroline County.

Containing encroachment on residential-zoned areas remains a challenge as the state’s competing interests in promoting energy generation and building more housing clash with Caroline County’s zoning laws.