Centroplex News

Bell County residents are voicing their concerns on the potential adverse impacts of a 3,000-acre wind farm by Big Elm Solar proposed for the area. In their most recent board meeting, the Troy Independent School District (TISD) passed the next steps for bringing the farm to Bell County: an appraised value-limitation application review from consultation firm McDowell School Finance Consulting, LLC. 

According to KDH News, Monty Humble, of solar farm director High Road Clean Energy, said at the board meeting that only 1,400 of the farm's 3,000 acres will have the 18-foot solar panels installed. 

In the meeting’s public hearing, several school district residents brought their concerns to light, including Dakota Fleming, a Bell County native who farms and ranches, and thinks the farm would be a bad move on the city and school’s part. Fleming told Centroplex News that agriculture is important to everyone in her family because of their farm and ranch—a common belief among Bell County residents. 

"And with the solar panels potentially coming in, it's going to impact a very large agricultural area and community," Fleming said. "I think it is important that everybody knows the pros and the cons that come with the solar panels."

Fleming feels that, from environmental friendliness to dollars and cents, the solar panels simply don't make sense. 

"They don't make sense as far as how efficient they are," she stated. "Or how they're getting a tax abatement to function when, they're a business, so they should be able to function on their own. They shouldn't need help."

The Bell County resident is concerned that the solar farms are inefficient. She said that from the start, the panels produce less efficiently as some might assume, and that their productivity dwindles year after year. 

"So the amount of input it takes to create those panels—are they dangerous? Are they not dangerous? They take up a lot of land, and as more people are coming in, being born and coming in to Texas, we need all the land we can get to produce food," she said.

Fleming said that the products farmers produce is more important than many people realize, from the clothes they wear to the beer they drink. 

According to the KDH article, the solar farm will have a 30-year lifespan. Big Elm Solar's contract with Bell County requires at least 180 megawatts of electricity each year starting in March of 2022. 

Fleming said that the effects of this issue on the community are already evident. 

"The community is definitely divided," Fleming said. "The farmers are all friends and we like to consider each other friends but at the same time we have our differences so there has been a definite divide in the way we are thinking out here."

KDH reported that the solar farm projected is projected to bring in more than $186 million in developments to the Bell County region after acquiring a county tax abatement in July. 

Fleming said that Bell County farmers won't pin it on each other for wanting to turn their land into solar farms—but hopes her agricultural neighbors who truly want out of the industry will consider selling their land to someone who wants to continue farming instead. 

"I get it, it's their own property, they can do what they want with it if they want to get some money out of it," Fleming said. "But then again there are plenty of young guys and women out here who would like to get their [farms] going. They can turn the land over to someone who who wants to do the hard work."