Solar vs. scenery: Scandia solar panels show a tense debate

SCANDIA — The roads that lead to this town in northern Washington County do most of the convincing, ferrying visitors past timeless wooden barns, the Scandia Creamery Banquet Hall, and on to the brick steeple of Elim Lutheran Church set on a hillside at the town's center.

If there's a romantic country scene that comes to mind when people say the words "scenic Minnesota," it's here.

And then there are the solar panels. After a 2013 state law called for the creation of community solar gardens — a typical garden amounts to a five-acre spread — Scandia became home to one and then two, and now six solar arrays. While some fans of renewable energy cheered their arrival, the panels have made other locals wary of what's happening to their prized open land and bucolic charm.

"We call them solar farms, which a lot of people feel that's a misnomer," said Scandia Mayor Christine Maefsky. "They're industrial devices."

Tensions flared anew when a local man suggested he could build the town's seventh community solar garden if Scandia would tweak its rules governing where the arrays can be built. Instead of a tweak, the City Council may soon implement a one-year moratorium on solar gardens as they consider a balance between solar and preserving the town's rural feel.

It's not just in Scandia. Driven by ever-lower costs and the push for renewable energy, solar gardens are on track to more than double across the state. The mushrooming expansion is forcing cities and towns to weigh the rights of property owners and the perceived rights of a community that doesn't want the view to change. Some residents also worry that they're shouldering the burden for urbanites who want solar but don't have the space to install it.

"It's actually a national issue," said Brian Ross, vice president at the Great Plains Institute and a consultant for communities facing solar's surging growth. "It's not just Minnesota."

Searching for solutions

It wasn't uncommon in the early days of solar gardens for the projects to find at least some local opposition, but six years after the first one opened near Kasota in September 2015, town boards and local officials still struggle to find an approach that works.

A year ago, the Wright County Board of Commissioners enacted a one-year moratorium on solar gardens, fearing that the rush of applications was, among other issues, forever altering prime farmland and filling in a vital economic development corridor along Interstate 94 from Albertville to Clearwater. The moratorium gave the county time to figure out "fact from fiction about what is actually taking place," said County Commissioner Darek Vetsch. "These solar farms kind of came at us fast and furious around 2015 and ordinances were enacted quickly and they didn't necessarily have the language and the research done enough."

Vetsch said he's not opposed to solar, but he's not yet convinced by it, either. The moratorium ended with tighter rules for solar garden developers. A new one-mile separation requirement between gardens will help close a tax loophole, and has the secondary benefit of preserving open space, said Vetsch.

In other places, local control has been tough to enforce, as the McLeod County Board of Commissioners found last summer when they saw their rejection of a proposed solar garden overturned in court. The Minnesota Court of Appeals said the board's concerns about neighboring property values and the solar garden's use of prime farmland were arbitrary or capricious, and ordered the board to approve the 3.5-acre project in Hale Township, about 55 miles west of Minneapolis.

The wrangling over setbacks, land use and sight lines looks only to continue as Xcel Energy says plans are underway to more than double the state's 426 solar gardens, while larger utility-scale solar projects will grow from today's 268 megawatts to 2,500 megawatts by 2032. A Metropolitan Council survey last summer found that solar installations were 7 %, or 1,335 acres, of the metro-area farmland or vacant land that got developed from 2016 to 2020.

'Done our share'

The first community solar garden landed in Scandia to much fanfare. Then-mayor Randall Simonson crowed that the site at the busy Minnesota Hwy. 97 and Manning Avenue intersection would showcase the town's commitment to renewable energy. But complaints quickly piled up and the town's solar ordinance was paused, amended and then repealed by 2017. A new ordinance in 2019 set height limits and required deeper setbacks, and vegetation to obscure the panels.

Today six solar arrays dot the roadsides and intersections here, pumping out nearly 20 megawatts. Ten more solar gardens sit scattered throughout Washington County.

"We've got a number of people saying we've got more than enough generating capacity in the city of Scandia," said Steve Kronmiller, who sits on the Scandia City Council. "We've done our share, let somebody else do their share. We want to benefit from our open spaces, too."

Kronmiller said the Scandia viewsheds are an amenity worth protecting: the town bills itself as a tourist destination, and has fought for years to have a bike trail extended from nearby William O'Brien State Park to draw more people looking for scenic recreation.

There's also the sense that Scandia is making room for the solar panels that people in Ramsey County are asking for, said Kronmiller. The state's solar garden law allows the owner of a solar garden to sell that electricity in the same county or an adjacent one.

These feelings were already in place when local resident Mike Lubke told Scandia officials last summer that he wanted to build the city's seventh solar garden near a pond on his land, a five-acre array with room for sheep to graze under the raised panels. His proposal requires an amendment to the city's ordinance to allow solar installations on shore land, but rather than change the ordinance, city councilors said they would prefer to take a break, pass the moratorium and look at all aspects of solar development.

"I understand their viewpoint," said Lubke. "Yes, [the moratorium] sets us back, but I also want to make sure the ordinance is set for the long term and not just my property."

The city's screening requirements for solar gardens could be more effective if they were more flexible, said Lubke, so he's proposing some alternate ideas along with a bigger setback from certain roads in town.

He'd even be willing to install a plastic screen like one being used at a solar garden in River Falls, Wis.; the light brown screen has prairie grass images printed on it and hangs from the panels, disguising the array.

The end result of Lubke's pitch is that if the city changed its ordinance in the ways he's proposed, two new Scandia parcels, including his, would be eligible for solar gardens, two other parcels that are already eligible could be expanded, and approximately 17 parcels would be eliminated due to the tightened setback rules.

Lines filling up

Some Scandia residents point just down the road to Chisago County for what they consider a disquieting vision of what the future could bring.

Solar gardens started blooming there soon after the 2013 law passed, some with little-to-no screening from nearby roads. Spurred on by Xcel Energy's Solar Rewards program, the largest solar gardens initiative in the nation, the county developed solar so quickly that today there are 38 installations in place or in planning stages.

"We support solar energy in Scandia," said Maefsky, the mayor, who has said she's in favor of a moratorium. "But we also recognize that they have an impact on neighbors and we need to protect neighbors and protect the city as a whole as well as we can so that they don't become intrusive."

It might be that the electric grid will soon force a pause in Scandia's solar economy. A spokeswoman for Xcel Energy said so many solar gardens were installed in Chisago and Washington counties that the feeder lines and substations in that part of the metro are essentially full.

"We are reaching the point where upgrades are needed in order to interconnect," said spokeswoman Lacey Nygard. The installation of a new solar garden might require the developer to pay for grid upgrades, with the potential for big costs if new infrastructure is required, she added.

For now, the Scandia city government plans to hold a public hearing on April 5. The City Council could take a moratorium vote soon after.