LETTER: Neighbors kept in dark while landowners got rich solar deals

To Ozaukee Press:

There is something undemocratic going on with the covert solar farm deal in our Town of Holland. The Town Board purposely withheld the information that Ranger Power was coming into the town in December 2018 to explore a possible solar farm. They allowed Ranger Power to move around secretly and sign contracts with farmers in the area before the public knew about it. As I understand it, once those lease contracts were in place, the board could then block the public’s ability to ask them to write an ordinance to regulate where the solar farm went.

As taxpaying Wisconsin citizens, we were robbed of our free speech, a hearing and vote on this issue that affects everyone in the town.

 When Town Chairman Don Becker tells Ozaukee Press “the Town Board has little to say on the matter,” that’s not true. The town could petition the Public Service Commission on behalf of its residents and tell the PSC we do not want a solar farm.

I have spoken to Emily Straka, who wrote a letter to the editor in last week’s Ozaukee Press defending Ranger Power. She is a nice person, but she is paid by Ranger Power to smooth-talk and manage rural people, telling them of all the benefits of solar, while at the same time withholding important information. For instance, in her letter she didn’t say how much the 10 farmers are being paid. That’s because those farmers were told to be quiet and not tell anyone.

Well, through public access, I found out. Normally, when farmers rent their land it might be for about $100 an acre. Ranger Power is paying these few select farmers an astounding $800 to $1,200 an acre. If a farmer has 40 acres, he will make between $32,000 and $48,000 per year. Over 40 years of the lease contract, each farmer will receive between $1 million and $2 million each.

The dirty little secret about the greedy gold rush of solar farm development in Wisconsin is that the lives of many fine, honest, hard-working Wisconsin residents have been destroyed by solar farm companies like Ranger Power and underhanded deals like what is happening now in the Town of Holland.     

Tax benefits to residents surrounded by Ranger Power solar panels will be of no use to landowners because of the damage done to their real estate values.

And you can say goodbye to our beautiful endangered sandhill cranes whose habitat along the Onion River has brought back their struggling population. Say goodbye to the wild turkeys and deer that roam across the fields by the Onion River. And if the solar panels leak into the Onion River, say goodbye to the trout population that conservationists worked so hard to bring back in recent years.

Wake up, sleepy Wisconsinites. Solar farms are sleek and glossy to a child’s eyes, but deep below their snakeskin plastic surface lies a dark, dangerous demon that will rise up to bite us all sometime in the future. Remember, a solar farm is not a farm; it is an industrial power plant and it is dangerous. That’s why they put a chain link fence around it.

Robert Hudovernik
Oostburg