The Board of Weld County Commissioners will vote to adopt the rules during its meeting this morning. Today’s proposal is almost unrecognizable from the one introduced late last year. Officials say the process proves how important outside input and compromise can be.
The solar regulations hit the scene in December, when commissioners considered booting all future solar from farmland. After months of public hearings, stakeholder meetings and even a restart, the regulations changed and shifted until they looked entirely different.
When the conversations started, officials didn’t know about community solar projects; they painted all solar development with the same brush. They feared large utility projects would cover Weld’s farms, and that nearby residents would have no say in the matter.
Industry representatives attended the first meeting to accuse commissioners of killing solar in Weld, and they attended the most recent meeting to praise them for their flexibility.
When commissioners and planning officials look back on the past seven months, they say they’re proud of the end result and what it took to get there.
“Even though the process was long, I think it was a good process,” said Weld County Commissioner Barbara Kirkmeyer. “I think the conversation was good.”
She was one of the most vocal officials during the early drafts. There was a clear break in officials who were passionately fighting for a rule update and those who didn’t think they were necessary.
“From my standpoint, I never really understood, from the inception, the ‘why,’ ” Commissioner Sean Conway said in an interview last week. “I remember walking in on first reading, I was very contentious.”
The planning commission, a board that advises the commissioners on regulations like these, recommended the county commissioners drop the rule change.
But a few of the commissioners feared projects would blanket the county in solar panels, taking farmland out of production and, frankly, freaking residents out.
“We started to get bombarded with solar inquiries,” said Tom Parko, the county’s director of planning services.
He’s not an elected official who votes to approve projects. His department takes applications from companies wanting to build in Weld. Planning employees go through the application process with companies and eventually review the studies attached to the application, then present them to the planning commission and county commissioners.
“We never had a solar project approach the county until about two years ago,” he said. “But then all of the sudden, it was these large conglomerates, these huge companies coming in.”
For example, Poudre Valley Rural Electric Authority had two major projects built in the county, spanning about 70 acres each. The company’s 100,000 panels came online earlier this year.
That was problematic. Solar technology is so new, Weld County’s code didn’t address it specifically. There were rules on electric generation but nothing specifically about solar.
“(We thought), ‘There’s no criteria at all,’ ” Parko said. “ ‘How are we supposed to process these cases?’ ”
A handful went through the county’s general use-by-special-review process. And if only a few companies a year were going to pitch solar projects, that would have been fine. But demand was increasing, officials say.
First, solar projects already are gaining popularity as technology improves. Gov. John Hickenlooper signed off on a 2013 bill that requires rural electric companies to get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020. Land is cheaper in Weld, and there’s more open space; that puts a target on the county’s back, officials say.
The first regulations that came out of that were rough, officials admit.
“It was kind of shooting from the hip,” Parko said.
Under those rules, no one could build solar projects on farmland. They would have to get the land’s zoning changed.
That means farmers couldn’t use a chunk of their land for a little extra revenue during bad years. And if a solar company bought land to develop and got it rezoned, that would take the land out of ag production for more than a few years.
“That’s forever,” Conway said.
Land zoned agriculture covers more than 75 percent of the county, and land zoned industrial tends to cost significantly more to rent. Industry representatives, especially those who build community solar projects, said the initial rule change would have priced them out of the market.
When companies build community solar projects, they install solar panels that users can access remotely. It’s ideal for renters, or for homeowners whose houses can’t support panels. Usually, these projects span a handful of acres or less.
“We hadn’t seen any 1-acre ones,” Kirkmeyer said. “We were seeing ones that were on 75 acres or more.”
After a couple of hearings with the unpopular regulations, commissioners “hit the reset button,” as they like to say.
“We just thought, ‘We need to take a step back, do more research,’ ” Kirkmeyer said.
They pulled the plug on those rules and drafted different ones, and they sent those back down to the planning commission.
Now, the rules differentiate tiny projects, medium-sized ones and the large-scale utility projects. Most sizes can go up on farmland, and the permits they need are just as easy to get as they were before the rule change.
Only large-scale utility projects’ requirements changed drastically. Planners for those have to go through the same permitting process as other large utilities — power plants, for example. The applications are much more involved, but the permit requires the same amount of hearings: one before the planning commission and one before the county commissioners.
Commissioner Julie Cozad pitched making the community solar projects even easier to get, cutting the hearing requirement.
She was overruled for now, but officials say that option isn’t off the table.
“Don’t be surprised if in a year, we’re looking at it,” Kirkmeyer said.
©2016 the Greeley Tribune (Greeley, Colo.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
