A demonstration of various setbacks

I did not apprciate how right JPC commissioner Walters was when she siad “people have a hard time visualizing distance. She made this during the JPC solar setback discussion.

Limestone Solar recommended a 50 foot setback while JPC recommended a 500 foot setback.

To help you see these distances in real life we have set up hay bales at various setbacks from the corner of the field. So for example the 50-foot bale is 50 feet back from the road and 50 feet from the boundary fence and parallel to the road.

Each bale marks the corner of an SES fence if the setback is the distance marked on the bale.

The JPC recommendation measures to the SES’s outer fence. Since lease payments are paid on land inside the fence. This means the landowner will not receive solar lease payment for any land “in the setback”. It also means our local tax districts will lose $85.94 for each acre of setback as “setback” pays tax at ag ground rates instead of the solar tax rates.

You still have time to ask your Fiscal Court members not to waste our area’s valuable land with such extreme setbacks.