‘I don’t think we have balance’: Gov. Lamont tours solar facilities in East Windsor

About a third of the state’s solar energy is collected in East Windsor, and another facility could be coming.

Neighbors have been airing their concerns about more solar in town. Gov. Ned Lamont toured a facility on East Road with lawmakers and people who live in the neighborhood across the street to hear some of those concerns on Tuesday.

“I love clean, renewable power that’s also affordable, but I also love open space, protecting open space, and I don’t think we have that balance right now,” Lamont said. “We’re taking open space, we’re taking fields and commercializing them. In this case with solar, I think that’s going the wrong direction.”

Neighbor Amanda Berube described a constant humming coming from the facility.

“We built our home prior to the solar array going in, and we had built it for the peace and quiet that the area offered up, surrounded by farmland,” she said. “We deal with a ringing noise that comes from this facility from sunup to sundown. And it’s extremely loud, and it just permeates through our home if we have our windows open.”

Berube also told the governor about a fire that started from one of the transformers on the facility’s property last March.

“If the wind had been blowing in a different direction that day into the panels, we don’t have the support apparatus to put that out,” East Windsor First Selectman Jason Bowsza (D) said. “We can’t use PFAS.  We don’t have fire hydrants out here.”

East Windsor and Ellington State Representative Jamie Foster backs a bill that would upgrade fire reporting. She said she’s confident it will pass.

“There’s no plan for when there’s been an incident on a solar field, and there’s a fire,” she said. “Who determines the point of safety? It certainly shouldn’t be just the developer on their own who gets to say, ‘yep, safe. I’m turning it back on.’ They obviously have a financial incentive to turn it back on.”

Plans for a proposed solar project called Saltbox Solar would build arrays across from Berube’s neighborhood, throughout East Windsor, and in Ellington. It would produce 160,000 megawatts of energy annually, according to the project’s website.

John Hoffman, the owner of Hockanum Valley Farm, said the proposed site for Saltbox Solar is prime, meaning it can produce food year-round.

“It drains well, and we are in a 45-inch rainfall zone in this state,” he said. “And you can grow, especially food. So, vegetables and corn silage or hay for dairy cows. And we have a big concentration of dairy cattle to be fed right in this area.”

Flat land near transmission lines is ideal infrastructure to build solar arrays, which is why companies drift towards East Windsor.

Saltbox Solar has not yet been considered by the state siting council, which approves solar projects, such as the recently approved 150-acre expansion of Gravel Pit Solar in East Windsor.

Currently, municipalities lack representation on the siting council. The governor said it was too early to announce his support for a bill that would implement local representation, but he admitted there needs to be a change.

“I will say we ought to make sure we have legislation in place that guides the Siting Council and DEEP towards what we think are our broad interests,” he said.

DESRI, the parent company of Saltbox Solar and Gravel Pit, was unavailable for comment.