05/28/2025
EDIT: Link fixed
From The Valleys Planning Council with link to Montgomery Countryside Alliance
Earlier this year, the state legislature took up Bill SB931, also called the Renewable Energy Certain Act. This bill takes the power to approves large solar installations away from the counties and gives it to the state via the Public Service Commission (PSC).
Under Baltimore County's current laws, a councilmanic district may have up to 10 solar facilities. Each solar facilities may produce up to two megawatts, so about 15 acres (this does not include solar arrays for personal use). SB931 eliminates any limitations a county might put on where solar facilities may be located or how big they may be.
In spite of much opposition, the bill passed and was signed by Governor Moore last week. Now a developer that wants to put up a solar array of any size over one megawatt, or about 8 acres, will apply to the PSC, which will not have to consider local planning and zoning. Only when more than 5% of a county's Priority Preservation Area (farmland and conservation areas) is covered by solar can a county begin to decide where solar facilities can be located.
In Baltimore County, this means that the rural parts of the county will have to have 7,000 acres of solar, or about 10 square miles of solar panels, before the county can place any restrictions on where commercial solar installations go, how large they can be or how many there could be. And Baltimore County stakeholders will not be able to participate in PSC proceedings in any meaningful way.
Opponents are attempting to collect enough signatures on a petition to get the issue on next year's ballot. It is a difficult process. 20,000 signatures are needed. And we have literally just a few days to get it done. You can support solar — on rooftops, on parking canopies, on brownfields — while opposing the state taking away the ability of its counties to decide where solar should go within their boundaries.
Please join us in taking action TODAY. Our friends at the Montgomery Countryside Alliance have set up a landing page at https://www.mocoalliance.org/news/very-quick-action-overturn-100k-acres-of-solar-on-mds-prime-farmland online. You must be able to print out and properly sign the petition along with the bill on a single piece of paper — one side for the petition and one side for the bill.
--Time is of the essence. Petitions must be received in Centreville, Maryland by May 31.
--There are special instructions for anyone who wants to be a circulator; that is, if you want to get other people to sign a petition, you would be called a circulator. If you are the only person signing the petition, you are your own circulator and must fill out the Circulator's Affidavit at the bottom of the petition.
The process to sign the petition is complicated, but the alternative is to be at the mercy of the PSC to decide where large industrial solar facilities should be located, something that is better left to Baltimore County to decide. Please make the effort today!
FedEx to is KCPA, 503 Washington Ave #256, Chester Town MD 21620
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