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US town fears solar farms would 'suck up all the energy from the sun'
©
Regis Duvignau / Reuters
A
proposal for a solar farm has been rejected by the town council in
Woodland, North Carolina following public concerns.
Members
of the locality expressed their fear and distrust of solar panels
before a vote on whether the land in question should be rezoned to
allow Strata Solar Company to build a solar farm off US Highway 258.
One
local man, Bobby Mann said that businesses would stop going to
Woodland, the community would suffer as a result and the farms would
suck up all the energy from the sun, according to the Roanoke-Chowan
News Herald.
“You’re
killing your town,” he
said. “All
the young people are going to move out.”
A
retired science teacher, Jane Mann, expressed concerns that plants in
the vicinity of the panels would not photosynthesize which would
prevent the plants from growing.
She
also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying
no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer.
Woodland
is a popular choice for solar farms because it has an electrical
substation which the solar power generated by the panels can be
hooked up to.
Three
other solar farms have been approved by the council. One of them has
started installing solar panels.
A
petition rejecting solar farms coming to the area was handed to the
council and it was requested that any future solar farm applications
be put to a referendum.
Company
representatives from Strata then spoke and tried to put the concerns
of residents at ease.
They
told them “there
are no toxic materials on site” and “this
is a tried and true technology.”
The
council gave the people what the wanted and voted 3-1 against
rezoning the land and later voted for a moratorium on future solar
farms.
I should stop being astonished at the levels of intelligence, knowledge, and understanding displayed by this community and others like it. I always assumed that other students in high school and grade school were also learning, yet things like this keep cropping up, and they're not the dim thoughts of a few who are informed by their friends and neighbors, but apparently the best thinking the majority of the community could come up with. While they drive cars, do jobs, speak as though they were real thinking humans, this kind of thing results. It is truly an amazing species.
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