The following Letter to the Editor is from the March 2025 issue of The Lenawee Voice. Letters should be 350 words or fewer and may be emailed to [email protected]. If space is limited, preference will be given to local authors and local topics. Please include your town of residence and a phone number for verification.

Anti-solar activists continue to shortchange our communities

A total of 2,031 residents live in Palmyra Township. About 20 of them attended a special meeting on Feb. 18, bent on intimidating the township board that was voting on a workable solar ordinance that would have allowed a 175-megawatt solar farm to be built with local input.

The township’s needs are great and the project would help fund many of them. The 20 or so who bullied the board to a “no” vote also made loud promises to do a fundraiser for the dire needs of the community. They claim they themselves will raise the money to replace $875,000 in EGLE solar incentives. 

We shall see, but I doubt it.

Having failed to pass a workable ordinance, the developer will appeal to Lansing, where local input will be limited. 

Public Act 233 became law in 2024 to combat illegal exclusionary ordinances, based on misinformation, that were blocking renewables and farmers’ right to diversify their incomes and keep farms in the family.

The anti-solar minority think they won, but informed citizens know better. There will still be a solar farm in Palmyra, just no incentive money, and much less control for local citizens.

Anti-clean energy groups have shot themselves in the foot, and stuck Palmyra taxpayers with a big loss of needed revenue.

—­ Paul Wohlfarth, Ottawa Lake