The following Letter to the Editor is from the May 2025 issue of The Lenawee Voice. Letters should be 300 words or fewer and may be emailed to letters@lenaweevoice.com. 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.

We’re missing out on opportunities

Recently the Palmyra Township board, intimidated by a small but noisy NIMBY group (10 to 20 residents out of 2,031 township residents) blocked changes to a local ordinance that would have allowed a new solar farm to quickly proceed.

Such “exclusionary” ordinances are not legal under Michigan’s Zoning and Enabling Act.

Had the solar developer, RWE, been able to work out details with the township, Palmyra could have collected $875,000 in a “Renewable Ready Community” grant from the state.

But NIMBYs thought they knew better.

Now, the same anti-clean energy group, despite months of raucous complaints about the supposed “dangers” of solar energy, have realized, too late, the desperate need for funding in the community, and have, incredibly, proposed building their own solar farm to address funding shortfalls.

To that end, the group proposes forming a “task force” made up of  “community volunteers” for “researching and implementing a township-owned solar grid.”

The group will study “feasibility and funding options,” but no one in the group has the slightest experience, expertise, or financial ability to initiate such a project.

The NIMBY group relentlessly opposed a professional corporation with years of experience and a proven track record of bringing exactly this kind of project to the community.

Ironically, under Michigan’s new siting reform law, RWE will now take their proposal directly to the Public Service Commission, where in all likelihood it will be approved, but without direct input from the township, and with Palmyra forfeiting the badly needed $875,000 EGLE award.

Solar will eventually come to Palmyra, and there will be enormous revenue benefits, over time, to the community.

Sad that a handful of noisy, but poorly informed, individuals have cost the rest of Palmyra’s residents badly needed dollars, and critical time.

—­ Paul Wohlfarth, Ottawa Lake