NC small town bans solar farms over ridiculous fears

Posted on: Sun, 12/13/2015 - 19:18 By: Tom Swiss

The only problem with democracy is the people. (But it's an even worse problem in every other system we've come up with.)

Woodland rejects solar farm (www.roanoke-chowannewsherald.com)

During the public comment period preceding the rezoning vote, citizens expressed distrust and fear of the solar panels.

Jean Barnes said she represented many citizens who rejected any more solar farms coming to the Woodland area and presented a petition to the council.

...

Mary Hobbs has been living in Woodland for 50 years and said she has watched it slowly becoming a ghost town with no job opportunities for young people.

She said her home is surrounded by solar farms and is no longer worth its value because of those facilities.

Or, maybe your home's value has declined because the community is becoming a ghost town? (According to the wik, the town population is about 800 people.)

...

Jane Mann said she is a local native and is concerned about the plants that make the community beautiful.

She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where the plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight.

Plants in the shade of new construction, perhaps?

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.

...

Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms.

“You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.”

Oh, they might move out all right. Not so much because of the panels, I think, but maybe because they don't want to live around people ignorant enough to believe this:

He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland.