Hearing over Dike solar farm held

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Judge Will Biard of Hopkins County District Court presided over a hearing concerning a temporary restraining order against Hopkins County Energy, LLC, the company responsible for the Dike Solar Project. The main plaintiff in this case was Cynthia Martin, a Dike resident and an organizer of Save Dike from Solar. Hopkins County and Hopkins Energy, LLC, whose parent company is ENGIE, are listed as the defendants in the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, the solar farm’s construction may cause flooding to Martin’s property by changing the flow of rain water runoff and argues that the commissioner’s court did not have the authority to enter into a 381 agreement with Hopkins Energy, LLC. It also alleges that the agreement is invalid because it did not contain required provisions and that the notice posted for the meeting to approve the agreement was not sufficient under the Open Meetings Act.

The complaints facing Hopkins Energy are accusations of being a public and private nuisance, failure to file proper permits and give the community advance notice of the project, as well as the possibility of flooding to Martin’s property during construction.

Cynthia Martin’s attorney Chris Bell accused the Hopkins County Commissioner’s court of not creating a reinvestment zone before the agreement was filed, but instead made the decision eleven days later.

Bell also stated that Hopkins County has committed several tax code violations by not having a reinvestment zone, no list of improvements, no access provisions, and no property use limits.

In a flyer shared by ENGIE, the solar company shared that the construction of the solar farm will create 400 jobs and two full time jobs after construction is completed.

“This is an exaggeration because these jobs are only during the construction and will disappear once the project is completed,” Bell said.

The truth wasn’t set before the public in an open fashion and the signatures on the 381 agreement hadn’t been properly notarized,” Bell added.

Bell also shared that while he could not speak for everyone present but he and Martin are for renewable energy and the tax reinvestment zone if it had just been done properly.

The next complaint was the county’s lack of a flood permit being filed in the proper time or having a study done to determine the possibility of flooding to the adjacent properties.

In regards to the flooding, Martin’s party shared that they had a study done by Aqua Strategies which found that there is a possibility of increased flooding from 1% to 43% to 100 acres of Martin’s properties adjacent to the solar farm.

Bell also shared that when public notice was posted in September of 2020 about the Commissioner’s court meeting when the 381 agreements were being considered, it did not share who the court was entering an agreement with.

Bell claims that because the county didn’t follow the proper statutes concerning tax abatement properties and Martin considers the solar farm to be a nuisance to adjacent property owners, they are asking the court for an injunction or temporary restraining order to stop the solar company from building on the property.

Bill Kroger, an energy litigation attorney spoke on behalf of Hopkins Energy, LLC sharing that the flood permit hadn’t been applied for yet but was in the works and that construction wasn’t planned to start until September which is plenty of time to apply, have a study done and receive a permit.

“We aren’t going to be building these panels on a 100 year old flood plain like Miss Martin seems to believe,” Kroger stated, showing Judge Baird a map of the proposed footprint of the project. “We’ve leased more land than we need, the footprint of the solar plant is going to be much smaller than it appears on the map. Also, we are still in the permitting phase of the project, so the idea that we would enter into a TRO because we don’t have permits is jumping the gun.”

The permits are dependent on where the panels are placed, a flood permit would absolutely required if the company built the panels in the flood plain but if the panels are positioned outside of the plain, the permits wouldn’t be needed.

Kroger shared that another reason the TRO should be denied is that Martin’s lawsuit is based solely on perception, of might’s and maybe’s.

Kroger also showed the judge a map of the leased acreage for the solar farm as compared to a map that Martin’s attorney shared.

“You can see here that the area we are leasing is a fraction of the size of what is shown on their map,” Kroger said. “Early one, we were looking at a whole lot more but we made some decisions about what we were really going to use and you can see that their expert report, even though it’s dated for May 2021 and includes area we aren’t going to use, including the Martin property. So their conclusion that this project is going to cause massive run off and flooding is a gross exaggeration.”

Kroger went on to say that he felt that Martin’s party had no basis for the farm being a public nuisance because they haven’t shown that Martin will in fact have flooding or personal injury to herself.

Kroger shares that the document from Aqua Strategies was a preliminary report and didn’t have much standing in the court.

“This document is preliminary and was released on May 18, 2021 for the purposes of review,” Kroger read from the report. “Also on the bottom of the page, that Martin’s attorney didn’t read is ‘The degree of the impact of flooding can be mitigated by adequate storm water run off and erosion managing practices.”

Judge Biard shared that he would be taking all information and opinions under advisement and would most likely have an answer for both parties by the end of the week.