Wednesday afternoon, Judge Will Biard shared his final ruling in the Dike solar farm hearing that was held Monday.
In a public notice shared with the press, Judge Biard stated that after considering Hopkins Energy LLC’s response to the plaintiff, Cynthia Martin’s application for a temporary restraining order, with any reply and other filings, and having heard the arguments of counsel, it was the opinion that the restraining order and injunction be denied.
During the hearing, the judge heard from Cynthia Martin’s attorney Chris Bell that Martin believed that the solar farm’s construction would cause flooding to her 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.
Other complaints listed in the lawsuit were accusations of the farm being a public and private nuisance, failure to file the proper permits and failure to give the community advance notice of the project.
“We believe that 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 said.
Bill Kroger, an energy litigation attorney spoke on behalf of Hopkins Energy, LLC shared in his rebuttal that the flood permit hadn’t been applied for yet because the plans for construction were still in the works.
Construction isn’t planned to start until September which is plenty of time to apply, have a study done and receive a permit, according to Kroger.
“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.”
Kroger shared that another reason he believed the TRO should be denied is that Martin’s lawsuit is based solely on perception, of might’s and maybe’s, especially where the possibility of flood is concerned.
“This document is preliminary and was released on May 18, 2021 for the purposes of review,” Kroger read from a flood survey shared by Martin’s attorney, Bell. “Also on the bottom of the page, that Martin’s attorney didn’t read is ‘The degree of the impact of flooding could be mitigated by adequate storm water run off and erosion managing practices.”