Dear Editor,
Local news sources have published two letters from Gambier residents supporting the Frasier Solar project. As a resident of Miller Township, where the project is located, here is my response.
The people of Gambier have preserved the natural beauty of their own College Township. Taking the lead is Gambier’s own Kenyon College, a picturesque liberal arts college that primarily educates privileged students from all over the nation and world.
Text from the home page of the Philander Chase Conservancy of Kenyon College:
“The Kenyon experience is inextricably linked to the beauty of the College's location.
The sense of well-being that pervades this community — the sense of living in a charmed realm — stems not only from the loveliness of the campus itself but also from the surrounding hills, farmland and forest. Landscape and river offer views that please the eye and nourish the spirit. It is virtually impossible to imagine Kenyon without those views.
The College cannot take its setting for granted, however. Growth and development are changing the landscape of the entire Mount Vernon area. It is imperative that Kenyon act, as necessary, to preserve the surroundings it so cherishes…. Now, more than ever, Kenyon needs the resources to continue this practice, even to expand it.”
The people of Gambier absolutely deserve to live in their lovely environs for all the reasons listed here. Do the people of Miller Township deserve any less? Are our children less deserving of a “charmed realm” in which to grow in knowledge and maturity?
The majority of Kenyon’s students will leave this area, but many of Knox County’s own children will stay to live and farm right here. The future of conservation rests on this younger generation growing within idyllic landscapes like these, so they become adults who protect it.
Unlike Kenyon College, we do not have the charitable funding to buy up the land, but we do have the legal right to oppose any development that goes against local zoning. The land in question is not zoned industrial, it is zoned agriculture/residential. Zoning protects working-class residents from land barons. The majority of the project area is owned by wealthy landowners who do not live in the neighborhood. If the project goes through, they will make a fortune at our expense. Our own properties are at risk of flooding, and our property values will go down.
If the people of Gambier want industrial solar, they should install it on their own fields and hills, but I don’t think they could bring themselves to put hundreds of thousands of steel and glass panels on that beautiful landscape in their backyard. Please consider supporting us in the fight to have the benefits of charming rural living that you have. All of Knox County benefits from the preservation of green space, regardless of who has the privilege of looking at it.
Juliet Strinka
