Over the course of three public hearings about the proposed Frasier Solar project in Knox County, the Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) got a first-hand look at how successfully a well-funded misinformation campaign targeting our community can obscure facts and prey on fears to scare good people into action.
There has been a lot of coverage of the breadth of Knox Smart Development’s misinformation campaign against Frasier Solar, peddled through paid speakers, mailers, text messages, and social media. To this day, some of that misinformation sits prominently on the group’s website.
Speakers opposed to Frasier Solar repeated the same tired and debunked claims about utility-scale solar energy: Solar destroys farmland (in fact it preserves it); equipment will be abandoned, leaving taxpayers to clean up the mess (despite state law requiring a performance bond to prevent just that); solar doesn’t work in Ohio (multiple local residents with solar systems testified that it does); solar reduces neighboring property values (empirical evidence demonstrates otherwise); topsoil will be removed from the site (despite permit conditions prohibiting just that); and that solar will contaminate soil and water supplies (with no supporting evidence and despite a permit condition ensuring that Frasier panels will be non-hazardous).
Neighbors to the proposed project spoke about how solar panels will ruin their bucolic views. They’re entitled to their viewshed preferences, but they neglected to mention Frasier’s binding commitment to plant trees and shrubs around the perimeter of the project. They also didn’t answer an incisive question asked by a farmer in his testimony at one of the hearings: Since when is it a farmer’s job to provide neighbors with their preferred view?
Multiple speakers claimed the March Republican primary election was a referendum on solar in which “over 70% of voters” rejected it. In fact, even if one ignores all other issues in the election and views the primary that way, the voters for the two anti-solar candidates for county commissioner represent 19% of registered voters in the county (not to mention that one of the anti-solar candidates eked out his victory by one percentage point and two anti-solar candidates lost their elections).
Given the rampant lies, misinformation, and scare-tactics, it is no surprise that dozens of our friends and neighbors voiced their opposition to Frasier Solar at OPSB’s public hearings, mostly quoting misinformation pushed on them by the well-funded efforts of Knox Smart Development.
Despite it all, over 40% of the members of the public that spoke at the three hearings testified in support of Frasier Solar. OPSB should dismiss the concerns driven by lies, focus on the facts, and approve Frasier Solar.
Norma Butterfield
Mount Vernon, Ohio
