St. Joseph County, Ind. (Wndu) – It is a brave step and a completed deal.
The St. Joseph County Area Plan Commission gave a green light on Tuesday for a regulation that was aimed in large solar parks.
In the measure, developers must guarantee the market value of the nearby houses and potentially compensate for home owners if their real estate value decreases after the construction of a solar park.
“Ackerland, we have to protect what we have because there is only a limited amount,” says Eugene Matzat, who is sitting in the St. Joseph County Area Plan Commission.
Matzat voted for a regulation that makes it almost more expensive for developers to build solar parks in St. Joseph County, since developers have to publish a guarantee bond and compensate for neighboring homeowners if their ownership drops.
“People will have solar on three or four sides, which will clearly lower the value of their houses,” says Dan Schaetzle, President of St. Joseph County Council. “So you know if you have a farmer who has arable land near the city, where it will not affect the home values of many people, then we can handle it, but for most of our arable land we have to leave it.”
The session of the plank commission was visited by those who wanted to keep farmland “arable land”, but also from lawyers for solar energy and sustainable energy.
The lawyer of Solar, Steve Francis, was in a fairly blue radio after the plank commission was coordinated.
“I think that this coordination will unfortunately lead to the solar development in St. Joe County does not exist,” says Francis. “The farmers will lose income, the district loses sales because no solar investments allow, since the costs resulting from this real estate guarantee will be so great that solar developers do not come to St. Joe County.”
The regulation could indeed be expensive for the developers of solar parks.
Before a solar park is built, a developer vivation assessor determines the value of the surrounding properties.
If a house is sold on the market for less than the estimated value after 270 days, the solar developer stands for the difference on the hook or the property must buy the pre-solar project value.
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