Residents Complain over Campbell County, VA, Road Damage Caused by heavy Machinery going to Solar Project Site
Campbell County, VA, has issued six stop-work orders since June of 2020 to an AZ-based engineering and construction firm building a solar farm.
Besides that, there have been 26 notices of violations.
Residents are filing complaints against the county, Dept of Transportation and Dept of Environmental Quality over the road conditions in the area. The road used for trucks going to the construction site has potholes, the shoulders are damaged and the road is constantly muddy.
The Environmental Manager stated that the size of the project is probably to blame. The project is on 1,200 acres of land and about 600 to 700 acres will become a solar field.
"The Virginia erosion and sediment control regulations are approximately 30-years-old. They are only designed to be 60% effective when they are installed correctly, so going back to the scale and size of a project, when our erosion and sediment control laws were written and adopted they weren’t thinking about hundreds of acres being disturbed at one time” Stokes said. “When these folks see what’s happening in their back yards or front yards, I can understand why they may think, ‘well the county isn’t doing anything about it,’ but when our regulations and laws are structured to only be at a 60% efficiency, then that’s 40% that’s allowed."
Since this Solar Farm Construction Project was issued "DOZENS of violations and stop-work orders," Yet they continue to move forward on their construction. This is a typical example of Solar Developers and their out of town construction crews not caring about the local communities or property. We NEED to stop this crap from destroying our small towns and rural communities, all in order to line a few pockets with extra greenbacks.
To read the entire article, go to: Campbell County VA solar farm stop work order complaints
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