Farmers opposed to two solar facilities totaling 640 acres in Oregon’s Lake County have convinced a state land use board to block the proposals.

However, opponents now expect to challenge an even larger 3,900-acre solar development planned in the same area.

“We’re going to be fighting this tooth and nail,” said Micheal Reeder, attorney for several farmers who oppose the solar projects.

The Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals has overturned Lake County’s conditional use permits for the solar projects and ordered the local government to reconsider those approvals.

Meanwhile, the project’s developer, Obsidian Renewables, is seeking permission from state energy siting regulators to move forward with plans for a 3,921-acre solar project that encompasses the smaller two sites.

An attorney for the solar developer referred questions to representatives of Obsidian Renewables, who did not respond to calls for comment.

While smaller solar projects must win county land use approval under Oregon law, larger proposals must obtain permission from Oregon’s Energy Facility Siting Council, which has scheduled a remote public hearing about the 3,900-acre facility on May 21.

“They don’t care about the local people. They never come to us and ask us about anything, they just push ahead with what they’re going to do,” said LeeRoy Horton, a rancher and farmer near Christmas Valley, of the solar developers.

LUBA found Lake County’s review of the two 320-acre solar projects to be lacking in several respects.

Allegations that clearing sage brush for solar panels will displace rodents onto surrounding farms weren’t adequately addressed in the county’s analysis of the effects on agricultural practices, according to LUBA.

“Even if there were evidence in the record that such impacts would be temporary, findings are necessary to address those impacts,” the ruling said.

Horton, the Christmas Valley farmer, said that jack rabbits and ground squirrels depend on brush that would be removed from the proposed solar facilities.

“There’ll be nothing for them to live off of, so they’ll come onto our land and eat our crops,” Horton said.

Horton and other farmers opposed to the solar projects claim they’ll also cause several other problems.

Deer and elk that migrate through the project area will be forced onto neighboring lands, where they’ll consume hay and tear down fences, Horton said.

The solar projects are proposed on highly erodible lands that will blow onto surrounding fields and barns, reminiscent of the Dust Bowl era, he said.

“When you take that cover off of it or move it, we have a lot of wind storms and it just blows away,” Horton said.

The local government also approved the solar projects even though a fully-completed plan to mitigate harms to big game habitat wasn’t agreed upon by the developers and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, according to LUBA.

Though the eventual development of a mitigation plan was a condition of approval, “the county did not intend to provide the same kind of individual notice, evidentiary hearing and other procedural safeguards” as required to obtain a conditional use permit, the ruling said.

For that reason, the county’s approach  “is deficient in failing to provide for a proceeding that was infused with the same participatory rights” as the permit process, the ruling said.

Finally, Lake County officials didn’t sufficiently ensure the 320-acre solar projects would be on separate tracts that aren’t under common ownership, or that they’re sufficiently far away from each other, according to the decision.

LUBA has remanded the solar proposals back to Lake County officials to “conduct additional proceedings” and correct the errors identified in its ruling.

The two sites don’t have any water rights and aren’t considered arable land, but they’d be surrounded by a seven-foot-tall fence and require “permanent ground disturbance to construct access roads, ground pads and other infrastructure,” which would exclude deer and elk, according to LUBA.

Both solar projects would be carved from a bigger property owned by Richard and Virginia Morehouse that’s zoned for agricultural use. 

The developers argued the Morehouse property had been partitioned so the solar sites would comply with zoning regulations that require the projects to be developed on separate tracts. 

Such rules were enacted to prevent large projects from being divided into smaller ones that come under the jurisdiction of the county government rather than the Energy Facility Siting Council.

However, LUBA said there’s no evidence the solar tracts were conveyed to third parties to ensure the sites didn’t remain under the same ownership, as Oregon regulations required.

Even if those criteria were satisfied, the record contains contradictory information about whether the solar projects are at least 1,320 feet apart, which is also required by land use regulations, the ruling said.

The Lake County projects were approved in 2019, but the regulations governing the size of solar projects have since changed.

Under a law that became effective in 2020, counties may have jurisdiction over solar projects up to 1,920 acres on lower-quality uncultivated ground, up from the previous 320 acres.