The Geneseo Town Board has approved the installation of a 40-acre, 5-megawatt solar farm on West Lake Road in Geneseo. Several town members have expressed concerns throughout the process, including Town Supervisor William Wadsworth. The Geneseo community is projected to save 10 percent on their energy expenses once the solar farm is fully installed and operational.
Helios Energy, a solar company based out of Michigan, has contracted Ingalls & Associates LLP to build the solar farm. A representative from Ingalls, Joseph Hens, attended the Town Board meetings when the Helios Solar Farm was discussed to explain the project and answer questions from the community.
Many community members voiced concerns about pollution to Conesus Lake and the Watershed, while others explained their reservations about possible effects the solar farm would have on local businesses and tourism, according to the meeting minutes of a public hearing hosted by the Town on March 12. These were also discussed in a letter from Hens to Planning Board Chairman Robert Harris addressed from August 2020.
One local business, the Deer Run Winery, stated multiple times that their business could be affected by the solar farm, which will be built on the property next to them. Hens enumerated measures that were being taken to ensure adjacent properties would not be affected, such as increasing privacy fencing and tree coverage surrounding the solar farm.
Several community members also expressed concerns about potential cadmium pollution from damaged panels and increased or concentrated runoff.
Hens explained that the solar panels are silicon-based, and pose no pollution risk to Conesus Lake, or the Watershed. Hens continued that any increased runoff would be mitigated by the positioning of the panels and the ground would be specifically landscaped in such a way that it would absorb any runoff from the solar panels.
Amidst all these potential environmental impacts, the Town Board had other concerns in mind.
Wadsworth said that he questions the project’s status decades from now.
“We believe, as most companies do, there’ll ultimately be a holding company that owns this particular project,” Wadsworth said. “And a fear of mine is that twenty years down the road, they’ve sold or renamed so many times that by the time they get to decommissioning, there’s actually nothing of value that the company owns that we could seize or use to help us decommission.”
The best way to prevent an abandoned solar farm from falling into disrepair is to write a solid surety bond, or contract, that will ensure that in the event that the solar farm’s operations discontinue, the companies and banks involved will pay for it to be removed from the landscape. This process is ongoing, and requires a great deal of time and manpower, according to Wadsworth.
“We're making every effort to make that a solid, permanent, useful surety bond that will be there at the end if the company decides not to do their job,” Wadsworth said.