Posted on 06/06/2023 8:51:01 AM PDT by george76
Inflicting heavy fines on developers of a project billed as supplying clean, renewable energy, a federal jury has awarded a couple in southwest Georgia $135.5 million after runoff from “Lumpkin Solar” severely polluted waters and soils on their rural property.
According to a lawsuit filed by Shaun and Amie Harris, Lumpkin Solar’s developers – after clearing about 1,000 acres of timberland, farmland, and land previously used for hunting and fishing – failed to install adequate measures for erosion and sediment control.
“The result is what one would expect – when it rained, pollution poured downhill and downstream onto the neighbors’ property, inundating wetlands with silt and sediment, and turning a 21-acre trophy fishing lake into a mud hole,” said James E. Butler, the couple’s attorney, in a statement.
The companies slapped with stiff fines are Nashville, Tenn.-based Silicon Ranch Corp. and its contractor IEA Inc. “According to the lawsuit, Silicon Ranch Corp. has developed more than 160 solar panel facilities across the country, many of which were built by IEA,” the Associated Press reported (May 3).
“Created, Operated, and Maintained a Nuisance”
Despite the companies’ extensive experience in building and operating solar farms, Federal District Judge Clay D. Land found them seriously lacking in the case of Lumpkin Solar. The companies “created, operated, and maintained a nuisance … that caused sedimentation to pollute plaintiffs’ wetlands, streams, and lake. The court further finds that this nuisance has continued for approximately two years unabated,” Judge Land said in his order.
The fines assessed were compensatory and punitive. Compensatory damage was set at $10.5 million. For the solar farm developers, that was the good news. In the punishment phase, the jury found that Silicon Ranch Corp., IEA, and IEA Contractors, LLC, a subsidiary of IEA Inc., acted with specific intent to cause harm. The jury imposed $25 million in punitive damages against Silicon Ranch Corp., $50 million against IEA Inc., and $50 million against IEA Contractors, LLC, the AP reported. In an email to the Associated Press, Silicon Ranch said it would appeal the verdicts and blamed its contractor for the problems at Lumpkin Solar. The company also reiterated its commitment to Stewart County, where the town of Lumpkin is located.
The pollution caused by the solar farm near Lumpkin is no isolated incident.
“Runoff from a growing number of giant solar farms polluting rivers and streams in rural South Georgia is becoming a major concern,” reported Georgia Public Broadcasting last October, citing the opinion of the state’s environmental regulators.
The Meta Connection
In addition to polluting the environment they are said to protect, solar farms often produce electricity, albeit intermittently, for a narrow but powerful segment of society. As noted by Ken Braun in RealClearEnergy, the Lumpkin Solar farm is designed to supply power to a Georgia data center run by Meta, the parent company of Facebook. Even after the developers of the ill-fated Lumpkin Solar farm were five months into their lawsuit, Braun points out, Meta’s renewable energy chief had nothing but praise for the Georgia facility.
“We thank Silicon Ranch … for their dedication to successful execution and for sharing our commitment to have a positive impact on the communities where we locate,” the Meta official said.
Meta, it is worth noting, is an enthusiastic supporter of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. The company’s commitment to the “E” in ESG is called into question, however, by its participation in a solar energy project that uprooted timberland and farmland in order to build a taxpayer-subsidized solar farm that wound up polluting wetlands and soils on somebody else’s land.
I was told that when land is cleared for solar farms, the operator must basically “nuke” the soil. Can’t have tall weeds, trees, etc...growing up among the panels, as constant need to mow and weed hundreds of acres is a big labor cost
This is a GREAT award.
Every time I turn around, there’s another ecological catastrophe caused by “green” energy. I never thought of the possibility of solar panels collecting huge amounts of rain water and preventing the water from percolating into the soil (where forests and grasslands used to be pre-solar). The solar runoff pollution runoff ruined the adjoining property.
Another “unintended consequence” of solar.
Yet the greeniacs keep quiet about millions of raptors killed, whales killed, and land ruined by their fetish.
Hope this award will be the first of many around the country!!!! The “little” people matter!!!!!
But if it's just talking about the solar array and construction changing the direction rain water runs, then this argument applies to any large building project and it's not germane to solar.
I’m sure that this bit of news will get zero every time on the government networks
Maybe goats could eat the weeds and saplings down. That can work where land is unmowable. We use that in our city, where hillside weeds present a seasonal fire hazard.
True, but all construction projects and parking lots have to comply with runoff and soil percolation requirements. I doubt these are concerns for any “green” energy plant.
They wiped out almost TWO SQUARE MILES of forest and grassland with total disregard for rainwater concentration and runoff management. They ignored it and let the concentrated runoff flow to neighboring properties and inundate them with mud and silt, ruining their land and ponds. That is gross incompetence. It sounds like you are perfectly happy with that.
Try doing that when you build any other type of commercial project. Tough regulatory standards must be met for any project except “green” energy projects.
In a similar vein, I’m angry about the lack of land remediation bond requirements for windmills. If you want to open a surface mine of any type, you must post up-front bonds to restore the land after mining is completed. Windmills and solar plants will be abandoned, littering our once-beautiful landscape with tens of millions of failing windmill towers, each held up by hundreds of tons of concrete buried in the earth. No surety bonds are posted to make sure those despicable towers will be torn down or remediated. I presume you are fine with that looming environmental catastrophe, too.
Just like everything else in modern America, there are two systems of justice and regulatory law — one for the favored classes and one for everybody else.
We need to see a couple thousand suck lawsuits and awards to show the green agenda is anything but green.
Goats will climb onto the solar panels.
Yes, it is a great award assuming they EVER get paid.
More likely, the solar company will just go out of business. As will all the other companies involved.
Real Damages vs Imaginary according to greeniacs.
Thing is when presented with facts and data, it makes no difference to them. Gotta be a mental illness
Also the “climate scientists” who only know about how bad CO2 is cannot predict what will happen when you cover an environment in solar panels. Everything affects everything around it, and changes to one area could drastically alter another.
Two square miles? How much power was being produced? That sounds like power to supply the grid, which is a horrible use for solar. The grid should be dependable power.
Our solar on our home produces 80% of the power we need in our all electric home, including charging our EV. And it's in Alabama (similar climate to Georgia, where the article is about). Solar shouldn't be forced onto anybody. But if anybody is interested (free market), it's do-able in our climate without using up tons of land. All of mine is on the roof.
But you won't get the kind of efficiency I get if it's done with a large solar farm for the grid. For one, the grid's needs are different from a home's needs and the grid's demand varies a lot more than a home's demand. Simply put: it's hard to engineer to meet a constantly shifting target. Then there's the bureaucratic layer with grid power always mucking things up like bureaucrats do.
Yeah, they do climb. Hmmmm.
Solar farms...on our precious woodlands and farms....BIG mistake.
The last I heard, our county had declared a moratorium on solar farms in our county. One was allowed to be built and it was an eyesore and provided little to no energy. The commissioners were ticked off that it did not perform as promised and said “no more”.
Even large building projects havew a maximum footprint to allow mother nature to operate.
Oh MY GOD. They CLEARCUT TWO SQUARE MILES.
If this was a timber harvesting company they would be immediately subject to fines for run off, etc. Especially when it comes to runoff into wetlands/streams any bodies of water.
However, because it is a solar farm it was OKEY DOKEY, with the government.
On Federal lands in the western US you are not allowed to log within 50-100’ of a stream. Especially if that stream is the spawning grounds of salmon.
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