Arvid Merkner has spent the past several months submitting public records requests to Porter County government officials in a quest to learn more about NextEra Energy and its proposed solar project in Morgan Township, Malden Solar.
As planned, the project, on private farmland, would be directly across from his home on County Road 150 East, replacing his view of cornfields from his driveway with hundreds of solar array panels.
He and other opponents of the proposal plan to attend Monday evening’s Board of Commissioners meeting, where Merkner will present a binder with a fraction of the emails he has that he said outline his concerns. The Malden Solar application arrived in the planning department on April 4, on the cusp of the county’s solar ordinance, passed in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic,The Malden Solar application, had it not been denied, would have been grandfathered in under the old ordinance.
Merkner, a retired certified public accountant who worked in health care, first found out about Malden Solar in late February, when a neighbor called and asked him if he knew a solar farm was going in across the road from his home. Neighbors found out after spotting land surveyors on their property and asking why they were there.
Morgan Township resident Arvid Merkner points out portions of emails he acquired with a public records request as part of his fight against the Malden Solar farm on Wednesday, August 16, 2023. Morris-Cole said she’s “not totally against solar” but thinks it’s better suited for an industrial area than an agricultural one. And like Merkner, she pointed to the perceived lack of transparency over Malden Solar’s proposal.Scott Lunt also is a Morgan Township landowner who opposes Malden Solar. He lives near Wrigley Field in Chicago but after 35 years living in the city, wanted a different pace and environment.
Companies interested in investing in projects in Porter County often reach out to county officials first, Blaney said, so NextEra’s contact before the ordinance was crafted wasn’t unusual.Great Lakes Basin Transportation The emails, Merkner said, also showed that Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, who is now president of the board, was left out of the conversation.
Merkner and others against the proposal also question why the ordinance went before the plan commission instead of the county’s board of zoning appeals, which would have required notification of nearby property owners as well as a public hearing. The meeting was held in person, Blaney said, and the county hadn’t shut down its buildings yet because of the pandemic.Commissioners approved the ordinance on second and final reading on April 14, 2020, in a meeting held online because of the pandemic. There was no hearing, Blaney said, because one isn’t required unless there’s been a significant change in an ordinance between readings, “which there was not.
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