NextEra Energy Resources is proposing a $250 million investment in Porter County through its Malden Solar project. But officials are mum on who the farmers are who have agreed to lease their property for the solar panels.
The project, still in its preliminary stages, has yet to receive approval from the county, though NextEra is expected to ask for a tax abatement or other incentives for bringing the project here.
“It’s safe to say we have a project in Porter County,” added Zachary Melda, development director for NextEra, who is based in Juno Beach, Florida, the company headquarters. “Jasper County was always in a different position than what the Malden project would be,” said Stephen Eastridge, executive director of the Jasper County Economic Development Organization.
And that’s where Dunns Bridge Solar comes in. The Indiana legislature sets the value of agricultural property at $1,250 per acre where the solar panels are going in, Eastridge said. That will go up considerably with solar.NextEra Energy Resources employees Brian Held, left, and Zack Melda discuss progress installing panels at the Dunns Bridge Solar Field near Wheatfield, Indiana Thursday August 11, 2022.
“My counter argument to that is at the end of the day, if it didn’t make financial sense, it wouldn’t happen,” he said. “This is some of the least productive land we have in Jasper County.” “We’re still at 1% of the total farmland in Porter County,” he said, adding the project’s footprint of solar array panels and the fencing around them will be around 1,200 acres.
The Malden Solar project, Melda said, is within a few months of going to the permit stage with Porter County, depending on landowners, and environmental surveys are already underway.Darren Grieger lives a few miles from the Malden Solar site in Morgan Township. He’s been farming corn, beans and some livestock on the property for eight years. He took the farm over for his grandfather and his family has been farming on the same land for five or six generations.
“I think it’s a really inefficient way but it’s being pushed so hard by these solar companies because there’s so much government money behind it,” he said. County officials expect that, as is the case in Jasper County, NextEra will request a financial incentive for any project here. Sheafer, who turns 60 next month, has two adult children and neither is interested in farming. If they were, he would have been less inclined to go into solar.
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