Letters to the editor for Friday, June 19, 2015

Opposed to Photovoltaic facility

I am opposed to the planned Photovoltaic Electrical Generating Facility to be located in Douglas County on the Park Cattle Company property for the following reasons.

Let’s call this installation by its technically correct name: The planned 260 acre Photovoltaic Array and related infrastructure is a large industrial facility. An array of photovoltaic panels does not harvest sunlight, they collectively generate electricity when the sun shines. Referring to this facility as a solar farm is like calling the adjacent effluent settling pond a “poop Plantation.”

Clearly the commission/s who found Commercial Photovoltaic Arrays should be allowed as agricultural uses were (in charitable terms) grossly mistaken. One wonders if or what they were thinking.

Douglas County works very hard at maintaining open agricultural property by offering property owners a generous reduction of property taxes to maintain properties in a verifiable agricultural use. Now that Commercial Photovoltaic Arrays are deemed to be agricultural uses another question has yet to be asked and answered: Will the property owners continue to receive an “Agricultural Property Tax Deferment?” Certainly they should not.

I am opposed to the use of my federal tax dollars and surcharges on my electrical bills for subsidizing feel-good federal and state green energy mandates.

The proper way to fix this nonsense is for the commission/s to accept and admit that an error was made and reverse the decision about Commercial Photovoltaic Arrays being an acceptable agricultural use.

Chris Lang

Gardnerville