Dear Editor:
The Solar Express is chugging toward Imlay Township, love it or hate it. Where solar farms will be allowed to grow will be debated Feb. 14, at 7:30 p.m. by the township Planning Commission.
Members plan to go over the current ordinance and may tweak it to limit land use by energy companies to industrial zoning only, thus shutting the gate on farm field development. Or they may not.
Industrial zoning currently takes in acreage in and around the Graham and Rider Road areas including where the vacated Champion bus factory stands.
Farmers have a right to do with as they will with their property and could reap more financial rewards than they ever dreamed of by leasing land to energy companies.
I have deep respect for farmers. We have the best in the world feeding this world.
What is the big solar unknown, however, for our children and grandkids?
Let’s ponder the environmental damage that may or may not be left behind in the ground – leaching of heavy metals perhaps? And who-knows-what makes up the infrastructure unseen underground. As technology evolves, the country may move on to other forms of clean energy. What will be left behind?
Example, the Department of Energy recently announced a breakthrough in nuclear fusion with successful ignition. Some say it’s been a decades-long pipe dream while others say it could be perfected much sooner as studies are being done in other countries also.
Others say the announcement was simply a diversion to keep us from focusing on this administration’s end of our energy independence to buying dirty oil from other countries and actually selling oil to Russia.
Communist China is building dozens of coal fired plants likely on the cheap with little regard for emissions.
In this country carbon emissions have steadily decreased in the past decade. We do coal cleaner.
China is buying up America’s cherished farm land and I doubt they intend to feed us as our farmers do. Land is priceless.
Let your voice be heard Valentine’s Day at the township hall, 262 N. Fairgrounds Road, across from the cemetery. There are plenty of chairs. Trust me.
Sometime after this meeting, a public hearing will be scheduled so all can be heard again. Your vote will go on record at the hearing.
— Bernie Burgess Hillman,
Imlay Township
