Colton Berens was looking forward to the added income from his farm, but armed with rightwing falsehoods, other Selby residents opposed the move

The Berens’ solar project would have generated about $1m in annual tax revenue that would have been split between the county and its school for 35 years – money that could have gone a long way toward solving some of these challenges. During negotiations with his family over the use of its land, Berens said, Doral also agreed to upgrade the rugged gravel roads its crews would use during construction and to plant native grasses under the panels that could provide fodder for sheep.

In 2023, however, just as the solar industry was getting rolling, then governor Kristi Noem chose not to take advantage of funding through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Solar For All program, which offered $7bn for solar projects in low-income communities. She also opted out of the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program, which would have given the state $3m toward reducing emissions after filling out a form less than a page long

FFS lol :)

  • Niquarl@lemmy.mlEnglish
    11·
    23 hours ago

    “Farming is what we got out here,” Zabel said of why he opposed the project. “A lot of these kids that grew up in these areas, if they don’t have farms to come back to, they don’t come back.”

    He also worried about how solar panels might affect his crops. “We didn’t know if it was gonna bring more rain or deter the rain from getting here, or bring in hail storms,” he said. “You get that size of acreage of glass panels – we were concerned it could just change the atmosphere.”

    Fears that solar will overtake farmland and cause changes to the weather have been grossly exaggerated in misinformation spread by such organizations as No to Solar and Citizens for Responsible Solar, an activist group started by a longtime political operative with ties to high-level conservative politicians and the fossil fuel industry. They have helped disseminate a smorgasbord of unfounded claims, many of which found fertile ground in the anxieties of Walworth’s residents.

    That’s more the crux of the article instead of the idea of “owning the libs”. It’s basically misinformation funded by wealthy interest groups