County Board Committee Public Hearing on Solar Project Will be Continued on January 10th

 THE FOLLOWING IS A BILL PICKETT STORY

A hearing conducted by the Vermilion County Wind and Solar Committee on a proposed new commercial solar farm attracted a crowd to the Cannon Office Building Monday.  Mural Energy, LLC is proposing a solar farm on 1,443 acres of land in Jamaica Township, in the southwestern part of the county.

Project Director Rupert Crighton said it would involve erecting hundreds of thousands of solar panels.

AUDIO: The application that we submitted will show 422,000 panels, roughly.  However, the industry is; it’s quite an active development.  We see the panels getting bigger every year.  We will likely building the project with 300,000 panels; would be my expectation.

Crighton explained why Mural Energy chose that area of the county for the development.

AUDIO: It’s a low population density, which is a good fit for solar energy, obviously.  There’s good connectability.  There’s a strong Ameren transmission line that runs right through the area that we’re going to connect to.  There’s land owner interest.  So in the early stage of the development, when we started to knock on doors and talk to local landowners and people and “would they be interested;” we had a strong positive response.  And there’s precedence for solar and renewable projects in the area.

If the project wins approval to proceed, Crighton said the panels would not start going up until 2026.

AUDIO: It’ll be primarily one main season, meaning we mobilize in the spring.  (It should start in) March; probably, hopefully; you know weather depending; and work through the summer and complete in the fall; right around probably this time of the year, probably November, December.

Crighton added there may be some preliminary work done in late 2025.  He said the project would create 100 to 150 construction jobs which would increase traffic on roads in the area.  The company expects about 17,000 deliveries of supplies during the erection of the panels.  And Crighton added it would be a union project, which would create three or four full time jobs.  He estimated it would provide $1.4 million dollars annually in new tax revenues for the county – including new revenues for schools in that area.

The Wind and Solar Committee will be making a recommendation to the Vermilion County Board on whether to allow the project to proceed.  The final decision rests with the full County Board.

Some citizens are concerned about taking such a large area of farmland out of production but Crighton noted there is a possibility the land could be used for crops again when the solar project is decommissioned.   He also noted there would be some noise when the panels are erected because of the need to drive support poles into the ground.

There will be a continuation of this public hearing on January 10^th.