No. Shepherd’s Run will improve the local environment by removing pesticides from the soil and water, decreasing erosion, and protecting forests and wetlands.

Residents have raised concerns about the project’s environmental impact. Let’s examine each concern, keeping in mind that by law, New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation won’t authorize the project unless Hecate can prove it is minimizing harm to the environment.

🧪    Fewer pesticides: The farms at Shepherd’s Run currently use pesticides to grow corn, according to the landowners. Pesticides can be toxic to animals and contaminate the water and soil. These toxins will all be eliminated.

🏜️   Less soil erosion: Native grasses, which Hecate will plant around the panels, can reduce soil runoff by 95% compared to farms. So Shepherd’s Run should significantly reduce the amount of runoff into Taghkanic Creek.

☢️   No soil pollution: The crystalline silicon solar panels at Shepherd’s Run are the same kind that go on your roof. They’re made of glass, silicon, plastic, aluminum, copper and semiconductors. All these materials are recyclable. None of them are toxic. There’s no risk of the panels cracking open and contaminating people, animals, or soil.

💧   No water pollution: Solar farms don’t leech materials, so Shepherd’s Run shouldn’t hurt the quality of Copake’s water. It will likely improve it, by reducing erosion and removing cow dung and corn pesticides.

🚰   Water table: Native grassland can retain 20% more water than traditional agriculture, so the facility will help replenish Copake’s aquifer, an important benefit as the local climate warms.

🌊   Streams and wetlands protected: The site contains streams and wetlands. To protect them, the solar panels will be placed 100 feet away, as required by state law.

🌳   Forests protected: Trees capture greenhouse gases, so clearing forests to make room for panels is bad for the climate as well as the community. Forests cover 45% of the Shepherd’s Run site. According to Hecate, a small number of trees that dot the farm may be removed, but none of the forest groves that surround it will be cleared. And new trees will be planted around the facility to protect views.

No. Shepherd’s Run will improve the farms’ soil, support the farmers, and may help conserve farmland for decades to come.

Copake wants to preserve prime farmland, and has a plan to do just that. Although panels will replace the corn and cattle currently on those farms for a few decades, Shepherd’s Run will ultimately strengthen Copake’s farmland.

🌱   Restored Soil
Shepherd’s Run can make the land more “prime.” According to Bill Rasweiler, the biggest landowner supporting the project, the soil has been depleted by three decades of monocrop corn farming.

Letting that soil rest, and planting native vegetation, will restore its nutrients and micro-organisms. That will improve the soil’s quality and raise the land’s agricultural value.

👩‍🌾   A lifeline for farmers
To preserve farms, you need to support farmers. Unfortunately, farms in the Hudson Valley have been declining for decades.

To reverse this trend, farmers need new ways of making money. Solar farms are a great financial lifeline: they provide steady income and improve soil quality, which helps farmers stay in business for the long-term.

In fact, Copake’s own Agricultural and Farmland Protection plan explicitly encourages farmers to adopt solar in order to preserve farmland.

🏡  Preventing real estate development for good
Shepherd’s Run could also ensure that the farmland is legally protected for good.

Hecate is only leasing  the property from the farmers. They retain ownership of the land, and no permanent structures will be built on the property, so there’s nothing preventing the owners from going back to farming once the panels are gone.

But there’s also nothing preventing them from using the land for residential and even some commercial development.

Shepherd’s Run could change that. As part of the project, the owners could attach a  conservation easement to the property. This would make it illegal to use the land for anything other than farming and clean energy, even if it gets sold.

No, Shepherd’s Run native plants will help birds and solar panels probably won’t hurt them.

Audubon

🤕  Can solar panels harm birds?

Solar towers do harm birds, but that’s a totally different technology.

Photovoltaic solar panels probably don’t. Based on experiences at a single solar farm in the water-poor Southwest, scientists proposed that water-loving birds may mistake the panels for lakes and crash into them.

However, this “lake effect” hypothesis has not been proven. Anecdotal evidence from solar farms in the water-rich Northeast suggests little to no lake effect in the region. Though we won’t know for sure until more studies are done.

🐣  Will the project help birds?

Shepherd’s Run will help our avian friends in two ways:

1. By housing native plants that support birds, and keeping predators out, the solar farm will create a sanctuary for them.

2. Two-thirds of American birds are facing extinction from climate change. Large solar farms that take a real bite out of the problem are essential for protecting them. That’s why the National Audubon Society supports grid-scale solar.

🍃  What about the nearby Audubon bird sanctuary?

Solar panels likely don’t hurt birds, and the native plants around the panels will help them. This means Shepherd’s Run will likely support, rather than harm, the neighboring Rheinstrom Hill Audubon bird sanctuary.

🦅  What about endangered species?

Residents have also raised specific concerns about the following threatened or endangered birds of prey. Happily, they probably won’t be affected:

• Bald eagles nest in cliffs and trees near large lakes, and eat mostly fish. There's at least one pair nesting in Copake, but they depend on bodies of water, not fields.

• Peregrine falcons nest on bridges, buildings, and cliffs — not in fields. They are rarely seen in the Hudson Valley, as there are less than 100 pairs left in the state.

• Northern Harriers nest  in prairies—which the corn fields have already eliminated and the solar farm will partially restore, and in wetlands, which the solar farm will preserve. Moreover, they are infrequently seen  in Columbia County because they usually breed farther upstate.

No, they’ll just need to go around the fenced-in areas.

Hecate initially considered allowing foxes, raccoons, and other small animals to pass through the property by putting holes in the fence.

However, to avoid the liability of people running around between the panels, Hecate is required to fully fence in the solar farm. Small animals — as well as deer, bears, and other large animals — will need to go around the fence.

Local animals already have to do this with the Copake Agricultural Center’s 192 fenced-in acres in the middle of town, or the 800 fenced-in acres at the Shagbark tree farm. However, the 360-acre project will be split into four separate enclosures, each of which will be smaller than those properties.

No. Other counties currently send us most of our power. Shepherd’s Run will allow us to be self-sufficient.

On the contrary. Right now, we get around 85% of our electricity from neighboring counties! If we produce our own power, the vast majority of it will stay in the county.

Why is that? Because power flows to the closest place it’s needed. Our community needs a lot of electricity, but produces very little. So any new power produced here would stay here, satisfying our electricity needs and replacing what we take from others.

It would only go elsewhere when we have more power than we need.

We don’t know the visual impact yet, but Hecate is taking steps to minimize it.

Hecate has committed to minimizing the impact on views as much as possible. To that end, they are currently surveying the area to figure out where to add trees and where to remove panels.

They are planning to present and visualize this new design. We’ll know much more about the visual impacts then.

Nevertheless, it’s useful to keep things in perspective: only .44 of Copake’s 42.02 square miles will be covered in panels. That's just 1% of our town.

Probably not. The panels won't be visible from tourist destinations.

You can’t see the panels at all from Taconic State Park or the Catamount Ski resort, where most tourists go. Or from Hillsdale, Copake, Copake Lake, Copake Falls, or West Copake. So many tourists won’t see the panels at all.

Most tourists that do see the panels will only glimpse them on Route 23, because the solar farm will be largely obscured by existing buildings in Craryville, existing tree buffers, and new trees added as necessary.

Of course, some tourists will drive or bike through Center Hill Road and Route 7, but this will be a small fraction of those who visit us.

Not for most people, unless the property can see the panels. Even then, probably by 2%, at most.

The reality is that very little academic research has been done on the impact of solar farms on property values.* But here’s what we do know.

📝   Findings: no impact on home sales in rural areas

The only good academic study (Gaur & Lang, 2020) we could find measures the impact of 204 solar farms in Massachusetts and Rhode Island on 400k home sales. The conclusion:

“Results suggest that houses within one mile depreciate 1.7% following construction of a solar array.” (p. 2)

Those results are for the entire state, however, both rural and urban areas. The impact is different in the countryside:

“These results suggest that the treatment effect in rural areas is  effectively zero (a statistically insignificant 0.1%), and that the negative externalities of solar arrays are only occurring in non-rural areas. These findings go against our intuition.” (p. 17)

So at least in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, solar projects in rural areas like ours have no discernible impact on home values.

😱   Worst-case scenario

But let’s assume a worst-case scenario and see what happens. Homes within a mile of Shepherd’s Run — more likely, the few dozen homes that view the solar farm or are right next to it — could lose up to 2% of their value.

This isn’t ideal. Understandably, nobody wants their property value to go down.

But thankfully, it shouldn’t jeopardize anyone’s finances either. If your home is worth $250K, and the property value goes down by 2%, it would still be worth $245K.

📈   Copake real estate is booming

Realtor.com

Moreover, this 2% drop is tiny compared to the 30% jump in home values we’ve seen in Columbia County since the start of the pandemic (Feb. 2020-Feb. 2021).

So that $250K home is now probably worth $325K. And it'll probably keep appreciating: interest in our area will continue to grow if many people keep working remotely after the pandemic.

* We found only one study by economists that actually measured the impact of solar farms on nearby home sales. The study used real data on 419,000 home sales, and used statistical models to compare the prices of homes near solar farms with those of similar homes elsewhere. This is the gold standard for quantifying the effect of disamenities on property values.

All other studies ask a handful of property assessors for their opinion, and most are funded by the solar industry. One often-cited study from the LBJ School of Public Affairs isn't a published and peer-reviewed academic article at all. It's a  group project from some students. The paper relies on surveys from just 37 assessors. This is a tiny sample. To answer this question, you need to analyze hard data on thousands of home sales, not ask couple dozen assessors for their subjective opinion.

Despite those flaws, the study concludes: “Results from our survey of home assessors show that the majority of respondents believe that proximity to a solar installation either had no impact or positive impact on home values." (p. 23)

No. Solar panel fires are extremely rare, and the project will significantly boost fire department funding.

Solar panels very rarely start fires. We know this because, even though the U.S. doesn’t track solar panel fires, other countries do: In the past 20 years, only 120 of Germany’s 2 million solar installations started a fire. In Japan, only 127 of 2.4 million did. That’s only .006% of all solar systems.

Moreover, Hecate is required to pay special district property taxes to the fire department. So the fire department will actually get a significant funding boost in exchange for a minuscule increase in fire risk.

No. The project is legal under state law, even if local zoning disagrees.

In New York State, if you want to build a solar farm less than 25MW, the town alone can approve or deny the project. If it’s greater than 25MW, however, a state siting board — made up of 5 state appointees and 2 local ones — must approve it.

Shepherd’s Run is 60MW, so Hecate has no option but to go through the state-level Article 10 siting process (or the new 94C process). They can negotiate with the Town of Copake, but ultimately the siting board still has to approve.

If the board approves the project—which requires complying with extensive environmental and economic regulations—then Hecate is legally authorized to build.

At that point, Shepherd’s Run is legal even though it doesn’t comply with local zoning rules, because state law can supersede local law in New York when it comes to solar farm siting.

We need to do that too, but it’s not enough.

Widespread rooftop solar is necessary, but insufficient, to stay under 2 degrees Celsius of warming and avoid irreversible catastrophe.

We need to build around 360 square miles of solar in the next 15 to 20 years to reach 100% clean energy in New York State, according to solar power expert Dr. Richard Perez of SUNY Albany. If we put panels on half of all buildings and parking lots in the state, that would amount to only 160 square miles. That’s not even halfway to 360.

And even that goal seems unrealistic, because it would require convincing every other New Yorker who owns property to install rooftop panels in the next 15 years.

Rooftop solar is great, and we need as much of it as possible. But it’s not enough to solve the climate crisis.

These projects are often too expensive to compete with fossil fuels, and there aren’t nearly enough brownfields in the state.

This is a great idea, but there are two problems: cost and space.

💸   Brownfield solar is expensive

First, to build the massive amount of solar we need, it needs to be cheaper than natural gas, the fossil fuel that generates 30% of New York’s electricity. Otherwise, solar developers can’t compete, and projects won’t get built.

And there’s the rub. Building on a brownfield is much more expensive than building on farmland:

• Landfills can be up to 20% more expensive to build on, because the ground is unstable and full of greenhouse gases.

• Solar parking lots are a clever use of space, but because of their complicated construction, they produce electricity that’s 4-8x more expensive than utility-scale solar.

• Industrial sites have to be cleared of above-ground structures and require specialized panels that don’t penetrate the ground to avoid disturbing below-ground contaminants. Every site is different, which also adds to cost.

🚧   There aren’t nearly enough brownfields

All of this drives up the price and can make brownfield solar more expensive than natural gas, which is a deal-breaker. But even if it was cheap, there aren’t anywhere close to enough brownfields out there.

There are 24 square miles of parking lots in New York, and 29 square miles of landfills and industrial areas. That’s only 15% of the 360 square miles of solar we need to build in the next 15 to 20 years.

So while brownfield projects are worth exploring, they unfortunately cannot substitute for rural solar farms.

To connect to the electric grid through Craryville’s substation.

To hook into the grid, solar farms need to connect to a substation. Substations are often in towns, so finding one by farmland and with interested landowners isn’t so simple. The Craryville substation has both.

This also makes the project too expensive to compete with fossil fuels.

Another excellent idea! But if we’re serious about fighting climate change, we need to be concerned about the cost of solar projects.

The further we place the solar farm from the substation, the more transmission line we need to run. Not only is this unsightly, it’s surprisingly expensive: from $1 million to $3 million per mile.

So the project needs to be close to the Craryville substation or the project doesn’t make sense financially, and we’ll end up with more fossil fuel power plants.

It can be, and has already been cut down! But it can’t be 10 acres, or we won’t make a dent on climate change.

In response to community concerns, Hecate has already cut the project down by nearly 50%, from 500 acres to 255 acres, of which only 80 acres will be covered in panels.

But Shepherd’s Run still needs to be hundreds of acres, not dozens. For two reasons: cost and scale.

💰   Small solar can't beat fossil fuels

The smaller the project is, the more expensive the electricity it produces. Utility-scale solar projects are cheaper than natural gas plants, but 10-acre community solar projects are more expensive.

💯   The state needs hundreds of Shepherd’s Runs

At first glance, the idea that Shepherd’s Run is “too big” for Copake makes a lot of sense: “we’re a small town, the solar farms should be small too!”

But consider this, Shepherd’s Run has .44 square miles of panels. We need to build 360 square miles of solar in the next two decades.

If we put half the panels in cities, and half in the country, we’d still need to build 411 solar farms the size of Shepherd’s Run to get the job done. 44% of New York’s 932 towns would have a big solar farm!

That’s already a huge undertaking. But if the solar farms all have to be 10 acres, the maximum size Copake allows per lot, we’ll need to build 11,520! Each town would end up with 12 farms. And because of all the regulations solar farms need to satisfy, all projects take years to get approval, even small ones. There isn’t enough time to blanket New York in 10 acre projects.

So Shepherd’s Run isn’t actually too big. It’s just right. If you’re serious about fighting climate change, this is what a real climate solution looks like.

Small + Far = Too Expensive = More Fossil Fuels

That would be an elegant solution! But unfortunately, we run right into the last two problems we encountered: Small projects far from substations are too expensive to beat fossil fuels.