Category: Mecklenburg County

In this letter to the South Hill Enterprise editor, a certified landscape architect points out how large-scale solar projects permanently damage Virginia’s rural landscape, including by clear-cutting and removing all vegetation from solar sites (which damages critical habitat for birds and animals); clearing vegetation from the entire work site instead of just the area where panels will be installed (which leads to significant erosion and run-off into local streams and lakes); removing topsoil from project areas (which permanently removes that land from future agricultural or forestry purposes); and siting many projects near economically disadvantaged communities (which forces them to bear the brunt of the projects’ negative impacts).