The APA Planning Advisory Service memo highlights the long-term damage that is caused to topsoil from industrial-scale solar projects, an important consideration for those areas where agricultural and forestry land uses predominate. This is particularly important for projects that are on or are near ecologically critical lands, such as rivers, habitats of endangered or at risk species, wetlands, or forests. Making sure that solar projects are correctly removed is also critical to restoring the land afterwards.

  • Agricultural and forested areas are typical sites for utility-scale solar facility uses. However, the use of prime agricultural land (as identified by the USDA or by state agencies) and ecologically sensitive lands (e.g., riparian buffers, critical habitats, hardwood forests) for these facilities should be scrutinized.
  • For a solar facility, the site will need to be graded in places and revegetated to stabilize the soil. That vegetation typically needs to be managed (e.g., by mowing, herbicide use, or sheep grazing) over a long period of time. This prolonged vegetation management can change the natural characteristics of the soil, making restoration of the site for future agricultural use more difficult. While native plants, pollinator plants, and grazing options exist and are continually being explored, there are logistical issues with all of them, from soil quality impacts to compatibility of animals with the solar equipment.
  • A deforested site can be reforested in the future, but over an additional extended length of time, and this may be delayed or the land left unforested at the request of the landowner at the time of decommissioning. Clearcutting forest in anticipation of a utility-scale solar application should be avoided but is not uncommon. This practice potentially undermines the credibility of the application, eliminates what could have been natural buffers and screening, and eliminates other landowner options to monetize the forest asset (such as for carbon or nutrient credits).
  • For decommissioning, the industry usually stipulates removal of anything within 36 inches below the ground surface. Unless all equipment is specified for complete removal and this is properly enforced during decommissioning, future agricultural operations would be planting crops over anything left in the ground below that depth, such as metal poles, concrete footers, or wires.

Planning for Utility-Scale Solar Energy Facilities, p 4

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