Solar construction on the 80-MW Powell Creek solar project in Halifax County is damaging local roads, according to residents.
According to SOVANow, heavy truck traffic is leaving local roads with multiple large potholes. At a Board of Supervisors meeting on 4 April, a VDOT representative said his office had gotten a lot of complaints but that the “roads wasn’t built to handle that kind of traffic.”
If that’s true, why was the project approved without mitigation measures already in place to prevent the damage?
The Supervisor representing the area where the project is being built pointed out that North Carolina has weight limits for road traffic but Virginia does not. The VDOT representative said that most local Virginia roads were never designed to handle the type of heavy truck traffic going to the Powell Creek Solar site.
The representative also said that the solar company building the project is “not at fault” because they have the legal right to load the trucks to their maximum limit.
The issue is rising in importance because Halifax County has three more utility-scale solar projects that are also about to begin construction: the 51-MW Sunnybrook Solar, 65-MW Crystal Hill Solar, and 80-MW Piney Creek Solar in Scottsburg. The Halifax County planning and zoning coordinator said that similar problems will occur at all of these later this year.
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Running Roughshod in Alton: Roads take a beating from heavy trucks at Powell Creek Solar project (April 7, 2022, Tom McLaughlin, News & Record)
As construction gets under way at the Powell Creek Solar Project in Alton, secondary roads have already taken a beating from rock-laden trucks that rumbled through the area last month.
The trucks brought in rock to build a pad for an electrical substation that will connect to the 70-megawatt solar array. Work will soon follow to dig posts into the ground at the graded site and mount photovoltaic panels to catch sunlight and convert it into electricity.
Yet with the main part of the construction still ahead, residents of the area wonder if their back roads can bear the weight of the project — literally.
Postal carrier Stacey Jackson Long lamented the impact of heavy truck traffic on Hendricks Road (Route 786), which was left pockmarked with gaping holes as work to the substation picked up. “The roads are impassible in places,” she wrote on social media. “Trees are gone & our simple way of life in the country has forever changed. Sometimes technology & progress is not always good.
“It’s sad! But I guess money talks louder than anything else,” she wrote.
The damage to Hendricks Road and nearby Woodsdale Road, which runs from North Carolina into Virginia, was the subject of an exchange Monday night as the Halifax County Board of Supervisors met in Halifax. ED-6 supervisor Stanley Brandon, who represents the Alton area, asked Jay Craddock, VDOT assistant resident engineer, to address complaints about the road.
“We’ve had a tremendous amount of trouble down on Highway 768 [Hendricks Road],” said Brandon.
Craddock acknowledged VDOT has fielded “a ton of complaints” about the situation and added, “that road wasn’t built to handle that kind of traffic,” with heavy trucks running out to the solar site throughout the day.
The problem was worsened by periods of heavy rainfall and the inability of VDOT to do more than lay gravel to smooth out broken sections of the road. When the weather warms up and repaving work commences, the department will make a more permanent fix with “a good base of gravel and a seal with asphalt,” Craddock promised.
“We really couldn’t go in and fix things well” with asphalt plants shuttered due to the cool weather. “We could only put a bandaid on it,” Craddock said.
“It finally got to where we [VDOT] had a crew out there every single day, and as [trucks] were tearing it up, we were fixing it as best we could.”
Brandon said it was hard for him to explain to his constituents how the road could be allowed to get in such bad shape. He noted that one possible answer — setting a weight limit for road traffic — is allowed in North Carolina, but not in Virginia.
“If you’re not going to have weight limits, [roads] should be able to accommodate legally loaded traffic,” Brandon said.
Craddock conceded the point and explained that Virginia’s road system developed out of the 1920s Byrd Act, which marked the takeover of roads into the state-maintained system. Many existing roads, especially in rural areas, were built to a lower standard that what the highway department requires today.
Byways like Hendricks Road “evolved over time,” Craddock explained, never having been designed to handle the heavy truck traffic to the Powell Creek Solar site.
“Those loaded dump trucks just showed their weakness,” he said.
The developer, Carolina Solar Energy, is not at fault, Craddock hastened to add, since all the company has done is put legally loaded trucks on the road. It’s VDOT’s responsibility to ensure state-maintained roads can handle the burden.
“That’s why we’re footing the bill to fix [Hendricks Road] and we’re not going after the solar farm to fix it.
“It’s on us,” said Craddock.
Brandon urged VDOT to move as quickly as possible to repair the breaks, noting that a heavy rainfall could turn Hendricks Road into “a 200-foot mudhole” overnight.
“For people who live there, it’s going to be really tough if there comes a two- or three-day rain,” said Brandon.
The Powell Creek Solar Project is one of four solar generation facilities in Halifax County where construction either has started, or the project is in the pre-construction phase.
Detrick Easley, planning and zoning coordinator, said grading and clearing work is now under way at the 51-megawatt Sunnybrook Solar project in Clays Mill, 65-MW Crystal Hill Solar in the Crystal Hill area, and 80-MW Piney Creel Solar off Rodgers Chapel Road in the Scottsburg area.
Residents of those areas may see a reprise of the Alton experience as solar farm construction ramps up this summer.
“It’s likely [to happen] at all of them,” said Easley.