TOWN OF HARTLAND — About 100 area residents had the Hartland Town Hall bursting at the seams to oppose the proposed Isabelle Creek Solar Project during the April 8 monthly town meeting.

“The project will likely lease around 1,000 acres due to forested areas and other areas of avoidance, but aims for 550 buildable acres of privately-owned land for the project. This is equivalent to .4% of farmland in Pierce County, Wisconsin,” AES’ website, who is leading the project, states.

If approved, development and permitting would run until 2028, construction from 2029-2031 and operations would begin in 2031 in Hartland Township. It would generate 75 MWac and a decommissioning plan would kick in to return the land to agricultural use after its lifespan.

AES lists benefits on its website including generating enough electricity to power 18,000 Wisconsin homes annually, creating at least 200 jobs during peak construction, generating $8 million in utility aid payments to Pierce County and $6 million to Hartland and generating 146,000 MWh of carbon-free electricity each year.

The meeting attendees who spoke were against the proposal, citing concerns over environmental beauty being wiped away, noise, solar energy concerns, questions about AES as a company and more.

At the March board meeting, AES Solar representatives were in attendance, but many questions from the public were unanswered, according to the meeting minutes. One resident said he reached out to the Department of Natural Resources about the project and they were not aware it proposed. Some attendees who live next to the proposal said they had received no information from AES about the project, while others who do not live next to the proposed project area mentioned they did receive mail about the project.

“As Hartland Township residents who will be expected to live in the midst of this project, we believe that there are far more questions that still need to be answered and addressed before this proposal can even be considered,” Deb Kopp, a resident who would be nearly surrounded by the project, said. “The project website and fact sheet state that this project will create more than 200 jobs. Sounds great, but, however, they also state that many of these jobs will only exist during the peak construction phase. So, in the long run, how many long-term jobs will actually be created, and will they even benefit any local hires with an out-of-town company?”

Trina Groen, who lives adjacent to the proposal, mentioned their family will likely move out if it moves forward. She mentioned it may be difficult to sell the land next to the solar project and the property value will decrease.

One attendee asked why the proposal couldn’t be in a field far from the homes of the area. Another priority for residents is wildlife in the area, and they believe the high quantity of deer, birds and other animals will swiftly fade away. A number of residents said the natural beauty is something that must be preserved.

“I also learned that solar farms have a correction value, so, in our area, a solar farm basically only produces 20% of what it says,” Mark Groen said. “If you take for instance a 75 megawatt gas-fired power plant, it can produce 75 megawatts 24 hours a day. Doesn’t matter weather conditions or whatever. Well the solar farm, once you figure in a 75 megawatt solar farm with the correction factor, it’s only going to produce that for like 4.8 hours a day.”

Michael Petersen, a member of the Ellsworth Board of Education who has spent 30 years in the utility industry with a focus on power generation, discussed the future of power generation.

“Five years ago I would have said the future is solar, a lot of government support, price of electricity is going up and it looks like this is going to be financially viable even though I don’t like it in the long term and I for sure don’t like the way it looks,” Petersen said. “In the new administration, they just said they’re going to gut the EPA. Regardless of where you are politically, it doesn’t matter in my view. They’re going to gut the EPA. They’re going to try to bring coal-fired power plants back online.”

If the coal plants go back online, Petersen said the price of electricity will drastically drop, leading to the solar farm no longer being profitable. Petersen also brought up the business model of AES.

“Go to the SEC, you can find they have 800 shell corporations underneath AES,” Petersen said. “They sell this stuff to the shell corporation, then if the shell corporation dissolves then the shell corporation dissolves, which is a little bit of a concern.”

He said if the project is inserted and they decide to remove it, the cost will be around $30 million. If this happens, Petersen said the panels will be left and the landowners will be the first to take on the burden, climbing a chain to Hartland Township and then the county when the money cannot be paid.

“Somebody’s going to get the bill, and it’s not going to be AES because they’re going to be long gone,” Petersen said.

Members of the board said they will make a recommendation in favor or against the project to the county board, and the county board will make the ultimate decision on if the project moves forward.

“I would say that I hope that we have a voice,” Town Chair Kurt Nelson said when asked if the county generally bases a decision off the town recommendation. “If we do, it’s going to be because it damages our township in some way, and that’s going to be on all the residents to be able to prove that it does.”

They advised everyone with reasons to sway a county decision to participate in public comment, because those comments could directly influence a decision. The Hartland board expects AES to return to a meeting in the next few months where they will be expected to field questions from the public and the board.

A group of citizens opposed to the project has formed a group on Facebook called “Isabelle Creek Solar – Concerned Citizens.”