Many, perhaps most, residents of Wattsburg and all of Venango Township recently discovered there are plans for an 1100 acre solar project to be constructed on properties just north and west of Wattsburg. The planning has been under way for quite some time with leases and purchase options already in place with the property owners involved. For a project of this magnitude, you would expect there to be a lot of information and open discussion among the residents, but it hasn’t happened until now because details have not been widely distributed or announced. Now that a public hearing is imminent, on September 20th at 6PM in the Venango Township office, supervisors have to inform the public.
Our intention here is to bring everyone up to speed as quickly as possible. There are many residents trying to stay up to date on local issues who are not at all happy with the way this project has been progressing under the radar, and the more they find out, the more questions they have.
Whoa! Let’s slow down
We strongly urge the Venango Township supervisors to delay any decision on the conditional use request from Wilson Solar until all residents of Wattsburg and Venango Township have had a chance to completely review the details of what is being proposed and have had a chance to ask questions and to have them answered in full. This is a major undertaking that will impact the area for decades and any hasty decision before thoroughly investigating this project may cause a great deal of harm to the entire community.
Bookmark this site now, we have a lot of work to do. Everyone needs to attend the public hearing, at 6PM, September 20th, 9141 Townhall Road, Wattsburg, PA to learn more about their intentions directly from the supervisors and company representatives, and they need to hear from you. See you there!
Thank you helping inform the community.
There are more downfalls to solar than there are benefits. This should all be disclosed to the community by the township and solar company in a clear straightforward manor and has not been.
The ones holding the leases will most likely be gone in 35 years and I doubt have any care as to what happens at the end . Why care about the future when you can make money now?
The solar fields cause habitat loss, death of birds (anti glare dosent help much) and wildlife, put off annoying sound, don’t work at night or cloudy weather, manufacturing process uses rare earth minerals and is not environmentally friendly, possibly health risks and property value loss for those living nearby, among other things….
I seriously doubt that the underground supports and wires will be removed when the project is over which will leave the ground unusable for many things.
There is no way that the solar company can restore the area to the state before the panels were installed. Mature trees will be cleared and access roads will be put in.
I don’t particularly have a problem with solar although I think there are better options I certainly don’t begrudged the landowners for trying to boost their income however I do have a big problem with a Fortune 500 company being taxpayers subsidized for something that doesn’t benefit the people in the community upon trying to do some research about this I find there are other alternative sources for clean and green Electric wind farms need wind to produce solar Fields need Sun to produce I think both are subject to damage from Storm and worry that the taxpayers will be burdened for the repairs again in trying to do some research I’ve run across a Canadian company that has hydrogen generators to produce electricity and they run 24 hours a day no wind or sun required just water and the only byproduct from them is water I think the implementation of these would be less of an eyesore a more continuous and steady flow of electricity just saying there are other alternatives
Totally on board for this. How can you oppose solar energy?
Stick around and read the upcoming posts and see what you think.
Totally too big for Venango Township. Other solar projects in the area range from 35 acres to 300 Venango’s is 1,129 acres. Venango’s set back is 50 feet, others range from 150 to 300 feet. This is the largest solar project in Pennsylvania. Birch Creek is a four year old company that doesn’t answer its phone or return calls. Anð try to find a phone number for Wilson Solar. If you find it (in the the US, not Australia), please post it.
I oppose this I am going to be surrounded by this not happy at all!!!