Wahiawa solar farm divides community over food vs. fuel

A developer is proposing a solar farm near Wahiawa that could reduce electricity bills for 1,100 area households, but the project site on fallow prime farmland has drawn community opposition.

Boston-based Nexamp is pursuing the 6-megawatt project on 60 acres of former Dole Co. pineapple plantation land near the intersection of Kaukonahua Road and Wilikina Drive under a tentative Hawaiian Electric program that would allow residents to help pay for commercial solar farms in return for household electrical bill discounts.

A Nexamp representative said the company intends to give area residents extending to the North Shore a priority for trimming an estimated 30% to 50% off their monthly household electrical bill by paying Nexamp for discounted electricity under Hawaiian Electric’s Community-Based Renewable Energy program that allows solar farm developers to provide such a benefit to low- and moderate- income households.

The plan, however, has run into some community opposition over the use of prime farmland.

North Shore Neighborhood Board members voted 10-4 at a November meeting to oppose a special use permit Nexamp would need to proceed, largely because the solar farm would occupy high-quality agricultural land.

Nexamp intends to seek the permit under a 2014 state law that opened agricultural land with high-grade soil to solar farm use if the site is also made available for “compatible” agricultural use for at least 50% below fair market land rent.

Lowell Chun, a local planning consultant for Nexamp, said in a presentation to the board that the developer intends to have local livestock farmers Dan and Raia Olsen graze about 200 sheep on the site where legumes would grow under and between solar panels suspended on pilings.

The 60 acres are part of a 318-acre parcel owned by a partnership between two mainland chicken egg farm companies that formed Villa Rose LLC and are close to finishing a free-range hen house complex for 160,000 hens expected to each lay one egg a day.

Villa Rose would lease the 60 acres to Nexamp and earn revenue that helps support its farm, which is expected to begin producing eggs for the local market later this year.

“The solar farm and sheep ranch operation, and the Villa Rose chicken ranch, are compatible, complimentary and mutually beneficial uses at the site,” Chun told the board.

Yet several board members expressed concern about removing prime Oahu farmland from potential use to grow food crops that benefit from high-grade soil as opposed to lower- grade farmland more suited to ranching.

“I have a problem with solar panels taking up 60 acres of prime land that we will lose,” Racquel Achiu, a board member, said at the meeting. “Other people will want to do it.”

Carol Philips, another board member, added, “There is lots of land that is not important agricultural land that is barren and you can put solar panels on.”

Other recently proposed solar energy projects in Hawaii have raised concern over displacing active food production on high-grade farmland, though the Nexamp project would not displace active farming.

Bruce Plasch, another local consultant for Villa Rose, said during the meeting that the company won’t use land near its henhouses for crops because such use can attract rats, birds, pigs and other feral animals that pose disease threats to chickens.

“They are biohazard threats to the chickens,” he said.

Plasch added that Villa Rose plans to graze sheep on the 60 acres, which would be fenced, regardless of whether the solar project is realized.

Supporters of the Nexamp project who spoke at the meeting said it would help support agriculture by providing supplemental revenue for Villa Rose, which makes its business supplying local eggs, more financially viable.

Antya Miller, a former board member, said the solar farm plan supports agriculture in the community.

“I think the harder we make it for the ag producers to come in and do business here, the less chance we’re going to have of really getting our ag lands in production,” she said. “This is supplemental to the chicken farm and the egg producer.”

A special agriculture committee of the board, made up mostly of farmers and ranchers who are not board members, voted 5-2 to support the Nexamp plan.

Boyd Ready, a board member on the committee, said more than enough fallow farmland exists on Oahu for locally grown fresh food and that a company contributing to that goal should not be blocked from earning supplemental income from a solar farm on its land.

Leif Andersen, a board member who also is on the ag committee, argued that solar energy production on prime farmland should be supported by the board only if the energy is used by the agricultural operation and produces an economic benefit that way. Villa Rose has its own rooftop solar panels to power its farm.

“We need to preserve our ag land for food,” Andersen said.

Several neighborhood board members did not appear to be swayed by Nexamp’s proposed contribu­tion to the state’s renewable- energy goals or commitment to reduce electrical bills for area residents.

Under Nexamp’s business model, “subscribers” to its solar farm might pay the company $50 to $70 a month in return for a $100 monthly credit on their electrical bill while electricity from the solar farm goes to Hawaiian Electric’s grid.

Chun said Nexamp would offer such subscriptions exclusively to area residents for 50 days before soliciting other subscribers on Oahu. Under Hawaiian Electric’s program, subscriptions would be reserved for households with low to moderate incomes.

Neighborhood board resolutions are advisory but factor into permit decisions by state and county government bodies.

The special use permit needed for Nexamp’s project is subject to review and approval by the city Planning Commission, state Land Use Commission and Honolulu City Council.

Nexamp also would need to have its project selected as a Community-Based Renewable Energy project (also known as community solar) by Hawaiian Electric through a competitive bidding process.

Hawaiian Electric seeks to foster development of 235 megawatts of community solar projects on Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Hawaii island under a second phase of community solar still subject to state Public Utilities Commission approval. An initial approved phase was limited to 8 megawatts.