Woodland, North Carolina rejects solar panels, will bid to host 2016 World Congress of Village Idiots

God help us, NC State Senate President Phil Berger's constituents are dim:

...Later in the meeting, the Town Council voted for a complete moratorium on solar farms.

During the public comment period preceding the rezoning vote, citizens expressed distrust and fear of the solar panels.

Jean Barnes said she represented many citizens who rejected any more solar farms coming to the Woodland area and presented a petition to the council.

Barnes asked that any future solar farm request be put to a referendum so the citizens can make the decision.

Mary Hobbs has been living in Woodland for 50 years and said she has watched it slowly becoming a ghost town with no job opportunities for young people.

She said her home is surrounded by solar farms and is no longer worth its value because of those facilities.

She added that the only people profiting are the landowners who sell their land, the solar companies, and the electrical companies.

The next speakers were Bobby and Jane Mann.

Jane Mann said she is a local native and is concerned about the plants that make the community beautiful.

She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where the plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight.

She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer.

“I want to know what’s going to happen,” she said. “I want information. Enough is enough. I don’t see the profit for the town.

“People come with hidden agendas,” she said. “Until we can find if anything is going to damage this community, we shouldn’t sign any paper.”

Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms.

“You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.”

He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland.


http://www.roanoke-chowannewsherald.com/2015/12/08/woodland-rejects-solar-farm/