Two environmental groups said a proposed lease of state land near Gaylord for solar energy development is following the regular public process, and blasted lawmakers (mostly Republican) who voiced outrage over the idea. One group said some of the acreage could be a good fit for solar development.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources on Tuesday published a notice of its intent to lease 420 acres of state-owned land in Hayes Township for a solar energy development. If there’s enough feedback from the public, there could be a public meeting about the idea.
“There’s been all this squealing and screaming about possibly secret processes,” said Marvin Roberson, a forest ecologist for the Michigan Chapter of the Sierra Club. “This is going through the absolute normal, perfectly correct public input process.”
Republican state representatives Ken Borton of Gaylord and Mike Hoadley of Au Gres, and state Senator Michelle Hoitenga (R-Manton) called for mass firings at the DNR in a press release last week which called the proposed project a DNR plot to destroy forestland.
A DNR official and the Michigan Environmental Council said in reality, much of the acreage in question had been clear-cut in recent years and is used to harvest timber, while other parts were “degraded” by tornado damage. The acreage also includes oil and gas wells.
“The Michigan Environmental Council is concerned the DNR’s announcement to lease land for solar has been harnessed by bad-faith actors to start an anti-solar firestorm,” the Environmental Council said in a statement.
The council said the project could be shaped by the public input process to exclude acreage where there’s concern about negative environmental impacts.
“The notion this is going to significantly clear-cut areas that wouldn’t be is not necessarily the case,” echoed Roberson. “I just want to keep emphasizing how normal this process is. This is not something that is unusual.”
News of the proposed lease, first reported by MLive, caught some environmental groups and lawmakers by surprise. State Rep. John Roth (R-Interlochen) said he learned of the proposal from the MLive report.
“We shouldn’t be finding out that way,” Roth said. “We should know these things, as legislators.”
Roth said he’s opposed to cutting down any trees on state land for solar development.
Emily Smith, policy manager for land and water conservation issues at the environmental council, said the group met with DNR officials Tuesday. She said about 200 acres of the land is already slated to be harvested for the timber industry.
“After having discussions with the DNR, and looking at these specific parcels that they were putting up to lease, we felt more comfortable with the DNR process,” Smith said.
As Michigan officials work to encourage renewable energy development in effort to reach a statewide goal of a 100% renewable energy-sourced power grid by 2040, Smith said the environmental council doesn’t want to see development in dense forests, but may support building renewable energy infrastructure on “marginal” land where the ecological impact is less significant.
In an interview with Michigan Public on Monday, Scott Whitcomb, the director of the DNR’s Office of Public Lands, said the agency could use revenue from leasing the land, or other similar land-use leases, to buy more land with pristine natural environments to protect it from future development.
However, the company originally interested in building on the state-owned Hayes Township property abandoned that idea long before state lawmakers publicly condemned it.
RWE Clean Energy — which is building a 200 megawatt solar plant on more than a thousand acres of pirate land near Gaylord — said it approached the state about leasing land for the development in 2019, though it ultimately decided to partner with private landowners.
A spokesperson for RWE says that “was not a recent decision.”
