Centre County residents voice concerns over potential solar farm

CENTRE COUNTY, Pa. (WTAJ)– Several concerned residents voiced their concerns over a potential solar farm being built in Rush Township at Tuesday night’s meeting.

The project has been in the development stages for over a year and a half now by the company Ampliform. The company has already leased several pieces of land in the township.

The meeting was set up by the township supervisors not to approve the project, but to form an ordinance for approval at their next meeting to give regulations for the solar farm. Proposed regulations include the solar farm having to be 100 feet away from any property line and 300 feet from any residence.

“There are townships around us that didn’t have any regulation,” Pat Romano, chairman of the board of supervisors said. “We had a gentleman here that came in that said look I see solar panels right out my window from another township. That’s not going to happen in our communities.”

Several residents expressed their concerns about the potential environmental impacts of the project.

“You can’t have deforestation around these streams or they’ll get dry and you’ll have nothing left,” One person during public comment said. “It’ll just be a dry crick bed.”

Romano was asked during the meeting that if so many residents are against the project then why isn’t the township doing anything to stop it?

“You just can’t block them out and not leave anything for people to be able to do certain types of business,” Romano said. “Cause that is exclusionary and it’s pretty much against the constitution of the United States.”

Also at the meeting was the senior developer for Ampliform Vince Gibbs. Gibbs says that there are still several steps that need to happen before formal plans are submitted.

“We have to do a biological study, a stormwater study, there’s cultural studies to make sure that there is no historical artifacts that get disturbed,” Gibbs said.

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Both Gibbs and Romano say that community input will be taken into account every step of the way. Gibbs says that as it stands right now they would hope for construction on the solar farm to wrap up sometime in 2026 or 2027.

“We want to be good neighbors, and that’s the reason why we wanted to go through this process and not make it contentious,” Gibbs said. “As you can see people have concerns and those concerns need to be addressed.”

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