FAYETTE TWP., MI – They seem to be going up everywhere, and Sue Vessella is suspicious of all of it.

She opposes the change, the “gobbling up” of farmland, and she questions the need.

“What has radically changed? What has changed so much that we need these here?” Vessella, 68, said just as a crowded meeting began Monday, Jan. 12, at Jonesville High School.

Solar farms were not on the Fayette Township board’s agenda, but they were very much on the minds of the residents who filled the auditorium/cafeteria at the high school.

For about an hour and a half, people streamed to the microphone with their concerns, often centered on property values, an altered agricultural landscape and any environmental effects.

Chicago-based Ranger Power submitted last month an application for a special land use permit in the township, surrounding Jonesville in Hillsdale County, for a 140-megawatt solar farm roughly between North Adams Road and U.S. 12 east of Jonesville and west of Half Moon Lake Road.

The township zoning commission is to accept the application for Heartwood Solar II at a meeting Monday, Jan. 19, at the high school to begin the process of considering the application. A packed zoning board meeting earlier this month was rescheduled so the board could obtain a more suitable space for the residents.

Ranger Power has entered voluntary lease agreements with several area landowners for the project. The parcels total 1,350 acres, and the present plan calls for 1,000 fenced acres of panels, said Brady Friss, Ranger development manager.

The company already has a project, Heartwood Solar, under construction in Hillsdale County, in the area of Bunn and Jonesville roads, west of Jonesville, in Fayette and Allen townships.

Now bustling with trucks, workers and activity, the solar farm is to go online this year. The Michigan Public Services Commission in October 2022 first approved a power purchase agreement between Heartwood Solar and Consumers energy. The project initially was to be completed by the end of 2024.

Ranger Power says the two projects represent a $300 million investment that will address increasing demands for power. The company notes the economic benefits to Hillsdale County. The facilities will generate a projected $35 million in tax revenue and create hundreds of jobs during the construction phase.

Additionally, Ranger Power has established charitable partnerships, and a community grant program will transition to an endowment fund, to which Heartwood has committed a total of $540,000 as the projects become operational.

In response to some commenters, he noted the panels, made almost entirely of glass, are not hazardous or toxic, and studies looking at other Midwest or Michigan projects have not shown property value impacts.

For five years, representatives have been talking to residents and collecting feedback. “We want to be good neighbors,” Friss said after the meeting.

On Monday, the crowd, cheering and applauding the many public dissenters, showed unanimous opposition. Almost all hands raised when someone shouted for a tally.

After brief board business, residents talked for about an hour and a half. One man called green energy a “scam” and solar farms a “garbage waste” of land.

“We see what they look like, and we are not happy about it,” Chester Briner, who lives on North Adams Road, said of the solar panels. His house will be surrounded by them, he said. “And they are ugly.”

He loves watching the deer and “seeing the nature.” Now, he said, he will see solar panels.

Friss said Ranger will offer vegetative screenings for neighbors who wish for them. “We do our best to make sure that the projects are compatible with agricultural uses.”

John DeBacker, a former dairy farmer who lives at Sterling and Borden roads, north of the township, called the farms “a terrible eyesore.”

“And it’s all about the money.”

Eventually, Vessella too made her way to the front of the crowd.

She and her husband Tom moved after careers in higher education from California to Michigan. “And we’ve come to this,” she said.

“I would love to see little Jonesville take a stand. For our children and our children’s children.”

Though a new state law, meant to accelerate renewable energy development, allows large utility-scale solar projects to bypass local governments, Ranger Power wants to locally permit the project, Friss said.

It will be up to the zoning board to recommend whether the township should approve the special use permit, just one of several permits the project will require.

In a preliminary proposal timeline, construction would start in late 2027 and Heartwood Solar II would go online in 2028, Friss said, assuming the developer secures necessary approvals.

Some see the project as inevitable.

“I am not going to live in a farming community anymore,” said Angela Manifold, who lives on White Road in the township.

She and her husband said they turned down offers on their 140 acres.

Scott Manifold, who works in industrial automation, said they had hoped to be the “cog” that stopped progress on what he calls not a farm, but a “industrial solar complex.”