It’s official!

After four months of a Land Development Code revision process, the Mesa County Solar Moratorium has ended with an optimistic view for a clean energy future and solar infrastructure.

We have seen solar moratoriums adopted by numerous counties across Western Colorado for a variety of reasons and intents, and when Mesa County announced they would be pursuing one as well, we began to fear the worst. From the minute we found out this process would be underway, we launched an all-out campaign to ensure we were at the table every step of the way. Our Alliance’s members showed up in force to every planning commission workshop and county commissioner public hearing throughout the four-month process and pushed back against members of the community who sought to make solar economically infeasible or impossible to implement in our county.

When members couldn’t attend in person, they submitted well-reasoned comments online for the commissioners to read. Misinformation was shared by those seeking to prevent solar, and our members stood up and made sure there was no room for rumors, falsehoods, and poorly researched data in this Land Development Code.

We fought back against attempts to add extraneous requirements like requiring an interconnect agreement from a utility before granting approval and speculative bonding, as well as decommissioning requirements based in fear-mongering.

We also were able to ensure that agrivoltaics, the merging of solar and agricultural production on a single parcel of land, would be not only protected but encouraged so we can highlight our agricultural heritage while generating clean, cheap energy locally that will strengthen our farmer’s ability to continue to run their farms and add value to them.

We are thrilled to see this code unanimously adopted today, and look forward to seeing new solar projects come online in Mesa County.