{"id":1472,"date":"2021-03-02T13:39:54","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T18:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/conservation\/?p=1472"},"modified":"2021-03-02T13:42:07","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T18:42:07","slug":"polk-commissioners-vote-3-2-to-ok-second-chicora-solar-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=1472","title":{"rendered":"Polk Commissioners Vote 3-2 To OK Second Chicora Solar Farm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Solar farms appear to be becoming  the dominant land use in Chicora, a community founded in the 19<sup>th<\/sup> century in southwestern Polk County.\n<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday the Polk County Commission voted 3-2 to approve a proposal by Tampa Electric to add two more parcels to the two parcels already approved for solar farms. The solar farms are part of TECO&#8217;s move to increase its green energy footprint in this part of Florida.\n<\/p>\n<p>The controversy wasn&#8217;t over the merits of solar power, but the fact that one of the solar farm tracts is right in the middle of the community on the site of a former citrus grove.\n<\/p>\n<p>Residents argued the facility is an unwelcome intrusion that changes the character of their community.\n<\/p>\n<p>TECO officials and their consultants responded that the solar farm would be a much less intensive land use in terms of traffic, noise and water use than any alternative.\n<\/p>\n<p>During the hearing TECO officials did agree to relocate the barbed-wire-topped security fences deeper into their property and buffer the fence and the solar complex with a thick planting of cedar trees. In response to residents&#8217; complaints about the esthetics.  TECO officials also promised to work with the community toward their application to obtain a historic designation for the community.\n<\/p>\n<p>The vote came during the first week of the 2021 session of the Florida Legislature during which legislation has been proposed to pre-empt local officials&#8217; ability to decide on the location of solar farms as long as they&#8217;re in agriculturally zoned areas of the county. The legislation also doubles the size of solar farms allowed to be exempted from state power plant siting regulations.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Solar farms appear to be becoming the dominant land use in Chicora, a community founded in the 19th century in southwestern Polk County. Tuesday the Polk County Commission voted 3-2 to approve a proposal by Tampa Electric to add two more parcels to the two parcels already approved for solar farms. The solar farms are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1474,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions\/1474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}