By james art 
Guest Column from Steve KleinChesapeake bay journal
We need solar energy, but should the city plan have to trample?
My love for the east coast of Chesapik began in Chestertown, Maryland. I visited every fall for the exhibition and sales of wildlife in Chestertown, and it was one of my favorite weekends of the year – the washers of migrating geese from Canada, passing noisily over the head, a little of the autumn in the air. This feast of the art of wildlife was an attachment to the Chestentown autumn calendar from 1965 to 2012. And it was my first exposure to Chestertown’s magic.
As with so many cities on the east coast, this magic comes from the close interaction of Vista and Village. Just throwing a stone from your favorite bookstore, you can enjoy the rural provinces entirely by rowing the Radcliffe Creek, fighting in a picturesque path or photographing combines as they harvest.
At about the same time as I made these trips to Chesterow, not 20 years ago, the East Coast Conservation of Earth worked with Chestertown, Kent County and a professional planning company to set up Greenbelt in Chestertown. The master plan was to cover the future of Clark-Howwell’s Farm, described by Chesterow Mayor David Foster as “our only real opportunity to expand Chestertown.” Nearly 500 acres of farm, northeast of the Chestertown historic center, is one of the last remaining underdeveloped tracts within the city’s planning limit.
It was just before the big recession. Real estate flourished and there were many questions about how development would form the future of Chestertown and the entire Eastern coast. Hence the Master Plan, developed with a strong contribution from the community to ensure that the future development of the Clark-Hopewel farm will be an “organic expansion of the city’s historical tissue”, an effort to reproduce in the future of Chestertown, which worked so in the way in your past.
One of the questions asked at the inevitable community seminars during the process: “What determines the character of Chestertown and should be reflected in this new part of the city?”
The answers included: “Historically … a sense of a small town … The neighborhood is feeling … walkable … Life on a human scale.” These words do a good job, describing what Chestertown works. The master plan consists of these ideas, providing a flexible and iterative development program designed to “adapt much of the growth of the city and the county over the next 50-100 years.” The plan includes neighborhoods and villages, each of which includes mixed -use buildings, civil applications and green neighborhoods.
But instead of mothers for a man’s scale and mixed-use neighborhoods, what now seems to be ready to occupy Clark-Hopewell’s farm is a 45-Mugawan sunny massif. The massif will send power directly into the network, keeping lights and computers buzzing in homes and companies and data centers so far from Illinois. And all this is planned, despite the clear and official opposition of Chestertown and Kent County.
This change arose as the solar developer, a subsidiary of a massive Canadian asset management company, submitted by a petition and received a certificate of public convenience and need (or CPCN) from Maryland. What does that mean? Well, this is essentially a permission from the state, which allows the solar developer to simply ignore time trials and well understood local decisions for land use.
This “prevention”, as it is called, is done in the spirit of dealing with the challenge of climate change, for which the state has accepted aggressive goals for the production of energy from renewable sources. But in its hurry to the solar energy of the site, the state tilts the playing field. The plots near our cities and the designated growth areas deserve careful attention, responsible use of the land and careful consideration.
In the case of Chestertown, the state tramples the best set plans of the city and overthrows the mass of plot, which was intended to hold the well-planned growth over the next 50 years or more. Instead of public parks, municipal orchards, apartments from which young people can afford to easily ride a bike – instead of trees, cafe, playgrounds, gardens, barber shop or houses – we will have a sun panel, a sun panel, a sun panel. More than 140,000 modules.
Solar panels do not need fertile soil. They do not need to trim their hair and not ride a bike in a class in the morning. There are many other places when the solar fields can go. Where else should Chestertown go? There are not many other spaces in which the rest of Chestertown can grow. At least not, without contributing to what Greenbelt’s master plan describes as “an auto-oriented suburb of the east coast, which threatens to erode its rural character.”
In the solar energy race on the site as quickly as possible, the eastern shore looks more and more attractive. But we have to have a balance, equal terms, some way to say, “Here or here, but not there.”
Many of our open acres are best in food production and they should remain in agriculture. Other acres, located in our closest cities, are most suitable for new neighborhoods. Some spots are well prepared for sunny generation. But when we write a new set of rules that favor solar energy over all other lands, there is no balance.
Instead of allowing Chestertown to “grow harmoniously … slowly and methodically to maximize the efficiency of land use” as Greenbelt’s main plan is as eloquent, we will allow our land to be “quickly absorbed”. The East Coast will lose.
Steve Klein is the president and CEO of the East Coast of Earth. This article was originally published on November 1, 2024 on Bayjournal.com. It was distributed by The Bay Journal News Service. The author’s views do not necessarily reflect those of Chesapeake Bay.