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Members of the Coffee County Planning Commission voiced a need to add language to the county zoning resolutions that would restrict where and how solar farms might be built in the county.  

Committee Chairman Steve Cunningham expressed urgency for the matter during the Oct. 22 meeting.

“We need to get some kind of solar guidelines in our zoning book,” Cunningham said. “Because it’s going to come and right now if somebody wanted to put a solar farm in I think they could do anything they wanted to. And I don’t think we want that to happen.”

Members voiced concerns about noise pollution, chemical pollution related to the solar cells and lithium batteries and a reduction in useable farmland.

To address the issue in zoning, Cunningham suggested possible options of creating a new solar farm zone like an industrial or commercial zone or adding solar farms as a conditional use or special exception in certain existing zones.

A possible course of action discussed would be a “phantom zone,” a zone created for solar farms in theory but that doesn’t have anywhere in the county with the designation. The body will study Jefferson County’s solar farm zoning resolution and seek further council from its zoning legislation adviser Sam Edwards.

“I think this is one of the most important things we need to deal with and we need to deal with it as fast as we can,” Cunningham said.

He said that solar farms are billed as clean, but are less so in actual operation. The area has recently had large solar farms built in Franklin and Moore counties.

“If you really want to see one of these solar farms go over to Franklin County,” said Kevin Sipe, Chairman of the Board of Zoning Appeals, who was in attendance for the meeting as an observer.

“We are an agricultural community and they took prime agricultural land and turned it into solar panels,” Sipe continued. “We might have power but we might not have anything to eat.”

Planning Commission Member Sammy Anderson named three Franklin County landowners whose farms now make up the Highway 64 solar farm.  He said that one sold land for the farm, while one leased property at $1,500 per acre for 30 years.

A county agricultural census from 2022 was distributed during the meeting. That report said that the number of farms in 2022 was down 16% from 2017 in Tennessee, but said that the total acreage of land in farms was up a slight 4% during that time.

Sipe said that the Tullahoma Utility Authority solar farm in Moore County “took 4,500 acres of prime timber, wildlife area and clear cut it all and burned it all.”

“People around there … have been overrun with rattlesnakes, deer and all that because they destroyed the habitat,” Sipe said. “I wonder what all the environmental people who love nature … are pro solar, but they don’t care about the wildlife. They burned all the trees, put CO2 in the atmosphere and cleared all the land.”

According to calculations by sister paper Manchester Times, a 4,500 acre forest clear cut and burned would produce about 2.4 billion kilograms of CO2. A coal fired power plant could produce about 5.8 billion kg of CO2 per year. A solar farm life expectancy is about 30 years. A 4,500 acre forest would absorb 6.7 million kg of CO2 per year.