Republicans ramp up attacks in Louisa District BOS race
Republicans ramp up attacks in Louisa District BOS race
With early voting underway and Election Day fast approaching, the Louisa County Republican Committee has ramped up attacks in the hotly contested Louisa District Board of Supervisors race, mostly around utility-scale solar development.
In Facebook posts over the last month and a half, Republican candidate Chris Colsey and the party that backs him have targeted the race’s two independent candidates, Manning Woodward and Greg Jones, in an effort to paint them as friendly to large-scale solar development, which Colsey labels as a destructive use.
Colsey has made opposition to utility-scale solar a key piece of his campaign and the Republican committee has also latched on to the issue even as two of the board’s sitting Republican members have voted in support of thousands of acres of solar development during their tenure on the board.
Since 2015, supervisors have approved seven utility-scale solar facilities, covering about 5,200 acres, with most of those projects backed by Republicans Duane Adams and Toni Williams, who represent the Mineral and Jackson Districts, respectively. But since Virginia Democrats passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020, landmark legislation that seeks to decarbonize the state’s power grid by 2050, and turbocharged large-scale solar development, the use has faced growing resistance, especially in rural areas, where most solar facilities are being constructed. Critics of utility-scale solar argue that it’s gobbling up farmland, marring view sheds, impacting water quality due to runoff and detracting from communities’ rural character.
In a video posted on the committee’s Facebook page in late August, Colsey says that utility-scale solar development is “polluting our air, our ground and the water” and “destroying Louisa County.” Standing in front of one of the county’s two operational utility-scale solar developments—while the board has approved seven solar sites to date, only two have been completed—Colsey calls for a moratorium on consideration of new projects then turns his attention to Woodward, currently the Louisa District representative on the Planning Commission.
“Unfortunately, one of my opponents, Manning Woodward, not only thinks these are a good idea, he’s voted for more of them on the Louisa Planning Commission,” he says. Colsey has also said that Woodward voted to reduce the size of the buffers around utility-scale solar facilities and advocated for smaller solar projects.
In another post, the committee shares a news story from 2021 detailing problems at Dominion’s 88 MW Belcher Solar Facility off Waldrop Church Road, where stormwater runoff has caused significant damage to neighboring farms. The problems at Belcher led supervisors to tighten restrictions on large-scale solar development through a revised solar ordinance adopted last year, which Woodward supported. The ordinance caps the amount of county land that can be used for large-scale solar at three percent (9,800 acres) and beefs up buffer and erosion and sediment control standards, among other provisions. In the post, the committee says that, in the wake of Belcher, Woodward “has continued to vote for additional solar projects.”
“Who do you want to represent you on the Board of Supervisors? Someone who will fight to protect Louisa County’s agricultural land or someone who has voted to turn it into an industrial wasteland that our children will have to clean up in 30 years,” the committee asks.
Since joining the Planning Commission in 2020, Woodward has mostly recommended approval of utility-scale solar projects, but, in two instances, opted not to support solar development on specific parcels. One of those instances came in response to a request to expand Belcher to include open farmland along Waldrop Church Road. (Woodward supported a separate portion of the expansion, which faced little opposition).
Woodward’s voting record isn’t much different than Cosley’s Republican ticket-mate, Williams, who's running unopposed for a third term in the Jackson District. Typically a proponent of property rights and less government regulation, Williams has supported nearly every solar project he’s considered since joining the board in 2016 including voting for the full proposal to expand Belcher. (Williams missed the meeting where Belcher was initially approved in 2016).
Since joining the board in 2018, Adams has been somewhat less open to large-scale solar facilities, voting against several projects—including the Belcher expansion—mainly because of concerns about buffers. He also spearheaded the effort to beef up the county’s solar ordinance and, more recently, has seemingly soured on solar entirely as resistance grows among the Republican base. But, like Williams, Adams voted for several projects, covering hundreds of acres, even after the problems at Belcher came to light. In the last six years, he’s voted for more than 3,000 acres of solar development.
With respect to reducing the size of buffers, Woodward recommended approval of the revised solar ordinance last year, which expanded buffer requirements from 150 feet to 300 feet. But, during discussions about the ordinance, he warned against taking a one-size-fits-all approach to solar development and argued that the county was infringing on the property rights of smaller landowners who might want to use some of their property for solar panels.
At the time, supervisors were considering prohibiting solar projects smaller than 151 MW, which would’ve meant any solar facility approved in the county would require hundreds, if not thousands, of acres. Amid community concerns about property rights and the potential negative impacts of massive projects, the board axed the 151 MW floor.
Woodward also recommended approval of two projects that came before the commission in the last year in which applicants requested a special exception to the county’s setback requirements. The applicants argued that a 300-foot setback was unnecessary and impractical given the limited view of the projects. Woodward and the commission didn’t weigh in on the special exceptions, however. Granting exceptions is the sole power of the Board of Supervisors.
In a post on his campaign Facebook page Saturday afternoon, Woodward responded to the Republicans’ attacks, saying that, as member of the Planning Commission, he considers each project on its merits, supports individual property rights and will “ALWAYS put Louisa County first,” (emphasis his).
“My Republican opponent has again put out a misleading ad about my position on solar projects in Louisa County. What my opponent doesn’t say is that while I have voted “yes” on solar projects, I have also voted against solar,” Woodward said.
“I have always been a champion of individual land rights. The ideas my opponent brings from Loudoun County/New York are that (an) individual’s rights to use their land as they see fit isn’t an option…as your supervisor, I will always stand with individuals over government,” Woodward added, referencing Colsey’s years as a local government official in Northern Virginia and New York.
Colsey and the Republican committee have also made a somewhat dubious attempt to attack Jones. In a post last week, the committee shared a graphic featuring a picture of Colsey in which he calls himself a “a lifelong conservative Republican” who will “oppose solar projects that destroy our farmland, water and wildlife.” The last line of the ad states, “Greg Jones is the Vice Chair of an organization that received a check for $87,500 from the SOLAR COMPANY Energix Aditya LLC,” (emphasis theirs).
The line refers to supervisors’ approval of Energix’s request for a Conditional Use Permit to develop an 11 MW utility-scale solar array on a 95-acre parcel off School Bus Road. The project initially faced staunch resistance from neighbors, many of them African American, who expressed concerns about its impact on their property values, the traffic it would generate during construction and the potential for pollutants in their groundwater.
In response, Energix held meetings with residents to address their concerns, some involving representatives from the Louisa branch of the NAACP, which was asked to intervene on their behalf. At the board’s August 2, 2021 meeting, Energix added several conditions to its CUP in which the company agreed to establish an $87,500 scholarship fund for descendants of School Bus Road residents facilitated by the NAACP, provide a walking trail at the project site and conduct annual groundwater and soil testing. The board approved the project in a 6-1 vote.
In an email last week, NAACP-Louisa President Deborah Coles said that the organization “received NO contribution from Energix or the residents of School Bus Road,” (emphasis hers). She said that the group immediately passed the $87,500 along to the Community Foundation for a Greater Richmond, the entity ultimately in charge of the scholarship fund, and described her organization’s role as “simply the ‘in between’ for congenial conversations.”
Coles also said that Jones wasn’t vice president of the organization at the time and played no role in the discussions. Jones currently serves as vice president of the branch. His campaign has not publicly responded to the post.
At the August 2, 2021 meeting, Adams, who represents School Bus Road, motioned to approve the project and praised the community’s collaboration. “This process worked the way it was supposed to work,” he said.
In response to a request for comment on the committee’s post, Adams called the NAACP an important community partner and said he’s “grateful for the engagement of all those who made the process work.”
Aside from the revenue solar facilities generate via machinery and tools taxes and real estate taxes, utility-scale solar developers routinely craft deals with localities during their facilities’ approval process that include cash payments to offset a project’s impact or otherwise compensate the community. In addition to the concessions made to residents on School Bus Road, the company agreed to pay Louisa County $16,000 a year over the life of the project and make a $10,000 payment toward broadband deployment.
When Energix won the board’s approval for an up to 118 MW utility-scale solar facility and 50 MW battery storage system at the 1200-acre Cooke Industrial Rail Park—dubbed the Two Oaks project—on the other side of Davis Highway, the company agreed to provide the county with more than $500,000 in emergency services equipment including a 3,000-gallon tanker truck, self-containing breathing apparatus and thermal camera.
Local nonprofits and students in Louisa County Public Schools could also benefit from the Two Oaks project thanks to the involvement of the William A. Cooke Foundation, a charitable organization that distributes hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and scholarships annually. The foundation, mainly via Rail Park North, LLC, has leased some 400 acres to Energix while the Louisa County Industrial Development Authority has leased the other 800 acres. Assuming the project comes to fruition, the foundation estimates that Two Oaks will provide an annual funding increase of $700,000, which will be available for local grants and scholarships, per Energix’s land use application.
The Cooke Foundation’s windfall was considered a selling point of the project when the board approved it in a 7-0 vote in January 2022. All three of the board’s Republican members—Adams, Williams, and Green Springs District Supervisor Rachel Jones, who had just joined the board—voted in favor of the facility.
The Louisa District supervisor race is one of only two contested local elections on this year’s ballot and it has emerged as the county’s marquee matchup. After current Louisa District representative Eric Purcell (I) announced in March that he wouldn’t seek re-election, the race drew three contenders: Colsey, a public school teacher who moved to the county from northern Virginia in 2020; Woodward, a Louisa native who ran his family’s insurance business until retiring in 2021; and Jones, a pastor and small business owner born and raised in Louisa.
Note: This article was updated to clarify Greg Jones’ current position with the Louisa branch of the NAACP.
Election Day is November 7 and early voting is underway at the Louisa County Registrar’s Office, 103 McDonald Street, Louisa. Check out next week’s edition of Engage Louisa for our full election preview. Click here for voter information and sample ballots.