The Harvey Solar company has a green light to build a solar farm on 2,630 acres in northwestern Licking County.
In a unanimous decision released Wednesday, April 30, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected legal arguments by opponents of the $350 million project.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Doug Herling, vice president of the solar company based in Austin, Texas. “We started this project in 2020, so this has been four-plus years of process. And what this means is the permit is final and not appealable.”
In a decision written by Justice R. Patrick DeWine, the court said residents of Bennington and Hartford townships who challenged the Ohio Power Siting Board’s approval of the project “have not demonstrated that the board acted unlawfully … and they have failed to establish that the board acted unreasonably” in making its determinations.
“Therefore, we affirm the board’s order granting Harvey Solar a certificate for the construction, operation and maintenance of Harvey Solar’s facility,” the court wrote.
Residents who filed the appeal said the power siting board didn’t adequately consider the “adverse visual impacts,” the potential for flooding, adverse effects on wildlife, and noise and glare from the panels. The supreme court rejected all of those complaints.
Herling said he expects construction to begin sometime in 2026, and it will take another year to 18 months to complete the project.
“The timeframe is a little up in the air,” he said. “We need to go through a compliance review process – advancing site plans and engineering details.”
Installation will involve building elevated frames to hold about 900,000 solar panels that will generate about 350 megawatts of electricity, Herling said, adding that in a conservative estimate, it could power about 60,000 homes a year.
The site is a collection of leased farmland in far northwestern Licking County along the county’s borders with Delaware and Knox counties. It is north and west of the village of Hartford, also known as Croton, and parts of it are across Fairgrounds Road from the main entrance to the Hartford Fairgrounds.
Because some of the complaints about the solar farm involve the view, the company previously agreed to do landscaping around the site. And Herling said the solar panels will cover less than half of the site – about 1,000 acres – “and the rest is trees and waterways and landscaping.”
Much has changed since the project was first proposed, Herling said, but a new administration and tariffs “have not given us second thoughts.”
And he said there are more domestic options for solar equipment now than when Harvey proposed the project, so that is a positive change.
He said he’s excited about the location, which is close to main lines in the nation’s electrical grid, and there are many substations in the area. That means some of the solar power could flow into area homes and businesses at a time when Ohio’s electrical resources are stretched thin by rapidly increasing demand, Herling said.
“There’s a tremendous thirst for power in this area,” he said, referring to rapid growth and development. That includes a growing number of data centers.
And he said the company is looking into the possibility of grazing sheep on at least some of the land to maintain the agricultural aspect of the land and also to reduce the cost of mowing. The land also will be maintained as a pollinator habitat, he said.
He said he’s also pleased that the county and local community will benefit financially.
The company will pay $3.15 million a year in lieu of local taxes – including to the county; entities that have countywide tax levies, such as the levy to support programming for senior citizens; Hartford and Bennington townships; local emergency responders and to the Northridge Local School District and C-TEC Career and Technology Education Centers.
Licking County Commissioner Tim Bubb said the project was approved by the Ohio Power Siting Board before a state law allowed townships to ask county boards of commissioners to prohibit large solar and wind-energy installations. And since then, the Licking County commissioners have approved such bans for a half-dozen or more townships.
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.