Construction is scheduled to start in mid-July on a solar farm at Mercer County Community College, but opposition continues to generate some heat of its own.
The Monday, June 25, Council meeting and work session, which ran late into the night, essentially became a brainstorming meeting in which Council, township officials and residents considered ways to appeal to the powers that preside over the project. Township Attorney Michael W. Herbert was given instructions to draft a letter to several state agencies on behalf of Council and the administration, though as of Monday, July 2, the letter had not been sent.
The 45-acre solar farm will border residences along South Post Road and Old Trenton Road, and residents are concerned that the facility will be too close to their homes. The property closest to the proposed solar farm, owned by Marek Dziekonski (WW-P News, June 8), will be just 75 feet away, according to the latest information — far closer than originally stated.
Unhappy residents expressed themselves through lawn signs put up near the college ahead of Freedom Fest, which drew a large crowd to nearby Mercer County Park on Saturday, June 30.
The most vocal opponents remain Council Vice President Linda Geevers, Councilman Bryan Maher, and residents of South Post Road including Carol Wake (see letter page 5), Janet Mariano, Teresa Lourenco, and Marilyn Mangone-Stoddard. Each woman spoke at the Council meeting to update the public about the latest round of communications with the Mercer County Improvement Authority, MCCC officials, and representatives from West Windsor, including Township Landscape Architect Dan Dobromilsky and Director of Community Development Pat Ward.
Mangone-Stoddard said not only have the distances changed, but the project’s finances have as well, and she called the public statements of Steven Goodbody of SunLight General (WW-P News, June 7) into question.
“As of the May 31 meeting you cannot call facts, facts. Mr. Goodbody’s latest presentation was full of changing facts,” she said.
John Church of 11 Princeton Place summarized the issue as saying it was as simple as MCCC’s presence in West Windsor. “You can do stuff on your property, but you can’t harm your neighbors. Here it’s a question of harming your neighbors. When they create possible drainage issues, water pollution issues and visual pollution issues, it seriously affects the neighbors along South Post Road,” he said.
Church added that because West Windsor provides police and fire services to Mercer County Community College, “we have skin in this game. What MCCC does impinges directly on us and our responsibilities,” he said.
Later, during Council’s work session, Herbert said that any “stay of execution” to hold up the project would be the decision of MCCC and not the MCIA or County Executive Brian Hughes, as Councilman Maher had suggested. Church then offered some insight into the chain of command as he said that as a county college, MCCC is not a sovereign entity — it must answer to the state Department of Education, acting Commissioner of Education Christopher Cerf, and ultimately Governor Chris Christie. Herbert agreed, and Council discussed who a letter should be mailed to.
Herbert and Maher asked residents to compile data with all the changes to the project that have been made, condense that into a one-page document and submit that to Council by the next business day. One week later Herbert drafted a letter from West Windsor’s council and administration to multiple state agencies, County Executive Brian Hughes, the MCIA, and the state DOE.
