Landowner views solar project as opportunity for agricultural property

If Mike McKenzie has his way, a portion of the land that has been in his family for generations soon will become a solar farm, which he views as another chance for agricultural property to be put to different use.

The project, Moscato, LLC, a subsidiary of Energix LLC, is the second proposed solar farm in the county. A majority of the Planning Commission recently found the proposal was ‘substantially in accordance’ with the county’s Comprehensive Plan. The Patrick County Board of Supervisors will next consider the project.

On Monday, the board greenlighted a similar project, known as Fairy Stone Solar, LLC, on Commerce Street in Stuart.

McKenzie explained that his property has been in some part of his family since before the Civil War, and primarily was used for agricultural purposes. Before World War II, the land was owned by his grandfather. When his father returned from WWII, he wanted to start a dairy farm.

“We ran a small dairy farm for a number of years until bout 1960, and the dairy business got to be too much for my father to handle by himself. It was hard to get any labor around Patrick County, or at least labor that was willing to do” that kind of work, McKenzie said. “You know, that’s pretty hard work for low wages.”

McKenzie said his father sold the dairy business and started raising beef cattle. That venture lasted another 20 years. By then, his father “was getting up in age, he had passed the age of 70, and he decided that he was going to give up cows altogether. 

“He planned to farm white pine,” which was used by various furniture manufacturers before many of those jobs moved offshore, McKenzie said. “Only the cleared land was planted in white pine, and that was passed to me.”

Around 2012, McKenzie said, “We thinned quite a bit of what had been planted, and I don’t know, I enjoyed the fact that there was money coming in, but we went ahead and cleared off large portions.”

Four years later, in 2016, he was contacted by a North Carolina company about the prospect of leasing his land for a solar farm.

“Although it got my interest almost from the beginning, I made no effort to contact anybody or invite a proposal or anything of that nature,” McKenzie said. Instead, he decided to wait and see how things developed. 

Ultimately, his age played a large role in the decision to go ahead with the solar project. “I was approaching age 70. Obviously, my time is rather limited as to what it has been, and I just need to make some plan about how I was going to leave the property,” McKenzie said. 

“Of course, I could, and have, in fact, replanted all of the land that was timbered. Only this time, I went with loblolly” pines, he said. 

Fewer than 100 acres, including setbacks and other vegetative buffers and wildlife crossings, would be used for the solar project in McKenzie’s bid to make preparations for the next owner of the property.

“I don’t have any family to pass the property onto. I have a daughter,” but she does not live in the county, he said, adding that some of the funds from his lease would go into a trust. He wants to use some of the monies to restore the I.M. Akers General Merchandise Store, which he owns. His goal is to get it listed on Virginia’s list of historic places.

“Also, I would like to support the Patrick County Historical Museum and the Patrick County Historical Society, which owns the museum. The historical museum has a number of very interesting items in its collection now. It could be expanded to hold many more,” he said.

Given his stance that the project would benefit the county, McKenzie said he has been surprised at the amount of backlash to the project.

“The first indication of how strongly the opposition might be” was apparent at a January 16 Patrick County Planning Commission meeting, McKenzie said.

If he could have a conversation with those who are vocally opposed to the project, McKenzie is unsure of what he would say, in part because “I would characterize their objections as being largely emotional and not really rational in the sense they are looking at reality. 

“Then, my response might get emotional on my part,” he said, chuckling. “If you want to be cynical, you could say that ‘Patrick County is snatched defeat from the jaws of the future.’ Or ‘Patrick County hides from the future, again’ because this (opposition) has happened in the past.”

McKenzie recalled that in the 1960s, there was an effort to combine the higher grades in the county’s five rural high schools and consolidate them into one high school. 

“I think they had a public hearing in the courthouse in which there was a lot of opposition expressed to the idea of closing the five, more or less, community schools,” he said.

McKenzie added the opposition now is a continuing pattern of being averse to any proposed change “without looking at it rationally or in realistic terms.”

For instance, McKenzie said one of his neighbors built a house on the hill of an adjacent property.

“His house is situated so that he can see virtually everything I do on my property. When he built his house, I wasn’t even aware of it until we cut timber. Then I could see it. That’s freedom,” he said. “But now, this particular neighbor is opposing my plans for my property because it might affect him. He doesn’t see that he’s already affected me.”

McKenzie said another person talked about utility poles being planted on a lot close to that person’s house at a meeting where solar was discussed.

“Well, that’s life. I mean everybody assumes some risk during their life,” McKenzie said. “It’s also freedom. He had the right to build his house where he did, and if he gets handed utility poles, then well, that’s sort of too bad. 

“You win some, you lose some, and some you get rained out. It’s just part of life, and nobody has claimed that life was going to be fair for anybody,” he said.

In retrospect, McKenzie said he shouldn’t have been surprised at the opposition to the Moscato project.

“It’s typical Patrick County. People in Patrick County are just opposed to any change whatsoever,” he said.

Since he hasn’t been out in the community, McKenzie said he can’t gauge the support for his project, but he is surprised that some of the most vocal opponents to the proposed solar project aren’t native to the county, but rather those who moved to the area.

“I would think coming from outside of Patrick County, they’ve come from communities that were maybe more progressive than Patrick County. I would expect them to maybe look down on practices in Patrick County and be more amenable to changing systems,” he said.

Regardless, “their opposition seems to be largely emotional. They don’t see any benefit to them personally, and maybe that hasn’t been pointed out to them. That might be a mistake, but I think there could be some substantial benefit, particularly in economic terms,” he said.

McKenzie said the county seems stagnant, especially compared to the 1950s and 1960s when he was growing up. Solar farms would serve as an incentive for various industries to at least consider moving to the area. 

“If we could get more industries here, there would certainly be more opportunities for young people to stay in the county,” he said.

Developing new industries also may provide the leadership and sponsorship to revive the hospital.

“It was United Elastic that provided the leadership and the sponsorship to get the building erected in the early ‘60s. A lot of people felt it was unfair, and it probably was, but they required that all of their employees make some contribution from their wages to the construction of the hospital,” McKenzie said. “So, everybody was more or less mobilized for that particular purpose.” 

One of the biggest problems he sees in Patrick County is “too much attention to scenery.” The scenery and topography “have been perhaps the biggest obstacle to development in Patrick County.

“I mean look at the construction work on Route 58. The General Assembly passed legislation to expand Route 58 in 1989, so it’s been 35 years and $300 million, and we’re trying to send some workmen down on that project, and look what a project it is,” McKenzie said. “They’re literally tearing down mountains to put a road through.”

A thoughtful man who said that despite all of the opposition he’s faced with the proposed solar farm, he would still choose to go ahead with the project. 

“There is very little you could do with undeveloped property that would have as good of a return,” he said. 

If he second-guesses anything, it would be his attendance at some of the discussions about the solar project. He noted that he has not seen other property landowners who intend to lease their property to a solar company at meetings. “Maybe that was the better choice. I don’t know.”