Conservation concerns mean some environmentalists say no to solar projects

As Amherst, Mass., writes its rules for where to put solar, some local environmentalists worry about farmland and forests getting lost to solar projects. Other local environmentalists worry that overly restrictive solar rules would limit the town’s ability to fight climate change.

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Janet McGowan and Steven Roof both live in the town of Amherst, Mass., and they have a lot in common.

They live on the same road, in old houses built amid rolling farmland and maple and birch trees. Both care deeply about the environment and understand that climate change poses a profound threat to people and ecosystems. But they are split over how their community should rein in the emissions making the planet hotter.

Amherst is writing its bylaws for where and how to locate solar projects in the town, and McGowan, a mediator and lawyer who is on the working group to help write those bylaws, has concerns. McGowan says she isn’t anti-solar, but like many other residents, she worries about the town’s farmland and forests getting converted into solar projects. “To me, it just seems viscerally wrong and counterintuitive,” she says. “It just seems really odd to me to cut down a forest to put up a solar facility.”

Roof is overcome with a different worry. A professor of earth and environmental science at Hampshire College, he travels with students to the Arctic to study the effects of global warming. He worries that local fears about conserving farms and forests could lead Amherst to enact overly restrictive regulations that limit the town’s role in tackling climate change.

“We’re at a tipping point,” Roof says. “If we don’t turn to renewable energy and stop burning fossil fuels, in 10 or 15…