Planning and Zoning Commission - Special Meeting

30th and we're considering the pride of the prairie solar commercial solar energy facility. Um we will be here from until 9:30. At 9:30 we're done. That's four hours from now. Uh if we have not completed what we do, we'll be back tomorrow from 5:30 until 9:30. Hopefully in two days we can get it completed. If we can't get it completed in one, there will be a lot of people speaking tonight. So many so that we're going to ask a special favor. Nobody repeat what somebody's already said. If if they've said something that you agree with and you're already in line to speak, just say I agree with that person, move on because we are going to Right. The last I heard we had like 87 89 people signed up to speak already. If I give everybody three minutes, that's not enough usually to even state all you want to say. So, what we're going to do is we're setting the timer for four and a half minutes. I will let everybody know when they've reached that time and give them 30 seconds to wind up. You'll have five minutes to speak. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but when you consider the numbers, it's it's quite a bit of time. So, um, one more thing, everybody, please put your cell phones in cell phone, uh, mode, turn them off, uh, put them in airplane mode. do whatever to quiet them down and I'm going to swear everybody in and mass as soon as the meeting has

started. So, uh I will ask you at that time to all raise your right hands. Anybody who's speaking to take the oath. Uh right now I'm going to ask for a call to order and ask everybody to rise for the pledge of allegiance which I think they're going to put on the screen. I'll have to excuse me. I'm a little game. Turn toward the screen. If you can reach the screen, that way we pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. May I have a roll call, please?

Roll call for March 30th, 2026. Hugh Stippen here. John Kefner here. Kimberly Mitchell here. Matt Garland here. Karen Warick here. Lewis Navarat here. And Roger Bettinhousen. We have a quorum.

We have a quorum. Thank you. Uh Rogers here skip over a minute. We have our first zoning case tonight is ZC25-129 Lincoln Solar Energy LLC. uh well and it has a spreadsheet for all the properties which I think everybody has access to. Special use permit for commercial solar energy facility applies to 6,000 and 999 acres in Manhattan Green Garden and Walton Townships. Okay. Multiple properties roughly located in the area south of Stunkle Road, west of 104th Avenue, east of South Gala Road, and north of Wilmington Pone Road, County Boards Districts 2 and three. Uh, our presenter tonight is Kelly Kruinski. Would you please start?

Yep. All right. Good evening. Um, this is zoning KZC-25-129. Um, also known as Pride of the Prairie. Um, the project is located within the Manhattan Green Garden in Wilton Townships. Um, the applicant is Earthrise Energy represented by Attorney Benjamin Jacobe. The project includes 46 property owners across 96 separate pins. A detailed spreadsheet and property owner map is included in the staff of submitted as exhibits. Um the applicant is requesting a special use permit for a commercial solar energy facility. Um the proposed development includes approximately 6,99 acres and is planned as a 600 megawatt solar facility. As part of this request, the applicant is seeking several variances. These include um 96 variances for ground cover plant height, 96 variances for required mowings, and three variances for lot frontage from 300 ft to zero feet. Um overall the applicant is requesting one special use permit and 195 variances. Um this is a slide that shows the aerial view with the project footprint outlined in red. Um the area displayed includes both parcels that will contain solar panels and parcels that will you be used for above ground utilities only. Um for a more detailed layout that can be found in the staff report. As mentioned previously, the total area for which the applicant is requesting the special use permit for is 6,99 acres. According to the commercial solar energy facility section, um the term subject property and subject parcel refer to all parcels whether contiguous or non-ontiguous which are identified on the site plan for the use of commercial solar energy facility. Um the applicant submitted a concept site plan showing the parcels will be connected using medium voltage um cables. Um therefore only one special use permit is required.

Um Earthrise Energy owns several um natural gas peaking plants also known as peaker plants. Um these facilities generate generate electricity during periods of high demand. This project will utilize that existing interconnection to connect to the electrical grid. Um staff has added a condition to the special use permit to allow for above ground utilities where necessary um for areas such as wetlands and existing underground pipelines. Um kind of shown on the aerial view. The area is mainly agricultural farmland, wooded areas and some residential uses. Here is the zoning map of the property um with the special use permit area outlined in red. The entire subject area is zoned A1. The Village of Manhattan and Village of Frankfurt are the municipalities located in within a mile and a half. Um the municipalities were notified of the zoning case. Um the developer is also in the process of obtaining a special use permit through the village of Manhattan since part of the project is located within the villages jurisdiction. Here is a view of the overall site plan. Um the subject parcels will be connected using those electrical cables shown in pink on the site plan. Um parcels outlined in purple are the where the solar panels are proposed and the parcels outlined in blue are where the overhead utilities will be located. Um if zoning approval is granted, the developer will be required to obtain all appropriate permits. Federal, state, local, and county codes and ordinances will apply. Um, for a quick overview of the project, the project will include about 17,000 solar panels, each mounted on a tracking system to follow the sun, and none of them will be exceeding 20 feet in height. Um, there will be access roads planned throughout the different parcels. Um, and exact locations can be shown on the site plan. Um the solar arrays will be secured with a fence that

meets n national electric code standards and most of the equipment pads including inverters um will be centrally located within the array fields. Here's more of a zoomedin picture of one of the parcels on the site plan. Um, commercial solar energy facilities must must enter an agricultural impact mitigation agreement, otherwise known as an AMA, with the Illinois Department of Agriculture. Um, the intent of the AMA is to preserve agriculture agricultural land impacted by the construction of a solar facility and the eventual deconstruction of the solar facility. Um, Kimley Horn performed a glare and glint analysis report and the report concluded that they are not in are expected to have glare in the area. They also performed a noise report. Um, this report concluded that the predicted noise levels are anticipated to remain below the acceptable noise limits established by the IPCB. Um, lastly, the applicant has provided the initial site plan traffic route. Um this is attached to the staff report. Um there are various access points to the subject properties throughout different juris road jurisdictions. Um according to the plan construction, traffic will travel southbound on I-52 to reach the site entrances. Um so for this slide, um the applicants proposing two types of landscaping treatments. One is a residential buffer visual buffer and one is the rightway visual buffer. These are intended to screen the solar panels from nearby roadways in residential properties. Shown on the screen um is an expert or excerpt of a zoomedin parcel of the landscaping plan. Um a comprehensive review will be done during permitting. Um here is an example of their residential screening or proposed

residential screening and here are examples of their proposed right-of-way screening. Um, additionally, the applicant is proposing the use of native neighbor native pollinator species for ground cover. The seed mixes are shown on the screen. The use of native pollinators is strongly encouraged by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for solar developments um to allow these pollinator species to establish um the applicants requesting variances for plant height and mowings. This screen outlines the application submitt requirements. Um items shown in red are the required Illinois sighting standards. Um items items shown in the bold black um indicate additional requirements that the county is permitted to include. Um the applicant has submitted all the requirement or required submitts for this case to proceed to public hearing. This case would not be before you tonight if those requirements have not been met. Um, if approved, the solar energy facility must comply with the commercial solar energy facility regulations outlined in the ordinance. Um, continual maintenance and landscape upkeep shall also be required per code. So, here are some photos looking um near the intersection of 104th and Drawley Road. Here are looking at some photos along 104th Avenue near or just south of West Manhattan Mon Road. These are looking at the intersection of Drawley Road and Lraange Road. These are looking near West Manhattan Mon Road and Cheer Road. These are looking along Schoolhouse Road. These are near Offner Road um just east of Shear Road. Um, these are along 120th Avenue, south of Offner Road.

These are photos along West Julia Road, just west of 120th Avenue. These are some photos along William Wilmington Pietone Road, west of Elevator Road. Here are some photos at the intersection of Offner Road and Cedar Road. And I think this last one finally offner road and south Walsh Road. Oh, there's more along um these are some more photos along West Arsenal Road just west of Galer Road. Okay. Um due to the recent equity solar Illinois versus County of Brundy, the listed special use permit criteria is not applicable to commercial solar energy facilities. As a result, staff has not provided analysis of the special use permit criteria for the special use permit request. For the variance review criteria criteria, um a detailed analysis can be found in the staff report. But to summarize, for the variances for plant height and mowings, the state encourages commercial solar energy facilities to use native pollinator plants, which grow to varying heights and provide habitat for wildlife. Um to support growth, plants in the site need to reach about 36 in and the applicant plans to mow at least once. Um staff finds that granting these variances would not alter the air area's character. Um surrounding farm fields often exceed um these um requests and the land over 2.5 acres are generally exempt from height limits. Once established, the pollinator plants will support nearby agriculture and wildlife. The purpose of these variances is to allow the solar developer to develop the site as a commercial solar energy facility that follows the state's native pollinator guidelines. For the variances for lot frontage, these variance requests are based on unique circumstances. The parcels were created in the early 1980s are landlocked and were previously farmland. Um granting the variances will not change the character of the area. They simply are correcting the non-conformity. The lack

of road frontage creates a hardship that cannot be resolved due to surrounding property ownership. Approving the variances will not harm public safety or neighboring property values and allow the applicant to develop the commercial solar energy facility in compliance with county regulations. Okay. So staff has received um comments from local agencies. Um the ones that are included in the staff report include the Will County Department of Transportation. Um they noted that no permits have been applied for but they did provide preliminary comments. Those can be found in the staff report. Um from Green Garin Township staff received letters of objection from both the plan commission and the watershed wershed committee. Um in addition the Green Garden Township board passed a resolution on March 9th opposing the request. Um staff also received a resolution from the Wilton Township Board opposing this special use permit. Um staff was also provided with a list of requirements from the fire protection districts um for the earthrise projects. Um as part of the natural resource inventory report provided by Will South Cook soil and water conservation district they calculate a lease score of 236 which places this land in essential farmland category. Um their additional comments can be found in the report. Um, before the staff report was published, staff received 57 letters from concerned citizens, a signed petition, and a letter from the local union 174, all expressing concerns regarding the solar development. Um, lastly, for what that was included in the staff report, there were 34 letters of support. Um, all of the above mentioned items can be found in the staff report. After the staff report was published, staff received comments from the Forest Preserve, Manhattan Township, Potone Township, Wilton Township Road District, and Will South Cook. All these were sent out as memo. Those all their details can be

found in the memos that were provided. Um staff would like to note that Will South Cook um did send an email stating that the site inspections were completed and provided um as a report. Since this being provided after the staff report was published, um staff will be asking to remove condition number five that states that this that the field inspections will be required at time of permitting. Um staff also has received additional letters of objection since the staff report was published and these are provided as a memo. Okay. Okay. And then so staff is recommending approval of the special use permit um with four conditions removing that condition number five for the NRI. And then staff is also recommending approval of variances for maximum ground cover plant height from 13 in to 36 in. Approval of variances for required mowings from five times to one time. And then approval of all three variances for lot frontage from 300 feet to zero feet. Um, that is it. I'm happy to answer any questions if you guys have any.

Thank you. I have no questions. If anyone on the board have questions, thank you very much. Thank you. At this point, I'm going to now swear everybody in who's going to speak tonight. So, please raise your right hand. I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So, help me God, I do. Thank you very much, Mr. Jacob. Would you uh Yes, sir. Thank you. Good evening.

My name is Ben Jacobe. I'm the attorney for the applicant, Lincoln Solar Energy LLC, whose ultimate parent is Earthrise Energy. Not my first time in front of this board. Not my first time in front of this board in this room. So, thank you very much. It's a It's a privilege to be back. Excuse my lingering cough. I have my petri dish children to blame for that. Um, we're asking tonight for this commission to recommend approving a special use permit to construct and operate a commercial solar energy facility on certain parcels uh in two variances for each of those parcels. One to allow a maximum ground cover plant height from 13 to 36 in and one to reduce the required mowings from five times to a minimum of one time between May and October. We're also asking for that frontage variance on those three parcels. Um, these parcels were landlocked in the 80s, I think. Uh, and they don't have the necessary 300 foot frontage um, under the code. So, uh, they're currently legal non-conforming uses, and we as stewards of those parcels are seeking to bring them into current compliance uh, with this request variance. I know that this commission has overseen a lot of solar projects uh and has seen a lot of solar facility presentations and these requests are really no different from prior requests that you've seen. This project similar in many ways to the Plum Valley project that you reviewed on March 18. This project's bigger um and you'll see that it's a similar design and and development philosophy. I'm going to introduce the development team here tonight and the project at a 30,000 foot level and then I'm going to turn it over to the witnesses to provide details on the project and to answer questions. And I promised last time a streamlined presentation uh and tonight will be even shorter uh I do believe. So I'm joined here tonight by a very robust development team. We're very excited about this project. Um Rob Kus is the lead developer. He's right there in the suit. Um he will be uh providing

specifics on the development and site plan um and on decommissioning. You heard from him last time. He's been doing this a long time. He's the jack of all trades uh for the project tonight. Um number two on the list is Graham McFall. Um in the back there, he's the director of environmental at Earthrise. He'll discuss the project's compliance with environmental requirements, storm water management, sound and glare study. Uh Mr. Joseph Horn is an engineer with Earthrise. you heard from him last time as well. He's uh he'll discuss construction operations and drainage. We also have Chris Wilson, a landscape architect from Kimley Horn. Um you heard from him last time. He'll discuss the vegetative screening, pollinator friendly plannings and maintenance. Um Dr. Gilbert Micho is a professor at Lyola University in Chicago. He'll present the findings of the economic impact study conducted by strategic economic research. So he's stepping in from Dr. Lumis who you heard from last time. And then we have Mr. Andrew Lines, the property valuation expert u from Cone Resnik, MAI designation. Um he'll present his study which you heard about last time. He'll present it as it applies to this project specifically and I won't bury the lead here as I did last time, but his conclusion is that the solar facilities don't impact property valuation. Um that will conclude our presentation of witnesses. We also have with us tonight Dr. Chris Olsen. He's an environmental health scientist and PhD. He's available to answer specific questions on those topics. And then Ryan Solom is a professional engineer from Kimley Horn and he'll he's here uh for engineering questions and support. As you heard a moment ago, the project's about 600 megawatts up to 600 megawws, approximately 6,100 acres. The site and the projects have been meticulously reviewed by the development team. They've also been uh diligent about neighbor outreach and local government outreach. And I said this before and I think it separates them from other developers. this this uh diligence and outreach they've committed to. Uh this doesn't mean that everybody has agreed with their vision. Uh but certainly the

team has made efforts to connect the neighboring townships, municipalities, and residents. I always highlight some significant benefits in the beginning uh upfront so that the community knows why we're here. And you'll hear more about these from the witnesses, but just like last time, this project will bring a lot of property taxes, more than the other projects that you've seen. This project will generate over 81 million in taxes estimated over the life of the project of 35 years. 1.8 million is estimated to go to the Peton School District 207U in the first year of operations with approximately 43.5 million going to the school district over the life of the project. So big big money there. Also jobs. The economic impact study estimates that the project will generate 969 total jobs during construction in the county. with 286 of those being on-site union prevailing wage jobs. Uh a little over 2,000 jobs in the state. There's also 40 additional long-term jobs created during operations in the county, 56 in the state. And this project's no different from the Plum Plum Valley project in that it's a proud partner with the Tri Trades. And I think you'll hear from local labor tonight.

Okay. Okay. All all of you who are doing this are wasting your time to speak because what happens if we don't get any time because everybody's applauding or booing or yelling. You've lost your own time that you could have had. So please keep it down. Listen to what everybody says. You have plenty of chance to respond afterwards. Thank you. We do hope to move through this pretty quick. Um, we've taken great care to comply with the requirements of the county zoning code, specifically 1559245. The application has a checklist starting on page 8 as the last one did. I believe it's also in your materials. That that checklist shows where exactly we demonstrate compliance with each provision of the solar ordinance. So, you can check our homework and it's intended to be used that way. We also meet all the LAL factors and we address those in in the application as well. And the staff report notes and you heard from Kelly a moment ago that under the recent case law equity solar Illinois Grundy versus Grundy County the Lasal factors are no longer a relevant consideration and that is true. But that said, Earthrise has prepared and filed its application before Equity Solar was decided uh and designed its project to meet those factors anyway. So this was not a rushed exercise. The application's very thorough. staff was meticulous in reviewing it and uh and reviewed every piece of land that we uh applied for and required a threat to supplement the application in part over several months until they believed it to be complete. And the point I'm trying to make here as I made last time is that pride of the prairie this project, this application is trying to honor the county's way of doing business before Equity Solar. Um and even though those LAL factors don't apply anymore, we believe that we've met them and we hope after our presentation you'll agree. So that's our road map. We again sincerely appreciate your time and patience. We'll be as concise as

possible. I've said that three times now, so I'm I'm holding us to it. Uh we hope to earn your vote tonight. And I'm going to hand things over to Rob, but before I do, I just want to make sure we have a few things in our record. We have our uh application with its exhibits. We have the PowerPoint presentation that you're seeing tonight. Uh the proof of notices, including newspaper, mailing and scanned receipts. And then our letters in support. We actually had 42 letters, I think, at the time of tonight, um, submitted, uh, to our, uh, to our record. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Rob. Thank you.

Good evening, members of the planning and zoning commission. My name is Rob Kalbas. I'm the director of development for Earthrise. Thank you for reviewing our special use permit application for Pride of the Prairie Solar. My goal tonight is to answer the most frequently asked questions about the project. We got a acquainted a few weeks ago, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about myself, but to recap, I oversaw the preparation of the application materials you've reviewed. I've been developing renewable energy projects in the Midwest since 2019, and I came into this from the oil and gas business. I'm an all the- above guy when it comes to energy, and that's what brought me to Earthrise. Uh tonight I'd like to tell you more about Earthrise's innovative business strategy that involves tapping into existing power infrastructure. As we discussed last time, we own and operate natural gas peaking plants that allow us to accelerate the addition of new capacity to the grid, including our Gibson City project and our projects in development and gearing up for construction downstate. Earthrise is the first of its kind to pursue a strategy of combining conventional energy structure with new renewable power generation. This allows us to put clean energy on the grid faster than our industry peers at a moment when time to market could provide much neededed relief to electricity rate payers. We all know there are new sources of demand coming to the grid, including right here in Juliet. Earthrise's innovative strategy allows us to address that new demand quickly with projects like Pride of the Prairie. Because our interconnection strategy is based on utilizing our peaker plant, the capacity of this facility caps our project size. The pride of the prairie solar project has been designed to this limit. Uh there will not be a second f. I want to emphasize this. Earthrise is not going to build another solar project here. Now I would like to view review the project layout with you and present some

details on the design concept that is presented in our special use permit application. When we start a project, our first goal is to acquire land rights to build to our target capacity. We do not start with a clear concept of what the final footprint will look like. So we typically acquire more land than we need. As we study the land, we learn there are areas we want to avoid. In doing so, we rule out and release real estate. To date, we've released over 6,000 acres that were not part of this application. Solar arrays will be located generally southeast of the village of Manhattan in unincorporated Will County. Overall, there will be a little over 5,400 acres of parcels hosting solar array. I want to emphasize that this total is not the actual area under the solar panels. Electricity will be gathered to the point of interconnection using underground medium voltage alternating current cables. Our application also includes that uh the request to utilize an above ground cab system in specific locations uh to tie solar arrays to inverter blocks. We proposed two locations for a project sump station. One location is in the village of Manhattan where we are also seeking a special use permit as well as an alternative location in the county proposed in the application you have reviewed. We will make a final determination on which of these locations will be selected as we progress through the later stages of permitting in consultation with soil and water conservation district farm bureau and will county land use. We've developed a decommissioning plan that addresses funding of the deconstruction and restoration of the project which will occur following the operational phase. We will provide final uh financial assurance based on the schedule established under our agricultural impact mitigation agreement with the department of agriculture. Lastly, I want to mention that this facility is being designed to standards established in the Illinois state sighting law for solar projects, which covers a range of specifications such as setbacks. Although these standards prescribe minimum distances, in many

cases, panels be located substantially further than these minimum distances. In designing the facility, we sought out stakeholder input from day one. We brought members of this community down to visit our Gibson City facility while it was being constructed. We started with outreach to fire protection districts and first responders to coordinate on project design and emergency response planning. We provided updates regularly to the Farm Bureau so that we could understand concerns they're hearing from stakeholders and learn how we can be better stewards to the land. We've been working with the drainage consultant to speak with the farming community about drain tile and begin mapping it so that we can make plans to protect this important infrastructure. We've reached out to local road use authorities and presented our best practices for caring for local roads and bridges bridges including compensating for impacts. One example of our collaboration with road use authorities occurred in Green Garden Township. We learned how trimming our footprint could facilitate a road project. So we modified our design, dropping land that could have been used for panels to accommodate widening of a road. And our outreach doesn't stop there. We wanted to get our project in front of as many folks as possible before we even filed an application. So, we got the word out by sending our project team into the community. We identified neighboring households and we knocked every door. If one pro if no one was home, we left behind contact information which concluded our project website. We invited participating and neighboring land owners to an open house that was convened at the Hansen Community Center on the evening of October 8th last year. We showed up at beloved beloved community events like the Will County Fair, Irish Fest, Party in the Park, and Men Who Cook, and we had a lot of fun doing it. I'm proud to stand before you this evening to discuss the benefits this project brings to Will County. It's quite appropriate for the community to ask what's in it for them, and we'd like

to answer. I think it's helpful to frame these benefits under several categories that you see bulleted. First and foremost, our guiding vision for our projects in Will County has been to develop, construct, and ultimately own and operate substantial new clean power generation resources that be that could be used to offset rising regional demand. Getting relief to uh rateayers remains an ongoing priority in the state of Illinois, particularly in Will County. So when a project that produces the equivalent energy to what 120,000 average Illinois households consume in a year comes to the four policy makers should take note because this is the kind of project that can put a serious dent in all that new demand coming to the grid. Pride of the prairie will yield approximately $3.5 million for taxing bodies across the project area and that's just in the first year of operations alone. Close to 2 million of that new year 1 revenue is slated for Pietone School District. We will cover our economic analysis included with the application materials uh in greater detail later in the presentation. In addition to that tax analysis, this project will provide considerable stimulus to the local economy. Dr. Misho will cover that incre uh increased economic activity in greater detail. But I want to note that the multiplier effect of a project like this will have downstream effects that will ripple through the economy from suppliers to the project to weight staff at local restaurants. When you have a project that will put over 600 construction personnel to work, it also opens the doors to folks looking to start their career in the trades and that means apprenticeship opportunities for around 100 people to get their star as an electrician, an equipment operator, as a later laborer. We're proud to call the tri trades our business partners for this project. Additionally, we just launched a drone training workforce program for low-income communities in Will County uh in partnership with Gov State. This project is fully funded by Earthrise Energy. We are investing in new first responder capabilities like the grants

for safety equipment we've provided to Manhattan Fire Protection District. Finally, we're making funding available to underwrite public works, expanding on support uh we've already provided for important community projects such as a dog park in the village of Manhattan. I would like to conclude by emphasizing I would like to conclude by emphasizing the peaking plants anchor us in the community. Our team members already live and work here. We're your neighbors. Thank you for your time and consideration. With that, I would like to turn the presentation over to our director of environmental services, Graham McFall, who will review the site investigations that we performed to study conditions across the project area. Are you prepared to take questions yourself?

Yes, sir. Okay. Completely confused here. I tried to write it down. Earthrise is not going to build another solar farm here. I have no idea what that means. Well, we've encountered a lot of If those were your exact words, I think that's what I heard. And everybody said that's correct. Okay, explain that to me.

As I mentioned, um, when we develop a project, we use the peaking plants to interconnect our projects. That's our special sauce at Earthrise. Okay, that those peaking facilities cap the limit um cap the capacity that we can tie into the grid. And so this project is sized to that limit. We would not be able to utilize this strategy to this project. You're not building another one. That's correct. Okay. It didn't come off that clear.

Okay. I know I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but So then I will go right to this page that's still here. I took a picture of it. It says delivering new capacity to the grid to offset rising regional demand. This occurred to me at the last meeting. You're not adding capacity to the grid. All it means is when these solar panels are running 100% and making 600 megawws, those eight Pratt Whitney turbine jet engines out in Manhattan are not running. And if it's a cloudy day, you might get the call to fire up two, four, six or eight of them. Am I mistaken here?

So that those um those engines are capped in terms of the number of hours that they can operate a year. The solar is generating power when those engines are not running. So it is um in effect adding capacity to the grid. That capacity is it's kind of an either or. But I I believe when that project went in it was limited to a number of days. Have they ever added to that? Do you know the exact capacity? Can you can you repeat the question, sir? When that plant went in, it was an Enron plant, middle 90s, late 90s. I was at some of the hearings, they were capped at the number of days, number of hours that they could run. Yes. Do you know what that limit is for that peaker?

So, the the new limit is based on the SEA, the climate uh equity jobs act that was passed, I think, uh at the end of 22 if I'm not mistaken. They have put new limits on the peaker. I don't have a number for you, but I think it's it's less than 5% of the hours of a year. It runs very little. Yes, that's correct. And what you're saying then is with the solar, those wires leaving that peaker plant will carry electricity all the time and rarely from the peaker plant. Well, they're not not all the time. when the sun is shining, when the project when the sun is shining and they're generating electricity. Please, please, folks.

I've got a lot of questions I want to ask them and you'll get your turn and and I do have people up here that want me to just be quiet because I find out most people in the room enjoy it when I'm just quiet. But I I want to ask these questions because I have read and made notes on about 50 objection letters here and I've got a uh 648 names on this petition which I tried to read every name the ones that were legible and I know a lot of those people and I live in Manhattan so I'm going to try to get these questions asked and but as we said before every time you make noise and Don't listen to what's being said and don't let other people hear what's being said.

What did you mean? Believe me, the general public here is going to get a lot more time than they do. But back to this. So part of my role here as the commissioner is does this project provide the common good I guess for the community. So I would buy the argument that electricity is of the common good but I can't buy the argument that it's adding capacity to the grid. It's it's absolutely adding new power generation to the grid. there there are more megawatt hours going on to those lines than were with when it's when you just have a peaking plant available.

If we look at in the essence that you're not regulated by another agency that says you can't produce power now. So let's let's go back to the peaker plant since I'm real ignorant of it. What you have a limited number of days. What determines when they turn those engines on and off? That's determined by market conditions essentially when the grid is at peak. Absolutely. Sometimes cold nights. Yes. In the winter, real warm days.

That's right. And so we're looking out ahead and seeing um what we, you know, when we want to respond. Sometimes we're also contacted by the grid operator. It can go both ways. So we have the ability to respond to market conditions uh with our discretion based on uh uh grid conditions, but sometimes we're also um called up so to speak in in an emergency. And the solar in that case when the peaking plant uh activates the solar drops out you would not be able to run them both. We would not be running both at the same time. That's correct. I I take it there's times you only run the peaker plant at half capacity, fourth capacity or is it 100%?

Uh that's that's that's outside of my purview, but I would I would suspect that we would run it, you know, as as we would respond with as much capacity as we could. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Got a question. How much since the delivering capacity rising regional demand, how much of this is actually staying in the area in the state and going out of state?

That's a good question. So, electricity flows towards demand. So, that really depends on the conditions at any given time. on a hot summer sunny day when everyone's running their um their AC or on a cold winter day when there's a lot of electrical heat um online that might be a time when uh the power is is localized. It's very localized because there is sufficient demand local to the area to soak up all of that generation so to speak. on a on a nice mild day like today, that power will tend to flow further out from uh the the the source of generation, the point of interconnection.

Another question, you say that the the gas powered ones, isn't gas one of those natural resources that we're trying to preserve natural gas, natural gas is is a very substantial portion of America's uh energy consumption. So, uh I think really it's uh market conditions that determine uh its use. It's it's supply and demand. So, how much of the natural gases do you use? Like cubic yards or however that's measured. Uh I I really couldn't give you an answer on on how many BTUs. I'd love to respond to that. I'm sure we could give it to pretty precise number. Okay. Thank you.

It's it's a lot. It was an eight or 12 inch pipeline that went to my house. It's a lot. But so I'll go back to what you saying about electricity. So I would safely assume that just about everybody in this room is serviced by Comet or that third party electrical person that we could get from. Are you saying that the electricity from this facility could leave the Cometed service area? Uh I think technically it could probably leave Kameed if it, you know, cross the border over into say Nipkco. You know that, for example, it's pretty close to the eastern border. But I'm not a power flow expert. So I'm I'm really not here to address uh power flows in any detailed way.

I might as well address this now because I I think a lot of people feel like you are greasing the skids with the donations and the grants things that you have done before the project even came to. So, so one of the things I was considering, and this might be why anybody that was here last time I looked like a deer in the headlights and got really stupid at the end of last meeting. I wanted to add a condition. What kind of reassurances can we get that 5 10 years from now people really are going to know who Earthrise are and that you're still making contributions to the community? the some of these letters I've read it mentions grant to the me mental health facility or whatever and uh Josean and Horses that they got a grant and that's great. I know the historical society in Manhattan I believe got some money from some different sources but one would like to think that the local people in an area 5 10 20 30 years down the road they're sponsoring baseball teams still giving those. So, how could I with your blessing attach a condition that you would still contribute a certain amount of money every year if this passes?

Well, I I'll tell you that Earthrise is formed as a public benefit limited liability company. So, that's part of who we are to give back. And we, you know, we give back based on uh our our ability to generate a return. And so we start out by going into communities and investing to show people that we value the same things that they value, those important organizations. If we didn't, people would say they don't do anything for this community. So, it's a way of of putting our money where our mouth is from the start and saying that we do give back. Now, I fully anticipate that um as Earth Rise owns and operates uh these facilities that they will continue to give back in line with that public u benefit uh LLC structure that we have.

So, it's your it's your contention that the generosity would continue if this facility was built. Well, we would remain generous. We will continue to give back. And then I guess I should come up with the what we talked about last time with the taxes 1 point just too many papers 1.2 1.8 million in the first year to the Pon school district is Pone school district pretty much 100% of the uh uh the area of of the um tract. No, that's not correct. No, there there are other school districts in the area. So that that was just an example that we provided. Yes, that's right. It is the Vegas. Okay. So, there could be some Lincoln Way, Frankfurt,

and maybe even Manhattan. I, you know, it's covered in detail in a report. I'm happy to to uh find the reference, but it that those are covered in detail uh later in the uh the narrative section of our application. So, to go over it again then, what the people want to know is what benefit this does to them. Well, I I I think clearly the tax benefit um it you know that's a very obvious benefit I can point to and and what I tried to hammer down on last time didn't get the answer I was wanting was uh what would the taxes be per acre. I'm trying to figure

that I can't answer that question. I have um some experts here that I think could answer that in much more detail. But, you know, generally speaking, I would say that the that based on the the the prescribed formula, um, that the taxes will probably be about 10 to 15 times what they are currently today. And then, uh, I do have a bunch of rebuttal letters here. Green Garden, not Green Garden, Poton, Wilton Township, they're saying that they have not had good relations about the construction traffic. Are those being dealt with? Are those uh,

uh, we reached out to Wilton Township in December. They sent us a letter saying that they would not they do not want to engage um with in road use discussions until um we've secured a special use permit. Now, we've had other demands from them about um um project materials, but in general, they told us that uh and we can provide an email to support this that um until uh a special use permit was awarded um that it would be premature to discuss road use. And uh a lot of people are worried that Earthrise go into bankruptcy, be sold off. I mean, it's it's no surprise to most people that companies have subsidiaries with different names. I can't even keep it straight. Prior to the Prairie, Plum Valley, some of that. Who owns Earthrise? Is Earthrise a p I know I could have looked this up, but I want to hear it from you. Who owns Earthrise? Is it a publicly traded company in

Earthrise is not a publicly traded? It's privately owned. It's privately owned. That's correct. So none of us could buy stock in Earthrise? No, no one can buy stock in Earthrise. So is Earthrise the parent company? Are they the top dog or are they like Craft Foods where they have 400 brand companies underneath them? We're owned by our investors, investors in the company. So this is the main company, Earthrise. That's correct. It's not a shell comp. No, no, we're not a shell company, but this this is a concern among a lot of people that

Understood. And uh obviously uh we just talked about the peaker plant that was built by Enron and they sure had an issue but appar is is Earthrise the company that took it over from Enron or was there somebody in between? I'm not sure who was if there were I think there was some a couple intermediaries you know owners between Enron and Earthrise. We acquired it uh three or four years ago and so yeah. Yeah.

And how many other facilities do you have? We have five other peaking plant well four other peaking plants. So we have a a facility in CIT which you're familiar with after our last presentation. We have uh a facility in um Shelby County um where we're just beginning uh to construct a solar project and we also have an operating combined peaker and solar facility in Gibson City. I think you saw some of the um members of the community last week who testified about the relationship with Earthrise. Uh we also own a facility in Vermillion County. So, you're basically putting solar onto every one of your peer plants. That's correct. I guess there's one other thing that I would address with you. Um, I've seen several solar

I've been on this commission for six years. I know of several solar sightings that we have approved and just about always the first thing they tell the farmer is don't plan it. And so I know just about everyone around Manhattan Township that I go by sat one year sat two years and becomes all weeds. So the people are very concerned about weeds. Mhm. So do you have some I guess this will be uh Mr. Kimler Horn with the landscape design, but will you be having some kind of plan to keep these farms that if if this gets approved from just being vacant or whatsoever in the interim?

Absolutely. Uh I think that's something that we do well. Um I'd like to bring Graham McFall up here. I think he can tell you um in detail how we approach cover crops and and and making sure that there's something covering the ground and protecting it from um establishment of noxious weeds. So Graham, you want to come in? Other we have somebody worried about what pacemakers are um some addresses about tiling. A lot of people saying that solar is failing, toxic chemicals, but I guess we'll get to all that later. Yeah, we can. I think a lot of that's going to be covered in the environmental section. I think you know Graham would be best suited to answer some of those questions. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

I want to make a comment just if everyone listened here, they got a great exchange of information from a member who votes. So, I want you all to understand when your people come up and speak, we're listening to you because we know that you've got something cogent to say about this subject and we want you to listen to the other people so you can learn their side, too. Thank you. Go ahead, sir. I'm sorry.

Thank you, Rob. No, no, it's all good. And, uh, good evening and thank you all for your for your time. Uh, my name is Gary McFall. I'm the environmental director here at Earthrise. I know I briefly spoke a couple weeks ago, but I wanted to didn't get a chance to formally introduce myself, so I'll take a quick opportunity to do that. I hold a degree in aronomy and plant genetics and a minor in sustainability from the University of Minnesota. Prior to joining Earthrise, I oversaw environmental permitting, construction compliance, and post construction environmental monitoring for various renewable and commercial projects across 36 different states. And when Earthrise approached me about this role, they offered a vision which every environmental professional wants and yearns is to build a program that puts environmental stewardship at the forefront. It was an opportunity I had to take. And that was three years ago. And on day one, we went to work. We immediately brought in one of the best, if not the best in-class and most reputable environmental consultants in the US, Kimley Horn, who's here with us this evening. We began sending out wetland professionals, surveyors, biologists, archaeologists out to every corner of this project to assess what natural resources and environmental constraints are present so that we could prioritize avoidance ahead of environing commencement commencing, excuse me. When it comes to protecting natural resources, Earthrise is committed to being a good steward of the land. When other developers identify natural resources, there are federal, state, and county avenues to remove those features prior to construction. However, our projects are designed to avoid all natural resources, including all 99 wetlands that we invite that we identified during our land surveys. Here are some examples of the surveys that we completed. Over the last 24 months, we've sent several crews to identify jurisdictional wetland and water features, suitable habitat for federal and state listed species,

archaeological and architectural resources. Earthrise will continue to design around all of these features and constraints and re and natural resources as engineering progresses. I want to emphasize that we will continue to coordinate with land use and soil and water conservation district as designs change and engineering progresses. We will also optimize our erosion and sediment control plan as part of our storm water permit with Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and established vegetation prior to construction which is another best practice that sets us apart from our peers. Lastly, we completed a glare and glare and sound studies which concluded that the project will comply with all Illinois Pollution Control Board regulations for sound and that the glare will not negatively impact the surrounding area. not listed on this slide, but in the spirit of land stewardship efforts, I'd like to also point towards our use of agravaics and dual use on our other projects and what we aim to do here as well. As an example, on our Ford and MLAN county projects a little bit further south, we partnered with feeasants forever and fish and wildlife and restored 700 acres of prairie outside of the fence. At the time, it was the largest private land prairie restoration project in the state of Illinois. We also look to coll to collaborate with local veterans to join our beekeeping initiatives at the project and other ideas are always welcomed

and I look forward to answering any questions questions.

Maybe if I can preemptively answer the one you had asked before about out outside the fence areas that aren't going to be in the PV area. That's where we're doing the prey restoration projects. Of course, when we're working with land owners, they have the right of first refusal to bring it back into agricultural use, but that's their decision. If they decide not to, then we will absolutely not leave the groundow and we will do a prey restoration project. We will partner up with turkey federation, feeasants forever, fish and wildlife. There's a lot of neat programs out there to um to increase soil health and to keep the erosion, the storm and wind erosion from occurring with with fow ground. So we will absolutely not leave anything bare and we will we will have weed control plans and management plan um as as as part of this project as well that spans the life of the project. Having been in the business as long as you have, you understand that when you drive by and see a solar farm that's got weeds falling all over the place,

that nobody's happy, especially not a farmer living near there who knows these weeds are germinating the seeds that are going to get in their farms. Yep. Yep. I I absolutely know that and and um appreciate that concern because I've seen it as well. Um, and in my experience, uh, that's typically for developers. They develop, they it's it's they kind of flip it, right? They build a project and they flip it and then you don't have somebody to call as a as a concerned citizen and land owner.

Fortunately for us, we have a door to knock on with the thermal plant. And we have additional u technicians that are going to be assigned just for the solar project that'll be doing environmental reporting. And that is one of the things, one of the major things that they're going to be um focusing on is our vegetation management plan and our weed management plan to comply with state and federal laws that regulate weeds. We don't want weeds as much as um everyone else. They especially if they get out of control. Now I I do have a question now since you've expanded on this. So wetland and stream delineation, let's assume it's an 80acre farm with a creek through the middle. Mhm.

Is Earthrise I probably could find this but believe me it was a lot of paper. Is Earthrise running the entire or leasing the entire 80 acres and you're calling that because you just mentioned that the farmers would be able to farm it still if they want. I mean how how are areas like this treated because

for well it would be this more maybe of an engineering question but I can answer it a little bit holistically maybe where where the farmers can bring it back into agricultural production. I was talking about for outside the fence. So if you have that square and then we have a stream that goes through it and it's inside the fence. So we have the PV, so the panels, we would we would go on both sides if it made sense from an engineering standpoint or we would only go on one side and then have the fence on the on the inside of the other side of the stream. But the point is we would not impact that that uh waterway whatsoever that stream and we wouldn't fill it in or do any civil work with it. We're we're we're not touching that. In this case, if there was a stream going through the middle and they're keeping panels 100t away from each side, to me, that just seems like a rogue area. I'm fully aware of what prior converted farm wetlands are from the NRCS. And uh if that's an area that the farmer doesn't want to farm anymore and it's outside Earth's fence, you're assuring me then that it will be maintained.

Yes, sir. because in many areas um back in an earlier life I was the guy that everybody called when beavers were in the creek and so I can easily see areas that aren't being maintained growing up with willows especially if it's a wetland area creek banks becoming overrun with trees just great for the wildlife I mean they've even run specials that if you really want to bring back wildlife in an area you bring in the beavers to dam up the creeks and the rivers but for anybody upstream who's counting on at for drainage from their property, whether it's a house or another farm. That's a big problem. Yep. So, you're saying though these areas though, even outside the fence, will be maintained and taken care of.

Absolutely. If they're within the lease boundary, they're part of the part of the project area, the total footprint of that parcel. Absolutely. Yes. And then, so for clarification, where are most of the fences? If they're along another person's property or a road rideway, how far back would the fences be? Not your question. Yeah, I'll pass back to Rob for a second. Yeah, we we would adhere to the state um sighting law which specifies that uh setbacks would be at least 50 feet from a non-participating property line. So then one of these uh objections that said it would be 40t from their well can't be accurate if you got to be 50t from the property line. Either their well is off their property. I Yeah, I haven't seen

or they're they're just mistaken. I don't know the well in question, but since you know we'd adhere to the state minimum um setbacks, we would be 50 ft off of a property line. That's for the fence. That's correct. Where could the first photo cell be? Uh you know within a buffer from that fence. So it's safe to say they'd really never be within 50 ft of a property like more like 60 to 75 by and large. Yeah. And in in a lot of cases it might be even further. So I I I want to I stressed in the beginning part of the presentation that um those are minimum setbacks. In a lot of cases we're much further than that.

Okay. I think that would probably cover because I I could see uh I tell people all the time when uh subdivisions come, if your neighbor sells and they're building a subdivision, you're pretty much done whether you're upstream or downstream. Because if you're downstream, you're going to get all their water. If you're upstream, they're going to cut all your tiles and nothing's going to drain or at least drain as good as it used to. So, I can only take you at your word that you you're going to have these environmental assessments outside the fence and take care of that property.

Yeah, absolutely. And and on the on the on the topic of drainage, I think it's important to to understand that it's in it's in our best interest that the site drains the same way that it that it did before we went in there. So, we do a pre pre-construction hydraological survey and then a post construction hydraological survey. And what we don't want to do is add more water downstream from us or take any water back downstream. So, we're going to have a extensive, it's called an erosion sediment control plan that comes after our civil plan that really um shows the whole topography of how that project how that water is going to flow post construction. And it's going to look very very similar if not identical. And we will we are committing to um any drain tile that is damaged repairing that right away. Right? Because again it's not in our interest at all for the site to flood. That's an insurance claim. That's it. It's it's not good. It's not good for us and it's not good for our neighbors and we want to be good stewards of the land. So yes, as part of the uh we'll talk about in a minute here the additional people that we're assigning uh to this project. That is going to be one of again their many responsibilities as a technician is the environmental and the up and the operation and maintenance of a solar facility is is a large undertaking and there are professionals that that do this day in and day out and that is something that they absolutely have to pay attention to.

Hey, I just want to jump in here and say I I misspoke. Our panels are cited 50 ft from the property line. So the fence would be between the panels that are 50 feet away and the property line. That would be the closest they could ever be. Yeah, that's correct. Okay. You know, me members of the members of the board, I think you had um um introduce the topic of EMF and and health concerns. We have an expert here that can speak directly to that point. I'd like to introduce him to answer those questions. He wasn't scheduled to present, but I think you know the I saw the question. I want to make sure it gets answered if that's okay with you. Yep.

Okay. Dr. Wilson, there's a 90% chance I'm going to forget it later. Yep. I got a lot of notes here. Yeah.

So, so the the the rebuttal I got in question maker is worried about EMFs. I'm just Yeah. making sure he knows what the question is. Yeah, absolutely, Commissioner. So, folks, good evening. My name is Dr. Chris Olsen. I hold a PhD in environmental health sciences. I'm a consultant as well as a uh professor at the University of Toronto in the School of Public Health. I've been doing this job for give or take 25 to 30 years somewhere in there. I've kind of lost track now. um the role that I play. So I worked on everything from oil and gas projects to refineries, public uh municipal waste incinerators and about 15 years ago when we started getting into the different sorts of energy markets and energy projects, the wind turbines, the uh solar projects, battery storage and that my role is looking at the the proper sighting to ensure public health, safety and welfare of the local residents. Um to the question of pacemakers. So just to level set everybody so EMF, what is EMF? It's the electromagnetic fields. Everything we plug in has has an emission of electric and magnetic fields. So the the wires here in the room, the speakers, your microphones in front of you, the computers, your cell phone, everything that we're carrying around has um EMF emitted from it. The way we measure EMF, it's really the the the magnetic fields that we're concerned about. And we measure what's called Millie Gauze. And it's kind of like for some of you who are as old or older than I am, the old Star Trek where they carry around the the the camcorder, the little recorder thing and he was in the doctor walk around. It kind of looks like that. We walk around and we measure the magnetic fields. Right here in the room is if I'm standing out of these lights and the like in your homes every day, you're somewhere around 1 to four milligs, okay? Magnetic fields in our typical life. Um for those of you that still have hair and use a haird dryer, you're getting up to 700 milligs. When you got the haird dryer by your head, your microwave gives off about 300. your computer two or 300. So, all that to be said, um, for pacemakers, pacemakers you can interfere with p pacemakers with magnetic fields, but really we're

talking about having to work in like a steel mill or a a car manufacturing plant or the like where you're around very energized heavy equipment where it's giving off thousands of milligs of of magnetic field. From a solar project itself, there is a weak magnetic field around the the solar panels, mostly the inverters. By the time you get to the fence line, we're back to that one to four milligs that we have in our homes that we have in the room every day. Um the other source of EMF would be the the uh substation. Certainly like any other substation in the county, you've got dozens of substations in the county. you will have a little bit of EMF right as you're at the fence line kind of in the 2030 range far below the the thousands that it would take to interfere with a pacemaker. About 1% of Americans, 25% give or take of Americans over the age of 75 um either have a pacemaker or know somebody with a pacemaker. Over 3 million Americans. So certainly it's it's a concern that we hear. So hopefully that helps to address that. It won't interfere. It'll be within background. Commissioner, I think you had a couple other questions that I might be able to help you with. I think you were talking about some of the uh the toxicity. There's some issues around the soil. If if you wanted to was there some things around that you wanted to discuss as well. I think I heard.

Well, one of the common complaints that just about every uh solar sighting that we have is toxicity of uh whatever is in the solar panels if they break if they catch fire. I believe at the last meeting I asked what exactly in a solar panel will burn if we're told they're made out of glass, sand, and aluminum. what actually does burn because when the tornado hit Cane County a month or so ago, the next day they had a electrical fire or some sort of fire at a solar facility that was damaged and it made the news. So, you know, that's obviously a concern especially for people that have private wells.

Sure. Absolutely, Commissioner. So, again, um when we look at the solar panels, as you kind of described, they basically are are silica, so it's a sand material turning it into glass. You've got the panels themselves and then you've got an aluminum frame around them. There are trace levels of of metals within those those panels and you know the glass. You'll often hear and we'll probably hear somebody in the crowd over the next two days talk about there's a chemical called POS that's in the glass of the of the panels in order to strengthen the panels. What I point out is it's a this that I'm carrying around and most of us have in our pockets contains a far greater concentration of those same things that I just described. The glass on your on your cell phone is it's a POS material that's embedded in it, all of that material is embedded just like it is in your cell phone. So if I take this thing, whip it against the wall, break it apart, nothing's going to leech out of it. Nothing's going to come from. There's no liquid in my phone. Same thing with the panels. So what happens with the panels is when they're up and they're just running and you know it'll be there 20, 30, 40 years, right? They'll be there at the ground. There's nothing leeching out of them during operations. You are correct. There was a, you know, for example, there was a a tornado in Indiana a couple weeks ago. There have been there was a fire in Kansas where they went under. Panels don't actually burn. What they do is melt and they can melt. So if there's a sustained fire underneath the panels, they it's more that they melt than they burn. There's really no offging or toxic material coming during a fire. So for example, the example I can give you that I was actually at the site last week, um, it's the Pixie Solar Farm in Kansas where they had a grass. So very rarely does a solar project cause a fire. It's usually, you know, if it does, it's a shorting in the the the wiring. Then, you know, again, they're all under NEC code. They're all certified. Usually what'll happen is that you've got a grass fire or a crop fire coming from offsite to on-site on the solar. Um, as you'll hear from the vegetation folks, they keep that native grass. You know, it's it's lowlying. It really isn't good tinder. But if you do get a fire onto

the site, really what you're talking about is potentially the panels melting. There's nothing that's going to again off gas during that fire that's going to be toxic for the firefighters or for anybody off site. The panels themselves, they may melt a little bit and then become unusable. The Pixley Solar Farm actually didn't have that. They went through grass fire. It's very dry Kansas right now. Went right through. Nothing was really damaged. The site's still on side. But again, so the material in the panel then so that's a fire. If you did have, you know, somebody will bring up hail storms or the tornadoes. Again, if you have the screen damage, I don't know if for you folks, a couple like 10 years ago, you look at this thing funny, the screen would break and we still keep carrying them around our pockets and eventually had to go get it fixed or you know, our kids would break the iPad screens whatever all the time. Again, nothing leeching from the panels themselves during that time. and there's nothing that's going to get out get into the soil or the groundwater and it's not going to cause damage to the field to the lease field where they're leasing the solar pro project and so there's nothing within there that is going to be caused for concern. There certainly are like there's everything in this room has something that would be you know quotequote toxic in it. It's how it's bound into that material and whether or not it's going to then interact with the environment. The other one that I know that that has come up in the county is the steel piles. The galvanized steel piles that are going to the ground. They're they are galvanized steel. So they're coated in zinc. There is a very minor amount of leeching from the zinc direct like right beside the pile itself. It does not impact the crops. It does not like later on when the when the piles are removed under decommissioning, it will not impact that farm field. It's not going to impact the agricultural productivity of the field. And that's evidenced by again, you're going to have the landscape architect come up and tell you about all the grasses you're planting underneath. For the 30 years that you're going to have that project, you're going to have a grass crop right underneath the project. So, it is not going to impair the land. It's not going to do further damage to the land. It's not going to impact the soil. It will not impact the groundwater.

There'll be no offsite impacts to people's wells.

Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you very much, commissioners.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Olsson. Um, Mr. Horn, please to discuss the construction schedule. Hi, my name is Joseph Horn. I'm an engineering manager with Earthrise. Uh, thanks again for taking the time to hear our presentation. Similar to two weeks ago, I'm going to go over a few of the main components that make up this project and then go over the timeline and sequencing of the construction. So, as we just covered, uh first off, this project will utilize crystalline silicon bfacial panels. What the bfacial means here is that these panels absorb sunlight both directly from the front, but also light that reflects off the ground from behind, which greatly increases their efficiency. The main components in these are aluminum or steel frames, uh the glass surfacing, and then crystalline silicon cells. These are all solid and non-toxic materials. So, there's no concerns of any hazardous liquids leeching into the soil because there are no liquids and none of the materials are hazardous. Next up, we have the cabling that connects the solar panels eventually back to the project substation. First up, we have the DC cabling. So this is the cabling that runs above ground from the solar panels to the site inverters. Uh this is carried in something called a cab system. This basically is tension steel wire strung from solar row to solar row that has hangers on it. Uh these hangers then have have cutouts or slots for the DC cable and control cable suspending it above ground. There's two main benefits for this. One is uh given that this is all inside the array and the fence perimeter, ease of access uh for maintenance and inspections during operations. The other significant benefit is the uh minimal ground disturbance that this causes instead of having to trench a large amount of small

DC cable trenches in the soil. This keeps this all above the top soil. Then we have the medium voltage alternating current cable. This is what runs from the inverters back uh through our right ofways and leases to the project substation. Uh this is larger cable that is uh buried below ground per the AMA. It is generally trenched or plowed into the soil. However, in areas where we're crossing pre-existing obstacles like utilities, roads or wetlands, this is bored uh to a greater depth to avoid those. Then finally, we have the perimeter fencing. This site will utilize a Illinois Department of Natural Resource recommended game fence. This basically is a rectangular mesh steel fence that has a larger vertical gap at the bottom to allow small animals to enter and exit the site perimeter. And it will use wooden instead of steel posts in the ground. Now, we'll go over the sequencing of the construction. Uh this is anticipated to start in Q1 of next year and last 18 to 24 months. Uh this will start with the site civil works. So this is the construction of gravel access roads within the array areas. Uh the installation of the perimeter fence and the grading of any uneven uh terrain. It also will be when we install some temporary features. So lay down yards for material storage and organization and then uh sediment basins and silt fence uh per state storm water standards to manage runoff from rain during construction. After the roads are in, then the pile installation begins. The piles are basically vertical I-beams driven directly into the soil that serve as the foundations for the solar rows and the inverters and cab system. Once those piles are in, then the electrical installation begins. So the

inverters are set on those piles and the cab system is strung and then the trackers and panels are installed. So the panels are mounted on uh single axis rows that follow the sun. Once that's complete, then the site is commissioned. This is the initial startup and testing of the project to ensure that it's functioning properly and tied in with the grid. This is also when we remove those temporary sediment basins and lay down yards and reestablish grass on any areas that are bare at the end of construction. Thank you all for your time. Happy to take questions from the board here. Questions?

Any questions on the board? Thank you, sir. Next, we'll introduce Mr. Chris uh Wilson, who is landscape architect.

Good evening. Um I am Chris Wilson, a landscape architect with Kimley Horn. Uh Kimley Horn is a large international engineering consulting firm. Uh about 10,000 people. uh we've worked on many solar uh and renewable projects throughout the nation and we are uh a leading expert in renewable energy. Um myself I've worked on over 400 uh solar projects throughout the US uh and actually have fairly extensive experience here in Will County. Uh as as you may the board may know uh I've worked on over 20 projects uh locally here. Um, so I am, you know, it's a pleasure to work with Earthrise. I just wanted to take a moment to, uh, say that the multitude of developers we work with, Earthrise really does care about their community and environment. And so we we do take a lot of pride working with them. So going over a little bit of the goals and design approach to ground cover, screening, and landscape. Um, we wanted to kind of start with how we look at the project. So we look at this from an evaluation of the soil and hydrarology of all of the different parcels. Um and we work closely with the soil and water conservation district uh in helping to identify existing problem conditions, existing erosional conditions and surface water. And the goal of that is to come together with a conservation plan again working with the SWCD to address the existing conditions and to ensure that there is no new flood risk associated with the development of this project. As you may have heard previously, we we do work closely with the SWCD to ensure this. Uh some of this is done with best management practices, state guidelines, uh construction phase seating, um and as

previously mentioned, preeding, which is to get the site seated and established before construction even begins on these projects. And that's across the whole area of the project. Looking at the ground cover, um this project plans to utilize uh native and naturalized vegetation. uh and we look at the project for very specific sightseated design. So we're looking at it from that soil and hydrarology standpoint so that we're not just taking you know a fescue lawn and putting it on the project. We're trying to design this project to be what is most applicable for the land. What that gives us is a multitude of different improvements and benefits to the land throughout the entire lifetime of this project. Uh things like water infiltration and filtration, uh soil stabilization that I can kind of mentioned previously with erosion control, uh weed suppression and control. So native plantings especially a little bit larger in the range of the 2 to 3 ft area naturally have weed suppression that turf grasses do not. uh along with a very extensive weed uh maintenance control uh schedule. Um another big benefit that you kind of heard from a little bit about uh the soils themselves, right? So we're looking at the soil's health and how that's improved, the increased in top soil depth and organic content, recharging nitrogen and other things into the soil as it lays in this native condition throughout the life of the project. and also looking to address some problem soils which are defined by things like uh compacted clay layers which are really common in agriculture. What a compacted dens clay layer which is about 3 ft down four or 5 ft that

reduces the amount of water infiltration and will actually cause that surface erosion that you have seen probably in a lot of cult agricultural land. So by addressing those, by having deep rooted vegetation that breaks up that layer, increases infiltration over time, it'll help to regenerate and really give a much healthier soil profile. Another key thing with the ground cover is we are holding the standards of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Um their solar pollinator friendly habitat program. Uh they have a lot of requirements to meet that and a lot of guidelines. We plan to follow all of their guidelines which include um things as as mentioned the addition of um maintenance for the establishment period which is the first few years of establishment and then how it's maintained for the entire life of the project. Uh, another thing related to the IDNR's uh, habitat program uh, is the external fence line area ground cover, the native prairie area that was previously had uh, been mentioned. That's why we're asking for these variances for that additional height to allow uh, variety and sight specific seed design. And then also the reduction in mowing actually comes from the IDNR guidelines themselves which we are trying to uh maintain so that this project can um naturally germinate and have a very full and wellestablished ground cover. Uh going through all of this together, we assembled a comprehensive vegetation management plan which goes through all of these details on how to pre-prepare the site, how to apply the different vegetation, the seed mixes or the buffer vegetation, uh how to get it to establish and then maintenance and monitoring for the entire life of the project. So those guidelines are all in place and all part

of that comprehensive uh vegetation management plan. Now the last thing I wanted to touch on was the buffer vegetation. Um this project is looking at a a design approach of a two-tier layout as you had heard. Uh one being the right of way and the other being residential. So the rightway ve vegetation is using more traditional evergreen uh to break up those views as you know people are driving through these uh rightway corridors. Uh whereas the residential buffers, we're actually looking at things that are more robust and including not only those evergreens, but deciduous uh shrubs and ornamentals, which will give a bit more seasonal interest, soften the views. Uh and the added benefit with a lot of deciduous vegetation is that it does grow to fill a little bit faster than the evergreen. So there's a lot of benefit to having that multi-tiered approach in those residential areas. Um, and with that, I would be happy to answer any questions before I turn it over.

Yes, sir. This picture here, which would that exemplify, the rightway vegetation or the residential? That is one of the options for the residential vegetation with a staggered alternate row of evergreens and then that front periodic row of deciduous to soften the evergreen. So, you say one of the options. So if somebody's sitting here right now and looking at that and this facility gets built three years from now across from them, they may not see that. He's just saying this is one of the options. So this isn't part of the public record that this is what you're going to do. You'll see. Sorry, but and I'll say this because I

local solar farm. It's almost done. I drove by a couple days ago. There is an evergreen tree every 40 feet around the outside of the fence. And I was like, boy, I made that same stupid mistake 40 years ago when I cost shared a windbreak on a farm that I was technically destroying by building my personal residence on and it was doom 45 doom. Three lines of evergreens with uh the ibush cranberry and the gray dogwood and then 10 years later it's like, oh, we do these aesthetically appealing curves and everything. I'm like, I fixed it. I planted more trees and some died. But this is what the people are going to want to see and this is what's up on the board. So I would not be surprised if that doesn't happen. They're going to be upset.

Yes. And so we will absolutely commit to that is one of the options. That is actually the lesser of the two that were submitted in the landscape plan for the residential buffer. So the other option of the residential buffer includes the deciduous shrubs that you see here, but also some ornamental short trees as well. So with the residential buffer, you will see evergreens and deciduous in an either an alternating or some kind of a pattern like you had described. And we had earlier speaker said there would be a door for people to knock on. Will this door have your card? Could your card be made available during the construction process?

Absolutely. In fact, I can give I can give you my card as well. I worked at a field that had a cell tower built in the corner of it. They put up a fence and they planted beautiful shrubs around all three sides to guess I guess hide the fence. Mhm.

Within two years 90% of them were dead. There there was they were planted and forgotten and wasn't I didn't have skin in the game there. I don't farm that anymore. But I was like well what was the point? And I I'll admit I'm cheaper than probably anybody else in this room. I was just like you shouldn't have even wasted your money and just kept the damn fence. because he I I I also understand that every dollar that we make, you spend and jump through the hoop, you don't eat it. You just pass it on to me, the consumer. So when people tell me that a pipeline's coming through my farm, soak them because they got lots of money. I'm like, well, are we going to when we go pay a dollar more for gas at the tank? Because every time we soak it to somebody in a corporation, they just pass it on to the consumer. But they're gonna expect to see this. So you're saying this is the lesser.

So I think a couple of different things in your your question there. The first is I can't comment on the financials. Uh somebody else will be able to comment on that part of it. Um to address what you're seeing here and what is in the landscape plan that was submitted. Yes, this is the lesser of the two options, but this is one of the options for the residential. So yes, this is very potential what you could see. I'd like to get that they have recourse to get a hold of somebody two, three, five, six years from now.

That'll also be addressed uh by someone else. But then there was one other piece that I did want to bring up. Um you had mentioned about you know a large portion of vegetation dying off uh and things like that, right? Which it does it can happen. uh as part of that comprehensive vegetation management plan that we put together that was provided submitted with this project with the landscape plan working with the SWCD that has guidelines in it following the IDNR for replacement percentages. So if there's a certain amount dead within certain areas, it needs to be replaced by a certain time. So there is guidelines and windows in there to follow. and if they are not followed, it can be pointed to. So that is outlined in those documents if you would like to look through those.

I would I would just add um Mr. Commissioner that you know the the landscaping is um is design designed in conjunction with input from staff in the site development permit phase. Um, so what we've demonstrated here are some options that we're proposing would screen it would screen these residential uses from the facility. So this is one option and this is a residential use screen. So it's not a rideway screen, but this is this is an example of what somebody might see across the street um if they had a a facility across the street. So I think that you know would address that concern. And as Mr. Mr. Wilson stated this is the lesser of the two designs that were suggested in the packet as options and really this is just to demonstrate the commitment to soften the visual impact and to provide the screening that we know people want and that we've just talked with people about. So, um, you know, there's no commitment made because it's something that staff will require of us in the site development permit phase. And the accountability there is if we don't maintain the screen in a way consistent with the county ordinance or our site development permit, then there is recourse of the county against the company and there's a door to knock on and there's a landscape engineer to to talk to at that point. So, I wanted to make sure those points were made. Now that you bring that up, a couple years ago, there was a lot of complaints about the planning and screenings that were put in at some of the solar facilities. I threw an idea out to the county board, which bombed, just like most of my ideas, that there should be some kind of fee paid annually so that the county can send staff people out to investigate every solar facility. Now, I don't know if that's part of the state law that is handcuffing us, but saying you're going to do it is great for your operation. And I you seem to be pretty up and up here, but I know on these other operations it wasn't done. And the

people are going to want that reassurance. Is there any way you can think of that we can add a condition on this proposal that you would pay? I'm thinking $100 a megawatt. I don't know something. But I would feel a lot better if somebody from the county land use staff showed up twice a year to say, "Hey, yes, there's not trees falling apart here. There's not erosive ditches. There's not noxious weeds growing and or you know that half the trees haven't died." And I know why they can't do it because they're handcuffed by their budgets. I I can't commit to a landscape bond, which is which is what I think you're asking for. Well, there there needs to be an annual inspection fee. I think

Chicago

but yeah and Rob can address this but there's the the number of staff that we have on site part of their function is to circle the property and make sure that we are compliant with the code because the risk to the project is that if we fall out of compliance with the permit and the enforcement of staff is either daily fines or in the worst case scenario a suspension or revocation of the special use permit. a big deal for a project like this. And so, you know, so part of our staff's role is to make sure that we don't fall out of compliance. And this is one of those things that they'll be looking at along with a lot of other stuff, including landscaping. You know, the projects you describe, I I don't have I don't have knowledge on. I I don't know who they are. I don't know what their enforcements were. I don't know what their special use permits were. But what I can tell you is if they're in if if they've deviated from the requirements of their special use permit, if they've deviated from the requirements of your county code, and if they've deviated from the requirements of the site development permit, then they could be in trouble. We don't want to be those people and that's why, you know, these options are being presented.

So all the residents do have a recourse. They could call the county and file a complaint if they I believe that would be true. if if things that were stated here they see 3 6 8 10 years down the road aren't being followed through, something slipped through the cracks. Not going to say anything's intentional. Yeah. Okay. I I I believe that to be true. Yes. Okay.

And I'll I'll I'll just add that, you know, we've talked about having a door to knock on. Well, what that really means is we have operational staff in the community that are maintaining these facilities. With a facility of this scale, um compliance, as Ben mentioned, is is top of mind for us. And to maintain compliance, we do employ full-time employees, which I think is a lot different than a lot of the solar projects that you've reviewed.

That makes me wonder. I drive by the peaker plant all the time. Looks like a ghost town, and there's a gate that I don't know if it's got a keypad or what, but if I wanted to contact somebody there, I don't know how the heck I would do it because I suppose I just jump the gate and wait to see if the police come. that I I assure you if you jump the gate uh someone would show up pretty quickly. Uh uh we we do have surveillance on the site. No, but there there are people there all the time and there's a call box so if you ever wanted to stop by, you'd simply just uh alert your your presence and someone would open it up. That's how I get in. All right. Thank you. With with that, is there any additional questions that you have for landscape? Um I think you've covered it.

Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Next, we have Dr. Micho. Uh to discuss economic impacts. Um Jeff, anybody else cold in here or is it just me? Okay. I guess that means I won't fall asleep. It is cold. Yeah, you can. I knew that from the last meeting. I wore layers. Right. I just get cold thinking about it. Am I ready? I'm sorry, but I maybe they'll do something about it.

Okay. Hi everyone. Uh my name is Gilbert Misho. I'm an assistant professor uh of environmental policy at Lyola University in Chicago. I teach at the sustainability school. Uh I teach energy law and policy. I'm trained as an economist. My PhD is in uh public policy specifically. uh and I was asked to uh review and speak about the economic impact analysis that was done by strategic economic research Dave Lumis who you might know uh I'm sort of subbing in for him today. I didn't do the study myself but I've done a lot of these reports in uh many other states uh for solar projects uh in Ohio, in Kentucky, in Florida uh and honestly all over the country and I've talked a lot about uh economic impacts uh all over the place. Uh and so my comments are going to focus on two specific aspects uh of the analysis that was conducted. Uh first we're going to look at the uh property tax impacts. Uh and on the next slide I'll talk about jobs. Uh so let's talk about the uh local tax impacts at first here. Uh based on the property valuation framework established uh under Illinois law for these large utility scale solar facilities. Uh Pride of the Prairie is estimated to generate uh approximately $3.5 million in new property tax revenue uh just in its first year of operation. Uh and over the uh life of the project uh in total we are talking about 81 uh total million dollars. Uh and these revenues are distributed as you can see here on the slide uh across a local a number of local taxing bodies uh that provide key public services. Uh and again this is just in the first year alone. Uh you can see to the Ponan School District 207U is estimated to receive as was mentioned earlier uh in the presentation $1.8 million. Uh and you can see uh Manhattan school district $75,000. Frankfurt and Manhattan fire districts uh receive uh over $500,000. Uh and on down the line uh into road funds, Juliet Junior College uh also

supporting public libraries uh and the forest preserve as well. So uh the project represents a sizable um you know project obviously with a substantial uh increase in taxable value within the county. Everything in the report uh checks out uh in my mind having done a lot of these myself over the years like I mentioned. Let's look at the jobs real quick uh on the next slide here. Uh so the jobs and economic activity this is sort of the second component of the analysis uh examining the broader economic impacts of this project. Uh this study used uh IMPL plan which is an acronym of sorts for a software called impact analysis for planning. I'm trained in it. I've been to the trainings and I've used it for many years myself. It's a widely used economic uh impact analysis software that goes beyond renewable energy and you can you know model the economic impacts of many other things of course. Uh and it's important to sort of better discern sort of these two uh categories of interest these two phases if you will. uh first first the construction phase and then O andM is what we call it operations and maintenance phase right so uh as you can see in some of the numbers here uh on the slide during the construction phase uh which I believe the developers mentioned was about a year and a half to two years uh in terms of length uh the project is expected to generate over $104 million uh of labor income uh during the construction phase uh itself just here in W County uh the construction of the projects will also support over according according to the models. Uh 600 direct construction jobs uh and over 2,000 uh total jobs and this is actually at the state level uh during just the construction period again a year and a half to two years right uh and when we that's the total number when we include uh basically what we call direct indirect and induced all the supply chain activity in the indirect right so uh hiring material suppliers and professional services and those types of things uh and then also supporting other local jobs that uh you know folks that are gaining these uh

incomes and spending money at local restaurants and the grocery store and many other things that folks do in a local economy. Uh so that's all the total jobs in total, right? Um when we move forward into the on andm again operations and maintenance phase after the construction is complete, uh the project will also continue to generate a great amount of economic activity uh in the region uh through that ongoing operations and maintenance. Uh the facility in particular is expected to support more than 40 uh long-term jobs. Again, those are total jobs. Uh including operations staff, we've been having conversations around this. Maintenance crews, folks that go out to the site, uh vegetation management, uh and those types of things, uh and other supporting activities. Um in terms of total economic impacts uh which is that last number you can see uh we are anticipating uh through the report and the models that it will generate uh $8.3 million in total economic impacts and that's an annual uh number. Uh so if you think of the life of the project as a 35 or 40year project, you can take that number and multiply it by that to to you know consider that there's tens and tens of millions of dollars of operations phase economic impact uh that will occur. Uh so in total you know in some the construction uh represents like a large short-term uh impact to the community uh of course but the facility is also going to help provide ongoing employment uh and wages and other economic uh impacts for several decades uh as long as it's uh operational. So u that's it for me. Uh again thank you for your time. Uh happy to answer any quick questions you might have.

Thank you. Have anybody anything? No. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm going to turn it over to Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see labor request. I'm just looking at the the the construction job, the 600 new construction jobs 2000. So, this is only going to be during construction. So, all these people that are going to work here, they got to go find new jobs after the construction is done. I mean, I think the developer can answer that a little bit better than me, but um people that work in solar construction probably build many, many projects across a region or across the state, right? So, um, yes, it will support those jobs specifically in this community during the construction phase of the project. I know you've got to take some employees from Will County as part of what you need to do,

right? But out of 62,000, 2,600 people going to be working there. How many of those are really going to be from Will County? I believe the answer is 969. How many? 969. 900 plus jobs. Yeah. So out of 2600 basically roughly a thousand of them. So yeah about half of the jobs will be in local to the community which honestly doing this in many other communities is is quite high. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh I'm going to hand it over to Andrew Lines at Conres. Hey, good afternoon. My name is Andrew Lines. I work at Conresnic. I'm a partner. It is a national advisory, tax, and accounting firm. We have over 40 offices around the country. I lead our real estate valuation group. Um, we work on assignments all over the country. I've been practicing real estate appraisal here in the state of Illinois for nearly 25 years. I've appraised property from Six Flags to St. Louis. Um I am a MAI designated appraiser. I am also a counselor of real estate. I have a state license in Illinois and also several other states. Um, for the last 10 years, I've been collecting data on property that's immediately adjacent to solar facilities. Uh, I'd like to think that I probably have more data on the subject than any other appraiser in the United States. Um, and I'll tell you a little bit about what we did. U, you all have reports uh that have been filed um, along with the application. There are a lot of details. I'm going to be a little bit briefer than I usually am because you guys just heard me a couple weeks ago. Um but um what we do is we do three basic things. One is we um look to see what other academics and other appraisers have spoken about the subject. We review their studies and uh understand the merits of them. Uh second is that we

interview market participants. Uh we speak a lot to county assessors and also real estate brokers who are familiar with transactions of real estate near solar facilities. Uh and then we conduct our own studies on eligible solar farms u where we can identify actual transactions of homes that are literally adjacent to solar farms. We're trying to isolate proximity. And so if the theory is that solar farms are injurious to neighboring real estate, the ones that are immediately adjacent should probably suffer the most. We use a methodology that comes from real estate textbook. It talks about test areas and control areas. Uh so we take a test area, again a sale of a home that's immediately adjacent to a solar farm. U we compare it to actually a group of control sales. Uh and we look at their prices per square foot. we don't adjust them uh for anything except for time. Uh and what the book says and this is authored by another MAI who's also a PhD says if a legitimate detrimental condition exists there will likely be a measurable and consistent difference. So we need to find that difference again and again and again in order to state that there is a specific trend. So, I've looked at solar facilities all across the country uh and here in the state of Illinois. There are a lot that are being developed in in the Midwest. Uh there are certainly 21 uh smaller community scale projects here in Will County. Uh there are no measurable and consistent difference in property values. We don't see differences in unit sale prices, conditions of sale, overall marketability, or in rates of appreciation. So, we've conducted before and after analyses where we've looked at homes before and after a solar farm was constructed and we've tracked their appreciation rates not only against control groups which are located away

from solar farms but also against the federal uh housing uh index for home prices for that particular area. So, they're appreciating at the same rates, if not better, than homes that are located away from solar appreci uh solar facilities. We've also noted that solar facilities aren't deterring new development. We see signs over and over and over again of farm parcels that are located next to solar that are then developed with subdivisions and other types of property. So with regards to the some of the academic studies, uh I'll just kind of highlight the the last few. Um generally speaking, all of these studies indicate that there's u little to no impact uh on adjacent real estate. Um, in the fall of 2024, actually, um, individuals from Loyol University in Chicago, I think there was somebody just up here talking about this, um, studied seven utility scale farms in the Midwest, uh, and found that projects actually increase nearby property values by roughly 0.5 to 2%. I didn't write it. Virginia Tech also had a study that came out in April of 2025. This looked at 8.8 million sales over at 3,700 solar sites. U while it did find a small decline for residential homes, it actually found no impact or little impact in the Midwest and it found little to no impact in rural areas. Uh and most recently in the fall, uh there was an appraisal journal article that was written. This is the only article that has been published in an appraisal journal or appraisal periodical. Uh and it studied three utility scale farms in Texas. This is written by an MAI like myself and two

PhDs. Uh and it notes specifically that uh three large scale solar projects did not provide any evidence of a negative impact on sale prices, days on market or sale price to list price ratios. For the data that we put together in our reports uh where we looked at nine different um utility scale projects um we identified a median difference of about 2.23% between target and control data and that was uh a distance an average linear u distance of 400 ft from house u to panels themselves. Um, and we believe this qualifies, noting that we did not find a consistent negative trend. Again, we've studied dozens of established solar farms across the United States. Uh, I noted that we also speak to market participants. Um, we've interviewed probably close to a hundred county assessors across the United States over the last 10 years, uh, including the Will County assessor, Iris Shaw. So, we spoke with Iris Shaw. Um um your assessor noted that they have not changed their methodology and how they approach homes that are nearby solar. Uh and not only that, we also asked the county assessors whether or not people um apply to get their assessments reduced by the fact that they're now next to solar and nobody has asked for reduction in their assessment for anybody who's around the 21 community scale solar farms that are in Will County. And we find this consistent across the entire United States. Again, based on our examination, research data that we've been compiling for 10 years, our conversations with market participants, our conversations with county assessors, uh, and the actual conclusions for several academic

studies, uh, that are out there, uh, we don't see a consistent negative impact that's occurred to adjacent property that could be attributed to the proximity to the adjacent solar farm. Uh, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. I guess just to clarify here then you may not even be able to answer this but Illinois has a certain setback that you have to be from a residence. How does that compare to some of the other states that are in these studies? Are we closer allowing solar facility to be closer to houses than other states are farther?

So it's it's 150 ft uh is the minimum setback from uh house to to panel. That's the state of Illinois. Uh and what we see is that almost most of the states are about that much. Uh for the studies that we've done, uh the the closest that we've ever been able to study has been 89 ft. That's the closest that we have in our in our datab banks. I haven't seen anything shorter than that. So, it could be that there's an impact if it was a lot closer than than 90 ft. Um I just haven't been able to measure it. I think 150 is is relatively um I mean that's the state law. I can tell you that our study it's an average of of 400 feet which I generally see is fairly consistent from from state to state especially in rural areas where you don't have that same kind of density. I think the developers do a fairly good job in being fairly reasonable and staying as far away as they can. Uh, and usually they're pretty good neighbors and they they try to approach their neighbors before they finalize their site plan so that if there are any issues they can kind of get in front of those. Um, but 150 ft appears to be pretty much the standard from state to state.

I don't know if I want to open another can of worms or not. No, please don't don't don't egg me on, please. Um, we got here.

You You don't even know if I'm your advocate. I'm just asking questions. I I I take the attitude here that if I ask some of these experts some of the same questions that I've had to ask in the previous six and a half years and about 35 of these cases that maybe rather than having 19 hours of testimony here, we can get it down to six. But I I guess now would be the time to remind you from the multiple times that I've done training for this role, my job is to apply the zoning standard that is on record in our Will County land resource management plan and unfortunately the state one, it's not a popularity contest. So even if 400,000 youth members came in here and told me it's a great plan, I can't vote yes because of that. And even if 14,000 people came in here and said, "This is terrible. It'll ruin our property values," I can't take that into consideration. I have to address the land resource management plan and its zoning court and how it applies to this situation. But if it's going to happen, I want to do everything I can to protect all of us in this area if it happens. We have a state law. We have a mandate. Whether I agree with it or not is not my job. I cannot impress my will, which is different than what most you probably think it is, upon this case. Send my peace. The reason that I let him go on as long as he does is because you all get an education for the questions he asks. And that education helps you make a further decision later on as to whether you want to continue to direction you're going or whether you want to divert and go to another direction because the area has

you've learned something that changed your mind. We have Thank you very much. Excuse me. Let me answer that. We've had so many people come with a preset mind that doesn't want to change no matter what they hear that they start yelling out, demonstrating, causing commotions. I've had to have people removed from these meetings by security. That's not the way we're supposed to do this. We're supposed to do this as a learning process. And yes, everybody here is interested in what's going on. Uh we're all residents. Mr. Chairman, may I try? May I May may I try on this? So, we have to operate within the law. I think the term they use is a quasi

official board. But if we don't find something to say no, it's my understanding that just about every solar case that really wanted their solar project to happen has instantly gone into the courts. So if we don't find a good reason, and I will kind of go you into help me to find that reason. If this was a data center, I'd be a lot quicker because I could live my life without a data center. And I made this point earlier, but being old school, I look at the three basic necessities of life are food, clothing, and shelter. And I would say electricity falls very high in that. I could live without a Google search and AI, but could I want to live the next four months without electricity? Now, whether or not I agree with the state standard of how they're going to address this electricity, and I am going to ask you a little bit later about nuclear, but that's where we're at. And actually, us addressing you with this outburst is the worst thing we could have done.

Mr. Commissioners, our presentation is complete. Um, can I ask you a few more questions? Yes, sir. Do you have any nuclear facilities in the United States? Does Earth rise? Does Earth rise? He's not.

So, what a lot of these people are worried about is the amount of land it takes to produce uh 600 megawatts of power. So, unbeknownst to you, we had a solar facility uh solar facility about half this size in Southern Will County come to us. And I know this commission approved it. My memory is correct. It never went to a final determination with the county board. And that facility sat right next to the Braidwood nuclear power plant. It was going to produce it was bigger than yours. It was 800 megawatts if my memory is correct. And I got thinking about that as I heard that the Bravewood nuclear power plant with two nuclear reactors was cranking out 3,200 megawws on a footprint of we'll say 400 acres, maybe 800 acres. Get thrown in the cooling ponds, whatever. Do you have any nuclear at all in your

We don't have any nuclear in our portfolio. We don't have any plans right now. It's very difficult to uh find investors who want to build nuclear power plants because

because of the expense per megawatt hour. If you look at the levelized cost of energy, which is basically if you add up all the capital expenses, the ongoing operating expenses, and the revenues that are generated by them, the cost per megawatt hour is much higher than other forms of power generation. Uh, and that's why it's it's really not an investable strategy right now. And so there's not a lot of folks looking at that um seriously from the um capital formation perspective. Also, we've known that nuclear has had quite a bit of resistance from the public. Uh um that is it's not been very popular to live next to nuclear power plants. Um by and large and also um they they tend to take a very long time to build. In contrast to our project, we can once we begin building it, we can put it on the grid in 18 to 24 months.

Okay. I think people start. Yeah. The people want to talk. There was something he said that really

I know what's going on. Seven. Okay. I just have one quick question. Do any of you on the panel here from Earthrise? Do any of you live near solar facility? I have solar facilities in my community. Um I'm not adjacent to a solar facility. No. So, none none of you live near any inner solar facility. Like I said, I have solar solar farm right down the road from me, but not next to it. Not next to it. No,

I've I've I've worked on I've worked on in peritted solar facilities in my parents' community. I I live in Chicago now. Um, don't hold that against me, but I grew up in central Illinois in a rural community outside Champagne, and we have several solar comm community comm uh solar facilities being built in and around that town. And um I don't I don't have a I I encourage it. That's that's why I'm here. It's because I believe in it. Thank you. All right. Thank you for the question. I ask Jud. Okay. We'll get a chance to read questions.

Okay. I I would as our presentation concludes here um I would just remind the board that we're happy to answer the questions of the public as they're posed. Um I just want the record to reflect that. So I mean we'll we will answer we will allow the public to speak, provide their testimony, and ask their questions and then we will reserve a time at the end to answer all of those questions that we have written down. We'll be taking good notes and happy to um address any issues and questions that are posed. So I just wanted to make sure that I was clear on that. But with that our presentation concludes and after the public comment and question we'll respond and close. Thank you.

Now time for public comments. I want everybody to rise easily. Don't hurt yourselves. Don't rush, but get in the line and we'll start taking questions from both sides of the room. I think Louis, she's let the public know that you're teaching. Oh, it's over at 9:30. When do the speakers stop? They would be 9:30. We'd come right back to speakers. The meeting's supposed to be over at 9:30, right? So this we would just recess cut off, right? And then they would they would form a new line at the next meeting. Yeah.

What time are the speakers getting cut off? 9:15. Sir, would you start by giving your name for the record? My name's Mark. Hey folks, we want to give him a chance to speak. Quiet down, please. Give your name again, sir.

Sorry.

My name is Martin Rhoden. Okay, we're going to give you five minutes and we'll tell you at 4 and a half minutes so you could finish up. Got the timer up here. Okay, go ahead and start.

Okay. My name's Martin Rhoden. I I'm in in favor of this um power the solar stuff. I I've dealt with these guys. I' I've signed contract with them. Um they've come back little critiques. never had a problem critiquing stuff. You know what I mean? Everybody's signed your on a dotted line and wants to be perfect and exact. There's no there's no project that will ever be that way. And we all know that. Okay. But with these guys, they have been the most consistent on resolving small issues and moving forward. And I've been dealing with them for two and a half years and there is no issue. They're just they're working with me and and and as far as you know all the jobs that are going to be created, that's a good thing. You know, with construction, that's what we do. I I've been I was in construction my whole life. I'm retired now. And that's what you do. You You build something and you move on. We never You never No one never stays anywhere. That's what we do. That's what life's about. That's what we do. And And we need it. I'm just simply making a statement. You know, everybody wants to scream and yell. We sat quietly while everybody was interrupting us. So again, I appreciate the same consideration that I gave you.

That's what I would like to say. Earthrise has been a good solid company and they're willing to work with you and willing to work through your things and I think that's a good thing that people need to understand. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening. Thank you. Uh my name is Tony Chinowski. I represent uh 58,000 carpenters and 4,000 Will County carpenters from Will County Carpenters um right here in the community. Um I am a Will County resident. Uh this project hits home. A little bit about myself is I've been working with energy policy for over 10 years. I helped craft the SEA uh with multiple trade unions as well as the SERA. Uh one of the things as far as even with the project labor agreement, we have worked on over four uh 400 projects throughout Illinois. Even on the study out here, I can give you utility scale projects that could show you know how the community has prospered. Earthrise has mentioned the Gibson City project. That project was done under a project labor agreement that was inclusion of all the building trades, all local residents. This project here is basically limiting it to three trades. And what that does is that's going to create a a avenue for out of county and out of state workers with the data center work going on, the bridge work and um the nuke work that's going on as well as Dresden and Sitco. Um there I want to just mention something. I took notes just to go a little off off course here. Last time I spoke it, this project is for the general welfare of the community. Okay, that's how it's that's that's how it's written in the special use permits um in the I noted that and mentioned that it was on page summit of the the project that was dated um uh or the Z the ZC 25139 to Plum Valley where it states that the establishment or operation of special use permit will not be detrimental okay for the safety, comfort or general welfare. In today's

proposal, it's taken out of there. Everything else is putting in there from the staff recommendations, the staff analysis, and the staff's facts and findings. I would like to have that put in so it's for record. The other thing is I would ask that the board table your decision tonight and it's contingent upon through the 12th district. There is a Will County versus a solar developer challenging the u the sighting. Um the legislative intent of the sighting bill was not to ram this thing through the local counties. It's to give the residents a voice, give the trade unions a voice and do what's right for the community. Now, as far as asking a question to Earthrise, we've been partners with them in this case, Secret Squirrel working behind the scenes on this. Why aren't you including the the carpenter residents from Will County, which I am one of them. I still can't get that answer except they say that the project won't pass unless we sign a trade trade agreement. That's So, can I get an answer why you won't you won't uh that could be for Rob or that could be for the attorney since you said that you would answer questions. Why aren't you including the Will County Carpenters, all 4,000 of them? We can guarantee that it's all local residents. I want to see the metrics behind the economics where all 900 people are going to come from Illinois with, you know, where the rubber hits the road. So, can I get an answer? Excuse me.

Answer end. Oh, I thought we can answer as we were speaking. Okay. Please make that number one. Thank you. want me to just do it then?

Good evening. I'm Laura Hydrickch. I've been a professional dog groomer and profess and preservation breeder of champion cocker spaniels pointers and Irish setters for the last 38 years. Uh, my dogs have been successful on an international level and we um I've sold dogs to Oprah Winfrey, Terry Bradshaw. My dogs have gone all over the world. My kennel name is known worldwide. I have therapy dogs that come from my place. This is not just a hobby. It's my livelihood and my life's work all based on our property. We started our venture in New Lennox, but due to zoning restrictions, we had to move to a more rural property. We found our 10acre farmstead in 1999. And even though it was zoned A1, we still needed to apply for a special use permit in order to have more than five adult dogs. We could have had as many pigs, chickens, cows, or horses as we wanted. But even though it's a quarter of a mile to the nearest neighbor, we still needed the permit. We needed to notify the adjacent property owners and all the township officials. So, we went to each person individually personally with pictures of our dogs in our place because we wanted them to meet us and know what we wanted to do. We could have been turned down very easily, but we were granted the variance. I tell you this because Earthrise is has not done anything like this. They never contacted us personally, not even a letter, even though we were very they were very quietly acquiring all the property surrounding our farmstead, nearly a thousand acres. We and our neighbors found out that they were buying this land in August of last year. We went to the open house in Manhattan on October 8th. We made our way to the back of the room to see the map with our own eyes. I took this picture as I was horrified to realize it was all true. Mr. Calbus was standing by the map and asked if I had any questions. I said, "You see this little spot in the middle of all that blue? That's us." He said, "I've been meeting to talk to you." But he never called. I finally decided to

call them on February 13th to talk about the possibility of them purchasing our property as we were going to be surrounded by thousands of solar panels. as far as the eye can see. Mr. Calbus came out to our home then and this is what he said. They did not need our property. They had no plans for battery storage, which we now know is not true based on their own lease documents. They did not want to purchase our land because they could not include it in their application, which we now know is not true as amendments were made after our conversation on February 16th. They made the last amendments March 10th, 2026. Why did we think that they should buy our land? I said goodwill. He said that they'd been giving money to women's shelters, dog parks, and fire departments. I also said that they had other farmstead. He also said that they had other farmsteads that they didn't know what to do with as they were leased for 30 plus years. I said, "You could rent them out." To which he replied, "We can't have people living in the middle of our solar fields." And I said, 'But you expect us to do that very thing? If this project is truly safe and compatible with residential living, why would they avoid having residents within it? When we moved here, our thoughts were that someday the land around us would be subdivided, made into farmats or estates, much like the rest of the land in this county, a quiet community in the country, and that our property values would go up as a result. We never imagined the horror of finding out it was to become a commercial installation. We genuinely have huge concern for our property value. Earthrise has told you that they have studies that they say there's no damage to property values. But have they really done studies on homes surrounded by solar and stoage storage batteries? Our home is our largest asset. We're retired except for my grooming business. We have had been considering moving south for better weather in the near future because we're older. We fear the pool of potential buyers is much smaller with a thousand

acre solar installation as far as the eye can see for at least 30 to 50 years, maybe more. A desert of commercial, industrial, steel, glass, and chemicals. You have 30 seconds to wind it up.

Okay. Um, we're also opposed to the long grass because we're afraid of fire. And how am I supposed to get my dogs all out of there if there's a brush fire? What's going to happen? I mean, our whole place could go up. They they want this variance and and we don't want to do that. Um, let's see. Um, when Mr. Calbus was there, I told him he we could sue. He strongly said, "I would recommend that we I wouldn't recommend that. We're owned by a multi-billion dollar company with deep pockets, so they have plenty of money for buying all our beautiful farmland in court battles, but they just leave us stranded in the middle of the industrial installation." Your time is over, ma'am. I'm sorry.

Good evening. My name is Carrie Morgan and I'm here tonight to tell you about my experience with Earthrise Energy. I have lived in CIT for almost 50 years and I have always believed that residents have the power to make a good community great by volunteering and getting involved in local civic organizations. One of the organizations that I am involved with is the Creek Park Pal foundation. We're a nonprofit organization whose mission it is to support our amazing park district through volunteerism and fundraising. We're a small but mighty group. A few years ago, we had about three people attending our monthly meetings, and we're currently up to about six or seven at our meetings. In early 2023, the Park Pals made a pledge to the Creek Park District to raise $50,000 over 10 years, $5,000 a year to be used towards an outdoor fitness court that they were installing in our community. Through the generosity of many amazing donors, numerous fundraisers, and a whole lot of hard work, we were halfway to our goal in just two and a half years. Only $25,000 more to go. Earthrise Energy has had sponsored a number of park district events in CIT, Park Palooa, Creed Unplugged, and Acornfest. And it was at one of those events that I was introduced to several members of their team. After talking with them for a while, they encouraged us to apply for one of their RISE grants. Earthrise is a PB LLC, a public benefit limited liability company, which means that they are a for-profit company. Um, I'm sorry, that means that while they are a for-profit company, they are actively involved within the communities in which they are located. After speaking with Earthrise that day, I still had some questions. So, a member of their team came to one of our meetings. He not only answered my questions, he explained more about the company to us. We were impressed not only by their community involvement, but

also by how hard Earthrise works to be a good neighbor. Fast forward to several months later and the park pals learned that we had been awarded a $25,000 rise grant. To say that we were grateful is an understatement. The gr grant allowed us to fulfill our pledge towards the outdoor fitness court in under three years, which freed us up to focus on our next big project. The cool thing is that we were just one of many organizations to receive a grant. Some of the others include which was mentioned earlier uh the village of Manhattan for a dog park, Northern Illinois food bank, Suburban Youth Symphony, Will County Economic Development Foundation to bring Dolly Parton's Imagination Library to Will County, Beure Fire Protection District, the Nature Foundation of Will County, and so many more that it would probably take me an additional five minutes to list them all. Earthrise has donated over $1 million in Will County alone. Please don't interrupt. It's rude.

They've donated over 1 million in Will County alone and they've just gotten start started. A woman who spoke at the March 18th meeting summed it up nicely when she said, and I'm paraphrasing, Earthrise is a is dedicated to the betterment of her communities. I think that's something we can all agree is a wonderful thing. Thank you. You know what? You people are forgetting the rule of courtesy and I will call security. I'm warning everyone right now. Your turn, sir.

Thank you. Uh, good evening. My name is Steve Becker. I am an attorney. I represent multiple clients who are living adjacent to this Earthrise project and I want the record to reflect uh that I have been denied the opportunity to conduct crossexamination and to introduce evidence on behalf of my clients during the evidentiary portion of this hearing by the will county land use and zoning commission. Um, this was done both by the county land use department who I contacted last week as well as my consultation uh this evening with the state's attorney's office. Obviously, I have multiple clients. There are 96 properties involved and there's no way to conduct any meaningful cross-examination in 5 minutes. It's constitutionally preposterous. So, I will spend the remaining time talking about my objections. Um, you heard about the equity solar decision that recently came down and setting aside the validity of it, if you believe that that decision is valid, the only thing that you have any power to do is deny this application because it is incomplete. It is incomplete. Um, there are no uh proper field tests under the NRI. I heard from uh I think the land use that they had now been submitted, but they were not submitted prior to this hearing. So we had any opportunity to view those and to do cross-examination on them even if we were allowed to do such cross-examination. Um secondly and most importantly there is absolutely no site development permit applications as required by Will County ordinance or uh the mandated wetland delineations or the Army Corps Engineer jurisdictional review under federal law. So this application is woefully incomplete. I can't imagine how the Will County staff could have approved it uh for a hearing

at this point. In addition, um I want to make several constitutional objections for the record. Um it is our position of my clients that the Will County ordinance, which is section 155-9.245, 245 which allows uh these non-ontiguous uh parcels to be used in a single application is unconstitutional um under the due process clause of the federal and state constitutions as well as the equal protection clauses of the Illinois um and US constitutions. Um in addition it is our contention that uh the state solar statute which is 55 ILCS 5 back-2020 which is the commercial solar statute is likewise unconstitutional under the due process clauses of the Illinois and federal constitution. also the equal protection clause of the Illinois and federal constitution and the separation of powers clause under the uh state and federal constitutions. And lastly, I wish to make my objection based on the preeemption doctrine. Uh the department of agricultural secretary Brooke Rollins recently established a policy preventing solar panels on prime farmland here. Even according to the staff report uh it appears that the great majority of this land is prime farmland. So we believe that the federal government has preempted this and therefore because this is an incomplant application I'm asking that you deny this um and force earthrise to comply with the law. Thank you very much. taking

Why are we Let's get the speakers done.

It's your turn to speak, sir. Hi, my name is Ed Culture. I'm the uh proud representative of over 20,000 hardworking union laborers in Chicagoland with several thousand in Will County. And while I can appreciate their disagreements over this issue, I'd like to speak on the things we should all be able to agree on. We all want the opportunity to provide for ourselves and our families. We all want financial stability, cleaner streets, and safer communities. We believe projects like this support that vision. From a micro perspective, this project will provide the community with hundreds of good playing jobs for local union men and women, including new opportunities as apprentices for people in Will County, which is a pathway pathway to the middle class, and includes jobs for existing union workers, which helps them provide for their families and grow in their careers. These workers not only work and live here, but coach, pray, spend money, pay taxes, and so on. Uh from a more macro perspective, opportunities on projects like this create opportunities down the road and down the road from there. And all along the way, people are spending money locally, giving local businesses a chance to hire more people or pay their workers more. And the impact does not stop when construction ends. Projects like this generate long-term tax revenue and community investment that supports schools, infrastructure, and essential services, including first responders. In this case, several million in the first year and tens of millions over the lifespan of the project. So, to summarize, myself and the labors union are strongly in favor of this project because of the significant benefits it will bring to the local economy and local communities, as well as being a significant investment into clean energy and promoting future investment into Will County. So, thank you for your time. Thank you.

Thanks.

Just some background information. My name is Diana Hesseline. My great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents all farmed in Wilton Center, Wilton Township. I grew up on the family farm and was raised my own family in Wilton Center between 1973 and 2000. I served on the Wilton Township board as a clerk and later as a trustee for several years. Several years ago, our 160 acre farm was going to become part of the Illy Indiana Expressway project between Route 65 in Indiana and Interstate 55 in Illinois. The farm would have been taken for eminent domain. We would not have been given a choice. We would have been left with about 20 to 25 acres of farm ground. Not enough left to farm. Fortunately, the project was suspended in June of 2015 and our family farm was saved. Fast forward to today. Earthrise Pride of the Prair pride of the Prairie project wasn't a secret or undercover. We were approached over three years ago about the project. We didn't make a final decision until June of 2025. After careful consideration of our options, we agreed to lease the property so that we could continue to keep the ground in our family. As far as concerns, we have none. I was sent a letter and a 12-page document from the Illinois Department of Agricultural Agriculture September 30th, 2025 that went into effect September 26, 2025 that the Lincoln Solar Energy LLC and the Illinois Department of Agriculture, the IDOA, entered into an agricultural impact mitigation agreement, AIMA, that the so that the Lincoln Solar Energy LLC will follow from construction of the solar energy facility until its

deconstruction to protect the agricultural land and the owners. The Lincoln Solar LLC has entered into an agreement which will protect the agricultural integrity of the ground while providing clean energy, local jobs, additional tax revenue for Will County. Earthrise Energy has provided a path forward to to support clean energy while making it possible for us to continue to pass on to future generations the ground that we care about. While some will say that the natural gas and nuclear power plants are the better option, we haven't been given a choice as Illinois shut down the Zion nuclear plant in 1998 and attempted to close the Dresden plant in 2021. All of this while predicting possible shortages of electricity in as little as five years time. Earthrise Energy is providing a clean solution for the growing demands of energy while giving us a path to hold on to the land that we and our parents held so dear.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Amanda Johnson and I'm a resident that's directly affected by this project. I want to begin with the concept of the property values that were discussed and presented. If you took close look at all of the analysis that was provided, those property values clearly called out that there was a decline of at least 1% in most of those studies. A lot of the studies used in their property analysis was looking at co not at commercial grade facilities but at community level. This is not a community project. I would argue it is an industrialization of currently occupied and lots of residential homes. While we're not a lot of people, we chose to live in a rural community and we want our way of life in most cases protected. When I look at their study on glare and some of the other things that they provided, one of the points is very close to our residence. And when you look at it, they're looking at an entrance. And then in that study, it clearly calls out from a singlestory residence. Well, I can look down my street and at the subdivision down the road from us, and I would guess that about 90% of the homes are not singlestory. We will see or have some sort of impact to our home. And I don't think that that's being fairly considered given the low number of people that are generally affected. As you look at the peer-reviewed study that was also presented, it does say in a national study that analyzed 8.8 million home sales across 40 different states, there were consistent residential value declines on homes that are 5 acres or less. I would argue in my community of Green Garden, many of our homes are 5 acres or less. Those that were closest within a half mile or less were looking we could receive property decrease values of up to 9.8%.

9% 9.8% of someone's home value is pretty extreme and it's not going to help future generations. Now in that study since they will rebut that after 10 years the property values began to rise in the next 10 years where are you going to be? Do you know where your family is going to be in 10 years? If something happens and I need to sell and my property is decreased by 9.8% that is not taking care of myself or my neighbors. Few other points. Um as I look at the described property it I understand that they're applying for temporary. I just want to point out that while I understand it's a term 35 to 50 years isn't temporary. In 50 years I will be over 90 years old. That means that this is going to have generational impact. As you look at the transparency, yes, I've heard people say that their transparency is there, but as somebody who has sent this application, it missed all of the appendices. I had to go find them on myself by myself or ask for Freedom Information Act request or do what I needed to do in order to get the information that was provided. The planning of this project does not align with green garden comprehensive plan or the approved future land use map which prior prioritizes agriculture preservation and rural character. At its core, my argument comes down to this. This project is of massive scale. When you looked at the evaluations that they provided, it wasn't using comparable data sets. It's proposed by a non-local company with incomplete public documentation in my opinion and in conflict with local planning. Many parts of the application mention in process mention that they are in process or will be determined in the future. And I would argue that the work needs to be done in its completeness prior to the approval and not the other way around. That is not a fully vetted application. If there are still questions and things

that say TBD or we're working on it, that's not fair. We are we deserve a complete application under any reasonable standard that warrants any outcome. I believe as a community, we deserve a deeper level of investigation. I'm almost done. 30 seconds. Okay, great. Fully transparent application process on a property scaled analysis that matches what they're proposing of over 6,000 acres in a community. Approving this without a comparable data, full transparency is not due diligence. You're transferring risk to our community. Thank you. Thank you.

Beforehand, I just want to thank the commissioner board. I want to thank the scholars and the leaders that are heading the solar program. I want to thank the best local in the world is local 75. YB, Mr. Curly, Mr. Mark, the executive board, and the members. Just FYI, distant, come with my wardrobe. I left my reading glasses in the car. Good evening everyone. I'm Jennifer Williams, a proud Luna Loca 75 safety journey worker. And tonight, tonight we're wearing orange. so that the leaders of this project and the Luna labor workers are impossible to ignore. I've trained in solar. I've seen what it takes. This isn't guesswork. It is engineered, tested, and built to produce reliable reliable power for decades with minimal maintenance and zero fuel volatality. No pipeline to fill, no deliveries to interrupt, just the sun showing up every single day. And I understand the hesitation in this room. Change can feel like something is being taken away. But this isn't about loss and it's not something being forced on Joliet or any other community. This is a choice. A choice for the land that still works, for families that still earn, for a grid that's stronger when we need it most. Less pollution, more stability, a future we're actually preparing for for instead of reacting to and for and for jolly. That choice mean local jobs, reliable revenue, and investments in our school,

roads, and emergency services without raising a single family bill. Most importantly, this is a safe union work done right, done by us. Who's wearing orange? The standard just isn't getting it built, it's getting it done. This color is a signal. It's a signal that um exemplifies the sunrise over Will County with Luna skill trained union laborers with great leaderships of the Chicago land district council, Lyuna Local 75, with our exceptional executive board. We will we would do the best of the best at what we could. And if I may leave you with something, Helen Keller, she was a famous author. She once said that although the world is full of suffering, if it is full of if it's not helping anyone, how could it help someone? So, thank you for listening.

Hi, my name's Kell Johnson. Uh, my name's Cal Johnson. Can you I'm going to make this short and sweet, but I've been in uh the u the township, the Green Garden Township for 34 years now. One of the reasons that we moved out there, we love country. And while I was on the building uh board or the township for a period of time, there was a comprehensive study that was often cited that this is what we want our community to be. We want to be farming community. We want to have a small town feel to what we're doing. Therefore, we restricted certain building goals. uh if it didn't meet the two and a half acres or 5 acres or larger properties. I'm here to say that in many of my recollection there was no room for solar panels. There was no what we really wanted was to preserve the farmland that we now have and possess. And really what we want to do is look out at corn fields and bean fields. And that's something that we cherish. That's what our life is out in Green Garden. I don't want anything to to get in the way of that or pressured us to accept. And I feel that that's what exactly is being done is that we're getting something rammed down our throat on something we really really as a community don't think we want. Now what I'll say is what I'll say is one more thing and maintenance is the issue. You brought it up that uh ma maintenance is always says oh yeah we're going to do

this and we're going to do that. Okay come 10 years down the line you're going to find who's going to mow this? Who's going to take care of them dead trees? Go 20 years down the line this is a shortterm thing. 20 years down the line what are you going to find? a bunch of broken down piece because many in this room is not even going to be around to correct the problem from the promises that was made. So, frankly, I don't believe what you're going to say in some of that. I hate to be that blunt about it, but I'm uh I'm questioning. So, my request to you is please don't vote for this. Just take it out. Do not do not put this through us. We love our community. We want to keep it. That's it.

Thanks.

Good evening, commission. My name is Jim Connelly. I'm business manager laborers union local 4 and a representative of the labors district council of Chicago and vicinity. Lyuna represents thousands of Will County residents and as you're all aware the framework for approving this renewable energy project exists under the climate and equitable jobs act as well as the clean and reliable grid and affordability act which was affirmed in the recent Illinois appellet court case equity solar Illinois LLC versus Grundy County where the court affirmed that the county is limited in the scope of factors it may review and improving the immediate matter before you today. I can appreciate Mr. Tony Janowsk's advocacy and exercising his First Amendment right on behalf of his members. However, their concerns are misplaced in this forum and it would be improper for this commission to consider in voting on the matters before you tonight. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Jason Brashler and I'm a father of two from Will County. I'm in support of this project for three uh three reasons. I'll be brief here. Number one is affordability. With a new data center coming online that will pull 1.8 gawatts from the grid, as much power as every house in Chicago. We need this solar plant and any other renewable p uh power that we can get as quickly as we can. It's the cheapest form of electricity out there and it does not result in carbon dioxide being pumped into our atmosphere resulting in respiratory illness and added healthcare costs. Second, uh reliability. Uh the sun is a resource we all have access to. We have batteries that can store energy for the time that the sun is not shining and we don't have to send our soldiers abroad to fight for it. No one dies for solar energy. Finally, it will help us preserve the rural heritage of Will County. This project uses land from farmers who are leasing it. It is not the government forcing it onto the community. Rather, it is farmers doing what they always do, which is stepping up when we need them the most. As we have an energy crisis here, please let them use their land to harvest the sunshine like they harvest the foods that we use to feed our families. Thank you for your time. Yeah. Uh, good evening, uh, planning commission. First, I want to thank all the residents who've shown up tonight. This is incredible that they've filled the room like this. Uh, my name is Thomas Becker. I am the chairman of the watershed committee. And we began our challenges 20 years ago because of developers who did not respect the natural resources. And we've seen time and again they claim oh they're not in the water resources so there's nothing to do. Uh I'm getting confused about the figures and the statements being made by

uh uh the Earthrise uh representatives here. Anytime there is a waters of the US on a parcel it requires a jurisdictional review by the Army Corps of Engineers. Now, I've looked at these parcels, and of the 96, I find 84 of them contain Prairie Creek, Fork Creek, their wetlands, or possibly isolated wetlands. Every one of those parcels needed to have been reviewed by an Army Corps jurisdictional review. So, we don't rely on the developer to do that. That is what the oversight of the federal government is for. Now, they mentioned in their in their uh packet that they only have 13.5 acres that they found of unfar of farmed wetlands. This is a 6,100 acre uh project in the watersheds of Fork and Prairie Creek. And they also just recently said there were 99 wetlands that they found. The federal government and the army corps and the county ordinances require that there is jurisdictional review from the federal government and the state to find those wetlands and they have to be done with the requirement of hydrophic vegetation. I'm not sure how they found these wetlands since this is tilled land and you have to have the landow. You need hydraology, hydrophic vegetation and the hydric soils. They don't have the hydrophobic vegetation. They can't make those determinations and they're required to have that element. On top of it, many of these parcels are in FEMA flood planes. That requires Earthrise to have generated site development plans in the preliminary stage to find the base flood elevations and to outline where these flood planes are. They don't just come in and say, "We're not here. We're not in the water resources." That's why we have federal and state agencies to

monitor and manage this and yet will county or rides have not generated a single Army Corps review or an IDNR OWR review regarding these these parcels. There are two things that we can follow here. The gentleman said why uh is a reason to deny this? This is an incomplete application. The solar statute 155-9.245 245 specifically states in in section Q uh 2B uh I'm sorry QB2 that uh you have to have a preliminary plat. The preliminary plat has to have the natural features including wetlands including flood planes and that is to determine the number of panels. If you look on the the uh brochure that we got tonight, it said there are were only 1,700 solar panels, 17,000 solar panels. We have a facility they're trying to push in by us and it's it's on 30 acres and they have 17,000 solar panels. My understanding this is closer to 1.3 to 1.5 million solar panels. But you can't determine where to put those and where they can be located which is required by your solar statute until you have found the natural resources the flood planes the wetlands the waters of the US. You can't proceed and that says preliminary plat not final plat preliminary that's in your solar statute. And finally, one more thing. The county uh ordinance for uh special uses, which is what this is under 155-16.40 states specifically the county board may shall approve these solar facilities if state and f federal regulations have been met. They have not been met. The Army Corps has not been brought in. Why? Because it's going to find that many of these parcels are nonbuildable. Where is the OWR to come and look? Because these parcels are sitting in

farmed wetlands that have never been inventoried and they don't have the criteria available until the land is letow. So you can deny this. This is an incomplete application by Earthrise and until they generate and trigger the federal and state agencies, they cannot proceed. Thank you.

Thank you. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Jerel Aman and I live in Moina, Illinois. At the last meeting, I expressed my joy that solar panels installed in 2019 paid for themselves in six years. As a result, I have personally saved 118,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, which is the equivalent of driving 134,000 miles on sunshine. I also shared that my daughter now participates in a solar farm since her home is not good for rooftop solar. When I looked at my monthly solar energy generation, what was generated in January, cold, Drury Illinois, was onethird of what's generated in hot, sunny July. The free energy from the sun is available even in Illinois, even in the winter. Tonight, I'd like to say that allowing farmers the right to supplement their income with renting a portion of their farm for solar should be their right. Additionally, during the lease, pollinator plants will actually restore the land. At the end of the lease, the land will have regenerated, allowing for more productivity. Monocrops, tilling, and excessive pesticides are just not sustainable. I fully support solar energy as an alternative to dirty, unhealthy, climate warming fossil fuels that also make us vulnerable to wars and political unrest as we have seen in Ukraine and Iran. I urge you to approve this project for the reasons I've stated. Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Jeff Becker from the watershed committee as well. So, we heard all this snake oil salesman over here and what you repeatedly heard was we haven't done this on the BMS. Oh, we might do we might do that. Well, people went to them and asked about the BMS and they were told we don't have to do that. That's not in the solar statute. These are the this is a billionaire class coming in to industrialize three townships, Green Garden, Wilton Center, and Manhattan Township. That's why they're here. The billionaire governor JB Pritsker passed this law to take away all of our rights and everyone knows it. Everyone. So it is here to industrialize our area and that's what's going to happen. So what do you think is going to happen when they bring for for 30 years they bring this in, everyone is going to leave. They're going to force out all of the farmers. And for all the union members that are here, I just find it really really disgraceful that you are you are here to support something that is going to destroy. What about all the farmers that their jobs are going to be taken away and those are long-term jobs and those are those are jobs that feed a community. So, I really think that that that if you're here from from if you're here and you're here from a union, please come and at least have the decency to say that you're just here for your 30 pieces of silver because that's what you're here for. You you are not you don't live in the community. You're not going to face it. You don't care about all all the people here. And I I I think that is a horrible thing to be supporting something like that so they can bow down to their to their billionaire donors and and friends. And that's what the unions are doing in this case. And I think I think it's really it happened with the the data center project and it's happening here again and I think it's disgraceful. So I want to get back what you can do. Each one of you can vote against this because as my brother Tom said this is not complete and you know it's not complete because they've told you that it's not complete.

They said they don't have the wetlands. Did have you read what they put in in the staff report? So either everyone here realizes just like they did with a Joliet data center these projects are being pushed through. They're being jammed through by the billionaire class. And what they want is they want to knock out our communities. And we're here to tell you, you're either going to be a good neighbor and support us or you're going to be supporting the billionaires. You have a right to to deny this because the application is not complete. And if you're not going to do that and you don't care about all of us, that's what we're all going to know. We're all going to know Green Garden is already considering incorporating to leave so we don't have to be under you and we can control our own land use. So, that's what's going to happen. You're going to send all these What do you think about these thousands of people? How do you think their lives are going to turn out after you dump all this crap in their neighborhood? It's a it's a it's a disgrace. And you need to you need to look in your own conscience. Would you want to live next to this? No, you wouldn't. And we all know why you wouldn't because it's a blight on a blight on the farming community. All these people came out here. They have horses, dogs, chickens, goats, and that's all going to be gone. They're going to be looking at solar panels right next to them. How are their sunsets going to be? How are their sunrises going to be? Do you care about the farmers or do you care about the union members that want jobs or the billionaire class? Because that's what this ultimately comes down to. This is a massive change in the community and they have hid it from everyone with their lease agreements and confidentiality agreements. They never came to Green Garden. You I someone asked about you came they said oh we came to Wilton Center. They never came to Green Garden because they know Green Garden doesn't want it there and Green Garden will fight and so will Bolton Center and so will the other Manhattan townships. There's going to be a lawsuit either way. So, you're going to have to figure out which side you're on. Are you on the side of the residents or you on side the billionaires? Thank you.

Uh, thank you. It's a hard act to follow. I'm Andy Penelli. I live in uh the village of Homer Glenn here in Will County. I'm member of the Village of Homer Glenn Environmental Committee. And for the past dozen years, I've been a volunteer advocate bipartisan for bipartisan state, national, and local initiatives that can help mitigate the worst consequences of climate change. I was moved by your comment about looking out for the public good. Uh burning fossil fuels for energy is expensive, polluting, and contributes to more extreme weather events, albeit it's very necessary, and we need an all of the above strategy. Um supporting responsible designed solar and renewable energy projects does benefit the public good and in more ways than just being a cleaner source of energy. America and Illinois are hungry for electrons, electricity. Illinois may have some excess capacity at the moment, but it won't in the near future. And I'm just talking four or five years. We need to build capacity to prevent future outages. uh our electricity bills are skyrocketing and uh and it's because of that growing demand from these u data centers but also electric vehicles building electrification there's a lot of forces that are moving it in that direction. So um uh the fastest way to get uh energy onto the grid right now is uh to support that energy need and that all of the above

strategy is uh renewable energy especially solar. So uh we uh appreciate all the work hard work that you commissioners are doing uh in a tough environment. We thank you for that. Uh asking you to please vote yes on uh for the common good on approving the the pride of the uh prairie uh project. Thank you very much.

Hi, my name's Ted Lamb. I live in Green Garden and I'll be able to see these panels from my backyard. What wasn't brought up was the fact that they're taking 6,000 uh regular farmed acres. And if you take that into consideration, that's 1,260,000 bushels of corn. And at today's rate of 455 to 462, that's 5 million733,000 a year. you're taken right away from Will County. That stays in Will County. That doesn't leave. And that is fact. That isn't projection. That isn't what they brought up on their studies. And uh there's other alternatives out there. They talked about the nuclear, it's too expensive. Nuclear has lasted how many years now? Like 80 years that it's been in existence. And it doesn't cost that much when you look at the long run on it and it's clean. So they're talking about solar. The one solar plant in uh Cana Key just got wiped out by the tornado. Who is testing the ground? Who is testing the water? That's right next to the Cana Key River and all that garbage went into the Cana Key River. Now people get their water out of the Ki River to drink. Who's tested that? And has anybody talked to uh Kameed about these solar panels? My understanding is they only produce like 12%. And they only produce maybe one hour a day when the sun is out at peak. So eight hours a day at maybe 20%. So, I don't know what the studies are or

who's doing them, but I've seen none long-term studies on any of this. So, I'd like to see something done more than just let these companies come in and overrun everything. That's I guess all I have to say.

Very good. Good evening, commissioners. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. My name is Chris Herurder. I'm a director of the Frankfurt Arts Association. And on behalf of our president and association, I would like to read you this letter. As president of the Frankfurt Arts Association, I'm writing to express our organization's support for Earthrise Energies prior to the Prairie Solar and Plum Valley Solar Projects in Will County. The Frankfurt Arts Association is a fully volunteer-run nonprofit dedicated to enhancing the community through the creation, education, promotion, and appreciation of the arts. Every program, exhibit, and event we offer is powered by community support and partnerships with organizations that care about the people who live and work here. Earthrise Energy has shown sincere commitment to benefiting the communities that surround its projects. Their support for local organizations, both through engagement and financial contributions, makes a measurable difference for small nonprofits like ours. Their generosity helps fill a growing gap in resources for community arts, education, and cultural programs that rely almost entirely on volunteer labor and donations. Beyond their charitable support, Earthrise Energy Solar Projects represent responsible, forwardthinking development. They bring new opportunities for economic growth, workforce engagement, and long-term sustainability while preserving the natural and cultural landscape that defines our region. We are proud to stand behind Earthrise Energy and its continued efforts to create a positive impact, not just through clean energy, but through genuine investment in the

communities they serve. The Frankfurt Arts Association ethusically supports the pride of Prairie and Plum Valley solar projects and the lasting benefits they will bring to Will County and its residents. Sincerely, Christina Culie. Again, commissioners, thank you for your time. Hello everyone. I'm Gus Bordon with Wilton Township. I'm the supervisor. Um, I want to thank you for having us tonight. The one thing I want to point out is that when people say this wasn't a secret, I just found out about it accidentally over the summer. And then, of course, they had the open house. And how I found out was when I saw someone doing a survey at a neighboring field. getting past that, once the township packets went out, once the um Will County Board sent the packets out of their application, I started getting a number of calls, very concerned people that lived in our community who I'm here to represent um in my position because for the majority of the people in Wilton Township, they do not want a solar farm this massive to be encompassing all of our residential area. When the study was presented tonight, I had done research myself to try to find some very hard facts about the data and what it meant to live within 150 ft of those solar panels. And I couldn't really find much at all. three miles. Three miles from a solar panel and know you don't have as much of an impact. But if you live 150 feet, I'm looking out my picture window. Every evening I see a

sunset. That's never going to happen if the solar panels are installed in the field in front of my house 150 ft away. No more corn fields, no bean fields, no fireflies, no deer, no eagles. All of those things are going to be gone, as well as the cap quality of our life within the entire scope of Wilton Township. And when I was doing my research, I also ran across some minutes that the land use and development committee had on their website. And when I was reading through them, there were some very big concerns about the size of solar farms that were coming into the community. So, I'd like to um just at the what I have to ask for this board tonight is to vote no for this special use permit and then for the next meeting on Thursday to take a real look at what would be happening to our community and say no as as well. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Christine Duran and I have the privilege of living in Manhattan and I am also a small farm owner. I want to start by saying what matters most to me in all of this is I support farmers and I respect their right to decide what happens to their land. Farming isn't just a business. It's personal. It's generational. It's identity. And for me, I do not believe anyone's it is anyone's place to tell a farmer what they should or should not do with something that carries so much meaning. Some farmers will look at solar

and say it's not for them. Others will see it as a way to stay afloat, create stability, or keep their land in their family. Others may choose to lease or even sell if that's what makes sense for their future. I respect all of those decisions because at the end of the day, it's their land, their livelihood, their legacy. I have seen the massive amount of social media against solar. But I don't think we're taking a step back and realizing that we are telling farmers what they shouldn't do when we are always fighting so hard for farmers to have rights over their land. There's a lot of noise in our community about stopping solar, but I don't hear that same energy when a farmer is facing losing their land, when there's no next generation stepping in, or when the numbers just don't work anymore. Where is the support when they're truly stuck between a rock and a hard place? I'm not speaking about this in theory. I've had these conversations directly with farmers. I've heard from families who land has been in their name for generations, but the next generation isn't interested in continuing to farm. For them, leasing becomes a bridge, a way to hold on to that land long enough for the possibility that someone might come back to it one day. I've also talked with farmers who simply aren't making enough to justify the amount of work they're putting in every single day. That's the reality. I heard so much negativity when these conversations first started, but I have to admit, I was skeptical, too. So, I didn't wait. I did my research right away. I looked into what the panels are made of, what are the foundations made of, the impact on the soil, and what happens if there's compaction? I asked questions like, "What happens during unpredictable storms? What if earth rise goes belly up? What happens to the material sitting

on the farmer's land?" I even asked about sheep grazing, beekeeping, and whether the land could still be used agriculturally. My research was thorough. My questions were tough, and I got the answers to everything that I asked. To me, this isn't about taking land out of agriculture. It's about giving farmers more ways to keep it working for them. A couple of years ago, we started looking for land to expand our adult farmers program, where we teach adults with disabilities how to grow food, raise livestock, build real hands-on skills. And what we found was eye opening. Much of the land around us has already been brought up, bought up by large corporation, and is being held until development comes. Right now, it may look like farmland, but in reality, farmers are leasing that land not because corporations are invested in farming, but because taxes are lower until it becomes more profitable to turn into subdivisions or businesses. That's the direction things are going. So, when I look at the options, I try to be honest about what's really in front of us. And for me personally, if the choice is between another subdivision or solar, I choose solar because at least then the land is still open. It's still doing something, and the farmer still has a path forward. But really what matters most to me in all of this is the farmer. I do support what Earth Rise is offering because it gives people another option. And from the conversations I've had, options are exactly what farmers are needing right now.

These decisions aren't simple. They're personal. They're about family, finances, and everything tied to that land. And I believe those decisions should stay with the people who live it every day. I'll continue to stand behind farmers and their right to choose what's right for them. Thank you for your time. Good evening. My name is Dean Chris and I am the Green Garden Township Supervisor and on behalf of many, many residents, uh, we thank you for allowing us to speak. Um, I do stand here on behalf of the many residents as well as our official board of trustees. And what we are asking right out of the gate is for Will County Planning and Zoning Commission to vote to deny moving forward with the Earthrise Solar Special use permit that's before us tonight. This is exactly what our township has already done. Our township board has passed resolution 2026-00005, which was referenced this evening, opposing Earthrise solar application Z C-25-129 for a special use permit. I have had so many people come up to me and say, "This is a done deal. You're all wasting your time. This is not a done deal." I read that this is a special use permit. It's not a done deal. It's a deal that could be denied. And we're going to hear, and we already

have heard many good reasons to deny this permit. Attorney Becker and the watershed committee has eloquently laid out that this permit is incomplete. So, I'm not going to discuss that whatsoever. There's a lot of other reasons that we'll hear that are very good. Most of them are extremely thought out and valid and gives your commission like it gave our commission the opportunity to deny this. I want to share just for a few minutes the reason our township did this. Again, there's a lot of reasons, but from an official standpoint, this solar project is not compliant with our comprehensive land use map for solar facilities. It's just that simple. I've been really impressed with what I've heard by PhDs, environmentalists, landscape architects, and you name it. But you know what? It boils down to this that it's not compliant with our land use map. It's just not it doesn't it doesn't go along with it. We have highly capable We have a very highly capable Green Garden Township Plan Commission just like your commission and they have done a remarkable job bringing land use decisions to our township. They have guided our entire township. They have spent countless hours interviewing residents, talking back and forth to our board of trustees, conducting open houses, hiring architect engineers to look into this. And we have at their recommendation as as you would

recommend to the Will County Board, we have accepted their re their recommendation and we have a designated area for solar in Green Garden Township. We're not saying we don't want solar anywhere no matter what. Forget it. No, we have a designated area and it the map we don't have the time to look at it. It was already put up on the screen already, so I won't take the time to do that. But I will tell you that Earth R Solar is nowhere near in this designated area. Seconds to wind it up. Pardon me. You have 30 seconds to

Okay. They have taken 25 acres, spread it out indiscriminately everywhere within our township without any regard for land use. They're in complete violation of our land use plan. They never contacted us. The only time I heard from them when they came, it was way too late in the game and we were offered uh we were offered something. Thank you, sir. So, I'm going to ask you to deny this. Have them start over and talk to our townships about where the designated areas are. This whole thing is out of order. They need to start over. Thank you.

M Mr. Chairman, could could I address the Green Garden Township Supervisor who I I'd prefer to hear to okay people what we have right now. We're quitting the line at 9:15 because we are leaving here at 9:30. Period. And we are right now at 8:30. So I want everybody to know we'll be back tomorrow from 5:30 to 9:30 again. Have to do this until we're done. Go ahead, sir.

My name is Bill Wagner, past supervisor and trustee of Green Garden Township. This project directly impacts my property to the south. A statement you don't hear from most of the people supporting this project. Folks continue to move to Green Garden Township as they've been doing for years because they seek the rural landscape we provide and they have the expectation that our county will continue to support the Green Garden Township comprehensive plan to maintain that rural landscape for the electors that moved here. We are here today with the goal to convince Will County to continue to maintain that which they have supported in the past, the rural nature of our township. Solar will negatively impact rural resident growth. As such, we support solar where it belongs in the industrial and maybe commercial corridors according to our comprehensive plan. Nonetheless, whenever solar is approved, hopefully in industrial and commercial corridors, the special use permit must include condition that existing field tiles running through the solar properties must be maintained in good working order by the solar company in charge of the property. Field tiles play a critical role in mitigating flood waters on upstream rural residation farm rural residential farm properties as well as the road district. As such, a conditional approval must include remedy for failure to maintain those field tiles. To sum it up, let's not let outside interest destroy that which we work so hard to build for our community. Let's work together to do it right. Let's not let grants from Earthrise buy their way into our community. Thank you. Hello, my name is Cindy Westerman and I live in Cree. I own a farm that has been

my family since 1856 in Lel County. So, it's not like I'm going to be able to make any money off of this. That's why I want to say I'm in Lasell County. Believe me, I go to the Chicago Farmers all the time. I would like Please raise your hand if you are a farm owner. Well, I'm glad that there are a few of us here because, you know, there is no money in farming. Matter of fact, I raced out to look to see how many more years I have on my lease contract. I cash rent as most people do in my position and there's a lot of us in this state and I still have two years. But I sit at the Chicago farmer meetings every month and there are people there that don't know what they're going to do because the people are calling them and saying, "We're not going to cash rent anymore. There's no money. you're losing money. We're done. And they don't know what to do. So, everyone keeps saying, "Let's stop. Oh, we can't lose our farmland." We don't need all of our farmland. We don't have markets. I just want you to consider all of that. It's not I mean, there is no market. You can talk about how many acres bushels of of corn, but you have to have a market. And I can't believe I do believe that Brook Rollins wouldn't know that we don't need all the farmland that we have. We have no markets. And unless there's research done for people so that we know what to do with all this, we're we're farmers are basically screwed. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Mike Haneyotus. I'm a union carpenter for over 10 years and I've worked all over this county and region. Let me be clear. We support solar. We support clean energy. We support these projects. We want them built. And we want them to be the ones building them. Union Carpenters have already helped build clean energy projects across Illinois. We know how to do this work and we do it right. But this agreement structure shuts us out before we even get a chance. It's not about capability. that's about access. We're not opposing this project. We're just asking to be a part of it because a clean energy future should include the people who live in these communities where they're built. Thank you.

Thank you. Mer.

Good evening. My name is Kelly Valtus, clerk of Manhattan Township. On behalf of the township and our residents, I am here to urge this committee to strongly encourage Earthrise to meet the standards outlined in our solar energy facility development resolution should this application be approved. We have submitted this resolution to the land use committee multiple times, most recently on March 23rd in direct response to this special use application. These standards are designed to protect the rural character of our community and the quality of life of our residents, especially the many non-participating property owners who will face permanent daily visual impacts from a project they had no role in selecting for these residents. Appropriate safeguards are not optional. They are essential. A central concern in our resolution is the need for increased setbacks from non-participating homes along with appropriate vegetation and screening. Expanded setbacks and thoughtful aesthetic treatments provide meaningful visual buffering, reduce use land, reduce land use conflicts, and help preserve the agricultural landscape that defines Manhattan Township. These measures are reasonable, protective, and consistent with the expectations of a rural community. At the same time, we recognize the broader context across Illinois. The transition to renewable energy is accelerating and solar power plays an important role in the state's clean energy strategy. Many rural residents, including those in our townships, are not opposed to renewable energy. Solar can offer real benefits. Stable lease income for farmers, construction jobs, tax revenue, and clean power. But the debate in rural communities is no longer just about renewable energy. It is increasingly about who gets to decide how local land is used. With the passage of SB25,

significant authority has shifted away from local governments. Counties and townships must approve large so large largescale solar facilities if they meet state criteria even when local officials identify concerns about drainage, farmland preservation, infrastructure, or proximity to homes. Longstanding local ordinances that once provided stronger protections have been overridden. For communities like ours, this represents a fundamental shift. Residents who have invested their lives in building rural communities worry not only about one project but about the presidents that is being set. Solar installations can remain in place for 30 or more years and and longer many longer than many zoning plans are written to consider and they shape land use patterns for generations. None of this means Illinois should abandon its commitment to renewable energy, but process but progress should not come at the expense of local voices. Rural communities understand their land, infrastructure, and long-term development needs better than anyone in Springfield. When local authority is weakened, residents feel that decisions affecting their homes, farms, and futures are being made without them. This is why Manhattan Township continues to advocate for balanced, respectful development. Although state laws limit our ability to enforce a local requirement, we still have a responsibility to speak for our residents and to ensure that largescale energy projects are compatible with surrounding communities. And I will make a side note that Manhattan Township did have a meeting last week with Rob from Earthrise who very plainly told us that if we would play with him before this application and come to certain agreements, he would be much more applicable to meet our requests than he

would be if this application is approved. Thank you. I'm trying to

Hi, my name's Dave Moer. I have a sore throat, so put up with me. Um, I was a carp union carpenter, a proud union carpenter for 38 years. And, uh, from day one to the day I retired, there were specific sizes, layouts, and designs for buildings. Not maybe we're going to put landscaping here. It could look like that. I never had a job where I could just maybe it's going to look like that when I'm done. And there's too many uh the setbacks are 50 feet, maybe 150 feet. Well, where where's these blueprints to show specific layout of the fields, especially the ones by my house, and I'm sure everybody else feels the same way. Where's the specific measurements and and landscape designs? We've seen nothing. We've heard nothing. You know, and when you read their books, they're confusing. Are they cutting grass five times a year or one time a year? Everything is maybe, maybe. So, if you want to assume they're going to do what they say, you know what that makes us. I've assumed a lot in my life, so you know what I am. Thank you.

Okay. Tim Shanahan from Manhattan Township. Uh here we go again. Five years ago it was the warehouse invasion. A month ago we had the data invasion which was approved and it's solar today. And I remember back to the to the to the controversy on the warehouses that the objectors were saying that the problem was going to be traffic, it was going to be pollution and it was going to be noise. And guess what? They find out that it's traffic. It's pollution and it's noise. So, as a resident of Manhattan Township for over 42 years, I have a few main objections. First, it's a location which is 100 yards from my house and is going to have regardless of what the uh real estate guy said, a negative effect on home values in the area. At the warehouse meetings, North Point had a real estate appraiser very similar to this and actually said it possibly could increase the value. Ask the home homeowners in Elwood and they would tell you that that was just a lie. I'm also concerned with the rain uh the rain runoff at the corner of Bruns Road and Kanka Key Street, which is a proposed location for the solar fields and floods numerous times every year. Has a study been done deter determine the runoff of these 6,000 acres? Has a study been done on the location of miles of farmland tile of what of some is over 100 years old? And they're talking about how they install the the panels. Well, these the tile the farm tiles are running all through the fields. And when they're going to go ahead and drive these these uh I beams into there, you won't know that you've hit a tile until it rains and the and

the tile backs up and the and the and they flood. And here's another thing. You've got the panels in in place. How are you going to find out that you do have a bad tile and how you going to get in there in the midst of all those solar panels to go ahead and and uh repair them? Also has a study been um the years of planning has gone into the determination of the future of our communities with is that going to be uh ignored? My second concern is will the technology of the co of this current solar centers be relevant in 30 or 40 years? You only have to turn a clock back 30 years to around 1995 and see how technology has changed. Take a look at your cell phones from 1995 to now. And I'm sure more efficient forms of power generation will be around. And I think John indicated the SMRs or small modular reactors. This this solar uh I don't think it it it'll be re relevant in 30 in 30 years. One last comment and this is for our friends behind me. I see there are a lot of union members that are here to show support for this development because of the jobs it will create. We understand that. The opponents on the other hand are here because of the development threatens our home values and our way of life. I hope the union understands that. I know of some union members who live in the area and oppose of the project but understandably remain silent. If the project is approved, the job will finish up. The union members will be headed to the next project. On the other hand, the people in this audience against it won't be able to move on. We'll be stuck with 6,000 acres of solar

and the destruction of our way of life. just take a ride through Lwood and the warehouse invasion and see what I'm talking about. I hope the board takes it all into consideration and votes no. Thank you.

Hello. Uh my name is Larry Kash and I'm here to remind you I was here uh last time and uh I'm a resident of Neighborville and and Will County for 30 years. In Neighborville, we have 140,000 people that burn about 1.2 gawatt hours a year. We have a capacity of 340 megawws that are needed to keep that community operating. And we're currently under a contract that supports this this energy need using coal power. 80% coal power. It emits. We pay into a a a Prairie State coal plant which is the number one poller in Neighborville. It generates more um pollution than any other any other uh power station, any other single source in Illinois. You wonder why it is that you can't eat the fish in your streams? is because pollution from our coal power plants, mercury, we don't want to do this anymore. We want to get out of the coal plant and the only way that's going to happen is if there are alternatives and renewable energy is the form that we're looking for. So, I I recommend and I know I empathize with the people here or not the land owners. They're not the ones who will benefit from the installations, but I know Neighborville will. And I would like for you to uh consider approving this project for the benefit of our community and others abroad. Thank you very much.

Bill McGrath, I'm Representative Hen Township Board and a resident of Manhattan Township. Wait one second. I hope all of you when you speak have your opponents yelling at you so that you could feel very comfortable. original.

As a member of the township board, I respectfully request the plan commission to delaying this proposed solar project. B County staff has been looking at this project possibly a year or longer. As elected township board member, I feel that we as a board could not make a decision in a short period of time that we have been given to review the full scope specific details of the development to make a a decision as what's best for the citizen township. There are significant outstanding concerns including overall size of the project, lack of transparency regarding the exact locations of partials involving incomplete information about road crossings infrastructure impacts. Additionally, the developer has not demonstrated a willingness to follow township of status resolutions that other solar projects have occurred to. Given to the scale potential long-term of this impact of this project, it's critical that all affected township boards afford adequate time to conduct a careful and comprehensive review. We're asking for the delay to ensure that any decision made are fully informed, consistent with township standards, and the best of the interest of the community. If this project goes forward, then I would hope that we all could come together and make a a good decision. Thank you. You guys really have been transparent cuz none of us saw you coming handful of years back working quietly, gathering up land all around us. We didn't know. I'm a 100% disabled veteran and you're going to surround my serenity with solar panels. I don't want that. Front of me, behind me, this is the land I grew up in, the land I came back to, and this is where I

wanted my peace. You never once asked me, my wife, my neighbors. That's how you should have done it. That's how I would have maybe trusted you. But like I said, working in the shells, throwing money at all our townships, bribing, that's not somebody I trust. Shouldn't be someone any of us trust. You come straight to us, talk to us face to face. None of y'all, y'all, y'all said it. Y'all don't live anywhere near solar panels. As a matter of fact, it's privately owned corporation. Where's the owner at? Bring them front and center. That's right. He can afford it, right? That's all I got to say. Good evening. My name is Jim Walsh. supervisor with Manhattan Township. Uh the reason we are here tonight as a board are we are not totally against solar farms. We appreciate clean green energy. It is sincere surely the best way to produce electricity and power. We as a we as a township have had three smaller solar projects come to us and we okayed them. We were able to work and compromise with them and work to create our solar resolution which uh this board we brought to a couple of times and they have agreed to work with us and made it feasible that these could be put in Manhattan Township. The problem we have with Pride of the Farm Solar Earthrise is that it is just too darn big. 6,000

acres that stretches probably almost 10 miles. I can't believe that we are even saying these these numbers. If you would have told me this a year ago, I would have said something's wrong. It can't be 6,000 acres. As I said before, we are not totally against solar. We certainly are not totally are not against union labor. We we certainly are at not against uh solar farms, but of all we are not against farmers. They have been the backbone of our township economy forever. The problem we are having with this monster project is Earthrise does not want to work with our Manhattan township solar resolution which we presented to which we presented to them and they told us that they would go with the state rules. We created this sol this resolution to be able to have answers and solutions for our residents. As a township, we are very concerned about the small farmets and homeowners out there in all three townships who are being negatively affected by this monster project. There are people who live out there in beautiful peaceful country settings and have and have invested their whole life and savings into them. We all appreciate that feeling. Now, we are about to take all of that away from them by encircling them with solar panels. They haven't even had a chance to negotiate or litigate about any of it. A lot of the trouble was we spent the last two to three months trying to get maps and locations of where all this project was going to lay and then in practicality and no time at all, here we are in front of the planning and zoning board. Just not enough time. This is we have not had enough time. I don't know what the hurry is to this project has been pushed. We

we we couldn't get maps till say 3 weeks ago that were good maps that we could read. We could see these blue dots on up on the board not knowing where threearters of it was. So it it's just been pushed too much. Let me get my little page here. Damn it. Okay, we realize that the state uh has put us all in this in this terrible trick bag. They basically eliminate any significant decision making a lo local government input on a lot of very important concerns. So on behalf of Manhattan Township Board because we cannot do any negotiating, we feel that this must go back to the state. We we want the state to change their mind. It's not we we and I hopefully you as a board will turn this down so that we can get the state to know that people do not like these rules and that we need more negotiating with these solar farms. So we as a as a board Manhattan Township ask you to turn this project down. Thank you. Good evening. I'm going to read you an email that I sent to Tom Becker, Jason Nolles, and land use. 28 years ago.

Pardon? Your name, please.

Katherine Rmmer, maiden name Norcus. 28 years ago, my family moved from Oak Lawn out to Will County unincorporated green gardens where my parents built their dream home being surrounded by cornfields, the peaceful scenery of farmland, and the want to get away from the suburbs. My dad died of a heart attack in 2019, and I got married almost two years ago, in which we stay now in my parents' house with my mom, just under 4 acres, and this property has so many memories that I cannot fathom moving away from. About a year ago, we started seeing people coming out to the fields around us. Land surveyors and people that were under do not disclose contracts. Couldn't give us any information. We weren't being nosy neighbors, but it was just to be on the lookout and looking out for our neighbors. They basically stated that they can't tell us anything as to why they were out there. And now it has become the known fact that it was Earthrise wanting to buy up the land or bribe the farm owners to buy the land or lease it to create all these solar fields. It's going to destroy everything around us and trying to industrialize this beautiful farmland. Earthrise among other companies keep trying to tell people it will not change anything but in fact it will change every single thing from property values decreasing because let's face it if somebody wants to sell their house are they really going to want to move right across the street or have a solar field right behind them or data center the animals that are used to roaming the fields or using the cornfields as homes during spring and summer months they'll not be able to do so because the fencing will cause them to go on main roads causing accidents Seromore. The birds will see the panels as a reflection thinking it's water and fly into them. What happens when severe weather rips through the solar field and the panels go flying over destroying our houses? The owners would then have to file a claim through our homeowners insurance

to cover the damage. Is Earthrise going to pay our deductibles? What about the people that suffer from chronic illnesses that have hyper sensitive hearing like myself or eye problems that are super sensitive to any types of glare that will drive a person mad hearing the humming or the chaos that will happen for well over a year to two years about the construction, the traffic, the noises, the roads getting destroyed. No sleep at all for the people that have to work nights that need quiet during the day. My house is right in the middle of what is proposed to be two huge solar fields to the north and to the south. No more looking across the street, literally watching the corn grow or the deer or the coyotes going through the fields or the eagles flying overhead looking for food. We desperately all need to find a way to get these companies out of here. If they truly wanted to help, then they would realize they're destroying our land instead of helping. They could have gone door to door asking people to put them on their roof or find some other kind of way. But they came like a thief in the night. Our area is not in need of these data centers, solar fields, or thousands of acres. They're merely wants. These companies just want to make the money. They don't care about us. They offer the farmers millions of dollars for their land because they're taking advantage of their age, knowing that they will not be able to farm much longer. But what happens to all of us when we're surrounded by these? We don't get compensation for for any of this. We're told basically live with it or move. I'm 43 years old and I was able to go without AI, high-speed phones, all these streaming devices. The world doesn't need to change overnight. What we need is to have transparency and Earth Rise is not giving that for any of us a chance. I just want to thank everybody for taking the time and think about the simplicity of life in which we need to strive to get back to, not ruin the world by taking away

the land that'll put food on our tables. Because let's face it, this is going to be tied up for 30 years in which our children still won't be able to do anything with. Please give Will County and all of us that are opposed to solar a chance and send them on their way. Thank you so much. Good evening. My name is Jack Connelly. I'm a union organizer for Lyon's Great Lakes region. I'm here tonight along with my brothers and sisters behind me to show my support for Earth Ris's Pride of the Prairie Solar Project. I will be keeping it brief just due to the time constraints and just saying a few words about Lyona and what we bring to this project. If you're if Lyona isn't talking about the pride we have in our brotherhood and solidarity, then we are most certainly talking about our pride that we have in our hard work. We have around just a little over 2,000 active and trained members here in Will County and they are very excited to have the possibility of working on this project. We make sure our members are trained to the highest of standards not only in general construction and safety but now in solar. And we are excited to show that hard work and put it to use. Thank you for your time tonight. Y My name is Charlotte Dugan. I was here two weeks ago. I'm just want to follow up on some things I said two weeks ago. Um, I want I want to I want to address the people here and say be careful for what

you're wishing for because these solar farms may be one of the things that helps you save your farmland. I live in Bowling Brook. 61 years ago, I moved out from Chicago and had the exact same experience you're talking about. a few houses, idyllic farmland, a quiet clean air, the whole nine yards. Now we are in done undated with noise, pollution, trucks, warehouses, every single thing you could think of that came from hell. 20 years ago, they came and they got the farmers in Lwood, some by coercion, some by money, to give up all their farmland.

Okay? And you see what happened to Elwood.

Now you have Warren Buffett and his railroads in there. The farmers are gone. The land is destroyed. So, I understand there's still somebody that wants to build an airport around your area. That's going to be another big polluting massive problem. So, you could lose everything that you hold dear. And maybe the solar farms will be a help instead of a hindrance because we need clean energy and we need to not have the farmland that exists right now. totally destroyed by the big business that everybody's concerned about.

Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you. Thank you.

Uh good evening, chair and commissioners. My name is Dan Wexler. I'm a Will County resident. I'm here on behalf of the Indiana Illinois Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting representing Operating Engineers Local 150 and our signatory contractors. I'm here tonight with one clear and simple message. approve the pride of the pra prairie 600 megawatt solar project. This project comes at an extremely important time for Illinois as energy demand continues to grow and the need for reliable instate generation is becoming more immediate. This project is a tremendous win for Will County, creating hundreds of high-paying, highly skilled construction jobs that will put real money into the pockets of local families. Those workers standing behind me eat in our restaurants, shop in our stores, and support businesses across the county, delivering an immediate shot of economic energy right where we need it most. Just as important is how this project will be built as the contractor has entered into a project labor agreement with the tri trades, the operating engineers, laborers, and electricians. that ensures the project will be constructed by a skilled local workforce with strong training, safety standards, and accountability throughout the job. Once it's up and running, Pride of the Prairie will generate $3.5 million in new tax revenue in the very first year alone, strengthening our schools, improving our roads, supporting our fire districts and police, and keeping our parks and libraries thriving. That is real lasting support for the services our families count on every single day. This project is built to protect our land. It includes a full agricultural mitigation agreement, a guaranteed decommissioning plan, and careful buffers so the soil can return to farming when the time comes, better than ever. Best of all, this solar facility will deliver clean, reliable power to our region while making smart use of an existing grid connection. It gives us more energy without expensive new

infrastructure, meaning cleaner air for our kids, more reliable power for our businesses, and a brighter energy future we can all be proud of. Let's choose progress that lifts up our families, boosts our economy, and secures our future. I urge you, vote yes tonight and approve Pride of the Prairie. Thank you very much for your time. I have been I have been reminded that the chairman wishes to uh wrap this up at 9:30 and we would uh go into a recess until tomorrow. So unfortunately you all may not get to speak but I'm not telling anybody they have to sit down. Go ahead.

Good evening. My name is Mark Fck and I am a farmer. Uh we own about 600 and some acres uh in the eastern part of Will County. another 300 acres in the western part of Will County. I appreciate y'all show y'all showing up staying. Unfortunately, a lot of your group is gone, but you got to hear it from a farmer's perspective. I'm not a billionaire. So, let's uh to no thing. Things are tough on the farm. Crop prices are what they are. You've heard about the government handouts. We don't want government handouts. We do want the ability to do with with what we want with our ground, just like you all want to do with what you want with your houses. Uh it may come as a surprise to you, but you move out here. Not everybody's thrilled to see you. You bring you come from Chicago, whatever. You flood our kid our schools with kids. Guess who guess who subsidizes those kids? Farmers. You our taxes are going through the roof. I They changed a lot in Illinois. Um, I'd call that your attention. You don't think about those things. What, uh, given what the lady said previously, um, you have no idea what it's really like on the farm. This is an opportunity for us to keep farm in our uh, in our families. I grew up on a centennial farm in western Illinois. There wasn't room for me on our farm in Western Illinois. uh to the uh point the person made in Bowling Brook, our family's been raising hogs, a lot of hogs. We could come in to your local build hog buildings and that's the last thing you'd want. You talked about the the sunsets and stuff. What happens when a subdivision comes in? Those sunsets are going to go. I think you're going to want to have solar panels. We do have some ground on the western part of the county a lot uh where we have sold off 10acre parcels. Those people want to be away from neighbors. They want solar panels. They want solar panels as their neighbor.

Don't necessarily dismiss that. I understand you might be in the minority uh in the vocal majority here. Uh but not everybody shares that same opinion. With regards to um some of the other discussions, I guess I John, you know this. We're we're adding zinc as part of our micronutrient package. They talk about zinc being in the soil and polluting the soil. Um, we add it as additive from our modern farm practices. Um, another another conversation we can have is about the uh heavy metals in sludge. We get mailings every year, multiple times a year to put sledge on our ground. Do you guys you guys all know what sludge is, I'm assuming, right? You know where that comes from, right? Um, we've not we've not done it. I think you ought to be a little bit more more concerned about that kind of stuff than uh the solar panels. Obviously, people are sleeping underneath solar panels. Um it kind of defies defies logic. Um

I understand the board doesn't want people telling them out of Springfield what to do. I I I uh fully understand that. I don't like being told what to do. The truth of the matter is you heard earlier. I don't know whe you guys read the fine print on the law. It's the law. Um I I'm happy to share it. The third appellet district uh voted three to nothing that you need to if the um application meets the criteria which are uh the people we pay said it does. You need to you need to approve it. I've heard a lot of conversations about this is not complete. It's not complete. Ma'am, I I I know about how much time you guys spent on it. I think you said it's complete. I'll believe you. There's a whole staff of you there saying it's complete. Um, so I guess when those people come up, I guess I'd ask for a little more delineation. We talk about farm ground here. I grew up in the central part of the state. Our ground here is not a soils. It's not the greatest production. So again,

again, it's a bit of a problem. Um, you talked about the tile. Earthwise has came to us and done a tile tile study already. Uh, they spent a lot of money out of Springfield uh, company helping us locate those tile. They are required to to fix it as per our contract. I won't take any more the time. I hope you'll approve this uh, community asset. Thank you. I'm sorry everybody, but we're going to stop the line now. Uh, and we'll resume tomorrow at 5:30. 5:30 to 9:30 again. Uh so we are in the process of public hearing process and I'm sorry that all of you can't speak yet tonight but I told you that we were going to firmly end this at 9:30.

So

please sit down and we'll we'll hear you again tomorrow. The meeting will be held here tomorrow at the same time, 5:30 tonight. So, Commissioner, are you ending the meeting right now? I am giving No, we're ending the meeting at 5 at 9:30 as we said we would.

But I can't have people standing in line who can't speak. That's unfair to them. Okay. Did you want to end the meeting now then? I will. Yes, we're getting close to ending the meeting. Okay. Did you want to make a motion to end the meeting right now or are you going to Do we have I I want to pull the board first and find out if they anybody felt uh like everything was going okay for tomorrow. We were going to give them 15 minutes to put all the answers. She she thought you were going to let the applicant respond to something, but I think they should wait until the very end.

Oh, no. Tomorrow. No, he just wanted to cut it. He wanted to cut it at 9:15 and that's it so they could start moving out. Probably stopped today. You could have stopped. Kev. Hey, Kev. What did you tell me when you came in here today? We didn't let them. If we could have order, please in the room until we until the meeting is concluded. order please in the room. Okay. Now, do you have any adults wish I'm sorry. Do you have any doubts but No. If we are going to conclude the meeting, we need to make a a motion. Yes.

For the date and time. Yes. Mr. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion to recess tonight's meeting until 5:30 on Tuesday the 31st of March. Do I have a second? Second. Same place. Say something in in the same room. I'll try to fix my hair and Yeah. Let's see if I could turn the air down. So, a motion has been made by John Kefner to continue this meeting until tomorrow,

March 31st at 5:30 p.m., same place, second floor renaissance room. And that's second by Lewis Navarette. All in favor? Hi. Hi. So, you leaving all the paper? Hey, Paul. Oh, that was fun.