Housing Devaluation of Property Surrounding Solar Power Plants

Housing Devaluation and the Installation of Power Plants in Our Area

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A response to the two solar power production facilities, one being located on 217 yatesville road, and the other to be located on 866 McCollum Rd. Both will reside within one mile of the city limits of Barnesville Ga.

I have never claimed to be the most socially conscious individual in the country, but I have noticed that interactions with the community has become quite hostile lately, and it was never my intention for it to get that way. As I have mentioned to friends and family, people have started to act like I was blaspheming God in recent discussions over the two new solar power plants, which is just not at all called for. They have reacted as if I was robbing the future from their children’s hands, instead of preserving it for them. So, it is my intent in this letter to separate perception from reality, to dismiss gossip, to enlighten the dim of the mind, and shed some light on the potential misunderstanding of my words. In this process perhaps if we are lucky we can begin to scrape horse manure off our boots, and move on to a cleaner future.

Let us disassociate ourselves first, which was always the first step. It is through disassociation that we can see the framework of the problem, we remove personal bias, and we reach the foundational principles of the problem. Once we have handled these principles then we can begin to see causation, and allow reason to take over giving understanding.

Now, let us deal with a single piece of this puzzle and lay it before us, we can refer to this as the first principle. Regardless of the purpose of the facility, regardless of legislative exception, zoning laws, and price tag, when you place an industrial or commercial facility directly in the middle of a suburb or other residential area you are automatically lowering the property value of the area.

My old buddy Tim, use to live out in northern Houston County. It was quite a unique place, right below the airport. It was still very much back country, and behind his place the open uninhabited land seemed to go on forever. But one day, I noticed that a part of it had been flattened off. After arriving at the house Tim responded, They are building a diaper plant next door. Just like that, it was over. There were no fences, just surveyors tape, and the, security guards drove them away. The beautiful old, eccentric home was useless now, and was quickly sold for less than $23,000. It sucked.

But, it didn’t matter about the purpose of the facility industrial and residential property don’t mix. The reason I use the term industrial is because of how utility production facilities have always been defined in the world of business. Now saying this, there really are only three primary types of zoning, and they are commercial, residential, and agricultural/residential. It is therefore assumed that commercial and industrial are equivocal, and the truth would be the same for commercial property as well. Just because you were given a legislative exception, does not mean your property has been rezoned, it only means that you have been granted a special purpose exception for land use. Which has nothing to do with the type of facility that you are placing on your property, nor the classification of what that facility is placed under. In other words, it does not excuse or exempt anyones property from being located beside an industrial facility. Even the person who is the seeking exception for use will experience property devaluation, because regardless of the exception, you still have an industrial facility on an agricultural/residential zoned piece of property. And this is going to be difficult to sell, because you would have to sell it for restricted use only, which means will never be residential nor commercial, it is something altogether distinct and will never be anything else.

As far as the consumer market is concerned, as part of the sellers disclosure the owner has to admit all known faults of a piece of property. Being next door to land with anything restricted does not necessarily boast well for buyers influence. Then once you start mentioning something about the production of anything on the industrial scale next door, the deal is usually over. Keep in mind that studies such as The Effect of Power Plants on Local Housing Values and Rents by Lucas W Davis, have shown that distance and property values have a positive correlation. Meaning that the further the property was from a power plant the greater the value received. So we now can begin to draw the conclusion and understand that placing a solar power plant in the middle of a residential area will only affect the value of all the property in the surrounding area negatively.

Another affect that industrial facilities have on the surrounding area is a complete destruction of aesthetic value. It is going to be pretty hard for anyone to ignore 50+ acres of twelve foot high pillars draped in aluminum foil that dance throughout the day. After all, at that size NASA and the rest of the world can see it from outer space, if not immediately, then with the next Google Earth update for sure. When this happens, you just know someone will look down and say, I would hate to live by that shiny power plant there. This will define our city, when people look at a satellite image of our town, the most distinctive and recognizable features will be these two solar plants. Just think about it. What will that say about our county? What will that say of us as a community? How much do you think that will reduce property values in this community?

The reason I mention this continual detriment to aesthetic value is that this one theme was repeated several times in the legal cases we research. There are a few not far from here, down in Thomaston, and I must apologize, I unconsciously have always associated them with large garbage bins. This is because the solar panel site lays where there use to be red and green garbage bins, at what is now the Chief Manufacturing facility in Thomaston. So this is just an association purely out of coincidence. But, you may now better understand the association between the two.

I have been trying to keep up my property here for a while now, and I just have to say there appears to be inverse relationship between Solar power plants and farming. Meaning the more power plants, the less farming. Why does a farmer need a tractor when a golf cart and squeegee will do? Why would they even need grass when gravel will do. That would directly reduce the size and amount of tractors and farming supplies a farmer would require. If it is easier and more profitable for a farmer to be a utility company, then why farm at all? Which in turn would mean less farming supplies will be purchased. What affect would that have on a farming community like ours.

"If farming was easy they would call it picking."
	The Great Alan Lowman, Director of the plant protection, Ga Dept of Agriculture.

The Solar energy companies need land, farmers own land. This is why our state encourages the relationship between agriculture and solar energy. Because farmers who don’t want to farm are selling out, it is as simple as that, and there is no big secret to this. Which means that the residents living beside those farms are the ones that lose out. This is why we say that the property in the surrounding area both solar power plants will be devalued.

From the beginning this has been our primary concern, and we feel that it is a given, and were under the assumption that it was common knowledge. Next time, if I can, I will go over why these two solar plants will have no impact on your power bill, and why we state solar increases your utility bill. It is just basic economics, and has already occurred on the west coast.