Tag:Tips
Sunny Thoughts on Solar Panels
I’ve been watching/reading about all the Solar Farm controversy in Marshall County with a mixture of amusement and disappointment. While I don’t advocate unlimited rights to a property owner, I would advocate tipping the scale in favor of the owner’s decisions about use of their property. My main thought is how the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is a repeat of what happened when there was the discussion about wind farms in Marshall County a few years back. (Wind Farm Posts here and here.)
In both cases, spurious arguments are put forth, when I believe the real reason for disliking either of them is aesthetics. Those against them don’t like looking at them. As with wind farms, I can understand that and feel it is a valid argument. To each, there own… But it was a much more understandable argument regarding wind farms than solar panels.
The setbacks of 300′, 500′ or more being requested seem ridiculous. Marshall County isn’t a table top, but it is pretty darned flat. The high point in Marshall County is 895 MSL and the low point is 775 MSL with an average of 810 MSL per the Joint Highway Research Project by Purdue University. That’s not a whole lot of topographic relief and I’m suspicious that the low number is actually under water! That tells you that there aren’t many areas where a grove of 20′ to 30′ evergreens or mixed plantings wouldn’t hide what’s in the field from anyone on the ground; even from a distance. This would solve the concern some have expressed about the sun reflecting off the panels too. Large setbacks are usually used to protect against noise or odors, not visual issues that can be hidden by a vegetative buffer. These setbacks requested are meant to make property unbuildable unless it’s an excessively large tract of land. Admittedly, I’m pretty indifferent on the aesthetic issue, but I don’t know that a picked cornfield with an inactive sprinkler system sitting vacant from Fall until Spring is a particularly bucolic landscape view either. It is just one of those things that we live with and allow to the property owner.
There is the argument about chemicals from solar panels leaching into the soil. For the most part, new solar panels are solid state devices composed of silicon and glass, with trace amounts of gold, silver, copper and other valuable materials which people in the industry will be glad to retrieve and recycle. There is also the issue that most farmers are leasing land that is marginally productive as farmland, which requires large chemical applications to make them productive. Some of these properties were potato farms in the past, which required hundreds of pounds of fertilizer per acre. As part of this argument, I’ve heard, “Why not put solar panels up to cover parking lots and buildings first, before threatening farmland!?” If there was any merit to the chemical leaching argument, I would much rather have any bad things filtered through soil, rather than running directly into storm drains and thus, our rivers and streams. There’s enough of that coming off cars and trucks in parking lots and on streets. Not that I don’t see merit in solar panels for covered parking. But I assume it’s the same reason they don’t graze cows in solar farm fields. They would need to greatly beef up (pun intended) the support structures for cows rubbing against them and thus, even more so for cars.
There are those that express concern about the loss of farmland which currently produces food products. I would prefer to see some soil analysis and see solar farms placed only on marginally productive land, but much of the placement is based on access to the electric grid. To some extent this is self regulating with property owners making the economic decision themselves. I am sure, if the payout for farming was greater, the land would remain in crops. At it’s greatest proposed coverage, the proposed solar farms would only cover single digit percentages of the total Marshall County farmland available. Is this any different than allowing subdivisions to be built and lots to be sold for housing or industry? Plus, check out some of the interesting things Purdue University is suggesting for agrivoltaics. There are options to keep farms productive as food sources as well as for harvesting solar. They’re just two different ways of harvesting sunshine.
There are those that say solar is a boondoggle and wouldn’t make it without subsidies. Possibly, but farmers know how subsidies work as they are sometimes paid not to plant, told what to plant and subsidized for planting specific crops. They are well versed in how to play that game and how to achieve the best economic benefit from it. Are solar panels the solution to global warming? Hardly. Nor has much of what’s out there touted to change the weather ever resulted in the the reputed outcome. But let landowners take advantage of the rare opportunity to benefit from this one.
One thing that has come out in this that particularly scares me is the bonding or other means of providing for decommissioning of these installations at the end of their life. If we start down that path, where does it end? Drive around Marshall County and you will see abandoned silos, farm windmills, railroad beds on abandoned rail lines, railroad depots, grain elevators, former school buildings, houses, collapsing barns and unusable commercial buildings. That same argument could be used to say we should prevent any of those things happening again, but can you imagine the cost of construction if you had to plan/pay for end of life removal of EVERYTHING? Most construction puts significant funds at risk when the investment in these these things is made. The increased cost due to this increased risk would undoubtedly stop some expansions and new endeavors from happening. In the case of solar farms, you’re asking the companies involved to plan for the cost of removal 30 years from now. What does that look like and how would labor inflation costs balloon that? Building’s generally have lifespans of 2 to 4 times that. How does that even work!?
Again, I believe all of this amounts to spurious concerns, past the aesthetic issues. I’m not thrilled with the aesthetics of high voltage powerlines crisscrossing Marshall County, Those power lines are largely what makes Marshall County attractive to solar farms. But these things benefit my life. Stopping them means hurting other property owners and limiting their livelihoods. If we collectively care enough about stopping these things, then we should put our money where our mouth is and pool funds to purchase and control the property ourselves. Otherwise, be quiet and let progress move on…
Destination 2040 – Culver Comprehensive Plan
After almost two years of work by local volunteers through various committees with the help of MACOG, the final draft of the new comprehensive plan is available for review here.
A community’s Comprehensive Plan should be revised every 5-10 years. I had advocated for the plan to be revised sooner (I thought Culver’s 2020 Vision had a nice ring to it!), since we completed many of the goals of the previous 2014 Comp Plan through the Stellar Communities funding. Unfortunately, like many other things, Covid stopped early progress on this.
It is generally the responsibility of the Plan Commission to create a new Comp Plan, but in this case, the Culver Plan Commission delegated this to the fledgling Culver Crossroads group. With the help of MACOG, Culver Crossroads held multiple meetings, public events and other opinion gathering methods to take the pulse of the community and set goals for the future. I’ve participated in this from the start and I believe the new plan captures a lot of vision needed for the future of Culver.
Once the document is finalized, the work needs to continue. The plan is worthless sitting on a shelf. It needs to be revisited often by all branches of Culver government so that its goals can be implemented and its guidance can be observed in the decision making process. Since it was created by the citizens, it should be respected as the new direction for Culver.
This is your last chance to be one of those citizens giving final input before it goes to the Plan Commission and Town Council for adoption. Even if it’s just catching a spelling error or punctuation error, let MACOG know, so this is the best document it can be. This will be our plan for the next 10 years and the face of Culver when new developers, businesses and residents consider locating in Culver.
West High Corner
Whew! There’s a lot going on there! Very little of it good… To orient you, if you’re not local, this is the curve north of Lake Latonka, where S.R. 17 begins to run east towards Plymouth and Sycamore Road continues north towards S.R. 30.
So I don’t bury the lead, the initial reason for writing this was a John Oliver style, “Why is this Still a thing?” rant. I came around this corner from the East the other morning on the way to work, in the dark, to find a school bus stopped to pick up kids from the house on the inside of the curve on the SE corner of this intersection. It wasn’t very visible to me until I was almost on it and it would have been worse for someone coming from the South. The best case for this is this time of year when it’s dark and the bus’s flashing lights are reflecting off of everything. At twilight, the danger doubles down.
This property just recently changed hands. I know things get grandfathered in. I know it’s cold out and kids don’t want to walk far, so the closest point to the house is the preference. But there is a significant piece of property here with an alternate driveway. Barring getting rid of this dangerous driveway, can’t the school bus pick up at the alternate driveway off the curve?
This intersection has always been dangerous. The memorial at the northwest corner of the intersection commemorates the 5 fire fighters that gave their lives at that intersection in 1982. The truck they were in took the corner too quickly and went into the swamp on the west side of the road. This was the worst single-event loss of life for a single fire fighting unit prior to the 9/11 terror attack. The permanent stone memorial included lighted flags and was dedicated in 2014 It replaced 5 wooden crosses on a utility pole near the crash site. It is somewhat fitting that this memorial is quite striking, yet somewhat eerie when lit up at night.
It will be interesting to see how long the West High Corner moniker remains in use since the referenced school is gone. The Northeast corner of the intersection was home to the West High School, named for West Township. Many people were sad to see the school go away this past year. I have to agree that it was frustrating that it couldn’t be repurposed, but location is everything and is often the case with structures like that, its highest and best use was as a school. I could not find documentation, but my recollection is that the school corporation sold it at auction for $1,500 in 2005. From there, the buyer stripped most of the things of value from the building. It became a door and trim shop after that. The Covid pandemic ended that. Most recently it was purchased by Jackson Salvage, which made it go away… except for the slabs and foundations. All that remains is a memorial with a bell and well along Sycamore Road to commemorate the school’s previous glory.
The property on the southeast corner referenced at the beginning of this post was the former location of the original West Township Trustee’s home; a log cabin that was just recently relocated south to Memorial Forest. The picture to the right shows the cabin during reconstruction as new roof framing was placed. The recently formed Marshall County Parks and Recreation Department tried to have it relocated onto the West High site, but there weren’t sufficient funds to make the deal possible.
As attested to by the lost fire brigade, the West High Corner is to be respected. The two exits/entrances onto S.R. 17 from Sycamore Road are also treacherous. From experience, the southernmost connection is the most dangerous and least respected as I often see cars exit or come onto S.R. 17 without stopping. West bound cars cannot see that intersection until they’re into the curve, so if they are taking it quickly, there’s often near misses. In icy winter conditions, this is even worse.
In the mid-1990’s, the Culver Chamber of Commerce petitioned the Marshall County Commissioners to improve Sycamore Road to give Culver more direct access to S.R. 30. For a time, this was a collaborative effort between the Town of Culver, Ancilla College (now Marian College), Culver Academies and Swan Lake Resort. One option for this was to attempt a trade-off with INDOT, changing Sycamore Road into the north end of S.R. 17 and the east/west portion from West High to Plymouth would have become a county road again. This would have had many benefits including an intersection fix at West High, an improved route to S.R. 30 from Culver, fewer driveway accesses, and an easy aerial railroad crossing. At the time, Marshall County had already broached INDOT through MACOG about the Pine Road extension. And also at that time, Plymouth didn’t want to give up the benefits of INDOT maintenance on the main street through the City. (Plymouth is having second thoughts now as their Complete Streets Committee wrestles with the pedestrian issues associated with this.) With the completion of the Pine Road extension to S.R. 17, this initiative is unlikely to be considered. Some of the property that was vacant has been developed, further hindering this right-of-way acquisition.
I don’t see a good solution to this intersection in the near future. At a minimum, I would still like to see something done to eliminate the school bus stop in the middle of a State Highway curve. This intersection doesn’t need another memorial…
Knox Boxes
One of my lurkers saw my instagram post about meeting the LaPaz Fire Department at LaPaz Commons Apartments last week. We always offer the local fire department the opportunity to walk through once the framing is in place. This gives them a better understanding of the structure in that worst case scenario of fighting a fire there. One of the things we discussed with the firemen was the location of the Knox Box. My Lurker sent me this picture of a Knox Box he had seen in Grand Rapids, MI. (See right)
Yes, that’s a Knox Box somewhere around 12′ above the ground above the awning. Pretty much inaccessible… I’m guessing this is a case where the City required a Knox Box, but didn’t include location specifications and the building owner didn’t want one and put it there out of spite. But I’m just projecting that scenario. Who knows?
Most communities set up standards for placement of Knox Boxes. These have to be carefully considered so they have some flexibility. All buildings are different. But as much as possible, you want the box placed in a location that is immediately recognizable and found by emergency personnel, else its intention is defeated. Firefighters in particularly are notorious for bringing their universal key (fire axe) and not hesitating to use it.
Easterday Construction Co., Inc. was responsible for introducing and writing the Key Box requirement in Culver’s Zoning Ordinance, Chapter 6, Section 100. Enforcement has been pretty limited though. We haven’t actually seen one installed on any projects completed by others. (That doesn’t mean there aren’t some out there.) Even with a pretty clear definition, we ended up getting cross-ways with the building commissioner on a project where he chose to interpret the requirements differently than they were written. (He lost. We don’t argue unless we’re right.)
There is more than one benefit to these systems, i.e. 1) limiting property damage from emergency personnel accessing the building by any means possible, 2) speeding up access when the building is extremely secure and 3) giving emergency personnel a place to find pertinent information such as building plans, electrical shutoffs, among others. But the system has to be set up for the municipality to make the Knox Box keying universal and the program must be understood by the emergency personnel it benefits.
We have promoted the use of these systems, but with limited success. We’ll continue to sing their praises, as they are a benefit to public safety.
IYKYK
October 8, 2024
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Personal, Plymouth, Tips
Community, Tips, Trends, Volunteering
For those of you unfamiliar with internet acronyms, IYKYK = If You Know, You Know. It’s generally used as a hashtag for an image with a second meaning, inside joke, or something else often hidden in plain sight. Despite having known Gary Neidig, ITAMCO and many of the Neidig family for decades, I was surprised by some of the things I learned about Gary and Robin at the MUAC (Marian University/Ancilla College) Changing Lives Scholarship Dinner at Swan Lake Resort last Thursday. I was there representing MCCF (Marshall County Community Foundation). I felt like I was out of the loop on the picture to the right. I wasn’t privy to the #iykyk meme, despite knowing Gary and Robin forever!
I’d always know the Neidigs as very family oriented. They are extremely dedicated to their family, their company and their Church. My father and I worked with Gary and his father and uncle for years doing work at the ITAMCO plant (then known as Indiana Tool and Manufacturing) and their Church, the Grace Baptist Church in Plymouth. My father and Gary’s Uncle Don did millions of dollars of work with only handshake contracts. We doubled the size of the Plymouth plant and built their world class office space. We helped them renovate and modernize the Grace Baptist Church, built the Christian School adjacent to the Church and later added the gymnasium to the school. We even did an addition to Gary and Robin’s house!
I knew that Gary had been drawn into some of the regional planning meetings through MCEDC in recent years. I served with him on the Marshall County Crossroads Committee and knew he remained involved and now chaired the next reiteration of Crossroads, One Marshall County. I served with him on the Plymouth Comprehensive Plan Committee as we updated the plan for a new decade. But at the dinner last week, I learned that there was much more he was doing behind the scenes in other areas. I was not surprised that Gary would be doing good things… He always has… I was surprised at how much there was in which I didn’t know he was involved. Much the same with Robin. I knew she was involved in the Church and school, but not the other things that came out during the award presentation.
It was a reminder to me that there are unseen layers to people all around us. Who among us hasn’t seen an award going to someone we thought was less deserving than others we knew. Maybe we shouldn’t be too hasty thinking we know everything. Gary & Robin were deserving of this award just for the things I knew they did, and then I learned there was so much more. There are no doubt others in our community involved to greater depths than many of us realize. Maybe some of those other recipients we heard about and questioned had impacts of which we weren’t aware. Maybe we weren’t in their circle of #IYKYK…
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