On Wednesday, a contingent sat at the front of a large room at the Ada County Courthouse, clad in yellow shirts that read “Don’t tread on my sunshine.” The group, along with over 100 others, was there before the County Commission to weigh in on how hard it should be to develop solar facilities on local farmland.
At first, Ada County staff had proposed an outright ban on solar farms in irrigated prime farmland, which the county defined as land with the “best combination of physical and chemical characteristics” for agriculture.
The county’s planning and zoning commissioners had been uncomfortable with the outright ban, according to Brianna Bustos, spokesperson for Ada County’s Development Services Department…