King George Planning Commission Recommends Denial of Caledon Solar Farm
Commissioners had concerns about a conservation easement that exists on the property, which is owned by County Attorney and State Senator Richard Stuart.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele
The King George Planning Commission last week voted 4-to-1 against recommending approval of a special exception permit that would allow for development of a utility scale solar farm on 122 acres owned by County Attorney and State Senator Richard Stuart.
Commissioner Denise Flatley’s motion stated that the application is “not compatible with [the Planning Commission’s] responsibility to provide for the preservation of agricultural and forestal lands and other lands of significance for protection of the national environment.”
The parcels are zoned for agricultural use and are located on Caledon Road next to Caledon State Park. The proposed solar farm would generate up to 22 megawatts of electricity for local use, and connect to existing distribution power lines on the property.
Of concern to the commissioners is the fact that the project sits within an open-space easement owned by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. There is an exclusion area where oil and gas extraction is an approved use, and the applicant, Caledon Solar, LLC/Terraform Power, reiterated at the September 9 Planning Commission meeting that the entire project is within this exclusion area.
The applicant, represented at the meeting by Tyler McGilvery, also states that commercial solar is another approved use in the exclusion area. McGilvery referenced a July 26, 2024 letter sent to Stuart from Travis Voyles, then the state secretary of natural and historic resources, in which Voyles states that “solar energy development is specifically permitted in certain areas of the property, where it is consistent with the easement.”
However, representatives from an alliance of conservation organizations—including the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust, the Piedmont Environmental Council, and the Land Trust of Virginia—point to the fact that according to an August 2, 2023, letter from Matthew Wells, director of the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), the easement’s “conservation protections do not allow the commercial solar development as preliminarily described.”
Wells’s letter states that in order for solar development to proceed, the easement language would have to be amended, including by removing language that would “[create] a private financial inurement.”
The easement was dedicated in 2001 by James Nash, the property owner prior to Stuart. It was purchased with a grant of $986,000 awarded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which required a matching grant from non-federal agencies. The matching grant funds were provided by the Virginia Outdoors Foundation ($425,000), The Nature Conservancy ($150,000), the Trust for Public Land ($10,000), the Virginia DCR ($46,000), and the landowner ($400,000).
Last summer, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed with DCR’s assessment that the easement prohibits commercial solar development, according to a June 21, 2024, letter from Colleen Sculley, assistant regional director for the Service’s Office of Conservation Investment.
“We understand that the current landowner, who purchased the property subject to the existing Easement, has requested the Department’s approval of a 125-acre commercial solar development on the property,” Sculley wrote. “We concur with the Department that the Easement prohibits commercial solar development… The proposed commercial solar development as described by the Department appears to be inconsistent with the purposes described in the competitive Federal grant proposal submitted by the Department on June 14, 2000, which the Service used to evaluate, rank and award Federal grant funds for the Easement acquisition.”
All three letters are included along with other application materials in the 575-page packet that was attached to the agenda for last week’s meeting.
Commissioners asked McGilvery for clarification on whether or not the easement holder has approved commercial solar as a use in the exclusion area.
“We have approval from DCR and that information has been shared,” McGilvery said, adding that he would have to “defer to the county attorney”—also the landowner—for further opinions about the language in the easement.
Roger Kniceley, James Monroe district representative, said he understands that the Planning Commission “[has] to stay away from the legal assessment, but I don’t want to get the county embroiled in lawsuits and precedents that could impact and discourage other people from putting their property in conservation easements.”
At-Large representative Ian Fox said he is “also wary about creating a precedent where easements can be potentially trampled on or negated in some way.”
“The bottom line for me is, it’s a good project in the wrong place,” he said.
Stanley Palivoda, the only commissioner to vote against recommending denial, stressed that, “It’s not up to us to delve into the legal [aspect].”
“I imagine that a judge will decide that,” he said.
The King George Board of Supervisors will make a final decision on the application in coming months.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”