LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — When Mayor Linda Gorton testified against the East Kentucky Solar Energy proposal her testimony was not against the idea of creating more solar energy sources for Lexington.
“Our farmland is a 2.3-billion-dollar economic impact on our economy,” the mayor said Tuesday morning from her downtown office. “I just think that is a poor use of prime, productive farmland. I believe in solar."
That proposal, the mayor feels, would’ve been a detriment to farmers, and ultimately consumers, as it would’ve eliminated valuable farmland by installing solar panels in its place.
To proceed with a grand scale solar project for Lexington, while protecting the county’s agriculture business, the city recently initiated a study of the landfill attached to the old Haley Pike Waste Management facility in the southeastern part of town. Phase-1 was recently completed.
“I knew other cities were doing solar on landfills, so I wanted to investigate if that was a possibility. There’s some promising information,” Gorton said of the study.
Phase-1 didn’t tackle the issues of cost, which the mayor expects will be a part of phase-2. The next phase will also have to determine how many acres of the hundreds on that site will be viable for holding the weight of a solar panel farm.
“There seems to be a few hundred acres (at the landfill) that are possible, so I'm excited about it and i think it's the way for us to go,” she said.
Lexington is growing and Mayor Gorton believes we will soon be a city of more than 400,000 residents.
“As we’re getting to be a bigger city, we must pay attention to energy sources and what can help us. I think it's important to mix sources of energy for a city, so if something happens to one, you're not totally down,” the mayor explained.
Gorton referred to “Solarize Lexington,” a program that’s already helped some firehouses, churches, and lower-income businesses to benefit from solar panels on their rooftops. She indicated that Fayette County’s school building could be next in line.
“What about the school system?” she asked, despite knowing this has already been discussed. “They have lots of roofs and they're big. We're in conversations with a lot of folks in the community about this to see where they might be to partner, or to go in on a plan for Fayette county."
“It’s a source we have to investigate,” she said, as the conversation drifted back to generating solar energy at the Haley Pike landfill site.
“It’s difficult for it to be the only source here,” she acknowledged of solar power in Kentucky.
