By Brian Shane

Staff Writer

(Oct. 23, 2025) Posting a hefty decommissioning bond ahead of solar farm approval is now the law in Worcester County, where officials made the change as emergency legislation.

Emergency Bill #25-04 adds decommissioning bonds to the review process for major solar farm projects and legally establishes abandoned solar projects as a public nuisance. Solar developers of projects greater than 2 megawatts must post a bond at 125% of the project cost. They’ll also have to provide detailed decommissioning and restoration plans.

Jennifer Keener, the county’s director of Development Review & Permitting, brought the bill before the Worcester County Commissioners at the board’s Oct. 7 meeting to be considered as emergency legislation.

It was the second time the commissioners took the bill up for an emergency vote. The first time they heard the bill, in mid-August, it resulted in vote being tabled because two commissioners, Jim Bunting and Caryn Abbott, were absent.

When the vote came up again Oct. 7, Bunting abstained, saying he hadn’t been present to hear Keener’s original pitch. The commissioners ended up passing the bill in 6-0 vote.

In Worcester County, any bill requires 6 of 7 commissioner votes to be enacted immediately as emergency legislation while an ordinary law takes effect 45 days after passage.

The issue came up over the summer. After the commissioners were briefed on a proposed 40-acre, 5-MW solar farm off Queponco Road – that’s enough electricity to power 1,500 homes – they didn’t like that planning for a solar farm’s eventual decommissioning came at the end of the approval process, not the beginning.

Commissioners also said they didn’t want to be surprised should a solar farm suddenly cease operations, leaving behind acres of junked metal, glass, and electronics.

Developers now must post bonds with both the state and the county. Initial bond estimates would be prepared by an independent engineer and re-evaluated every five years. The county’s bond would not include the cost of salvage, which the state does require.

Solar farm owners must now notify the county not only when a facility is about to go dark, but also when it’s been out of service for six months. A one-year deadline for decommissioning is now mandatory. Projects that end up abandoned would be deemed a nuisance under county law.

Keener said the latest draft of the bill had been slightly amended:  before, it defined the principal purpose of ground-mounted solar systems as providing electricity to the grid. That’s been struck.

“Forget about how the power is generated, where it’s going. It’s the size that’s being generated on site, just to keep it clean and simple,” she told the commissioners.

Another tweak to the bill says developers must explain in detail what they’ll do to restore the site to pre-development conditions, including a soil assessment, when a solar farm is decommissioned.

Ultimately, all solar farm applications go before the state’s Public Service Commission for approval. State law says counties can offer feedback but cannot adopt zoning laws or other regulations that would get in the way of any solar farm development.