The county has recently been looking into ways to assess usable farmland that owners wish to change over to solar projects.

The County Farmland Protection Board along with the County Planning Board have been looking at different ways to review specifically solar installations on land that has been used for agricultural purposes, as there has been an increase in the amount of requests for solar projects. Recently, they have come up with a form and a scoring system.

“A few months ago we came up with a form to assess what we are looking at,” Jim Joy, member of the Chautauqua County Farm Bureau and protection board, said. “It is an impact assessment form for solar projects and includes a scoring system.”

Joy said the board did not want to see land that could be considered prime farmland to be changed over to solar when it could still be put to good use for other farm work. The scoring system included as a part of the form will help to determine that.

“The scoring system will allow us to score the land and if a farm scores poorly, then we would say it can make use of it in other ways, like solar,” Joy said. “It will allow us to make good decisions, and let us prove why we did what we did with it.”

Joy added that local municipalities will all have access to the form so they will be able to see the scores for themselves. The hope is for town boards to be able to look at the form if they have questions and for them to be able to see why the decision was made.

Joy used an example of land that the board recently scored out in Kiantone which scored poorly so was able to be made use of in other ways besides farm land, specifically for a solar project.

Additionally, Joy said the state has been looking for ways to do something similar to this, but as far as he knew no one else had done so yet.

“I don’t believe anywhere else in the state has done anything like this yet,” Joy said. “Maybe when we get it out it will spread. It is something that is needed. It can be used for other projects as well, not just solar.”