Friday, September 05, 2008

Privatizing Park Land?

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According to this story in the Sun, County Executive Ken Ullman is proposing to allow SunEdison to install solar panels on 7 acres of the former county landfill in Ellicott City.

Larry Carson reports that Ullman “envisions a 7-acre solar array that would produce an estimated 548,418 kilowatt hours of electricity the first year. The power would be sold to the Baltimore Regional Cooperative Purchasing Committee, a regional power grid supplier. The county would provide the land, which is next to Worthington Elementary School, and the facility would be built by Sun Edison, a Beltsville company.”

 What the article doesn’t mention is that this land is currently county park land. The former county landfill was turned over to the Recreation and Parks Department years ago and is slated to eventually become Worthington Park.

 Is the county executive now proposing to give away a significant portion of this park land to private solar energy concern?

 Stay tuned.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know which is worse...a parkland which smells of methane gas or a solar park which smells of methane gas. Actually, I would prefer to have a tax break. I'm sure that I can spend a property tax break on plenty of energy to heat and cool my buildings. Why waste my tax dollars on some boneheaded idea to create electricity for Worthington? If they want to convert Worthington park to a solar panel, let them....just don't do it with my tax dollars. With my property tax dollars, give me a tax credit to put solar panels on my roof and let me benefit from clean energy. Worthington residents should pay for their own solar panels.
HH