Dougherty commissioners learn more about plans for solar power facility

The sounds of cars speeding down Moultrie Road are nothing new.

But what people see along that road could be drastically different in about a year, when part of it might be filled with about 440,000 solar panels standing about seven feet tall.

That’s the plan from Dougherty County Solar, to put a photovoltaic solar power energy production facility on a 1,089-acre space bordered by Moultrie Road and Spring Flats Road.

Those plans were presented to Dougherty County commissioners at their meeting Monday.

Unlike the road outside it, Planning and Development Director Paul Forgey said the space would stay relatively noise free.

“There’s no offsite impact because it’s a solar facility like there would be with a garbage dump, that you would smell or you’d see dozens of trucks going to and from every day,” he told commissioners.

Forgey said only one or two employees would be there each week for maintenance.

“For the most part, it’s just a facility that just sits there and collects solar power, basically like crops that would collect the energy from the sun,” he said.

That solar power would later be sold from Dougherty County Solar to Georgia Power.

Stephen Land, a project manager for NextEra Energy, said the construction of the facility will require about 300 workers.

“The ratio of locally sourced construction jobs is about 70 percent of that,” he told commissioners.

Land said they hope to start work by January of 2019 and finish up eight to nine months later.

Margaret DeArmon, who lives on Gaissert Road, near the proposed site, also addressed the commission.

She said she doesn’t have a problem with the solar energy project, but she did with the signs notifying neighbors about it.

“You can’t see it unless you can turn to the side,” she told commissioners.

DeArmon asked that commissioners find out how this project would impact neighbors like her before they vote on it.

“I would hope that all of you would do your independent investigation of this project and not necessarily rely on just the planning department or the planning committee,” she said.

Construction for this facility will require special approval from the commission. The vote for that will come next Monday.