The day before the Montgomery County planning meeting, this writer’s father had solar installed on his house—an event that seemed improbable six months ago. Just a few months ago, he kept trying to spark a debate over electrification. He’s the kind of guy who pooh-poohed Priuses until he had to drive six hours one way to get to work at the beginning of the week, six hours back every weekend for a couple of years.
When I heard he was going solar, he cited the calculations on his spreadsheet. Even without tax breaks — he opposes those— he was going to see a net gain.
He’s like plenty of other pro-Trump people locally who have put solar arrays in their yards. It just made good economic sense.
Solar energy didn’t used to be polarizing. It was a good use of money and land, so listening to the testimonies at the Copper Box Commission Meeting on Tuesday, March 10, inspired close attention to the anxieties and concerns raised in opposition to solar farms in the county.
Fire risk
Concerns about peat fires and volunteer departments facing a runaway blaze are emotional bullseyes, especially for people who remember actual soil fires. But the record from Indiana’s existing 119 solar farms shows that there have been zero fire disasters. “Have you ever tried to light a window on fire?” asked one man who owned a 100-year-old farm here in the area.
The solar panels are made of glass, silicon, and aluminum that do not readily burn. (Silicon and glass are made from sand. Silicon is commonly used as heat protectors in kitchens, from hot pads to handle covers.) Fire risk in these projects is concentrated in wiring, inverters or transformers placed on roads for access. The risk is the same as for traditional electrical transmission and the developer has committed to annual training with local departments plus site design that allows equipment to be reached quickly. As one solar builder and local volunteer firefighter put it, we have “more of a problem at Shades Park with the down timber for fire than anything else” in the county.
Land never going back to agriculture
Several speakers framed this as “a total loss of good agricultural land” that can “never be reclaimed,” invoking stories of peat fires sterilizing soil for decades. Yet the project is a 30‑year lease, not a sale, and the developer is required by the county ordinance to post a full decommissioning bond up front to remove equipment and restore the land at the end of its useful life. The company’s vegetation expert described a site‑wide perennial cover designed to build organic matter, increase infiltration, fix nitrogen—farmers should love this— and dramatically cut insecticide, herbicide, and fungicide use across 100 percent of the site, inside and outside the fence. As farmers know, those who build CRP‑like cover and rest soils routinely see better structure and fertility afterward than if they had kept those acres in continuous corn and soy with heavy chemical programs.
The company will sell and walk away
It’s easy to imagine a far‑off boardroom flipping projects like stocks, especially when people have been burned by other industries. Here, though, the developer emphasized that its core philosophy is to be an owner‑operator, not a project flipper, and that it intends to own and run Copper Box for its full 30‑year life.
Yes, we live in a time when trust in business and institutions is at an all-time low. But decommissioning does not depend on corporate goodwill: the ordinance requires a bond covering the full cost of removal to be posted at the start of construction and to follow the project for its entire lifespan. Even if the project were sold, that financial backstop stays in place, so the county is not left with an orphaned facility.
Harm to birds, insects, and wildlife
The image of cranes and other birds disappearing from a nearby 80‑acre bird sanctuary that hosts 247 species, including sandhill cranes, suggests trouble. So, what does the evidence suggest?
Local ecologists and biologists pointed to a large and growing body of evidence that, compared to ro-crop fields, native plantings under solar arrays reduce erosion and pesticide runoff while improving habitat for insects and birds. One conservation professional hired for this project described a customized seed mix for the entire site to boost pollinators, soil health and water quality, and a beekeeper spoke about how 900 acres of diverse forage could significantly help honeybees that now struggle with toxic chemicals and monocultures. A visitor to another Indiana project reported watching sandhill cranes foraging comfortably among the panels, and a long‑time solar builder said he consistently sees “more bugs and birds there than there ever was when it was being farmed.
Glyphosate and other chemicals
The word “glyphosate” triggers understandable worry; cancer, Parkinson’s and poor water quality sit very close to home here. Glysophate is among the same chemicals many conventional farmers already use in far larger quantities on intensively tilled fields.
In this project, vegetation management is designed around establishing a dense perennial cover within two to three years so that spot treatments, not broadcast spraying, handle weed pressure. The developer is already working with vegetation consultants and has a track record of using local contractors and farmers for seeding and management, which keeps agronomic decisions closer to people who live with the land.
Noise and visual blight
People worry about an eyesore. The panels, which stand about as tall as a mature cornstalk, don’t generate sound. Behind Pleasant Meadows, the quiet subdivision on the west side of town and the Boys and Girls Club, suffers no disturbance.
Copper Box is designed with more than 500 feet of setbacks from homes. Third‑party appraisers who studied similar Indiana projects using matched‑pair home sales data found no negative impact on nearby property values, which aligns with the county staff report.
Blocking future development
Opponents argue that once 900–1,800 acres are under panels, the county has closed the door on neighborhoods and businesses that could have located there instead. But the temporary nature of solar is exactly what distinguishes it from permanent development; there is very little concrete, no sewered subdivisions, and no long‑lived foundations to dig out when use changes. At the end of the lease, the ground can be easily returned, fallow and ready to use as owners choose. In other states, there are examples of large solar projects with new home construction directly adjacent on three sides, suggesting that proximity to panels does not freeze out development or crush demand.
Power exported out of state, not filling the “15% gap”
It’s easy to resent the idea that local land might serve big‑city customers elsewhere while Montgomery County sees none of the energy benefits. Yet Indiana is currently a net importer of electricity, bringing in about 15 percent of its power from other states, and Copper Box ties directly into a Duke Energy transmission line feeding the Crawfordsville substation. That means the project contributes to regional reliability and helps close the state’s overall deficit, supporting the grid that serves local homes and businesses. Energy markets are interconnected, but the more generation that exists close to load, the less dependent Indiana is on distant fossil‑fuel plants and volatile global supply shocks.
Heavy metals leaching into soil and water
Talk of cadmium and “hundreds of thousands of poles” punching contamination into groundwater speaks to another fear. But the panels planned here are described as mostly silicon, glass, and aluminum, “non‑toxic in nature,” with no liquid inside to leak and no mechanism to “leech into anything.” Multiple speakers worried about high water tables and well contamination, yet no one could point to actual cases of heavy‑metal pollution from modern silicon‑based solar projects in Indiana, despite 4.2 gigawatts already operating in the state. By contrast, current row‑crop systems regularly send fertilizers, pesticides and sediment into ditches, creeks, and wells—harms that the perennial groundcover is designed to reduce.
Soft soils and peat
The history of peat burning on this site is real and rightly unnerving for those who farmed it or heard the stories. However, the developer has already conducted geotechnical studies and explicitly committed to avoiding “the areas with the softest soils,” using new racking that follows the terrain and significantly reduces grading compared to older projects. One Indiana project of similar size cut grading needs from 500 acres to about 30 with this approach, preserving topsoil rather than scraping it away. The company also stated that panels will not be placed on muck soils identified in the maps, directly addressing the worst‑case fire scenario people feared.
“We’re not ready for renewables—if they worked, oil companies would have switched.”
The quote from a TV show—if solar and wind were truly the future, “Chevron, Shell, Standard… would be putting these up left and right”—captures a broad cultural skepticism, not just a local one.
But the reality outside this hearing is that utilities, manufacturers and even some oil majors are investing in solar because, at scale, it is now one of the cheapest forms of new electricity. Indiana’s own energy task force, created by the governor, is working from the premise that the state must pursue an “all‑of‑the‑above” strategy to meet rapidly rising demand, including from data centers, and that the state is already an “energy deficit” importer.
When skeptics point to EV disappointments or policy shifts, they’re really pointing to the messiness of transition, not proof that new technology cannot work; every major change in farming—from tractors to hybrid seeds—went through similar backlash and uneven adoption before quietly becoming normal.
Would you rethink?
When we face unknowns, it’s natural to resort to what ifs and what abouts. Honestly, we’ve been asked to rethink what we trust often. Fears are not illegitimate. They are native warning signals. In response, we need to test them against evidence and remember that humans are inclined to prioritize “fitting in” and interpersonal connections first.
What did you hear? Would you rethink it? What would convince you? Because, like this writer’s father, a man nearing his 70, we balance logic and concern. And when it suits us, when it benefits us, we often shift mindsets.
Any company coming in and asking to impact our community should build in local control and safeguards to calm concerns.
This company did.
And our county will face a huge shortfall after last year’s Senate Bill 1. We may want to weigh the value of an infusion of tax dollars, and ask our county to distribute them to emergency services, roads, and other rural projects.
What some of us heard: Bonds for decommissioning, written fire‑training commitments, drainage reviews, and clear setback rules are not just technicalities; they are concrete ways of saying: “We expect things to go right, but we’ve planned for if they don’t.”
An honest column about Copper Box can acknowledge that some opposition flows from love of land and a lifetime of watching bad deals roll through rural America. It can also gently ask: when our worries outpace the evidence from projects already in the ground, are we protecting Montgomery County—or are we letting the fear of the unknown close off a tool that could strengthen farms, county budgets, wildlife habitat and the grid our grandkids will depend on?