Recently, the firm Solstice Solar proposed an agreement where the Town of Woodstock would get a commission for every resident who signed up to be part of the company’s solar arrays. Central Hudson would still deliver the power, but the source would come from solar arrays.
The Woodstock Environmental Commission (WEC) said a majority of Solstice’s arrays are on former farmlands.
“Let’s keep farmland as farmland,” councilwoman Laura Ricci said, noting the panels are far away and doesn’t really provide jobs to Woodstockers.
“They don’t see Solstice as being better than any other company,” Ricci said of the Environmental Commission.
She said the WEC also found that while it is easy to enter into agreements with Solstice, it is difficult to get out of them.
Councilman Lorin Rose suggested the town-owned cell tower site on California Quarry Road might be a good location for a solar array if it can feed into the Central Hudson grid from there.