To the editor:

The best places for solar array installations are on the roofs of big box stores, in industrial park areas, or in abandoned parking lots — that is, on land we’ve already dug up, concreted over, i.e., “developed.”

The second best places for solar arrays are along our major thoroughfares. And if chopping down large sections of woods is required then, as objectionable as it may be on first consideration, another good place might be close to housing developments.

Borrego Solar’s project developer for the Brookwood array got it exactly right at the most recent Westport Planning Board meeting. He observed that, because this project was set back 800 feet from the nearest homeowner, no abutters had bothered to attend. No one showed up to voice concerns about the clearcutting of 32 acres just west of them, some of it in wetlands only 25 feet from Angeline Brook, with an access road crossing over Snell Creek. Borrego Solar was patting itself on the back for having dodged the standing room only crowd of very unhappy citizens who had shown up at the first hearing that evening to object to the 14-acre array to be built directly above their houses on Watuppa Pond.

Angeline and Snell are rare coldwater streams that support equally rare sea-run brook trout. Thirty-two acres of huge black (hot) panels two car-lengths from these streams—home to one of the most important remaining native sea-run brook trout populations in New England — will soon replace thousands of cooling, soil stabilizing, water purifying trees.

When the Planning Board asked the project director to reconsider and move the panels further away from Angeline Brook (specifically, the 100 feet required in our new by-law), he basically replied, “No, and you can’t make us.” Unsurprisingly, Borrego Solar is much more concerned with maximizing its profits than destroying habitats.

We also got to hear from a local housing developer who happens to be the primary landowner of the Brookwood property. After threatening the Planning Board with the construction of a 39-lot subdivision should the solar array not be approved, he spoke of his generous decision to lease the land to Borrego rather than to construct housing. Apparently, clearcutting woods is considered “low-impact” development. He also noted that, as state law mandates a portion of land be set aside to “compensate” for development, there would now be a “wildlife corridor” on the other side of Angeline Brook. Happily for all the animals too large to squeeze under the 9-foot high chain link fence enclosing 32 acres of solar panels they will now have a little lane of green to go about their various animal lives.

I realize it is almost incomprehensible to think that a corporation would voluntarily agree to step back a few feet from one of the only remaining salter streams left in New England, but wouldn’t it be really nice if they did? Fellows, I’m pleading with you to show us you have a heart. That you respect the wishes of a small town in which you’re getting ready to set up shop.

Here’s another thought about solar array placement: They should be out where we all can see and live with them, not hidden in the woods — or what’s left of the woods after you’ve chopped them down.

Instead of relegating every other living creature to move through our construction destruction along narrow wooded corridors, let’s try to think differently about our insatiable appetite for land use. Let’s do away with what developers call “beauty strips,” thin strips of land that run along our roads and highways where trees are left uncut. These treed strips hide all sorts of things we don’t want to look at or admit to, allowing us to pretend we live in a green world rather than in the dug up, clear-cut, concrete-covered one that we actually do.

Maybe then a few more of our species will care enough to show up at town meetings to try to protect what little green all species have left.

Constance Gee

Westport