“If this legislation passes, it’s going to directly harm farm families,” Hand said. He testified that farmers leasing their land to his company, which operates about 60 MW of solar in Vermont, generate annual incomes of up to $30,000. “You might not like their choice, but it’s not your land, it’s their land. They should be allowed to choose what to do with it.”
Ultimately, it seems neither measure seeking to bar solar on farmland will pass this session, which will likely end in June. The Senate dropped the section of its bill that would have restricted solar, and the House version has languished in committee for several months.
Even so, concerns about renewables taking up farmland aren’t going away in Vermont or elsewhere. Local renewable energy bans fueled by the argument have sprung up in states such as Ohio, and the Trump administration has blocked funding for solar on what it describes as “productive farmland.”
Climate activist, writer, and longtime Vermonter Bill McKibben vehemently disagrees with the notion that solar development and agriculture are at odds with each other.
“The farmland argument is wrong,” McKibben said. “Clean electrons are a valuable crop we use lots of, and produce too little of (unlike, say, milk).” Agriculture is not innocent when it comes to land use, he noted, polluting soils with nitrogen and phosphorus that are “doing billion-dollar damage” to Vermont’s Lake Champlain.
He also pointed to the success of agrivoltaics, in which certain crops or animals such as sheep thrive on fields shaded by solar panels.
“If you care about the future of agriculture on this planet,” he added, “you should be focused on driving down carbon emissions so we will still be able to grow things.”
Back in Lowell, on a rainy April day, Tetreault sat at his kitchen table and reminisced about the history of the hayfield Northland wants to build on — and what could’ve been.
Currently a senior vice president for Vermont feed provider Poulin Grain, Tetreault grew up on a now-defunct dairy across the street from the plot. Over the last few decades, he and his wife, Pam, have bought up properties in town to diversify their income, planting Christmas trees and pumpkins and operating a small farm stand. In 2023, they tried to purchase the hayfield from the Raboin family, whose patriarch, Robert, had recently died. They intended to keep the land agricultural, starting with growing hay and possibly expanding their Christmas tree or farm stand.
But the couple, who offered $165,000, couldn’t compete with the solar company’s undisclosed offer, which Tetreault claimed was about $280,000. Hand said he wouldn’t specify the amount of his offer, but noted the land was publicly listed for $250,000.
Both Tetreault and Manning described the Raboin family, who are selling the property, as very good people. Robert’s wife, Rita, still lives in a yellow house down the road. A Raboin family member at the home declined to comment for this story.
“The people that are opposed to this want the Raboins to get the best they can for their property,” Manning said. “Nobody feels like they’re doing this out of anything but concern for the immediate community.” Like Tetreault, Manning voted in 2010 in favor of the 63-MW Kingdom Community Wind project, which overlooks the town.
Tetreault said he was willing to sacrifice some aesthetics back then, and saw the financial benefits: He and his wife saved roughly $9,000 in property taxes last year thanks to the wind project’s annual payments to Lowell, which VTDigger reported totaled about $600,000 in 2025. The solar farm, meanwhile, will pay only about $20,000 in state property taxes per year, plus a smaller amount in municipal taxes, according to Hand’s testimony to the Public Utility Commission.
The wind proposal was also distinguished by the fact that Green Mountain Power, the utility backing the installation, promised to pull out if residents voted against the project.
“Green Mountain Power bent over backwards to communicate to the community what was going to happen,” holding multiple meetings and community discussions, Manning said.
The town’s select board could call for a similar vote on the solar project, but it wouldn’t be binding, Manning said, since energy-permitting decisions happen at the state level. Lowell Select Board Chair Jennifer Blay, who declined to comment for this story, told the state legislature that the town didn’t hold a referendum on the solar development because she didn’t want to pit neighbor against neighbor.
But the town did hold a vote on whether to spend $50,000 on a lawyer to help fight the project. The result was a tie, 86–86, with a single ballot that would have tipped the result toward paying the lawyer struck as faulty. In the end, VTDigger reports, officials found unallocated funds in the budget to hire an attorney to help it navigate intervening in the Public Utility Commission case.
“Some people believe in solar, but they don’t want to see it there,” said Sonja Blodgett, a paraprofessional at the nearby school who opposes the array. “We already gave up our mountains.” Blodgett is yet another resident who voted for the wind turbines but against the solar farm. She worries the development would ruin the view, create disruptive noise during construction and maintenance, and harm local waterways and grasslands — concerns that the school and town select board echo in testimony to regulators. The testimony does not cite any concrete evidence backing up claims that the installation will result in environmental damage beyond the project site.
Blodgett wants to know why the solar couldn’t be situated on the shuttered asbestos mine that rises like a massive gray mountain north of town. But Lowell prohibits development on the property or disturbance of the soils, which would cause carcinogenic asbestos to enter the air and pose health threats. Hand said that the lack of power lines to the area would necessitate building new electric infrastructure, increasing costs for customers.
The developer says he would have liked to pick a less controversial location. Ideally, “it would be totally hidden from view, and no one would ever see any of it,” he said. “But it’s Vermont. If you need to be near roads, flat land, not have trees, near electrical infrastructure, then it’s going to be visible from somewhere.”
Soon, the fate of the parcel will be decided, with the Public Utility Commission expected to rule on permits before summer. (A spokesperson said the agency could not comment on a specific project or pending case.)
But already, the Lowell project has had knock-on effects: At least one property owner, Laurel Appleton Griffin, sold her bed-and-breakfast after hearing about the solar development, which would border her flower farm behind the inn.
“We were devastated to learn about the surrounding Raboin farm property being sold to the solar company as it would vastly change so much about our own property and livelihood,” Griffin, who once considered the property her “forever home,” said in an email. She added that while she and her husband “absolutely support clean energy and applaud solar arrays being used in appropriate locations,” she couldn’t stand watching the destruction of prime growing land and the town center.
The bed-and-breakfast changed hands to Damien Walker, who moved from Arizona to Vermont in November. The 48-year-old relocated from his notoriously hot, dry hometown of Phoenix in part because he felt Vermont was a safer place to confront climate change, which is driven by the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.
“Arizona’s going to run out of water in the next two decades,” he said.
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