Maryland environment secretary Ben Grumbles denied a permit Wednesday for a solar farm project that Georgetown University wanted to build and that would have involved razing about 210 acres of trees in rural Charles County, Md.
Local activists vocally opposed the project in public hearings hosted by Grumbles, saying they appreciated Georgetown’s goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions but worried that the project would endanger the area’s birds and lead to runoff that would put tributaries to the Chesapeake Bay at risk. Grumbles said in a statement that “water quality-related conditions” were not met at the site, a rural area about 12 miles west of La Plata.
“While Maryland strongly supports the increased use of clean and renewable energy sources, these two proposed projects would harm the nearby high-quality stream in Charles County and threaten our continued restoration progress in the Chesapeake Bay watershed,” Grumbles said. “This is an unacceptable trade-off for the environmental benefits of clean energy.”
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Rachel Chason over at the Washington Post