After 16 months’ discussion involving the Logan Township supervisors, the township Planning Commission, the Zoning Hearing Board, solar developers and residents, the supervisors last week adopted changes to create a more robust zoning framework for solar development that will accommodate technical advances and increased solar electric demand.

The effort began with the Zoning Board, moved to the supervisors, then to the planners, then to the supervisors again, then to the planners again, to the supervisors a third time, to the planners yet again, then back to the supervisors for last week’s action.

Two specific cases helped drive the effort: a resident’s request for a variance to allow a ground-based array large enough for household needs that the Zoning Board had to deny for legal reasons; and a Harrisburg partnership’s request to install a solar farm on agricultural ground in Coburn, which triggered a rezoning request that aroused neighborhood opposition — and eventual denial.

The first case led the Zoning Board to suggest to the supervisors that solar regulation needed modernized, because electrical demands were increasing beyond the range of the existing ordinance; while the second case led to a suggestion from Supervisor Joe Metzgar that a tweak to allow solar farms in agricultural zones, as well as industrial zones, could ease Coburn residents’ concerns.

Thus, while the old ordinance restricted ground-based accessory or household arrays to 600 square feet or half the footprint of the house, the new one doesn’t have that sort of size restriction; and while the old ordinance would have required a major rezoning in Coburn that residents thought created the possibility of unwanted development, the adoption of Metzgar’s idea should set those concerns at rest.

“We tried to work it so everybody is happy,” Metzgar said. “So you can do what you want and others are protected.”

John Feather, owner of the Coburn ground where the Harrisburg partnership has proposed a 15-acre solar farm, thanked the supervisors.

The project seemed to be dead after a split vote of the supervisors denied Feather’s request to rezone the acreage to industrial, along with about 250 additional acres Feather owned, so the solar farm site would connect with an existing industrial area in Mill Run, thus avoiding illegal spot zoning.

Now that all the ground can remain agricultural, Feather plans to reopen discussions with the Harrisburg partnership.

“I’m hopeful,” he said.

The proposed site of the solar farm is indeed “out of sight,” said Supervisor Ron Heller, who visited it recently.

“That was the whole plan,” Feather said.

He wouldn’t have agreed to the partnership’s proposal in the first place if it had been “intrusive” for his neighbors, he said.

He is working with the partnership so that income from his property can offset the increasingly burdensome real estate taxes on it, and thus keep it in his family, he said.

The vote on the ordinance adoption was unanimous, in contrast to the split vote that resulted in the denial of the Coburn rezoning.

It shows “we’re not hard-faced, stone-faced people,” said Supervisors Chairman Jim Patterson. “We try to make government user-friendly.”

One supervisor is all-in on solar: Patrick Jones, who in November invested $72,000 to have solar arrays installed on the roofs of his house and barn to serve the power needs of his all-electric household.

In the winter, his electric bill went down 50%, but in the warmer months he’s been making a “nice profit” selling the electricity his arrays are producing back to the grid, Jones said.

With the help of government rebates, the investment should pay for itself, he said.

He would encourage anyone to make a similar investment, if they can, Jones said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.