Taxpayers could be on the hook for solar clean-up

Foothills County is a co-sponsor of a resolution passed by the Rural Municipalities Association calling on the province to proactively deal with companies setting up solar farms.

Reeve Delilah Miller says landowners are being offered big money to allow them to set up hundreds or thousands of solar panels.

"If these companies become insolvent or a lot of them are from out of Canada, they're not even in Canada, if they disappear who's left holding the bag on this clean up so it's the same thing as the Orphan Well Association where it's the taxpayer that gets left with the clean up or the landowner so we're saying to these landowners, you sign these agreements you need to be taking some kind of bond and making sure that you have enough funds set aside should these companies disappear and your end of life on these solar panels is 25 years, who's going to clean that up," she says.

Miller says the county is also concerned about putting solar farms on productive land and feels they should go in industrial areas or on unproductive land.

She also suggests perhaps every new home should have a solar component built in.

There's a huge solar array being installed just south of Aldersyde in Foothills County.

"TC Energy, we've had many conversations but there again that's an Alberta Energy and Alberta Environment application and they are the approving authority on that. Trans Canada is at least a credible company and so we're hoping we don't have those issues with them but right now there's nothing that makes them provide any type of surety bond, they are guided by a pretty lengthy remediation order on these types of facilities, so they're not allowed to just walk away from them they do have to have a reclamation plan."

The county has some new land uses coming forward that they've never had before, and Miller says they're learning as they go and educating themselves.

She says Alberta Environment is also going through the same thing, but they have the experts in house that the county doesn't so they're left to rely on the province for help.

TC Energy's Saddlebrook solar farm site