To the editor:
For more than a decade, Sustainable Westchester has helped Westchester County residents and businesses access clean and affordable energy, including enrollment in the guaranteed savings of community solar projects.
Building safer and more resilient communities is at the core of our mission and, with that goal in mind, we write to encourage residents of Briarcliff Manor to consider the benefits of the Briarcliff Solar project, a proposed community solar asset. Transforming the former Philips campus on Scarborough Road – vacant for 11 years and long deemed a liability and eyesore – into a genuinely useful community project is exactly the kind of practical, local investment communities should welcome. The large, heavily vandalized buildings will be removed to make space for the ground-mounted solar arrays.
The project will help reduce the cost of residents’ electric bills who enroll as subscribers. As costs continue to rise, community solar is increasingly critical to providing relief to families, as it comes without the prohibitive costs of installing rooftop panels. Further, cost savings from enrolling in community solar extend the entire community, including renters, condo owners, and everyone who pays an electric bill, but whose own roof can’t support individual solar panels.
The project represents a major private and public investment in Briarcliff, strengthening the tax base, and providing lasting financial support for local institutions and schools – all while silently generating power, with no emissions, no noise, and no traffic.
The project restores open space habitat populated with wildlife that benefits the land. Many of the trees on the current, long-neglected site are dead, non-native or overgrown with invasive species. The Briarcliff Solar project will clear that overgrowth and restore the property to 42 acres of pollinator-friendly meadow, with a net gain in carbon removed from the air. After the project has completed its lifecycle, the restored meadow would continue to provide welcome habitat for bees, butterflies, and ground-nesting birds, such as the migratory bobolink.
The Village is currently reviewing the project’s environmental impact statement with the public comment period open now. I encourage you to make your voice heard in support of this important community project and urge the Board of Trustees to give it the consideration it deserves.
— Leo Wiegman
Director of Energy Systems, Sustainable Westchester
