Editor, Gazette-Journal:

In last week’s edition, the Gazette-Journal reported that York District supervisor Phillip Bazzani expressed his opposition to the increase in solar farm applications in Gloucester. According to the article, Bazzani’s concerns centered upon environmental risk and property value impact. Bazzani has also publicly stated that he is concerned that solar farms would significantly negatively impact the “rural nature of our county.” He proposed a motion for a moratorium to prevent any other solar farm projects in the county until the county passed regulatory provisions controlling such activity. Fortunately that motion failed 5-2.

Solar farm and agricultural farm sites require similar geographic and topographic land characteristics—large areas of level, cleared non-marsh terrain. Agricultural farms and solar farms are perfectly complementary.

Much has been written of the decline of farms in the eastern U.S., where relatively small farms predominate. A signif...