photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

William Skepnek, center, and Quentin Templeton, right, appear at a hearing with Terelle Mock, left, on Dec. 17, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

Story updated at 6:15 p.m. Dec. 17, 2024:

A judge has ruled that Douglas County commissioners will be able to vote on two proposed plans for an 8 million-square-foot solar farm at their meeting on Wednesday, declining to grant an emergency order that residents and businesses sought to prevent the vote.

Attorneys for Grant Township and more than 20 residents and businesses had asked Douglas County District Court for a temporary restraining order that would prevent the commission from voting on a pair of key studies for the Kansas Sky Energy Center, a solar farm project proposed for the Midland Junction area north of North Lawrence.

At the hearing on Tuesday afternoon, District Court Judge James McCabria decided not to grant the restraining order, but he did order that construction on the project not be allowed to move forward until after the next hearing, a status conference that’s scheduled on Jan. 10. Even before McCabria’s order, no construction activity at the site had been planned during that period.

McCabria said that this would balance out the interests of the two parties – the county and the township – and after hearing concerns from Grant Township, he said that what would serve the public interest was preventing construction modification to the land at this time.

With the ruling, commissioners can move forward with their scheduled votes on both a stormwater management plan and an agrivoltaics plan at Wednesday’s meeting. The Kansas Sky Energy Center project — which would include more than 237,000 panels that would provide electricity for about 30,000 homes — can’t move forward until those plans are approved. They are among the last items left for county commissioners to approve on the project.

The latest filing said that Commissioner Patrick Kelly originally proposed delaying the vote by 30 days to give the township time to secure engineering reviews of the two plans. This offer came after Grant Township submitted a letter to the commission on Dec. 11, with Kelly being the sole commissioner to respond. Despite this, the vote remained scheduled for Wednesday.

Attorney Quentin Templeton said that there were massive issues created by the project, and that it violated dozens of county contracts, laws, rules and regulations. He listed many concerns at the hearing, including the hundreds of thousands of posts holding up the solar panels being driven into the soil and runoff tearing up roads and stormwater infrastructure.

Terelle Ashley Mock, representing Douglas County, said that the county had considered all of the concerns from Grant Township and would make a thoughtful determination on the vote on Wednesday.

Grant Township and the residents and businesses that sought the temporary restraining order already have filed a full lawsuit that argues the county is violating a number of its own regulations and policies by approving a conditional use permit for the project in April. The lawsuit, despite being filed in May, is still in its early stages after the county unsuccessfully sought to have the case moved to federal court.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Douglas County Chief Judge James McCabria appears at a hearing on Dec. 17, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

Attorneys for the plaintiff had been arguing that Douglas County District Court would have to step in and prevent further votes on the project, or else the County Commission would try to get the project fully approved before Grant Township and the other plaintiffs could have their day in court.

“If the court allows Defendant to change the status quo, no aggrieved person could ever have judicial review of a county’s decision,” attorneys for the plaintiff — Lawrence-based William Skepnek, Brennan Fagan, and Overland Park-based Templeton — wrote in their filing. “Defendant will be emboldened to rush to greenlight construction and moot the case before any judicial review.”

In their filing, the plaintiffs had asked the court to stop the county from “changing the status quo and voting on any further conditions to the (conditional use permit) until judicial review has finished.” If that had been granted, that would likely have meant that the Kansas Sky Energy Center project wouldn’t be in a position to receive its final approvals for several months.

Such a delay would have meant two new members who are slated to join the Douglas County Commission on Jan. 13 would have been involved in the deliberations on the Kansas Sky Energy Center. Voters previously approved expanding the Douglas County Commission from three members to five members. Both of the newly elected commissioners — Erica Anderson and Gene Dorsey — have told the Journal-World that they believe the County Commission should delay further votes on the solar project until the commission expands to five members. However, the current three commissioners have supported moving ahead on the project before the commission expands.

At least three entities had asked Douglas County commissioners to voluntarily delay their vote on the stormwater and agrivoltaics plans prior to Wednesday’s meeting – including Grant Township and the Douglas County Food Policy Council, as the Journal-World reported.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Quentin Templeton appears at a hearing on Dec. 17, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

The latest court filing, however, also included a Nov. 22 letter from the Douglas County Kaw Drainage District that was sent to county commissioners asking them to delay consideration of the stormwater plan.

The drainage district board, which is an elected body created by state statute, said in the letter that it was still seeking a firm with technical expertise to review the stormwater plan on the board’s behalf.

“In order to meet our statutory purpose, the District needs to thoroughly review the final plan,” the district’s board members said in the letter.

The drainage district — which is not a party to the lawsuit — said the effort to review the stormwater plan is likely to be significant, and noted that the stakes were high for surrounding property owners, including residents of North Lawrence.

“An inadequate plan could have significant adverse impacts on residents and property downstream, particularly since the recommended mitigations in the 2005 North Lawrence Drainage Study will not be part of the stormwater management plan,” the district said in its letter.

The 2005 North Lawrence Drainage Study found that the existing system of pipes and drainage infrastructure in North Lawrence already was overloaded and recommended that before any large-scale development north of North Lawrence be allowed that a large multimillion-dollar pump station be installed north of the city limits to divert new stormwater from traveling through North Lawrence.

County officials, however, have not required the construction of that pump station as a condition of the Kansas Sky Energy Center project. Rather, the county engineer has said he’s confident the solar project can devise a plan that will capture stormwater from the solar panels before the water leaves the site and flows toward North Lawrence.

The drainage district’s letter also states that it plans to take into consideration special stormwater regulations that are in the county code for the Maple Grove watershed, which the proposed project would be located in. Those regulations create stricter standards for projects to follow regarding stormwater management. However, the county has previously said the solar project won’t be required to meet those standards. That issue is a subject of the lawsuit against the county.

The Kansas Sky Energy Center project — which ultimately would be used to provide energy for Evergy, the state’s largest electric utility — has been a controversial project that has produced large numbers of supporters and opponents. Supporters have argued the project will help the county do its part to fight climate change, because it’s a major green energy project that will reduce reliance on coal and other climate-changing energy sources. Opponents largely have said they are supportive of solar energy but don’t approve of the proposed site for the project because it would occupy prime farmland and create flooding problems for North Lawrence and the surrounding area.