photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Douglas County commissioners held their business meeting on Wednesday, January 22, 2025 at the Douglas County courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St.

Testing for zinc levels in groundwater will be required at future solar projects in Douglas County, the County Commission decided at its meeting on Wednesday.

The commission voted 4-1 in favor of requiring the testing, with Commissioner Karen Willey opposed. The vote comes about a month after the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission recommended that the testing rule be approved.

As the Journal-World reported, solar energy projects use piers coated with zinc to support their solar panels. The new rule states that wells will have to be dug upstream and downstream of future solar projects and samples will have to be taken to see if zinc has gotten into the groundwater from those piers.

Willey said that she struggled with the zinc testing proposal, because she didn’t think there was any data to suggest that groundwater contamination was a concern.

“I do not see the need for it or that this answers a real concern,” Willey said. She added that while it does address a concern from people in the community, “I just don’t see that (this concern) is based on any facts that we were able to discover in the process.”

Commissioner Shannon Reid said that there was a lot of complexity in the discussion along with a lot of unknowns, but that she didn’t think the testing requirement would cause any negative consequences.

“Ultimately, there’s no consequence or potential harm I can see from moving forward with this,” Reid said. “… I do acknowledge that I’m not sure exactly what we’ll learn or be able to conclude from it potentially, but I think that’s OK. That’s OK for us to not know if it will mean anything to future commissioners, staff or (the) public.”

According to the Harvard University School of Public Health, zinc can be toxic in large amounts, resulting in symptoms such as nausea, abdominal cramps and diarrhea, but this occurs almost exclusively from taking excessive zinc supplements, not from any dietary source. Currently, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, there is no maximum contaminant level for zinc in public supplies of drinking water in the U.S. There is a secondary or recommended limit of 5 milligrams of zinc per liter in drinking water, but this is primarily related to zinc’s metallic taste.

The groundwater samples for the new rule would be collected prior to the installation of solar panels to establish a baseline, and then tested every 12 months thereafter. If zinc concentrations exceed 5 milligrams per liter, the testing and reporting frequency will increase to every six months. Additionally, with the property owner’s consent, water samples will be taken from wells within 0.25 miles of the monitoring sites, including those on neighboring properties.

The operator of the solar facility would be responsible for implementing any necessary mitigation measures, which will be required as part of future conditional use permits for solar projects.

The changes to the regulations will not apply retroactively to previously approved projects, including the Kansas Sky Energy Center solar project, which is slated to put about 8 million square feet of solar panels on fields in the Kansas River valley north of North Lawrence.

In other business, county commissioners:

• Approved a plan for the Senior Resource Center’s transition from a nonprofit to a county department, set to be completed by Oct. 1. A memo in the agenda states that while the total cost of the transition won’t be clear until it’s finished, the largest expenses will stem from adding SRC employees to the county’s payroll and benefits plan.

Salaries, benefits and other labor-related expenses are expected to increase with the transition. In 2024, the SRC’s budget allocated $667,853 for these costs, which is projected to rise to $899,626 in 2025. However, several other expenses, including contracted services, operational costs, and program expenses, are expected to decrease in 2025.

The county and the SRC estimated that $219,726 would be needed in addition to the county’s existing $549,700 in support funding for the SRC. The County Commission originally set aside an additional $250,000 to support the transition as part of the fiscal year 2025 adopted budget.

• Authorized the county administrator to execute a contract with SumnerOne Inc. for a 60-month lease for new multifunction devices — which could include printers, copiers, scanners and fax machines — in the amount of $234,182 plus costs per copy.

• Approved a contract with George Butler Associates Inc. for engineering services, with a maximum cost of $148,348, to replace the bridge on North 1600 Road, Route 442, over a tributary to Deer Creek in Kanwaka Township. A memo in the agenda notes that the current bridge was built in 1964.

• Awarded a construction contract with Dondlinger & Sons Construction Co. Inc. to replace a bridge carrying North 900 Road over a tributary to Washington Creek.

• Heard a presentation about Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical’s services and governance structure. As the Journal-World reported, LDCFM operates on an inter-government agreement between the City of Lawrence and the county. That agreement was set to expire in 2024, but was extended for a year to give both governing bodies more time to reach a new agreement. This week, both the city and county commissions received a presentation from LDCFM about the issues involved in a new agreement. These include whether LDCFM should continue under its current model; what the acceptable service levels for the department should be; and how long the agreement should last.