photo by: Journal-World

The west side of the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St., is pictured on Sept. 23, 2021.

Douglas County leaders this week will again consider proposed standards for solar farms in the county, a few weeks after their last discussion on the topic.

The proposed regulations spell out details such as how large solar farms in the county can be — up to 1,000 acres — and how far they must be set back from roads, homes and other structures. They also limit the amount of grading on the site, and they restrict the height of individual solar panels to 15 feet.

County commissioners at their meeting Wednesday could take a number of actions related to the proposed regulations. They could vote to approve the regulations with or without changes and direct county staff to prepare a resolution to adopt them. They could also vote to defer action until a future meeting and direct staff to revise the regulations, or they could vote to deny them entirely.

The most recent discussion on the topic took place during a study session at the end of March focused on agrivoltaics, the concept of using land for solar power generation and agriculture simultaneously. Commissioners had a number of questions about the topic — especially regarding the technical challenges of multi-use land and how it could complicate leases and business arrangements among private land owners, solar corporations and agriculture businesses like grazers or planters.

Regulations for solar farms have been a topic of discussion in Douglas County recently, in part because Florida-based energy firm NextEra last year expressed interest in developing a larger-scale farm partially located in Douglas County.

In other business, the commission will:

• Consider approving a question for the Nov. 8 general election ballot regarding increasing the number of commissioner districts from three to five. Commissioners in February directed the county’s attorney to draft the ballot question.

• Consider approval of the grant recommendations submitted by the Heritage Conservation Council for the 2022 Natural & Cultural Heritage Grant Program. The council recently completed its grant review process and is recommending $200,000 in funding for nine projects. The council notes, in a memo to the commission, that it received a higher number of funding requests than usual this year — 25 applications totaling $750,000 in requests.

The list of projects includes requests to help restore historic properties throughout the county; host community celebrations stemming from traditional Mexican and Central American festivities; and document letters from the first students to attend Haskell Institute in the 19th century, among other projects.

The largest single recommended award at just under $50,000 is a joint request from four organizations — the Grassland Heritage Foundation, the Kansas Association for Conservation & Environmental Education, Haskell Indian Nations University and the City of Lawrence Parks & Recreation Department — to restore the prairie at Prairie Park, using the restoration as a real-time and future educational tool in Douglas County classrooms.

Wednesday’s meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St. The meeting also will be available by Zoom. For meeting information, visit the county’s website: dgcoks.org/commissionmeetings.