A plan from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to potentially lease more than 400 acres of state land in the Gaylord area for solar development has stirred up a range of responses.
Some lawmakers have called for staff within the department to be fired, citing a lack of trust and transparency in the planning process. And the solar company that initially pitched the idea has distanced itself from the project.
The DNR released a public notice of its plans to lease the land for solar development on Tuesday, opening up three months of public comment.
Scott Whitcomb, the director of the DNR’s office of public lands, said the department will then decide whether to issue a request for proposals and solicit bids. He said this is part of the typical statutory process for leases or acquisitions of land over 80 acres to notify local units of government and the public.
“Considering alternate uses of state land is not unusual for the department,” Whitcomb said. “We're the largest landowner in the state, and people come to us when there are land activities that require acreage. And so those include, but they're not limited to, gas and oil, mineral production, sand and gravel mines, landfills.”
Whitcomb said in this case, a developer, RWE Clean Energy, reached out to DNR in May to ask about leasing state land to expand a nearby solar array in Hayes Township. (Hayes Township officials could not be reached for comment this week.)
RWE has been developing a solar array on over 1,100 acres of private land nearby, which is expected to produce about 200 megawatts of alternating current.
The department looked at around 1,200 acres of potential state forest land in the area and settled on the 420 acres, which make up just over half a square mile.
Whitcomb said there was the opportunity to develop solar on this tract of land with minimal harm to the environment. Half the land had already been harvested for timber, and he described the piney forest as “very industrial in nature,” with oil and gas extraction and transmission lines on the property.
Hayes Township had previously voted in favor of RWE’s solar development on private property butting up against the state land.
“We thought all of those things would lend themselves to a successful project,” Whitcomb said. “Obviously there are a lot of concerns, so we want to pump the brakes and spend some time gathering input and assess where we are.”
A spokesperson with RWE, Patricia Kakridas, said in an email that the company is no longer planning to expand onto state land.
“We did not just make this decision,” Kakridas wrote in the message, bolding and underlining the words “did not.”
“We have been working with the landowners since 2019 and already have leases for the property on which the solar farm will be located,” she continued. “We reached out to all of the adjacent property owners during the early development process, including DNR, but decided we only needed the existing footprint.”
However, Whitcomb said the DNR only became aware that RWE was no longer interested in leasing that land over this past week.
Public response
After MLive first reported on the project, a firestorm of responses followed.
Republican lawmakers like Rep. Ken Borton (R-Gaylord), called for department staff to be fired.
Others were upset at what they call a lack of transparency from the department. More than 50 lawmakers signed a letter to the department saying such projects “highlight the blatant hypocrisy within the DNR” because it’s denied smaller lease proposals in the past, and demanding more information about other projects.
“This was just dropped on all of us,” said Sen. John Damoose (R-Harbor Springs). “I found out about it through the news on Friday. And these types of things are big decisions related to the overall energy policy of the entire state. Legislators should be part of this discussion.”
Damoose’s 37th district covers parts of northern Michigan and the eastern Upper Peninsula. While he said he’s not opposed to solar overall, he doesn’t agree with cutting down trees to make room for solar panels. And he said lawmakers should be involved in these types of decisions.
Damoose is also among the lawmakers who say the state’s clean energy goals are unreasonable and should be scaled back.
“We can't get there in the way they want us to do it,” he said.
The state’s Public Service Commission estimates that Michigan would need to commit up to about 209,000 additional acres for solar and wind to meet renewable energy goals, though it made no distinction between the types of land.
Meanwhile, some environmental groups have criticized the response over the state’s process, saying it’s another example of anti-solar sentiment. Emily Smith, a policy manager with the Michigan Environmental Council who works on land and conservation issues, said while she and other staff were initially shocked, after reviewing information from the DNR, they felt more comfortable about the process.
There are legitimate concerns about deforesting land for solar and other projects, she said, but the specifics of each project need to be carefully considered.
“While these tracts of land might still have some ecological value, we were able to see that about 200 acres of the 420 is already slated to be clear cut anyway for pine for the timber industry,” Smith said, adding that another section had been damaged by tornadoes.
The council has called for the DNR to conduct a climate analysis of the potential project.
Clean energy goals
The lease discussion falls amid Michigan’s ambitious goals to reach a 100% clean energy standard in the next 15 years, which was set into law by the Democrat-controlled state legislature in 2023.
The administration under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer directed state agencies to assess their role in meeting goals outlined in the MI Healthy Climate Plan.
Whitcomb said for the DNR that could mean converting “marginal productive” state land for utility scale solar. This approach has been well-documented, most recently within the 2024 state forest management plan. The plan includes objectives to identify state forest land suitable for renewable energy, develop utility-scale renewable energy siting guidelines and issue requests for proposals for renewable energy projects.
In 2020, the DNR offered land for lease on two former northern Michigan mineral mining sites for solar development - one project fell through and the land reverted back to the state. And another solar developer outside of Mio was rejected out of concern for the endangered Kirtland’s warbler.
But Whitcomb said the DNR has set the maximum amount of state land that would go toward solar development at 4,000 acres.
“We've established a self-imposed cap to let people know that this is not going to be a widespread occurrence where we're leasing for the conversion of tens of thousands of acres of state land,” Whitcomb said. “This is going to be very limited, very strategic and very thoughtful.”
Reporting from IPR's Izzy Ross is made possible in part through a partnership between IPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
Editor’s note: The Michigan DNR is a sponsor of WCMU. We report on them as we do with any other organization.
