To the Editor:

I am in total glee, proud, awed and honored to the fact a rebuttal to my letter on the restrictions on the Marion landfill has been penned over the name of David W. Cash DEP Commissioner. Although I have never met David, I am sure he is a nice fellow one who would enjoy a round of golf, ski weekend and a good cocktail, I am also seriously doubtful David ever read my letter. If he has, he did not adequately vet the use of his name and position with the rebuttal letter that was posted.

I commented that given the current DEP restrictions on the Marion landfill prohibiting birding, hiking and picnicking precluded building a community solar garden. This is true and can withstand rebuttal.

Why would David, the DPE commissioner, write a letter stating to the effect that the landfill would be a wonderful place for a solar garden when it would not be suitable for birding, hiking or picnicking? The very restrictions his DEP department placed on the Marion landfill in the first place.

What’s in play here is a very nervous group of Marion solar advocates that are resistant to facts that are not attractive to their cause. As the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis stated: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” When the Marion Solar Citadel comes under attack by the very sunlight it advocate there is but one recourse, and that’s to call in reinforcements, David from the DEP to support the cause.

A solar garden can only be placed on the landfill after the DEP restrictions are removed and the landfill receives a new permit. This can only be done by the Town obtaining a Mass DEP Post-Closure Use permit (310 CMR 19.143) by filing a BWPSW 37 application. This is a significant and expensive engineering undertaking.  Further unknown at this time are any landfill cap modifications that too maybe required by the DEP before such a post closure permit can be issued for solar use. These costs may well exceed the net present value of any lease payments received from a developer for use of the landfill. This all for a private purpose of promoting solar garden investments contacts that only the rich will be able to afford. I would doubt the Town’s Energy Management Committee (EMC) has even done its due diligence on this issue. How much is this all going to cost?

The EMC has been negotiating in secret with a developer for a 20-year landfill lease. There is no information or details on the terms of this lease or on the financial solvency or ability of this private developer to meet its obligations to the town under the lease. If the solar garden fails, then what? The town would be faced with a bankrupted debtor in possession on top of an environmentally sensitive landfill. This would become a very ugly legal and financial problem for our town. No doubt Marion investors in a failed project for which they have no economic understanding of the inherent risks will blame the town and not themselves for their misfortune.

I would suggest that anyone seriously looking at investing is solar in any form to look at the SEC EDGER date base and read the recent form 10Q, 10k and S-1 filings  of the publicly trade solar companies. In those filings you will find the gathering dark clouds coming to cover the solar industry’s sunshine and all its hype. This is all available using your laptop from your comfortable chair.

If you’re seriously considering going solar then know what you’re doing as this is truly Caveat Emptor.

Ted North,

Marion