Residents filled the seats and some stood in the rain to hear warnings about outside companies eyeing their farmland, and how little power the town may have to stop them.
TOWN OF PELLA, WI- Some drove in early. Others arrived late and stood outside in the rain with umbrellas, straining to hear through the open windows of Pella Town Hall.
The crowd that turned out Tuesday wasn’t there for a routine meeting. They came because word had spread that their community, a farming town that has long prized its open land and agricultural roots, may be in the crosshairs of outside corporations looking to build solar farms and data centers.
And some of them were worried nobody had been paying attention until now.
“We sat here for three years and didn’t realize we were being targeted,” said Kerrie Marquardt, a Town of Pella resident who led the evening’s presentation.
The immediate concern is Nexamp, a company based in Boston and Chicago that has expressed interest in using land in the Town of Pella for a solar farm, according to town officials. But residents learned quickly that the solar question is just one part of a larger problem.
The town’s current zoning ordinances don’t address solar or data center development at all. Most of the policies on the books date to 1994. Shawano County is already moving toward a moratorium on data centers within its boundaries, but because Pella operates under its own zoning system independent of county control, it would need to establish its own moratorium to slow any development.
On the solar side, the town’s options are even more limited. Marquardt explained that while the town has authority over rooftop solar and smaller projects up to 100 megawatts, anything larger falls under the jurisdiction of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, a state body that can approve major projects regardless of local opposition.
“We have no say,” Marquardt said.
She pointed to what happened in the Town of Morgan in Oconto County as a cautionary tale. There, a 100-megawatt solar farm and 50-megawatt battery facility covering nearly 650 acres had been in development for five years before most residents even knew it was happening. The former town chairperson and a board member had been working with the developer, NextEra, the entire time.
Marquardt also warned that once towns sign agreements with solar companies, they are typically placed under gag orders, prohibited from discussing the details with residents, the media, or anyone else who asks questions.
The money is hard to ignore
Not everyone in the room was ready to draw a hard line.
Pella farmer Duane Buettner said he understood the frustration, but he also understood why some of his neighbors might be tempted. Farming has become an increasingly difficult way to make a living, and the offers coming in from these companies aren’t small.
“Someone comes along and offers me $15 million for X amount of acres, there’s no money in farming,” Buettner said. “I know we want to protect that, but everybody wants cheap food, and the farmer wants money, too.”
Farmer Jill Romberg said she and her family have received numerous letters from various companies expressing interest in their property, with each one vague about intentions but generous with financial projections.
One farmer argued the town needs to stop treating solar development as something that belongs under agricultural zoning at all. Call it what it is, he said, a commercial industrial operation, and zone it accordingly.
Marquardt noted that Pella’s existing zoning philosophy already leans toward land preservation, even in areas designated for future residential growth. Industrial development was never part of the vision.
“This shows we want to keep things simple and protect our agriculture, our farmland and preserve our land,” she said. “This is a good thing.”
What the town does next, whether it pursues its own moratorium, updates its zoning ordinances, or takes other steps, remains to be seen. But the crowd that showed up Tuesday night, some of them standing in the rain just to be part of the conversation, made clear that Pella residents aren’t planning to stay quiet.
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