Delta and Montrose counties have very different worldviews.(Photo by Werner Slocum / NREL)
May 26, 2021 – Byron Kominek, owner of Jack’s Solar Garden, tills the soil at the farm in Longmont, Colo. Jack’s Solar Garden is a 1.2-MW, five-acre community solar farm and is the largest agrivoltaic research project in the U.S. The solar project was designed and built by Namasté Solar.By Dave Marston | Writers on the Range | March 15, 2022, 3:50 p.m.Why would rural Delta County, Colorado, say no to a solar farm that would enrich the county by $13 million over 15 years, at roughly the same time neighboring Montrose County said yes to a solar farm that might power nothing but the energy-draining cryptocurrency industry?In early March, Delta County commissioners voted 2-1 to deny a 472-acre solar array built by Guzman Energy, a move that would help shift the local rural electric…