Lexington council OKs plan to put solar panels on old landfill despite concerns
After postponing a vote for two weeks because of frustrations with the contract, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council unanimously advanced a lease with Edelen Renewables Tuesday to build a solar panel installation on the former Haley Pike landfill.
The project will see 357 acres of the decommissioned landfill covered with new solar panels. It will be the first privately built, large-scale solar project in Fayette County’s rural area.
The lease is scheduled to get a final vote of approval in March 12th’s council meeting.
The council had many concerns about the initial lease. Some of those concerns remained when the measure was passed Tuesday, but the most vocal council members think the project is still a net benefit for the city.
“I wish the deal was overall a little bit better for the city,” 10th District council member Dave Sevigny said, but “there’s very little value (in the land) other than doing something cool like this project.”
Edelen Renewables will pay $85 per acre in rent to the city to lease the land. Earlier studies from Lexington staff estimated the city could charge anywhere from $550 to $850 per acre.
Why the land is less valuable than expected
Richard Dugas, an administrative officer in Lexington’s environmental quality and public works department, has previously told the council that the city’s “desktop studies” were not as robust as the on-the-ground assessments Edelen Renewables has done of the land.
The costly precautions required for building solar panels on a contaminated area make the land more expensive to build on, meaning the company will earn less revenue than the city thought, Dugas said in a Feb. 10 council meeting.
That expense shakes out to a lower per-acre rate.
Some council members have challenged that logic. While roughly 34% of the project area is on land once used as a landfill, the rest of the land is typical soil that is cheaper to build on.
Importantly, that soil more closely resembles rural farmland throughout Fayette County, where private companies are currently prohibited from building large-scale solar projects similar in scope to Edelen Renewables’ proposal.
Adam Edelen, CEO of Edelen Renewables and former state auditor for Kentucky, says that building on a property near a landfill is both more expensive and substantively different from building on healthy farmland.
“It’s still adjacent to a landfill, which means that environmental monitoring still has to continue, you’re still testing for water quality,” Edelen told the Herald-Leader. “A landfill-adjacent property is not prime farmland and shouldn’t be considered as such.”
But some council members think the project still sets a precedent for future solar development in Lexington.
“Whether we like it or not, that landfill is in an agricultural area, and it’s zoned to, currently, agriculture. So we’re literally breaking our own rule, and we’re putting it in an agricultural area,” Sevigny told the Herald-Leader. “That’s the precedent.”
The Haley Pike landfill is in an agricultural zone. But because the land is city-owned, Lexington does not legally have to follow the zoning regulations it sets for private developers.
“We’re kind of talking out of both sides of our mouth,” Sevigny said.
A work group of several council members, including Sevigny, will soon present revised language for how large-scale solar could be permitted in rural Fayette County to the council’s general government and planning committee.
Edelen agrees to pay more for community benefits
While the lease rate is unchanged from the original proposal, Edelen Renewables did cede ground to the council on a community benefits agreement.
Lexington’s current zoning regulations suggest private solar developers contribute $750 per megawatt produced to a community benefits agreement, but that amount is not required. Whether the money goes to the city or to a nonprofit is still up in the air, but the regulations suggest the money be used to help lower-income families with utility costs.
Edelen Renewables originally proposed paying $125 per megawatt to a community plan. After negotiations, the approved lease sets a minimum rate of $250 per megawatt.
Edelen told the Herald-Leader the council’s insistence on such a narrow community benefits agreement, rather than considering how the project itself benefits the city as a whole, is unique to Lexington.
“The notion that we don’t take the entirety of the economic impact and tie it into an overall community benefit analysis is rather unique. And by unique, I mean it doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world,” Edelen said.
“This is a citizen council, and this is made up of people who volunteer to run for these offices. I don’t think there’s a high level of subject matter expertise in this space.”
First District Council member Tyler Morton, who pushed for enshrining community benefits language in Lexington’s solar regulations, said it’s important that constituents feel tangible impacts from solar projects through those agreements.
“We’re getting solar from that macro-level, so we know that it’s a huge benefit from the larger scale,” Morton said. “But then on the ground, how can (constituents) benefit directly? Our constituents, especially the constituents in underserved communities that need the most assistance, can benefit from (the project).”
Edelen Renewables and the city will negotiate a more detailed benefits agreement over the coming months. That agreement will have to be approved by the council.
‘It’s been beyond transparent’
The approval of the ground lease comes eight months after Edelen Renewables submitted an unsolicited proposal for the project.
The city opened a formal request for proposals in September 2025, but the bid was only open for two weeks.
Silicon Ranch, a private Nashville-based solar company that has advocated to allow large-scale rural solar projects in Lexington, told the city they would have responded had the bid been open longer.
Edelen has said in multiple council meetings the project needed to move quickly so the company can begin construction by July — just in time to qualify for federal solar tax credits that will sunset after that date, thanks to the One, Big Beautiful Bill.
Still, Edelen says the project has not been rushed.
“It’s been beyond transparent ... this project has not been fast-tracked,” he said. “As a matter of fact, it required a new level of patience from (myself) to work this through.”
“If anybody has a specific question about my integrity or the mayor’s, they should say it and we can talk about it out loud in a transparent fashion.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2026 at 3:46 PM.
