Sand Bluff News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Origis Energy and Sand Bluff homeowners outside of Archer have reached an agreement to not build a solar farm near the historic Black community.

A Miami-based company is postponing its appeal of Alachua County’s rejection of a site near Archer where it wants to develop a solar farm.

Published: Thursday, June 3, 2021 Florida Power & Light Sunshine Gateway Solar Energy Center. Photo credit: Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto/Shutterstock In this aerial view from a drone, the Florida Power & Light Sunshine Gateway Solar Energy Center is seen on March 15 in Lake City, Fla. Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto/Shutterstock A northern Florida town is at the center of a clash between renewable energy developers and residents of a historically Black community — one that highlights an emerging rift between President Biden's environmental justice and clean energy goals. Many Archer residents are descend...

All the regional power companies buy power from each other from week to week as needed.   Some residents of Archer pay their bills working in Gainesville at offices that use Gainesville Regional Utilities' power. GRU also provides transmission services for the main providers of power in Archer. A few temporary and full-time jobs are other boons created by the project, with workers receiving training useful for future solar jobs.  A few of the assortments of red herring concerns mentioned in public arenas are clarified here:   • Appraiser studies have shown property values are not affec...

At a neighborhood meeting last November, representatives from Origis Energy and Gainesville Regional Utilities sought to allay concerns about a proposed solar farm in the Sand Bluff neighborhood near Archer.  At that November meeting, a few local residents charged that the site selection had been racist: The county was once again conspiring to dump a dirty industry onto a Black and brown neighborhood (in this case a proud, multi-generational farming community).  Origis Energy, the solar contracting company that selected the Sand Bluff site, vigorously pushed back against that view. Th...