The Berkley Group participated in three regional seminars across the state in June to engage with localities on considerations for utility-scale solar projects. Invited speakers and attendees shared concerns, challenges, and lessons learned thus far and discussed options for improving the process and prospects. The Alliance for the Shenandoah Valley hosted seminars June 11 in Harrisonburg and June 18 in Middletown (https://shenandoahalliance.org/shining-light-on-utility-scale

Preparing Counties for the Future was the theme of this year’s VACo Conference and as part of that preparation, we were happy to serve on a panel to discuss utility-scale solar and its impacts on localities. The session was well attended with lots of Q&A. Hopefully our experiences with rural Virginia counties can continue to help them navigate the issues surrounding this relatively new land use and its impacts on communities. In addition to serving on the solar panel (get it

We entered this year’s annual VACo conference with eager anticipation as a new partner. To increase our profile and highlight our partnership with VACo, we hosted a hospitality suite which had about 100 attendees. It was very successful and kept Drew and Darren running for several hours! We had representatives from more than a dozen counties attend along with other consultants and VACo staff. We also suggested that VACo produce a partners video to highlight the conference a