Green Utopia? Adventure park wants to “go solar” but raze 15,000 trees

It takes bumper government subsidies to destroy this many trees for so little reason:

Six Flags Adventure Park goes Solar – Slate

The plan, the largest solar installation in New Jersey, will generate 21.4 megawatts of electricity, enough to power the amusement park’s Garden State facility. The company projects that the initiative will eliminate approximately 215,000 tons of CO 2 emissions over 15 years…

“We are excited about the fact that this project will reduce carbon emissions by 31 times more than the trees and shrubs that will be removed, and that we will become the world’s first solar-powered theme park,” said Kristin Siebeneicher, communications manager for Six Flags Great Adventure and Safari.

The 66 acres of native wildlife may not be so excited.

Nor are the surrounding hominids. Can’t please em’:

Local residents and environmental groups—including Clean Water Action, Crosswicks/Doctors Creek Watershed Association, Environment New Jersey, NJ Conservation Foundation, Save Barnegat Bay, and the Sierra Club—beg to differ, claiming that razing nearly 15,000 trees will adversely impact water quality, air quality and sound quality; decrease the wildlife population; and affect biodiversity,…

Somewhere a plot of underground coal is being protected.

Welcome to a managed economy, where we try to fix weather problems by creating environmental and economic ones. In a free market, the forest might stay, the coal would be used, everyone would get cheaper electricity and have more cash to spare to use to go to the theme park and to donate to environmental groups.

Various subgroups of greenness say the company should put the solar panels over the car park.The company says the car parks are used for other events, may be developed for other things, and are full in peak season. In the off season Amazon parks “warehouse” trailers there. Such are the complexities of big business…

Try a socialist solution to fix a socialist problem — fail:

State officials even offered to buy the land to stop Six Flags from deforesting it, but the company declined their offer.

Rinse, repeat, recycle. Greens raise new environmental concerns to trump previous ones:

Marina Shapiro is a local resident who lives close enough to Six Flags’ property to have seen zebra, giraffe, and antelope in the park’s safari from a road near her house. Now, what is currently a forest at the end of her street will contain thousands of solar panels. Shapiro, who co-founded the Jackson Citizens Coalition to oppose the project, has a variety of concerns. For instance, she worries a fire could start out in the field, given that electrical voltage is always going through the panels. The state Department of Environmental Protection’s Forest Fire Service recommends a 100-foot buffer between any structure and forest. But the proposed Six Flags buffer is just 30 feet. Shapiro also fears that the panels will contaminate the soil and water underneath them, given that they contain lead, a known carcinogen. Lead is in many photovoltaic modules, including some of the panels being used by Six Flags.

Keep a forest to reduce the fire risk?

h/t Climate Depot

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