Developers are touting a former dump site south of downtown Cortland as a potential solar farm – and a place where National Grid customers can get monthly savings on their electric bills.
Davis Hill Development, a Tennessee-based company, says it plans to mount solar collectors on almost 14 acres of the former Rosen Brothers scrap yard south of Randall Middle School. Marketing materials say electricity generated from the site will enable Cortland residents to reduce their electricity costs and support clean energy.
“We’re offering residents like you the opportunity to subscribe to this community solar system,” states a letter to Cortland residents from Tory Hanna, a Davis Hill vice president, earlier in October. “As a subscriber, you can get a discount on the solar power credits generated by this project.”
The city and SV Cortland One LLC – a division of Davis Hill – signed a lease for nearly 14 acres of the site in August. Cortland’s Common Council had authorized the mayor to enter into a lease agreement in July 2023.
What Cortland Mayor Scott Steve gets from the agreement is something different: the chance to turn a site – one perceived as having little future when it was basically debris from what had been on the site until the mid-1980s – into something productive for the community and its residents.
As part of the contract to lease the site, Davis Hill agreed to install an electric charging station for buses, Steve said, at the Cortland Junior-Senior High School just up the hill from the solar farm site.
“With the state emphasizing the need for electric school buses, that would be perfect,” Steve said. “Think about a bus transporting kids from a distance for a playoff game. The bus could charge up during the game for the trip back.”
Also, he said, he also believes about 2 acres at the western edge of the site would be the perfect site for a dog park.
The Rosen Brothers site, on land formerly occupied by the Wickwire Bros wire mill, was a scrap-metal processing and automobile-crushing facility that was abandoned in 1985 by the Pennsylvania company that last owned it, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. After the state determined that PCBs and other hazardous materials were present at the site, EPA removed drums and contaminated soil, and capped a former cooling pond and excavated four “hot spots” where soil had been contaminated.
Five-year reviews are conducted to ensure that the cleanup protects public health, the environment, and functions as intended. Five such five-year reviews have been conducted; EPA says the sixth is to be done before May 2028.
