MANSFIELD — A solar farm generating electricity is the best possible use for closed former landfills in Mansfield and Richland County, according to Barrett Thomas.
That’s why the senior director of economic development for the Richland Area Chamber & Economic Development has worked during the last three years to make it happen locally, a project that has included the city of Mansfield and Richland County officials.
That effort takes another step toward fruition on Tuesday evening when Mansfield City Council is expected to vote on a land lease agreement with CEP Renewables for a solar farm that could generate 25 megawatts of power.
The actual acreage size of the solar farm has not been finalized, according to Thomas, who said the company has not finished a final design of the project on the land, which has been designated as brownfields.
CEP will lease land used for the solar farm for $2,000 per acre per year and will also take over responsibility for mowing and maintenance, lightening the load on the Richland County Solid Waste District.
That rent payment shall increase by 2 percent each year, beginning on the first anniversary of the project achieving commercial operation, according to the proposed agreement.
The lease agreement is for 20 years with three, five-year extensions at the company’s option.
Construction is expected to take about 12 months and is expected to create a maximum of 350 temporary jobs. Additionally, the long-term operations and maintenance of the facility will result in annual contracting of approximately three part-time individuals for regularly scheduled activities, according to the agreement.
CEP must also prepare a decommissioning plan to be submitted and approved prior to construction. The decommissioning plan shall describe how CEP intends to remove the solar project and any support structures at the end of commercial operations and also describe how CEP intends to protect the landfill caps during such decommissioning.
The project will include land occupied by the former county landfill, which closed in 1990, and the former city landfill, which shut down in 1970. It would include land south and north of Cairns Road near Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport.
Using closed landfills for such solar projects has gained popularity in recent years, including one CEP constructed at the former Brooklyn Landfill in northeast Ohio. That landfill closed in 2010 and the solar farm became the first in Ohio installed on a landfill in 2018.
The project in Cuyahoga County, located in the city of Brooklyn, was awarded Solar Builder Magazine’s 2018 Gold Project of the Year.
(Below is a PDF with a document produced by the Ohio EPA in 2023 regarding solar farms on closed landfills.)
In 2023, the Ohio EPA endorsed the idea, though it added such efforts would require long-term planning.
“Solar farms can provide an attractive reuse for landfills, given that other developments aren’t always feasible. Several considerations that must be made before moving forward with planning solar reuse at a closed landfill include the total area of the surface oriented toward the sun, the duration of daily sunlight, proximity to the electric grid, minimum acreage requirements including the slope of the area, and local climate conditions. If those factors indicate that solar power reuse is a good option, then the remaining concern would be installation of the solar panels in a manner that does not damage the landfill cap or impede its performance,” the state EPA said.
(Below is a PDF with the agreement scheduled for vote Tuesday evening by Mansfield City Council.)
Thomas, whose work on the project began even before he took over economic development efforts for the city of Mansfield, said it’s a cooperative effort among local officials.
Richland County commissioners in 2025, at the request of trustees in 11 townships, banned commercial wind and solar projects in those jurisdictions. That ban survived a citizen-led drive to reverse it on the May primary ballot.
Commissioner Tony Vero said Thursday the county’s participation in the landfill solar project is evidence county officials are not opposed to solar efforts.
“Thc Richland County Board of Commissioners believes renewable energy projects have an important role in our future when they are pursued responsibly and in the right locations,” Vero said.
“Projects located on appropriate sites — such as the old county landfill — demonstrate that renewable energy and responsible land stewardship can work together for the benefit of Richland County residents,” the commissioner said.
Thomas said Mansfield lawmakers are being asked to approve two sections of potential landfill land for the solar farm, keeping in mind the location of airport runways and FAA regulations.
The solar panels would rest on concrete ballast since digging into the old landfill is prohibited by the Ohio EPA. Thomas said they would stand around 10 feet tall at the highest point.
“It’s not like a big obtrusive thing. It’s pretty low profile,” he said.
Thomas said the CEP official involved in the local project is Kurt Prinzick, a senior development manager for the company and former district chief of the Ohio EPA Northeast District Office.
“If you are going to be working around your closed landfill, you want it to be the guy who used to run the EPA and knows exactly what he can and can’t do, right?” Thomas said.
In 2025, Princic, who led the Brooklyn Landfill effort, told SpectrumNews1 that “there isn’t a whole lot you can do with landfills.”
“These landfills generate methane gas, so you really don’t want to have any occupied structures or really even have people in these landfills to avoid any potential risks,” Princic said.
Thomas said the project will not need approval from the Ohio Power Siting Board since it will not connect into the PJM Interconnection grid, which coordinates and moves electrical power in all or parts of 13 states, including Ohio.
Thomas said the plan is to supply the power needs of a large, local commercial user(s).
“The trick is … it’s solar, so it’s not on all the time. We will need some kind of a battery system or it’s going to go to a user that is much bigger. They will use this power when they have it and then supplement with other power off the grid later.
“But 25 megawatts is a lot,” he said. “I don’t know that we’ve got any manufacturing users in the industrial park right now that are using even half that.
“It’s kind of the micro-grid system that everybody’s talking about. Generate power locally and use it locally. That’s the best way to do this.
“The most efficient way with the least regulation is to get companies that buy power and need power, stick them together, they make an agreement, they buy the power. That’s by far the most efficient way to do this,” Thomas said.
The key was finding a developer like CEP, which local officials did through a request-for-proposals project. Thomas said the New Jersey-based company was “by far” the strongest offer.
“My goal has been to find a solar developer, push the whole deal across the table to them, and go, ‘Here you go. Here’s an opportunity,'” he said.
The economic development leader said he wanted public transparency around the proposal.
“We’ve never done this before. There’s not that many instances of this happening. It’s unusual, but I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Thomas, who will attend City Council’s meeting on Tuesday.
“I’m happy to answer questions about it if people are interested or curious. We have nothing to hide. I want people to know that good things are gonna happen,” he said.
