CHRISTMAS VALLEY – When Gary Perkins heard that solar companies were buying nearby fields and planning to fill them with commercial solar arrays, the Christmas Valley alfalfa farmer snapped up two parcels in front of his log cabin.

He didn’t want to see the sagebrush replaced by solar panels, he said.

“But there’s a limit; I can’t buy thousands of acres,” Perkins said.

At least three companies have bought or are trying to lease more than 1,300 acres in the Christmas Valley area to take advantage of the sunny skies. The first row of solar panels is already in the ground, three other projects have been approved, and two more will be considered next month.

Solar company officials say the projects will bring tens of thousands of dollars of tax revenue to the area, and note that they are private property owners building projects allowed by the county.

But Perkins and dozens of others in Christmas Valley, an unincorporated community east of Fort Rock, have organized a group to oppose the developments. They’re concerned about taxpayer money spent on solar projects and want Lake County to require the companies to put up money to ensure the sites are cleaned up if they’re abandoned, like the state does. And with solar farms going in right next door to alfalfa fields and sage brush plains, some feel the solar farms don’t mesh with the Western lifestyle in the High Desert.

“If you just look out here, at the thousands of acres of sage brush, there’s lots of places where you could put this,” Perkins said. “This is getting shoved down our throat.”

At the same time, the state Department of Land Conservation and Development is considering whether future solar projects in the area will need to get an exemption from land use planning laws.

Projects proposed for the area include one by GreenWing Energy America Corp., which has applied to lease 640 acres of state land to install anywhere from 50 to 104 megawatts of power. A Washington dentist is developing a site northeast of town, and started construction this winter.

And Obsidian Finance Group has spent more than $541,000 to buy about 765 acres in the Christmas Valley area, according to Lake County assessor Phil Israel. The company has the county’s conditional OK to site three solar arrays in the area, each of which will cost between $25 million and $28 million, and the county will consider two more next month. Additional permits would be required before construction, however.

Oregon land use laws say commercial energy projects on land zoned for agriculture can’t be bigger than 20 acres, said Jon Jinings, community services specialist with the Department of Land Conservation and Development.

Most of the solar projects cover more than 20 acres.

Lake County determined that since the land wasn’t commercially viable farmland, and a groundwater moratorium means no one could irrigate it, the rule didn’t apply, said Ken Gerschler, planning director with Lake County.

The state is working to determine if that is the case.

“We’re trying to figure out if we agree with that interpretation or not,” Jinings said.

The decisions the county has already made will stand, Jinings said, because they have already been put in place. But if the state agency decides it doesn’t agree with the Lake County’s interpretation, it could advise the county that future solar applicants need to also apply for a land use exception a more complicated process than the conditional approval process.