Land Use: Green Garden Township Solar Plan Fails 2-4 Over Wetland Objections

Will County Land Use & Development Committee | October 1, 2026

Article Summary: The Will County Board Land Use & Development Committee on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, voted 2-4 against recommending a 4-megawatt solar facility at 25740 S. 80th Ave. in Green Garden Township, minutes after unanimously adding a condition restricting pile-driving hours that the developer itself had volunteered. The township supervisor, an adjoining landowner, her attorney and two residents all urged denial.

Will Solar Key Points:

• The permit motion failed 2-4, matching the Planning and Zoning Commission’s own 2-4 recommendation of denial with six conditions.
• The committee unanimously added a seventh condition limiting pile-driving to 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., narrower than the county’s standard 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. window, after the developer volunteered it.
• Green Garden Township objected in writing, citing conflict with its land use plan, proximity to the Charlevoix subdivision, stormwater, heavy metals and glare near the Meadow Creek Airpark Community.
• The applicant says wetland impact is limited to 0.06 acres at a single culvert crossing; objectors said the wetland is 1.8 acres and is not being buffered at all.

GREEN GARDEN TOWNSHIP — The Will County Board Land Use & Development Committee on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, voted 2-4 against recommending a special use permit for a 4-megawatt commercial solar energy facility on two contiguous A-1 parcels at 25740 S. 80th Ave., near Monee, with the committee chairman saying the project simply did not belong beside the subdivisions it borders.

The request, zoning case ZC-26-064 (S-26-033), listed Steven Molter as owner of record and Elijah Mitchell of US Solar as agent on behalf of Will Solar LLC — described in the applicant’s own cover letter as USS Will Solar LLC, a subsidiary of United States Solar Corporation. The site is PINs 18-13-23-200-009-0000 and 18-13-23-200-010-0000 in County Board District 3.

Development Analyst I Alec Van Patten told the committee the combined parcels total 40.05 acres, with the facility proposed on the back 30 acres across 128 arrays. Inverters would sit along the northern property line, 50 feet from the property line and 180 feet from the nearest residence. Staff later clarified, in response to a question from the floor, that requested setback variances had been withdrawn and were not before the committee.

Pretzel voted no, Newquist yes, Brooks no, Bullock yes, Mitchell no and Ogalla no. The Planning and Zoning Commission had voted 2-4 to recommend denial with six conditions. Five objectors spoke at that hearing, raising concerns about breaking field tile, disturbance of wetlands and insufficient screening. The commission had also added a condition, at the applicant’s own request, requiring a landscape plan identifying gaps in the existing tree lines along the north and west property lines.

The chairman also announced a correction to the printed agenda at staff’s request, striking duplicate parcel identification numbers from the item description.

Committee Narrows Construction Hours

Before the vote, Ogalla asked the developer about the noise of driving piles beside homes, noting the county permits construction from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. “People wake up with the noise and they go to bed with the noise,” she said. “I don’t think you want to wake up in the morning to the noise and come home from work and the noise is still going on for days on end.”

Elijah Mitchell said projects typically take six to eight months to build, with actual pile-driving confined to roughly one or two weeks. “We would definitely be amenable to reduce time — instead of 7 to 7, maybe for example 10 to 3, 10:00 a.m. to 3 p.m.,” he said.

Ogalla moved to add the restriction as a condition, applying only to pile-driving; board member Raquel Mitchell seconded. The committee approved the amendment on a unanimous roll call, with Pretzel, Newquist, Brooks, Bullock, Mitchell and Ogalla all voting yes. Elijah Mitchell confirmed on the record that the developer accepted it. The chair later called the vote on the permit “with the added amended number seven conditions.”

Wetland Threshold Disputed

Danielle Gustofson, who said she lives on West Monee-Manhattan Road on 20 acres with 650 feet of frontage along the site’s northern edge, told the committee she has lived there 46 years and worked on the township comprehensive plan. She said water flows from a neighboring property through hers and onto the subject parcel, which holds water because of hydric soil. “There’s sometimes that I can’t cut grass in the back of my property because it holds the water,” she said. “This year we had so much water. It was like a river running through my property. It’s the wrong place. It’s hydric soil. There are clearly wetlands in that area.” She described heavy equipment uprooting trees and digging in the drainage area this past spring.

Gustofson also objected that the developer’s first public meeting was held in Matteson, outside Green Garden Township, and said she contacted the township supervisor, who was unaware of the project.

Attorney Steve Becker, representing Gustofson as an adjoining landowner, raised objections he said were intended to preserve the record, arguing the state solar statute as applied to counties is unconstitutional on due process, equal protection and separation of powers grounds, and that the Land Use Department’s practice of deferring wetland determinations to the building permit stage violates procedural due process. He said the application is incomplete because no U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determination has issued.

Becker said Fork Creek, west of the property, is a federally protected water of the United States, citing a decision he said he obtained in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois within the preceding week and a half concerning a property about a mile away. He said multiple wetlands and an intermittent stream on the subject property drain into that creek. He also said the landowner acknowledged under cross-examination at the commission hearing that the land was never left fallow and is still being farmed, which he argued made it impossible to properly identify farmed wetlands.

Jeff Becker, watershed committee chairman, said 9% of Illinois wetlands remain and read from a county wetland provision he cited as requiring mitigation where development affects wetlands, waters or associated buffer areas, with an exception for impacts covering one-tenth acre or less of the total wetland area. He argued the wetland crossing the middle of the property is approximately 1.8 acres, that the developer is placing posts directly into it without a buffer, and that the access road is sited where the stormwater pattern comes down. “This is the first solar company that we found that decided they are not going to buffer the wetland,” he said. “They are just going to put the posts right into the wetland itself.” He said water table depths across much of the site run as shallow as six and 13 inches against roughly seven-foot posts, and that the Will-South Cook Soil and Water Conservation District found the soils unsuitable for steel posts. He also said a Green Garden resident who visited the storm-damaged Aroma Park solar site found it still unrepaired six months later, with garbage bins scattered and fencing unfixed.

Elijah Mitchell responded that the current design’s impact is 0.06 acres, below the one-tenth-acre threshold he said the Army Corps uses to trigger further study, and that the impact occurs only at the culvert where the access road crosses. “Besides that, all the panels with their posts are not considered to be impact under Corps guidelines,” he said. “We as a company, but even me individually, don’t want to impact the wetland for a multitude of reasons.”

Asked by Bullock and by Raquel Mitchell why the company chose a site with wetlands, Elijah Mitchell said the company filters candidate sites for proximity to electrical lines and substations and screens out floodplain and apparent wetland areas, with a landowner response rate of 1% to 5% on mailings. “Ultimately, we signed with this landowner and we did not know that there was wetlands on the property,” he said, adding that the design was iterated after the company’s wetland scientists at Westwood identified them. “Once we found that out, that’s when we continued to iterate and redesign the project to have as little impact on it as possible.”

Raquel Mitchell seized on the open-house location. “Why would you have a meeting in Matteson for something that’s happening in Green Garden?” she asked. “I find that absolutely reprehensible. You just got to bring it to the people and take your hits.” Elijah Mitchell said an open house is not required, that notification is required within 150 feet of the property boundary, that Matteson was the venue available in the company’s window, and that a second, larger open house was held with Green Garden Township on or about Sept. 10 after broader interest emerged.

Township and Neighbors on Siting

Green Garden Township Supervisor Dean Christofilos told the committee he appeared on behalf of the township board and many residents and gave three reasons for opposition: noncompliance with the township’s comprehensive land use map for solar facilities, which he said designates an area generally along Route 45; public health concerns related to metals leaching from steel posts into a stream connected to Fork Creek; and a public safety concern arising from the site’s location roughly a mile from the Meadow Creek Air Park community, where he said glare could affect small aircraft during takeoff and landing. He described being briefly blinded himself while driving past an existing solar farm.

“This one is 50 feet away from a beautiful residential property,” Christofilos said. “Is that really where a solar farm should be located, 50 feet from a beautiful subdivision?” He said a separate US Solar proposal near another township subdivision is in litigation and predicted this project would be too if approved.

The township’s written objection, dated Sept. 3 and received by staff Sept. 4, lists five adverse effects: undermining planned residential development while ignoring designated solar locations; bordering the Charlevoix subdivision with visual, property value and character harm; increased stormwater and runoff; steel posts leaching heavy metals into the stream system; and a public safety concern because the location is approximately one mile from the Meadow Creek Airpark Community, where the letter says nearby panels can create “distracting and temporarily blinding glint and glare.”

Christofilos also raised mental health, describing calls from residents. “Today I’m looking at green gardens and tomorrow I’m going to look at 9,000 solar panels. I would be enraged. It honestly would affect my mental health,” he said. “I get the phone calls as the supervisor. I hear the distress in their voice. I hear the distress in their soul.”

Gary Lincoln, a 27-year Green Garden Township resident who said he lives off 104th Avenue and has no direct stake, told the committee he came to support neighbors who had supported him when solar was proposed 50 feet from his own property line about four years ago. “To have solar panels 50 foot from your property line — there’s something, and I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s immoral,” he said. “I thought we had a voice in our future, and it doesn’t seem to be that we do anymore.”

The Monee Fire Protection District also opposed the vegetation plan. “The Monee FPD is opposed to such tall vegetation. This creates a great fire risk and fire growth potential,” Fire Chief Carl Nieland wrote in an Aug. 24, 2026, email recorded in the staff report.

Chairman Frankie Pretzel returned to Christofilos’ point before the vote. “I look at my backyard. My backyard is my escape,” Pretzel said. “For you to put thousands of panels in — I’m counting 13 or 14 backyards that literally back up to this. It changes everything for those people. That’s where I struggle.” He added: “You’re fundamentally changing those backyards. That’s more than a tree branch falling. You’re going from green gardens, as they put it, to glass panels. I just can’t get past it. Not against solar. I just don’t like this spot.”

Newquist, voting yes, said she sympathized with the objectors “but until the laws changed, I’m a yes.” Raquel Mitchell offered residents a closing observation: “Here is not where you go to fight the battle. Springfield is where you need to go.”

Project Detail from the Staff Report

Elijah Mitchell said US Solar develops, owns and operates its projects and has more than 2 gigawatts in its pipeline or in operation. He said subscribers could see bill credit savings of 10% to 15% or more, that interconnection work would upgrade local lines and poles, and that the company plants native pollinator habitat beneath panels and is piloting agrivoltaics to allow continued farming or livestock grazing on project land in other states.

The staff report adds that the panels would sit on single-axis trackers, stand six to eight feet high depending on tilt angle — within the county’s 20-foot maximum under Section 155-9.245(B) — and be enclosed by an eight-foot farm-field-style fence. The property has about 663 feet of frontage on S. 80th Avenue and lies within the Deer Creek Facility Planning Area. The applicant would lease the project area for roughly 20 years with four five-year extension options, for a potential 40-year operating life, and electricity would be sold to Commonwealth Edison under an interconnection agreement signed May 29, 2026. The Agricultural Impact Mitigation Agreement was countersigned by the Illinois Department of Agriculture on May 18, 2026, and staff deemed the application complete Aug. 21, 2026, after an incomplete submittal on July 23.

The county’s Natural Resource Information Report assigned the property a Land Evaluation and Site Assessment score of 173, below the 185 at which the Will-South Cook Soil and Water Conservation District recommends preserving essential farmland, and placing it in the “Country Areas and Productive Farmland” category. The district’s written comments list as “Most Significant Concerns” that all field tiles found should be rerouted rather than plugged and that the applicant should develop a Conservation Plan Agreement with the district.

A glare analysis run through ForgeSolar GlareGauge found that of 18 homes studied, two were predicted to receive green glare and three yellow glare at a certain height, with one route receptor and one airport flight path at Wix Airport also predicted to receive glare at zero-degree tilt. A Level 2 wetland delineation by Westwood identified two wetlands and three water courses in the study area.