12/30/2025
I am at a loss for words with something I read in Boralex's law firm's response to both my nonprofit, American Land Rescue Fund and the Grassland Bird Trust (GBT) asking for party status in Fort Edward Solar.
The law firm in question is Young & Sommer.
As you can see from the screenshot I attached below, Y&S has acknowledged there are MULTIPLE conservation/agricultural easements in place to be used as mitigation by Boralex for Fort Edward Solar.
These easements are managed by the Agricultural Stewardship Association. The ASA is an amazing organization that works to help keep farmland as farmland here in Upstate New York.
I need you to understand the gravity of this.
Boralex, a foreign corporation out of Canada, together with an American renewable energy law firm, are TELLING the ASA how they plan to use their easements.
Young & Sommer is telling the ASA they are misinterpreting their OWN EASEMENTS that the ASA wrote, holds, and is legally responsible for enforcing.
ASA is the only entity with authority to interpret the easement’s intent!
Here is the scariest part, and why we are going to lose our land and eventually our country if we allow this kind of governmental overreach to occur... Young & Sommer argues:
"The language of the easement allows the property to be used for “any federal or state or local program,” and therefore Article VIII mitigation qualifies as such a program."
They are asserting that the conservation easement’s allowance for participation in “state programs” means the developer (Boralex) can use these protected lands for Article VIII mitigation for their own solar project.
Easements run with the land and apply to the landowner... not to a third-party developer looking to use conserved land to satisfy a regulatory obligation.
Article VIII was NEVER designed to give developers power to use conservation-restricted land without easement-holder consent.
The law firm then states: “The ASA is still allowed to use the property for ‘Agricultural Uses’ by enrolling the parcel in the Article VIII mitigation process.”
Y&S is redefining what "agriculture" is to the ASA, the very body that writes and oversees agricultural easements.
Say it with me: Mitigation for displaced or fragmented habitat is NOT agriculture!
Up until this point, I thought there was one ASA easement being forcibly used by Boralex. I did not realize there are multiple totaling to 150+ acres (others claiming it's over 350 acres).
This is an outrage.
Every local news channel should be covering this. Every newspaper should be writing about this. Every politician should be standing up NOW. Now is the time to do what is RIGHT!
We have a runaway train in the form of ORES, a foreign corporation out of Canada, Boralex, and a bulldog law firm, telling this state's conservation easement drafters how THEIR easement is going to be used in a solar industrial facility.
Please share this and tag everyone. Send it everywhere. This cannot be allowed to continue, for it will set a precedent we will NEVER be allowed to walk back.
The Y&S ruling I screenshotted below is available for public viewing right inside the ORES docket.
