STILLMAN VALLEY – Drive north on Stillman Road out of Stillman Valley, and you can’t miss the signs.
No Solar Plant. No Solar Farm.
The signs are dotted along the roadway. And if solar developers have their way, that same land will soon be dotted with solar panels – hundreds of acres of them.
That is a concern for Mark and Dana Werckle, who live on Hales Corner Road. The Ogle County Board is voting on Tuesday, Aug. 21 on two solar projects that will be next door and across the street from their house.
“Right in our neighborhood here there’s four of these going in,” said Mark, sitting at the kitchen table in the house he and Dana have owned for 23 years.
Their house sits on 12 acres of land. Directly to their west is a farm that could soon be home to 36 acres of solar panels. And across the road from them, currently lush farm fields, will be another 146 acres of solar panels.
“The best farm land in the entire county,” Heather Lalor, another neighbor who could soon see her view turn from farmland to solar panels, said of the proposed site for panels 276 feet from her home.
Lalor and husband moved into their home 13 years ago.

“We built from the ground up,” she said. “We built our dream home – we built our forever home, or what we thought would be our forever home.”
With the state making a push for more renewable energy, and offering incentives, more of these solar farms – which are panels that capture the sunlight and convert it into energy – are popping up all over the county. There are new solar fields going in from Forreston to Davis Junction.
The tax revenue is something that could benefit county coffers, but Mark Werckle said tax revenues will fall over a number of years due to depreciation. That would not happen if there were homes on the land.
“If this industrial site comes into a neighborhood like this, and stops development or sale of these properties, the county is going to lose tax revenue from a property being developed there versus an industrial site like this,” he said.
And lower property values are a concern for the homeowners. They said the county’s own plan was for the land to stay as farms or for new homes to be built.
“So, we bought property, and spent a pretty penny, under that premise,” Lalor said. “Now, if this goes through, what will that do to our property values, and what does that do long term to the rural nature of our community?”
Marty Typer, who represents Stillman Valley on the County Board, said he is waiting to hear the testimony from the Zoning Board of Appeals, which voted against the proposed projects. The county’s Planning & Zoning Commission last week approved both projects on split votes. Now it goes to the full board for a vote, including the vote of Typer.
“I don’t not have any preemptive consideration for one side over the other,” Typer said.
Typer said that all property owners have a right to use their land, but that there needs to be a way everyone can coexist.
“If I wanted to plant a garden in my yard, I don’t know if my neighbor should be able to stop me,” he said.
But instead of a garden, Mark Werckle said it will be an industrial site. He said one of the developments is even referred to as a, “utility scale solar energy facility.”
“Now, if that doesn’t scream industrial, I don’t know what does,” he said.
The solar properties will also be fenced, including barbed wire according to a proposal for one of the sites. But hiding acres and acres of solar panels moving with the sun won’t be that easy.
Lalor is obviously not thrilled with the prospect of the panels or the fences.
“We moved out here for no fences,” she said.