Solar for Community Resilience and Local Co-benefits

Improving drinking water quality with solar energy on DWSMAs in Minnesota

Rural communities face legacy issues with drinking water due to the long history of agricultural land uses using nitrogen-based fertilizers. Agriculture was and will continue to be the economic foundation for these communities, but it comes with risks and consequences, particularly from historical conventional agricultural practices.

The primary vector for nitrates in drinking water is agricultural production in groundwater recharge areas and along hydrologic flows supplying drinking water systems. Lowering drinking water nitrate levels through treatment or drilling new wells can cost millions of dollars.

The burgeoning clean energy industry, particularly solar energy, can be an economic asset in helping to change agricultural practices in groundwater recharge areas and address the nitrate problem in rural America.

Millions of people who live in rural and suburban communities in the Midwest face unacceptable levels of nitrates in drinking water, which pose a severe health risk for infants and increase the risk of health problems and cancer in adults.

For example, over 10 percent of the private wells sampled by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) have nitrate levels above the US Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for unsafe water (10 milligrams per liter). MDA has mapped those areas of the state where groundwater vulnerability requires nitrogen fertilizer restrictions in the fall. Many public drinking water systems in rural and suburban Minnesota have elevated nitrate levels or have been identified by MDH as highly vulnerable to contamination.

By replacing agricultural land uses in recharge areas with a solar plus conservation dual land use, communities can leverage the growing solar energy market to reduce nitrates, avoid expensive water treatment, protect economic value for rural landowners, and create local habitat co-benefits.

What is a DWSMA?

Drinking water supply management areas (DWMSAs) are designated protection areas around the wellheads of public drinking water supplies where rainwater and surface water recharge the drinking water aquifer. DWSMAs are clearly defined geographic areas that MDH evaluates for risk of public water contamination.

Potential sources of contamination include surface water runoff from surrounding land uses, agricultural inputs that could infiltrate groundwater supplies, and chemical or harmful spills that can affect the communities’ drinking water supplies.

Host communities will benefit from the clean energy future

Equitably decarbonizing our energy system will require both a substantial investment in our country’s renewable energy resources and ensuring that this investment serves the needs and priorities of the communities being asked to host that investment. Solar energy resources are ubiquitous, carbon-free, and among the least costly ways to generate electricity. However, clean energy development should not replicate the mistakes of our conventional energy system that left a legacy of environmental damage and human health problems.

This project demonstrates that careful solar siting and system design can create value for host communities and even resolve intractable dilemmas, as is seen in the nitrate water risks faced by much of rural America. 

GPI works to build value for host communities in the emerging clean energy economy, including by supporting communities in realizing co-benefits from distributed and large-scale renewable energy projects. Contact us for more information on how your community can benefit from participating in the clean energy transformation: [email protected].

What can we do about it?

The Great Plains Institute (GPI), working with the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and other partners, continues to explore the benefits of solar energy for drinking water. Solar development offers a unique solution for protecting wellhead protection areas. Environmentally sensitive solar development can limit nitrate pollution, create a new tax base, provide habitat, and help meet clean energy goals.

 

Minnesota Department of Health Logo

The DWSMA Solar Initiative

For several years, GPI has been convening groups in and around Minnesota to discuss solar development as a tool for protecting or restoring local and state ecosystem services and natural resources. In general, the land between solar arrays and buffer areas around the arrays makes up 50 percent or more of a solar project site, and the ground under the arrays is also vegetated with perennial plants. Consequently, up to 90 percent of a project site is vegetated open space that can be used for conservation ground covers such as deep-rooted grasses and pollinator- and habitat-friendly vegetation

GPI partnered with MDH, the Minnesota Rural Water Association (MRWA), and Emmons & Olivier Resources Inc. (EOR), along with other state agencies, environmental advocates, and energy and solar industry stakeholders, to discuss how solar development can protect groundwater and restore nitrate-challenged drinking water supplies.

DWSMAs present a significant solar development opportunity, covering over 1.3 million acres of land in Minnesota. Looking only at DWSMA areas designated as vulnerable to nitrate contamination could, in theory, host more than 14,000 megawatts (MW) of solar capacity, enough to provide up to 20 percent of Minnesota’s current electric energy needs.

MDH has spent years attempting to reduce conventional agricultural production on vulnerable DWSMAs. However, most DWSMAs are privately owned, and much of the area is prime farmland.

Large-scale solar that meets Minnesota’s habitat-friendly standard offers a way to take DWSMA land out of agricultural production at scale (1,000 acres rather than 40–80 acres at a time) while affording an improved financial return to the landowner.  Community-scale solar (10-100 acres) offers smaller DWSMAs the same opportunity to provide both protection of drinking water and clean energy generation.

Replacing nitrate-producing agriculture with habitat-friendly solar can also bring improved health and safety to the community and substantial cost savings to the state and rural water providers, who will not have to drill new wells or build additional treatment facilities for nitrate removal.

DWSMA Solar Phase 1

In 2023, MDH, EOR, and GPI reconvened stakeholders and state agency partners to establish a project steering committee to evaluate opportunities and barriers to DWSMA solar and identify potential pilot or demonstration projects.

The committee considered and prioritized existing opportunities for solar development on DWSMAs, explored potential energy off-takers for the solar development, and identified high-nitrate watersheds and potential pilot project sites. The project cataloged electric interconnection standards and opportunities, considered solar market conditions, and identified existing programs and policy initiatives that affect DWSMA solar opportunities.

DWSMA Solar Phase 2

In the spring of 2024, MDH was awarded an Energy Futures grant by the US Department of Energy (DE-FOA 00002870). The grant provided funding to develop plans for community- and large-scale solar energy projects located on drinking water recharge areas that also bring other local co-benefits to rural communities. Co-benefits include mitigating nitrate levels in local drinking water, providing energy resilience benefits for the water utility, and prioritizing economic benefits for local businesses and workers.

The MDH team launched a kickoff meeting of the statewide project steering committee in January of 2025, but unfortunately, the grant has since been put on indefinite hold by the U.S. DOE.

Despite the loss of the grant, the MDH decided to move ahead with a trimmed version of the project.  Working with the Great Plains Institute, the Southwest Regional Development Commission, and the Minnesota Rural Water Association, the project will engage two communities to assess community priorities and conditions for solar on local DWSMAs. The effort will create community energy plans to do the following:

  • Assess interest in developing affordable and resilient energy to drinking water critical infrastructure.
  • Identify and connect with local landowners to convert land uses in vulnerable wellhead protection areas (DWSMAs) to solar plus conservation to reduce legacy nitrate contamination.
  • Create sample community benefits plans or model agreements to be integrated with large-scale solar development to ensure solar projects that create economic, environmental, and health benefits for the host community.
  • The project will engage two host communities through public workshops, focus groups, or other outreach to identify how solar development can be community-focused, serving both clean energy needs and community priorities.

The project has also re-convened a “DWSMA Solar Committee” to examine the opportunity to scale this effort across the state. The committee includes state agencies, energy and environmental stakeholders, drinking and surface water professionals, utilities, solar industry members, and agricultural organizations. The Committee will consider priority areas for DWSMA solar, consistency with existing programs and policies, and methods for removing barriers to and ensuring local benefits from accelerated deployment of DWSMA solar.

Want to learn more?

To learn more about our work to advance solar and other renewable energy technologies, visit GPI’s Renewable Energy page.