SOLAR PANELS TO SURROUND DULLES AIRPORT WILL DELIVER POWER TO 37,000 HOMES

Travelers taking off and landing at Dulles International Airport outside the nation's capital will soon see an array of 200,000 solar panels laid out near the runways the largest renewable energy project ever built at a U.S. airport.

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Dominion Energy and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority ceremonially broke ground on the 835-acre project Tuesday.

The solar farm is just a small part of a huge push by Dominion to add 16,000 megawatts of solar capacity - enough to power 4 million homes - by 2035 as it seeks to comply with a state law requiring 100% of its non-nuclear energy production to be zero emission by 2045.

Rural counties in Virginia, though, are pushing back against the solar expansion, as residents complain about the loss of farmland, wrecked viewsheds and construction noise. In recent months, Henry, Pittsylvania, Clarke and Shenandoah counties have all taken steps to restrict or regulate new solar projects.

Bev McKay, a supervisor in Clarke County, said it's unfair rural counties bear the brunt of hosting solar farms.

Urban areas "are huge users of electricity and there is no reason that the urban areas cannot generate their share of solar energy instead of depending on the rural areas to do it for them," he said at a Board of Supervisors meeting last month, according to the meeting minutes.