Resource extraction at NY solar complexes: the soil “shell game” under the guise of green energy

I have been speaking with a woman in Western New York, inside of Excelsior Solar, who has confirmed ongoing resource extraction within ORES solar complexes. Here’s what I’ve learned.

I’ve always been a common-sense person. And I’ve always been someone who sees the big picture.

When I started learning about the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) and solar complexes in 2025, I figured that, surely, at some point in my research, I’d come across an attribute of these solar complexes that justified their widespread environmental destruction.

There had to be some kind of trade-off.

Coming off 10 years in the business world as an entrepreneur who started working for myself at just 22 years old, I see the world as a series of transactions. There are good trade deals... and there are bad ones.

I thought I knew what a bad trade deal looked like before learning about ORES. I was wrong.

After speaking with energy experts, engineers, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) (before I was blacklisted), and town supervisors, I realized there is no inherent “good” in commercial solar complexes. In fact, these dystopian hellscapes generate, if they are lucky, about 15% of their annual potential in Upstate New York, according to data that anyone can access on the NYISO dashboard.

And when we need that power most, from mid-November through March, the panels fall below 7% of their potential daily generation, plunging to 0% during blizzards.

The part of me that sees the big picture paused and sat with this information for a while. Looking at it through the lens of business, I knew there had to be a monetary benefit flowing to the behind-the-scenes players.

Those players are obvious:

• ORES/a shadow bureaucratic class

• The governor’s office

• Foreign corporations

• NYSERDA

• Monopolistic law firms, like Young/Sommer

Since commercial solar is not a fix for our grid (they would have to build hundreds of thousands of battery storage facilities to even begin extending the relatively small amounts of energy generated intermittently), it is instead a fix for a business arrangement that is lucrative enough to incentivize breaking state law and invite lawsuits.

At first, the obvious monetary benefits are the subsidies and tax credits awarded to foreign solar and wind corporations through NYSERDA. But one whistleblower after another has shared with me that these companies, while physically constructing the complexes, have created what they describe as a “black market” for resource extraction that pays third-party solar installation companies lucratively.

The topsoil shell game

The imagery you are looking at in this article has been provided by Barbie Starowitz from Byron, New York. This imagery was captured over the last 14 months as Excelsior Solar was anchored onto prime farmland in Western New York.

As the photo above shows: the solar companies are stripping topsoil off the properties. Landowners have told me that when approached by these companies, the solar salesmen lied and said “they would not strip or extract topsoil from the property.” They were told the land would be farmed again.

One day, Barbie noticed the installation crew loading topsoil from surrounding parcels into a shipping waste container.

Locals captured a drone shot, also suspicious of the topsoil movement. Barbie followed the truck and discovered soil was being moved to a local waste management facility, where it sat until it was ultimately brought to the local dump.

From there, the truck brought the topsoil to the top of the hill. Calls uncovered that a deal, allegedly, had been struck between the solar installation company and the local dump to open a new section of the dump.

The participating landowners in Excelsior Solar, who are under strict gag orders, started tracking topsoil movement. As they call it: it’s a soil “shell game” whereby soil is moved from parcel to parcel, mixed, sorted, and the best soil is taken offsite and sold to hidden buyers.

Crushed clay and rock is hauled in to take the place of the topsoil, graded, and punctured with steel piles that anchor the solar panels.

Since these families have been farming the land for a century, they know a thing or two about soil. Soil is everything when it comes to growing crops like corn, cabbage, and potatoes, which is why watching that rich, USDA prime topsoil be taken offsite has traumatized those living in Byron, New York.

Co-mingling assets

This photo was taken after forest clearing at Excelsior Solar. It shows timber from multiple participating parcels that was immediately co-mingled. As a result, landowners were no longer able to identify which lumber originated from their individual properties. According to those familiar with the situation, the solar company valued the lumber at less than $100 for landowners who believed their timber was worth substantially more.

According to Starowitz, proper timber assessments were not conducted before the trees were cut. Once the timber is lying on the ground and mixed together like this, it can no longer be fairly assessed or accurately attributed to each landowner.

Starowitz says she has observed a pattern in which the most valuable resources, such as topsoil and high-value timber, are extracted quickly before they can be inventoried. Once they are co-mingled or moved to another parcel, she says it becomes nearly impossible for landowners to determine what resources were removed from their property.

Those resources can then become a significant source of revenue for the third-party installation companies hired to clear the land.

Complex materials abandoned in place

ORES documentation on the Department of Public Service website shows that solar companies are only required to decommission projects down to a depth of four feet (48 inches) below the surface. The steel piles, which are driven 10 to 15 feet into the ground to anchor the panels, are cut off and left in place.

As Starowitz documented just last week, four overseas trucks pulled onto prime farmland that local residents had been told would one day be farmed again. Today, that land has been stripped of its topsoil, covered with crushed clay and rock, seeded, and punctured by materials manufactured halfway around the world.

Along the way, drainage tiles are crushed, and water stagnates over fields that once produced the food we eat.

The companies lied, but because ORES does not monitor construction sites and has approved every solar and wind permit application it has acted on, it doesn’t matter. A media blackout surrounding the environmental impacts of “green energy” keeps images like these off our nightly news.

People like Starowitz are American heroes for having the courage to document this destruction in real time and share these images with the public. I hope you’ll share this with someone today.

In a way, the foreign corporations are behaving exactly as you would expect in the absence of meaningful oversight from New York State: it’s the Wild West. The real responsibility lies with New York’s bureaucratic leadership, ORES, officials at the Department of Environmental Conservation who have turned a blind eye, the governor’s office for facilitating these projects, the Albany media for failing to scrutinize them, and NYSERDA for its financial role in the system.

And that’s the truth.

More to come.

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