A screen shot from City Council’s virtual legislative session on Tuesday night
A small army of workers is expected to descend upon Uptown Harrisburg on Saturday in a rush to disassemble the vast solar array at the former headquarters of D&H Distributing.
City Council unanimously approved a resolution on Tuesday to enter into an agreement with Wildheart Ministries so that the Allison Hill-based nonprofit can provide labor in a one-day blitz to take apart thousands of solar panels on the sprawling property.
Eight years ago, D&H installed some 3,500 solar panels at its long-time headquarters on the 2500-block of N. 7th Street. Those panels conveyed with the sale of the property to the Hudson Companies, a Hermitage, Pa.-based developer that is constructing a three-story, brick-and-glass building for commonwealth employees. Hudson has no use for them, so is donating them to the city.
According to Mayor Eric Papenfuse, the city originally expected its Department of Public Works to do the job, which would have taken months with their limited manpower. However, D&H recently informed the city that it wants to break ground on the project next week, which means that the solar panels need to be moved immediately.
“We were quite frankly surprised a couple of weeks ago when we moved very quickly from the red to yellow (reopening phase),” Papenfuse said. “This began to accelerate construction projects like the Hudson project for the state office building on N. 7th Street at a faster rate than was anticipated.”
The public works department, he said, determined that disassembling the panels was not difficult, requiring brief training and simple tools. So, department Director Aaron Johnson and Deputy Director Dave West reached out to Wildheart Ministries, which, over the years, has deployed volunteers repeatedly for cleanup and improvement projects around Allison Hill.
“Working with Wildheart throughout the years, we know that they can assemble that type of group so that we can get it done in one day,” West said. “This is what we have to do in order to accomplish our goal.”
West told council that Wildheart is expected to deploy about 100 people to the effort. In return, the city will donate about $10,000 to Wildheart.
Once the panels are taken apart, the city will move them onto municipal land for storage until they can be redeployed starting next year.
Council members were told that the panels have 15 to 17 years of life in them and eventually should provide about 10 percent of the city’s power, saving it some $50,000 a year in electricity costs. The city also may make some money by selling power back on to the grid.
In other action, council approved a resolution confirming the resumption of street cleaning schedules and parking-related ordinances. In March, the city, Capital Region Water and parking manager SP+ suspended these operations as the COVID-19 pandemic took root. They will all now resume on June 15.
