It was applause and celebrations at Thursday’s Eagle Township Board meeting.

“This just shows what a township can do with the right people saying ‘no,’” one resident told the board. “So thank you!”

“Some places want economic development; it’s not a bad thing,” said local Cori Feldpausch, who led the charge to quash a proposed EV mega site. “What I don’t like is when it’s forced onto a community without them saying, ‘Yes, this is what we want.'”

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The celebrations followed just days after the Lansing Economic Area Partnership announced it will no longer pursue a Michigan Manufacturing Innovation Campus that would have consumed 1,000 acres of farmland to feed the electric vehicle industry, WSYM reports.

“As more and more input came in, the local municipality leaders and neighbor sentiment turned from initial unanimous support into significant opposition to new development on these specific properties for any type of industrial use,” according to LEAP, which is now ending contracts with affected landowners.

Plans for the mega site didn’t jibe the rural character of the township, where about half of the roughly 2,800 residents rely on farming. While LEAP’s plans came with promises of high paying jobs some time in the future, they would have cost the community jobs in the short term, and created issues with roads and schools, township supervisor Troy Stroud told Michigan Farm News.

“We have good things going on here, so you have to protect your own community,” he said. “Our kids have really high outcomes. Why would anyone want to jeopardize that. We have two great school systems in Eagle, and neither Portland nor Grand Ledge have the wiggle room to bring in thousands of more people.”

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Feldpausch organized the opposition through a “stop the mega site” Facebook group that grew to 3,200 members over the last year.

The outcome came as a relief to Jake Clark, who leases the 1,000 acre site eyed by LEAP – property that was endowed to Michigan State University in 2005 by beloved agricultural giant Dave Morris with a promise it would remain farmland for 25 years.

“People just stepped up and did it, which is pretty amazing,” Clark told Michigan Farm News.

“We all have the same feeling about where we live and how we want it to be. When my dad passed away in 2016, everybody stepped up and helped out. They helped us get harvest done, brought food, and just helped all over. Now, it’s happening again.”

Eagle Township Trustee Dennis Strahle told WSYM the township’s defeat of the EV mega site was welcomed news for most residents.

“We didn’t want it, we didn’t need it, and now it’s not coming,” he said. “So we’re happy.”

The ordeal also comes with lessons for the future, Stroud said.

“For me, I hope it becomes more of a how-to for continuing to improve Eagle, not how to save Eagle,” he said.

Township trustees used Thursday’s meeting to approve measures they hope will help avoid similar problems in the future, revising solar and wind zoning ordinances as the state shifts permitting for large scale solar, wind and battery storage facilities to state regulators.

“We’re excited, we have a master plan that is completed, we have a strategic plan, we have a vision, a mission, we want to stay rural,” Trustee Michelle Hoppes told WILX. “Our community is very engaged so we’ll continue to work with our community and move forward in our rural nature.”

“We put together our interim zoning ordinance on renewable energy and that’s utility-scale. We created an overlay district so that’s really where any type of solar and other renewable energy would actually be allowed in Eagle Township,” she said.

Those ordinances are critical for Eagle Township and any others in Michigan to receive compensation from large-scale wind, solar, and battery storage facilities, but rules finalized by the governor-appointed Michigan Public Service Commission in October leave them with no ability to avoid them.

The rules stem from legislation approved by Democrats in the Michigan Legislature through party-line votes last year to move permitting of those facilities from local governments to the three-member MPSC.

The move came in response to strong local opposition in many communities that posed a problem for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s climate goals and forced transition to “clean” energy.

Whitmer signed the legislation into law in November 2023 alongside other bills that forced a 100% clean energy standard by 2040, created a new office dedicated to transitioning workers to the industry, and tasked the MPSC with considering “climate and equity” in energy decisions.

“We are deeply concerned that the MPSC’s ruling undermines the democratic process by removing the voices of local residents and local officials in decisions that directly impact their communities,” Michael Homier, attorney at Foster Swift Collins & Smith who is representing 75 counties in litigation challenging the law, said in a recent statement.

“Local governments have a longstanding responsibility to ensure that developments align with their unique priorities, and this decision threatens to leave them powerless in the face of large-scale renewable energy projects.”