The Warren County Commission has distributed its first check to taxing entities in the county, for $675,000, from Invenergy, developer of the Split-Rail solar farm.

“That was the big one. That was the 300-megawatt one,” said Presiding Commissioner Joe Gildehaus, adding that, combined with payments from the developers of the separate Bluebird solar project, “they’re about $1 million a year, and then that will go up 2% every year.”

The money was distributed July 23 between five taxing entities, in addition to the county itself. The Warren County R-III School District received $456,835.14, Warren County Fire Protection District received $107,710, Warren County Ambulance District received $50,492.30, Scenic Regional Library District received $20,834.31, and the Warren County Developmental Disabilities Board received $16,626.62. The remaining $22,501.63 went to the county’s road and bridge and general funds, Gildehaus said.

The Split-Rail solar farm, located on 4,435 acres, mostly between Highway A and Highway W, is now up and running and has been transferred to Ameren. 

The 1,800-acre Bluebird Solar District, meanwhile, developed by DE Shaw Renewable Investments and operated by Ranger Power, is located on different parcels of property in roughly the same area as the Split-Rail Solar District and generates roughly 139 megawatts of power.  

Commissioner Matt Flake pointed out that the solar projects did not receive tax abatements.

“There’s no tax on solar in the state of Missouri,” Flake said. “It is not taxed, for whatever reason. That’s the only thing. Wind and all that is taxed. Solar is not. So when they came to town, we wanted the taxing entities to get some money out of this project, so we came up with a price per megawatt, we charged each solar company X amount.”

The commissioners decided to “distribute that as if it were a tax,” Flake added. “So every taxing entity will get the percentage they would get as if it were a real estate tax or personal property. It’s not, but we decided to distribute it just like if it were.”

State lawmakers have been considering legislation to make solar energy generation taxable, according to Gildehaus. “There was a lot of discussion about solar up in Jeff City this past year,” he said.

“There were some people that don’t like solar, without a doubt, and I understand, you know. But there’s a lot of land owners that wanted it. The commission didn’t go out and recruit Invenergy or Ranger Power to come here,” GIlderhaus added. “They came here because the land was out there, and the power line was right there.”

The commissioners said besides the payments, the county is receiving other benefits from its agreements with the solar developers.

“If something happens, if one goes out of business, whatever, there’s a decommissioning bond out there that they have to get it all back to fertile land,” Gildehaus said. “We did that as a county, which is nice for the land owners.”

Flake said any damage done to county roads was also reimbursed by the solar companies.

“And that got into the tens of thousands of dollars,” he said. “They replaced some culverts, some asphalt patching, a lot of gravel. We made sure that they paid for any damage done by trucking, so that was another thing that we made sure, that the county didn’t pay a dime for that.”

Commissioner Dave Mikus, who took office in January 2025, said the decisions regarding the solar projects pre-dated his time on the commission. Looking back, however, he felt the other commissioners “did an excellent job of the things that they put in place that weren’t required,” he said. 

“Because there was no tax, they made sure that these companies were going to pay a fee, and they were kind of on the leading edge of solar farms coming to the state of Missouri, so I commend the work that they did to get them where they are.”