State offers to buy theme park’s proposed solar site – report

JACKSON (AP) — State environmental officials have reportedly offered to buy the site where Six Flags Great Adventure plans to cut nearly 19,000 trees to build a 90-acre solar farm.

The Asbury Park Press says the Department of Environmental Protection floated the sale idea in a letter it sent Friday to Six Flags Entertainment Corp., in which it expressed its opposition to the proposal. But the newspaper did not say if a sales price has been proposed or discussed.

An unpaved street, Reed Road, separates the proposed solar farm site from the state-owned Colliers Mills Wildlife Management Area, which encompasses nearly 13,000 acres stretching across Jackson and Plumsted.

A company spokeswoman declined comment Saturday to The Associated Press. She said the letter has not been received at either Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson or at the company's corporate office in Texas.

The report comes in the wake of a lawsuit filed by several environmental groups, who claim the solar farm proposal violates the state's municipal land use law. They also allege the plan would be harmful to the Barnegat Bay watershed.

Six Flags has said the solar farm would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 24 times what the undisturbed forest is capable of removing on its own. It has also pledged to replant nearly 26,000 trees.

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