A tentative deal has been reached between Laramie County and Canada energy firm Enbridge Inc. officials on who pays $14.5 million to rebuild a key road in south Cheyenne that eases the way for construction to begin on a $1.2 billion solar farm project, Wyoming’s largest.
The negotiations stalled for months because of a dispute over the Chalk Bluff Road improvements that are needed to begin work on the 771-megawatt facility that will have more than 1.2 million solar panels.
The facility is needed to supply power to the recently announced Meta Platforms Inc. enterprise data center, a Microsoft Corp. data center being built nearby off South Greeley Road in south Cheyenne and possibly others on the drawing board.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is largely backed by co-founder billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.
On Wednesday, Enbridge project managers Christian Dick and Michael Howell met with Laramie County Commissioners Gunnar Malm, Troy Thompson, Linda Heath and Buck Holmes to draft the framework of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that the county planning commission will consider July 25, with the commissioners taking up the matter again Aug. 6.
Under terms of the proposed deal, Enbridge is to split the cost of rebuilding and widening the 9-mile stretch of Chalk Bluff Road leading to the solar farm project.
Enbridge will share $12 million of the costs while the county will pick up the remaining $2.5 million. Once completed in the fall of 2025, the road will accommodate heavy construction-related traffic of 350 vehicles daily in this grasslands area with mostly cattle ranches.
Bad Stretch
“The road is not in the condition that it would need to be in to facilitate the traffic that’s going to come along with the project,” said Justin Arnold, program manager for the Laramie County Planning and Development.
“The county’s been steadfast in its stance that we understand the road isn’t in good shape, and in order for it to be a safe project we need to widen the road, bring it up to current county standards,” Arnold told Cowboy State Daily. “Yeah, we have a tentative deal as it relates to who’s going to pay for what and who’s doing the design for Enbridge of the road.”
The solar farm will be built on private land leases in two phases south of Cheyenne, about 4 miles southeast of the capital city. The facility will generate enough electricity to light up more than 771,000 homes, more than all of Wyoming.
The proposal offered by the Alberta-based energy firm, however, designates power from the farm for large industrial corporate customers in Wyoming and not homeowners, according to the application.
The project area, totaling 3,845 acres, is located east of U.S. Highway 85 and both north and south of Chalk Bluff Road and County Road 203.
The project has been split into two construction phases over a 29-month period.
Solar Delays
Construction on Cowboy Solar 1 had been expected to begin in March 2025, with commercial operation commencing in January 2027.
That deadline has been pushed back at least three months with the MOU deal reached between Enbridge and Laramie County officials. Requests for proposals on new road construction should be issued this fall, with work scheduled to begin next June.
“By late fall (October 2025) we hope to have completed the roadway, then they’d (Enbridge) be able to begin moving forward with bringing equipment and other things in for site improvement,” Arnold said.
An access road also is needed for emergency firefighting equipment.
Commercial operation of Cowboy Solar II is expected to begin in August 2027, but no details were immediately available on whether this phase of the project would be delayed by several months as well due to the effects of the MOU.
As it stands, no solar panels or 40,000-pound solar batteries can be hauled to the solar farm site until Chalk Bluff is rebuilt and an emergency access road is constructed to the west, Arnold said.
The Industrial Siting Division of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality approved Enbridge’s application for the permit in May after it was submitted for consideration in mid-January, and a public hearing was held in March.
Enbridge’s only other presence in Wyoming includes the Express-Platte pipeline that transports crude oil from western Canada to refineries in the U.S. Rockies region. The main delivery point of crude through the pipeline is Casper.
When complete, the Enbridge project would become the largest utility-scale solar farm in Wyoming.
The dispute over road improvements relates to safety concerns with roads and access for fire safety. The main road, Chalk Bluff, isn’t wide enough to accommodate the traffic, and the developer is supposed to bring the road up to county standards.
The county had imposed several conditions on Enbridge before it would grant approval for the solar farm project, including building fire access roads from the east and west of the solar farm, and providing fire safety equipment for the lithium battery energy storage systems, according to concerns raised by Darrick Mittlestadt, fire chief of Laramie County Fire District 1.
“There are potential fire hazards. From an emergency services viewpoint, you don’t want a single access into the site,” Arnold said. “If a fire breaks out or gets out of control, they’d only have one way out, so the county requested a secondary point of access.”
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
