Sometimes a political or environmental fight begins not in a courtroom or a government office, but across a fence line. And sometimes the hero didn’t plan to be.

For Alexandra Fasulo, it began when she returned to upstate New York and bought a few acres with a very different dream. She wanted to build a farm, establish a pollinator habitat, work with Amish farmers, and create a small piece of land where agriculture and nature could coexist. She was not, by her own account, an activist campaigning against renewable energy. An idealist? Maybe. She even owned a portable solar panel for her own use. Then she learned that a neighboring farmer had been approached about leasing roughly 100 acres to a solar company. That didn’t fit her vision for the community.

Fasulo began attending town meetings and studying New York’s renewable-energy siting laws. Her initial response was remarkably local: she supported a town Solar Facilities Law intended to establish rules for solar development. The law passed. She thought the issue had been resolved. It wasn’t. Her education accelerated when she attended a hearing concerning the proposed Fort Edward Solar project in Washington County.

The project was a proposed 100-megawatt solar facility. State records show that the project ultimately received its final siting permit from New York’s Office of Renewable Energy Siting and Electric Transmission, or ORES, on May 26, 2026. The state proceeding identifies the project as being in the Town of Fort Edward.

What Fasulo encountered at the hearing convinced her that this was........

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