Solar Leasing on Land in Martin County, North Carolina

Real, operating solar development is already here

Martin County is not a hypothetical market for a solar lease -- utility-scale solar is already built and operating here. Green Farm, a solar photovoltaic facility, operates in Robersonville. Around Williamston, at least four more named projects are operating or in the project database: Williamston Solar (5 megawatts of capacity), Williamston Speight Solar LLC (15 megawatts), Meadows PV 1, and Jakana Solar. That is a genuine, multi-project track record of developers successfully siting and building solar in Martin County specifically, which gives a landowner here real local precedent and comparable deal information -- developers are not speculating about whether solar works on this land; they've already built it.

For a landowner, that existing base of operating projects is useful context, but it should not be mistaken for a settled regulatory environment -- as the next section covers, the rules governing new solar development here changed substantially and very recently.

A regulatory gap that just closed: a new ordinance adopted December 2025

Until recently, Martin County was one of the few North Carolina counties with no solar-specific permitting ordinance at all -- new solar projects were reviewed without a dedicated regulatory framework, an issue the county's own tax office reportedly flagged as a problem worth fixing. The Board of Commissioners closed that gap by unanimously adopting a new solar energy ordinance in December 2025. A county official described the change plainly: the ordinance is standard for North Carolina counties and gives Martin County meaningfully more regulatory control over solar farms coming into the county going forward.

The new ordinance is substantive, not a rubber stamp. It requires a detailed site plan showing array placement and setbacks, plus landscaping and fencing plans demonstrating proposed screening and vegetative buffering around a project's perimeter. It requires public hearings on proposed sites and allows for variances in appropriate cases. And it specifically protects conservation-sensitive features -- flyways, wetlands, historical sites, and cemeteries -- from being overrun by a project's footprint. If you're a landowner negotiating a lease now, or evaluating land specifically for its solar-leasing potential, that means any new project on your land (or a neighboring one) will be reviewed under a real, detailed ordinance for the first time -- not the largely unregulated process that applied to the earlier wave of Martin County solar development.

What to ask before signing a Martin County solar lease

• Whether your parcel or the proposed project layout can meet the new ordinance's setback, buffer, and screening requirements -- ask for the site plan and landscaping/fencing plan the developer intends to submit, not just a summary.
• Whether any conservation-sensitive feature (a wetland, a documented flyway, a historical site, or a cemetery) sits on or near your land, since the new ordinance specifically protects these and could constrain where panels can actually be sited on your parcel.
• Lease term, renewal, and decommissioning provisions -- who pays to remove panels, racking, and any interconnection equipment at the end of the lease, and whether a bond or other financial assurance backs that obligation.
• Whether the project has cleared, or will need, the new ordinance's required public hearing -- a project still working through that process is at an earlier, less certain stage than one already permitted under the prior, less formal review.
• Interconnection queue status with the relevant transmission utility, confirmed independently, since delays here are a common reason a signed lease doesn't translate into actual construction or lease payments on the timeline a developer first presents.
• Whether the specific project reviewed the vegetative-buffer and design standards against your neighbors' land as well as your own -- a project facing organized neighbor objection under the new, more formal public-hearing process may face a longer approval timeline than a developer's pitch assumes.