Wind & Solar Leasing in Walworth County, SD: Oahe Solar

Walworth County is home to one of South Dakota's more contested recent renewable-energy developments: the 355-megawatt Oahe Solar Project south of Mobridge, built on more than 3,200 acres of landowner easement agreements. The county's response -- a construction moratorium, then a specific one-mile dwelling setback ordinance adopted in 2024 -- gives any landowner considering a lease, or any buyer evaluating land near the project, real, checkable local rules to work from.

This page covers what's specific to Walworth County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

A real, named project: Oahe Solar and its 3,200+ acres of landowner agreements

Doral Renewables LLC has pursued the Oahe Solar Project south of Mobridge in Walworth County, securing easement agreements covering more than 3,200 acres from area landowners for a facility with a stated generating capacity of 355 megawatts. That's a concrete, verifiable scale of local land-lease activity -- not a hypothetical mention of "renewable energy interest" -- and it means Walworth County has real, recent experience with what a utility-scale solar lease actually looks like on the ground: multi-year easement agreements, project financing tied to a specific generating capacity, and a construction and grid-interconnection timeline spanning several years. Reported opposition to the project centered on landowners' and neighbors' concerns that the company had not been fully transparent about its plans, alongside safety and property-value concerns raised by area residents and farmers -- context worth knowing whether you're the landowner being approached for a lease or a buyer evaluating land near an existing agreement.

For a landowner considering a solar or wind lease in Walworth County, Oahe Solar's scale is a useful reference point: agreements at this scale typically involve per-acre or per-megawatt lease payments, decommissioning and land-restoration obligations at the end of the lease term, and easement terms that can run for decades -- all specifics that should be reviewed by an attorney experienced in renewable-energy leasing before signing, rather than assumed from general knowledge of agricultural leases.

The county's own setback ordinance -- a moratorium, then a specific rule

Walworth County's regulatory response to solar development is dated and specific enough to plan around. On May 2, 2023, the County Commission adopted a one-year moratorium on new solar farm construction pending a study and the development of a comprehensive planning framework for solar in the county. After a preliminary 4-1 vote in November 2023 and further hearings into 2024 -- including a public hearing on the ordinance's second reading on September 5, 2024 -- the Commission formally adopted a solar farm ordinance on a 4-1 vote, setting a one-mile setback from occupied dwellings and a 1,000-foot setback from property lines for new solar development, with subsequent amendments addressing battery-storage components specifically. Reporting at the time also indicated the ordinance was adopted in time to appear on a general-election ballot; we could not confirm the outcome of any subsequent county-wide referendum vote through available sources.

For a landowner or buyer today, the practical takeaway is straightforward: any new solar (or, by extension, wind) development sited in Walworth County has to clear a one-mile setback from any occupied dwelling and a 1,000-foot setback from property lines under the county's adopted ordinance -- a real, numeric constraint that will shape where a new project can physically go and how it interacts with neighboring parcels, quite differently from a county with no siting ordinance at all. One open question worth confirming directly with the county: whether the setback ordinance, adopted after Oahe Solar's own easement agreements were already in place, applies retroactively to expansions of that project or only to new development going forward -- we could not confirm the ordinance's grandfather provisions, if any, through available sources.

Wind and Solar Leasing in Walworth County, South Dakota

A real, named project: Oahe Solar and its 3,200+ acres of landowner agreements

The county's own setback ordinance -- a moratorium, then a specific rule

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