The right to sunshine may be one of the most significant and
controversial zoning issues of the next decade.
A handful of municipalities and states already have moved to the forefront of the issue by establishing regulations governing rights to solar access. In the coming years, other government agencies across the country will face the dilemma of whether to protect solar construction from conventional building.
Solar access is being considered in terms of property rights.
A U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department publication describes solar access as ``regulating development in such a way that buildings and vegetation do not block sunlight and prevent solar energy use by neigboring buildings,`` or, more simply, ``regulating to control shadows.``
Martin Jaffe, research program manager at the American Planning Association, Chicago, and an author of the HUD guidebook, explained it further:
``You want to get unimpeded sunlight to fall where you want it, either on south-facing windows or active solar collectors on roofs. It is a zoning technique that manipulates building bulk to minimize shading.``
Although solar zoning usually is talked about in terms of the future, there are ``literally hundreds of years of legal precedents`` said Debra Stangl, an attorney in Omaha who specializes in energy issues.
Those precedents hold that a landowner does not have a legal right to light, she said.
``Unless there is a state law, or a local zoning ordinance, or a private restrictive covenant, you have no right to sunlight,`` she warned.
``But as Americans, we think we have so many inalienable rights that people assume the opposite. The situation is such that a lot of people are installing solar systems and they don`t realize that they have no legal protection.``
Most of the work in solar zoning has been done on a local level, Stangl said, because needs vary locally, often according to topography, weather conditions, deciduous trees and other area zoning ordinances.
Two examples of local efforts are Ashland, Ore., and, closer to home, Soldiers Grove, Wis.
Ashland, a town of 15,200 in southern Oregon, best known for its Shakespeare festival, gained national attention when it passed a solar access ordinance in 1980.
``When we started, there were few solar applications in the city,``
said John Fregonese, Ashland planning director. ``Today, we estimate that 5 percent of the housing stock uses something (solar) and about 20 percent to 40 percent of new housing stock has some sort of passive solar application.
``Now they`re everywhere--on houses, apartments, churches, even car washes.``
Ashland`s ordinance works on three levels. The first is a solar setback that requires that a new building must not shade neighboring property between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. from Jan. 21 until Nov. 21.
A solar access permit is the second element. The amount of sunlight on a property is recorded for future reference.
For example, when a person`s tree infringes on another`s solar zone, the tree must be trimmed. However, if the tree was there first, it has squatter`s rights and is protected.
The third element protects solar access on every lot in new subdivisions. Builders are given an incentive to comply by being allowed a 20 percent increase in density per acre if the units also are energy efficient.
Ashland`s ordinance is very popular, Fregonese said, and there have been no major problems with it. In a report about the town`s energy program, he wrote that the ordinance ``is viewed by the populace as a solar right, not a regulation.``
The maximum penalty for a violation is $500 for each day it continues. So far, no one has been fined.
Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin`s energy landmark, passed zoning laws in 1980 to designate standards for thermal performance (conservation) and solar installations in its business district. Solar access also was zoned to protect those investments.
The solar access zoning applied to all buildings but the thermal performance ruling applied only to nonresidential buildings because the state regulates residential thermal performance.
``The way we did it at Soldiers Grove was as part of a more generalized consideration of energy management,`` said Tom Hirsch, former coordinator of the Soldiers Grove project and now on the Wisconsin Health and Social Services Department staff.
On the state level, New Mexico passed a solar access law in 1977 and California passed two bills in 1978, one a Solar Rights Act, the other a Solar Shade Control Act.
The Solar Rights Act addressed an issue that Hirsch and Stangl found pressing at a local level: ``It said that if there were a covenant or city ordinance which prohibited or unreasonably restricted the installation of solar, that covenant or ordinance was void,`` said Gregg Wheatland, attorney for the California Energy Commission.