Cart 0
What is SCA? What We Do Our Leadership Get Involved 50th Anniversary Recent Email Blasts
What's the Ag Reserve? History Benefits
Current Issues Conservation & Land Use/Zoning Agriculture Renewable Energy/Waste Disposal/Recycling Past Issues
Upcoming Events Reserve the Barn
Cart 0
 

A Letter from Our President

Download Printable PDF
Email this page to your friends and neighbors!

December 12, 2025

Dear SCA Members and Friends,

Season’s Greetings! Thanks for your support in 2025. Our advocacy efforts to protect and preserve farmland in the Ag Reserve and promote sustainable environmental practices have broadened and deepened in recent years:

  • It took years, but our fight to close the Dickerson incinerator, the County’s worst single source of pollution, is reaching fruition. After a 2-year assessment, County officials have agreed closure is the best course of action. Important steps towards that goal will occur in 2026. We’re deeply involved.

  • Reducing the volume of trash is another part of the County’s effort to improve its waste management. As one element of that effort, the County has proposed expanding the yard waste compost facility in Dickerson to incorporate food scraps which make up 20% of the County’s garbage. SCA must approve this initiative. It’s a good idea on the environmental merits. We’re in detailed negotiations with the County on how such an expansion would impact the community.

  • A renewed conversation about “agritourism” in the Ag Reserve has triggered concerns about inappropriate or excessive commercial activities on farms in the Reserve that may undermine or sideline actual farming. Farming must come first.

  • Where to put ground-based solar arrays? A new state law opened up about 120,000 acres of good farmland to such facilities, including about 5,000 acres in the Ag Reserve. The dynamics of the solar industry are in flux nationwide. We support more solar and other renewable energy sources, but not on the best farmland.

  • The County’s largest industrial development in years is being proposed in Dickerson: a data center campus and a battery-powered energy storage facility. In partnership with Montgomery Countryside Alliance, SCA is closely monitoring these proposals. Their scope and fate will be decided by County and state officials in 2026-27.

You can read about these and other issues on our website: https://sugarloafcitizens.org/

This letter solicits your annual membership dues and donations for calendar year 2026. Instructions are on page 2. We cannot do our work without your help. We must hire lawyers, researchers, and consultants to be successful. We are an all-volunteer board.

Again, thanks for your ongoing support. Feel free to contact us anytime about issues you think we need to know about. Enjoy the holiday season. And, our very best wishes for 2026!

 

Steven Findlay, President, Sugarloaf Citizens Association

Join SCA / Donate
 
 

Share this page with your friends and neighbors!