The Chestnuthill Township supervisors approved the conditional use application Tuesday night for a solar farm on top of a hillside on Merwinsburg Road in Effort.

The conditional use approval means that the project can proceed on land that is zoned rural residential district. At the time that the application was submitted to the township, solar farms were not excluded in that district. Since then, the township has passed an ordinance placing them in areas zoned light industrial.

The next step in the process is for the applicant, Effort Energy Initiative LLC, to file a land development plan with the township. This will be reviewed by the township’s planning commission and then sent to the supervisors for a vote.

As part of the approval, the supervisors did stipulate several conditions that have to be met. Some of these conditions are items that Effort Energy said it would do in its application, while others came up during the hearings.

Among these conditions are the following requirements.

The solar farm would be located on a 15-acre parcel of a larger 126.59 acre property owned by Connie Merwine along Merwinsburg Road in Effort. That 15-acres containing the solar panels would be fenced in entirely. Of that 15 acres, the solar panels will be limited to 9.7 acres. On that 9.7 acres, the solar farm is limited to a maximum of 8,034 solar panels, which is 309 strings of 26 modules each with related equipment and property improvements.

A 100-foot buffer is required to surround the solar farm, which creates a cleared area of 19.4 acres.

The construction places the panels on posts with the highest point at 10 feet above ground. The panels do not prevent water from permeating into the grass, said William Swanick, an engineer with Herbert, Rowland and Grubic Inc. who testified for Effort Energy during the hearing in January.

The water will run down the tilted panels to the ground covered in grass, and the posts holding the panels up are 10 inches in diameter, so they do not create a significant amount of impermeable area. There will also be a stormwater collection basin along the lower edge in the event of excessive runoff.

During the hearings, Effort Energy said it would monitor the solar farm 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that none of the materials in the solar panels are flammable. The approval of the conditional use application requires that the company responds within 24 hours of notification of damage or malfunction of a solar panel.

“Now it’s up to them to put those conditions into play or appeal,” said Carl Gould II, the chairman of the supervisors.