Norfolk installs 13-acre solar array at landfill

This crew worked long hard hours all summer long installing the landfill solar array in Norfolk.
Photo by Jennifer Almquist
This crew worked long hard hours all summer long installing the landfill solar array in Norfolk.
NORFOLK — Driving into the Norfolk Transfer Station, their vehicles filled with a week’s worth of garbage and recycling, folks in Norfolk have watched the extraordinary transformation of the surrounding fields into a massive solar array.
Norfolk is one of the first towns in the state to install a 5-megawatt solar array covering more than 13 acres. The new panels are located on a capped landfill, which First Selectman Matt Riiska said is “land that cannot be used for anything else.”
Jeff Macel, managing director at Lodestar Energy, stated, “The project offers significant carbon debt reduction of 4,249 metric tons removed from the environment annually, with a lifetime reduction of 148,715 metric tons. The carbon offset is the equivalent of removing 32,095 gas-powered cars from the road over the life of the project or powering 18,760 houses over the life of the project. Located on a capped landfill, this array demonstrates adaptive reuse by utilizing real estate that has no other viable uses.”
The multi-year project began when Riiska established the Norfolk Energy Advisory Committee (NEAC) in 2018 to investigate energy sources and make the most of the energy resources for the town. Members of NEAC include Susannah Wood, Paul Madore, and Hartley Mead. The committee head, Norfolk resident Tom Strumolo, contacted his friend Kirt Mayland, a University of Connecticut professor and an expert on solar projects.
Mayland, an Energy Fellow at the Connecticut Institute for Resilience & Climate Adaptation, (CIRCA) recalled, “Matt and I, and the town energy committee, started thinking about this project years ago when I noticed Eversource was constructing and upgrading lines servicing the wind farm in Colebrook. That upgrade in service opened new solar capacity on the lines that was not there before, so we were quick to jump on that, and lock it in before another solar developer scooped it up on, most likely, a less desirable site such as farmland. Locking in the interconnection rights to the grid was key to moving the project forward.”
First Selectman Riiska continued, “Working with Kirt we developed our plan and worked with Eversource to establish the interconnect agreement so the power produced could be sent to the grid. Kirt also established a relationship between Norfolk and Lodestar Energy. After reviewing several possible solar energy companies to partner with, we chose Lodestar in Avon. We then worked with an attorney to draft a contract with Lodestar.”
The solar project has now been sold to New Jersey Resources (NJR) “The benefit to the Town is that we receive $42,000 per year in revenue from NJR,” added Riiska, “This increases each year by 1.5%. This is needed revenue for the Town.
Norfolk has spent very little town money on this project. All application fees, legal contracts, and installation costs have been absorbed by Lodestar and NJR. Plus, the array will be maintained by NJR. This includes maintenance of the equipment, mowing, and maintaining the area around the array.
NEAC chair Strumolo explained, “The technology up there is called “ballasted arrays” which means the poles are held in place by piles of stones instead of being driven into the earth. The former landfill is covered with a membrane which must remain intact, no holes.”
Mayland, currently an assistant visiting professor at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, noted, “This is the first [array] to go up on a capped landfill. Under SCEF (aka community solar) low-income customers of Eversource will receive a monthly credit on their electric bills from this facility to help reduce their electricity expenses.”
According to Macel, “Norfolk Solar was awarded a fixed 20-year contract for all energy and environmental attributes in Year Two of the SCEF program, a statewide project which will help the state achieve its renewable portfolio standard. This project represents a significant savings to CT ratepayers with a power purchase price of approximately 5.99 cents per kilowatt hour. The price is fixed for 20 years and will not escalate.”
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.