Solar projects offer a tremendous economic opportunity to the pine forests in southside Virginia. Years ago, my family invested in lands like these and planted pine trees. There is now an enormous oversupply of pines in southeast Virginia and many other parts of the country, and the lands that grow pines tend not to be conducive to crop growing. It is absolutely absurd that the DEQ is proposing rules that would rob some of the state's most economically depressed regions of  promising economic opportunities, in a process that, I am sure, few landowners are aware of.