Controversy over cemetery solar farm draws Belleville Diocese into fray
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For at least two decades, the Catholic Diocese of Belleville has been leasing a small section of Mount Carmel Cemetery land to a trucking company that’s digging a borrow pit and hauling out fill dirt, east of the burial grounds on the bluff.
The operation didn’t attract much attention until last year, when a group of local residents began fighting the city of Belleville’s plan to buy nearby Mount Hope Cemetery, clear-cut 25 acres of woods and build a solar farm.
City and solar officials addressed environmental concerns, in part, by portraying the solar farm as the lesser of two evils. Mount Hope’s fate would be so much worse, they said, if the trucking company or some other private developer got control of the land.
Even after the city bought Mount Hope a year ago, Cliff Cross, former director of economic development, planning and zoning, and other officials continued to bring up the dirt hauling by Ray LaFore Truck Service as an example of what could’ve gone wrong.
At a public meeting this month, Rachael Cornick, director of operations for Shine Development Partners — the solar developer — displayed an aerial image on a large screen, pointing to a noticeable brown area in the midst of farmland and woods, north of Mount Hope.
“This was what was done next door,” Cornick told the crowd, speaking of the borrow pit, which is partly on LaFore property and partly on Mount Carmel land. “They used it to excavate soil.”
The negative focus on LaFore’s operation, which can be seen from grave sites to the south and Dutch Hollow Road to the north, have many people wondering what exactly is happening at the site.
Some argue that both the borrow pit and solar farm pose environmental risks because, they say, hillside excavation and deforestation could cause erosion and worsen flooding in the region. Rainwater runs down into Schoenberger Creek, which empties into Harding Ditch.
Jesse Berger, a leading opponent of the Mount Hope project, said he considers the solar farm worse than the borrow pit because it would have a greater impact on the cemetery’s character while also destroying a natural area filled with wildlife.
“In my opinion, the borrow pit should be shut down and turned into a solar farm,” he said.
The city has already signed a lease agreement with Belleville Solar LLC, which is owned by Shine, to build the solar farm at Mount Hope, and the plan is moving forward, according to Mayor Jenny Gain Meyer. Officials say the income is needed to fund maintenance and improvements at the cemetery, which was abandoned about 20 years ago.
More than 850 people have signed a Change.org petition called “Save Mount Hope Cemetery” opposing the project since May. Last week, opponents launched a GoFundMe campaign by the same name to raise money for a legal challenge.
Trucking company pushes back
Mount Carmel Cemetery was established as a Catholic cemetery in the 1890s. It’s operated by the Belleville Diocese’s Catholic Cemetery Association. Joe Hubbard serves as director.
Mount Carmel’s 147 acres border a 35-acre parcel owned by LaFore. Hubbard said the trucking company began leasing eight to 10 acres more than 20 years ago for about $5,000 a year. The money goes into the cemetery’s perpetual fund to help with maintenance.
All cemeteries are struggling due to a decrease in burials and increase in cremations, Hubbard said, and it’s particularly expensive to mow around 35,000 graves at Mount Carmel. He also works to make sure indigent people get proper burials.
“I’ve done all kinds of things to keep this cemetery going,” Hubbard said. “It’s a difficult business now.”
Clay Bertelsman, LaFore’s trucking services manager, describes the excavation as a way to improve the Mount Carmel property, removing a “giant useless hill” and creating more flat land for burials.
Bertelsman, whose wife, Megan, owns the company, said they make money not by selling dirt but by hauling it for construction projects — such as the MetroBikeLink Trail. LaFore is one of three companies operating borrow pits in the area.
Bertelsman rejected any suggestion by city or solar officials that LaFore is acting improperly.
“People who say these things, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said. “They don’t know me. They don’t know the property. They’ve never been up there. They’ve never talked to me.”
Bertelsman expressed an interest in buying Mount Hope at a Belleville City Council meeting in January 2024. Last week, he said he had considered starting a new borrow pit on the 132-acre property, which includes about 55 acres of burial grounds on the bluff. But he determined that its steep slope and marshland made it unsuitable.
Commerce changes tax status
Illinois cemeteries are eligible for property-tax exemptions if land is being used for cemetery purposes. Online St. Clair County parcel records, which go back to 1999, show that the Belleville Diocese paid a few hundred dollars a year in taxes for a crematorium at Mount Carmel from 2003 to 2009, then zero until two years ago.
The county charged the diocese $596 in 2023 and $1,910 in 2024 on about seven acres newly categorized as “farmland.” Officials had noticed significant landscape changes on aerial maps, according to Assessor Jennifer Gomric.
“If it’s being used as a cemetery, that’s an exempt use,” she said. “If it’s owned by the Catholic church and used for church purposes, that’s an exempt use and ownership. But the back portion of it is being used for ... It appears that it’s being used for excavation. They’re taking dirt off the property. It’s no longer exempt. That’s a commercial purpose.”
Mike Soete, the Belleville Diocese’s chief financial officer, said last week he wasn’t familiar with the LaFore lease or its terms. He agreed to look into it but didn’t respond to subsequent BND requests for comment.
Gomric said the Mount Hope solar farm will be taxable if electricity is sold according to plan. The lease between the city and Belleville Solar LLC specifies that the company must pay property taxes on the operation.
Jon Vasconcellos, Shine’s executive vice president of finance, said the company will provide the county with a memorandum of lease when the solar farm becomes operational, as required by law, to let officials know where to send tax bills.
“For budget purposes, I think we were expecting it to be somewhere in the ballpark of $50,000 a year, maybe a little bit more,” he said.
Property taxes on solar farms are determined by a state formula based on electricity production. The county charged a 2-megawatt operation in Smithton Township about $13,000 last year, Gomric said. Mount Hope will be a 5-megawatt operation, built by StraightUp Solar.
Could flooding be a factor?
LaFore has cut down some trees for its borrow pit, but much of the site was farmland, according to Bertelsman. He said the company has taken steps to prevent erosion. Berger is skeptical.
“When it’s raining, all the muck goes downstream and ends up in the Harding Ditch,” he said.
Preliminary environmental study of the Mount Hope solar-farm site shows no endangered species or wetlands, according to Cornick’s presentation at the public meeting this month. A more advanced study is underway. Berger questions why it’s happening now, just before construction is supposed to begin this fall.
Doug Stewart, a Fairview Heights attorney and expert on metro-east flooding, said he isn’t familiar with details of the Mount Hope project, but in general he recommends that any development on the bluffs be examined in light of flooding issues.
“If it increases the amount of sediment coming downstream, that will have a negative impact on Harding Ditch because it already has sediment problems,” he said.
“If it increases the rate of water coming down the hill ... The ditch only has so much capacity, and the faster the water comes down, the harder it is for it to naturally drain. When Schoenberger Creek maxes out the capacity of Harding Ditch, then it creates hydrostatic pressure for the communities upstream.”
Stewart founded the nonprofit organization Spring Lake Coalition with the goal of forming public-private partnerships to help solve flooding problems, which have hit East St. Louis, Cahokia Heights and surrounding communities particularly hard in recent years.
Mount Hope Cemetery was established in the 1890s by Immanuel Evangelical Church. Its last owners abandoned it during a financial scandal more than 20 years ago, leading to receivership and neglect. The city of Belleville began mowing and picking up trash in 2010.
The state receiver sold Mount Hope to the city for $1 at a St. Clair County foreclosure auction in July 2024. At the same time, officials signed the agreement to lease land to Belleville Solar LLC for $50,000 to $55,000 a year for 35 years.
Last fall, Shine and StraightUp Solar presented a revised design that’s deemed more environmentally friendly, reducing the size of the solar farm from 25 to 19 acres and dividing it into three sections.
E. Gayle Schneider, founder of an informal group called Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery, supports the project as a way to fund maintenance and improvements. Amy Clark and Natalie Wilson, co-administrators of the group’s Facebook page, are opposed to it. They recently renamed the page “Save Mount Hope Cemetery.”
This story was originally published August 27, 2025 at 6:01 AM.
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