Mark Vargas of Santa Clara, California, has a plug-in electric car and $70,000 worth of solar panels. But there’s a serious threat to Vargas’s environmental efforts: his tree-hugging neighbors, Richard Treanor and his wife Carolyn Bissett. Prius-owning Treanor and Bissett have eight redwoods in their backyard—towering, majestic beasts that shade the forest floor and, apparently, Vargas’s solar panels. Nature-hating Vargus wants the renewable energy-hating couple to cut down the offending trees, and the three have been engaged in legal battles for six years.
Now, a judge has ordered the couple to cut down two of the redwoods, citing the obscure Solar Shade Control Act (pdf). The law, enacted three decades ago, requires homeowners to keep their trees or shrubs from shading more than 10% of a neighbor's solar panels between 10 am and 2 pm. Existing trees that cast shadows when the panels are installed are exempt, but the law ...
