Rochester’s Planning Board Tuesday delayed signing the draft decision to allow Blue Wave Solar and BWC Snows Pond LLC to build a solar-energy array at 0 Cushman Road after the applicant’s representatives raised concerns about one of the decision’s conditions.
BWC Snows Pond LLC Managing Director of Solar Operations Aaron Simms, appearing on Zoom, asked for an alternative to complying with the condition that contractors on site use equipment only with bio-hydraulic fluids.
Simms said vendors have all told the company the same thing, that meeting this requirement is hard to do. The contractor hired for such a relatively small operation would have to drain all their hydraulic equipment, he said, a burdensome, expensive process that lead vendors to not even bid for the job. The size of the operation would not make it worth the effort.
“A larger firm could handle it,” Simms said. “I am not confident they would be interested in a project of this size.”
Simms asked if instead the company could fund a bond to front the risk of a fluid spill into the groundwater “for any issue that might come up,” he said.
Planning Board members were firmly against any compromise.
“You being in a groundwater protection district requires this condition,” Planning Board Chairman Arnold Johnson said. “No one has been given a pass on this before. Ninety-eight percent of our homes are on wells. Our job is to protect the townspeople’s wells.”
Johnson noted, however, language could be added to make an exception for smaller equipment, specifically skid-steel loaders and pile drivers. “Nothing bigger than that,” he said.
Simms asked if a designated equipment size could be the exception. Johnson said no. “We haven’t made any exceptions with solar projects before,” he said.
Simms and the project’s engineering consultant Andrew Hamel, who was attending in person, then quietly agreed to have this lone exception added to the draft decision. “So now we will wait to see the revised language,” Hamel said.
Concerned abutters of the 31-acre parcel where the 12.55-acre solar array will be built in a Residential/Agricultural District and a Mattapoisett River Valley Watershed and Groundwater Protection District were again in attendance, but Johnson said he could not let them speak because the public hearing had closed.
Johnson noted that once a decision has been filed, complainants or the applicant will have 20 days to appeal that decision. The Rochester Zoning Board of Appeals will then judge whether it was an appropriate determination but would be unable to change the decision language.
In other action, the Planning Board endorsed an Approval Not Required application for a plan to sell off land at 52 Wolf Island Road. From the house lot there, 2.5 acres are being sold off, and a 6-acre bog is being sold to the Buzzards Bay Coalition.
The board also endorsed an ANR application to modify an internal lot of around 40,000 square feet at County Road and Cranberry Highway for a proposed self-storage building project there.
Upon the applicant’s request, the board continued its hearing into the Site Plan Review application for JPF Development’s plan to construct a 15-acre self-storage facility at Kings Highway and Route 28 until March 26.
The board agreed to contract Ken Motta of Field Engineering to review the Planning Board’s rules and regulations at a cost of “up to $3,500.”
The board discussed one of the Zoning Bylaw articles it will submit for the May 13 Annual Town Meeting warrant, a bylaw change to regulate the battery systems installed at solar-array projects. Johnson said specific language for this article is not necessary before the warrant deadline of March 22, only “place-holder” language. The board intends to have the specific article ready for its next meeting.
The Rochester Planning Board will meet next on Tuesday, March 26, at 7:00 pm at Town Hall, 1 Constitution Way.
Rochester Planning Board
By Michael J. DeCicco