TranscriptDurham Draft Solar Ordinance Community Information Meeting ~ December 7, 2023

Joe Roy I'm here tonight with the Conservation Commission um I just figured I'd give a caveat here as most of you probably know I am on the select board but tonight I'm speaking purely as a member of the Conservation Commission so I just want to make sure everyone knows that anything you hear from me tonight is a Conservation Commission statement and by no means a reflection of the select board so um we're here tonight to talk little a little bit about uh proposed land use policy for solar systems and energy storage systems little background of how we got here tonight uh durm does not have any ordinance pertaining to solar electricity uh for any sort of utility scale solar so you can put things on your roof and stuff like that but there's no ordinance for actually developing uh solar fields and we the select board had brought up to the planning board that some we should explore a uh ordinance for solar uh to

just so the planning board has guidance if solar developers show up to and want to propose a project and so the planning board had deferred the starting of this process to the Conservation Commission and what the Conservation Commission has done is over the last few months gathered information from surrounding towns like topsum uh analyzed different ordinances from other municipalities um and then looked at ordinance language and standards from other states as well to try to develop an ordinance uh or at least propose one for the planning board's consideration and then the planning board can accept that or make modifications and then propose that to the uh select board and then from there it can be put onto the ballot for a vote for or put onto the uh votes for the plant as a warrant at the town meeting in April and so tonight's process is more or less going need to be to give some background information and

show what has been developed by the Conservation Commission up to this point and I just want folks to know that this is a rough draft and the point of this exercise tonight is to solicit feedback so I don't want anyone to see this and say oh that's exactly what they're going to do and we haven't had a chance to speak on it this is where we want to hear things like I think we should do this or I think this should be addressed or I have some concern about this so this is really that Community portion of it and we really are ready to put a lot of red ink on anything here and take that back and and analyze it and look at legal precedents and and things like that and then make a recommendation to the planning board so we're hoping that this is a really great two-way conversation if you have questions feel free to raise your hand and ask we're also going to make time towards the end to just have a discussion on these sorts

of things and get and get feedback so we'll start off George are you going to run the slideshow for us cool all right so I think I kind of skipped ahead and already started talking about the first slide but yeah that's what I have for the introduction okay yeah so I'm George tar the town planner and I work with planning board and I'm also assisting the Conservation Commission uh with uh doing the research and looking at what some of the options are and I'm also tasked with uh drafting whatever the policy is it into the land use ordinance a lot of communities have a separate ordinance for solar uh energy uh systems uh what Durham has done for several years is to integrate all of the land use policies into a single ordinance so what we will be doing we will be drafting whatever regulatory requirements come out of this process will be put into the land use ordinance and then uh the code officer

the planning board everybody will be that those exist and what they contain so uh as I said we've been working together uh for about six eight months now um and whatever comes out of this process as uh Joe said will go back to the planning board and then on to the select board for for potential consideration at the H town meeting in 2024 so just to give you a little bit of background as Joe said part of what's driving this is the fact that uh Durham unlike most in this region has no standard whatsoever for solar Farms so if a project comes in today and we've had multiple uh inquiries about doing projects here in Durham so the planning board has to rely on some general conditional use criteria uh it can do that it must do that and then there are site plan review standards but those really are designed for commercial projects uh not for solar

or industrial type projects so that's kind of a a weakness in the ordinance so what this will do is give the planning board with clear guidance for what the issues are related to solar Farms which we're going to go over tonight and then what are the regulatory tools that the planning board can use to to address potential impacts of a solar farm in in Europe so just to give you all a little bit of background what the Conservation Commission has been looking at as I said the the purpose of this initial effort on this topic of land use is to establish a clear process for the planning board uh in reviewing the projects and specific standards that they can apply to those projects the Conservation Commission has discussed possibly in the future looking at some other issues that other towns have addressed which would include uh looking at some areas of the community may not be appropriate for these types of uh

uses and facilities and then there may be actually Optimum places where they should be located so they will consider doing some additional research on those two tracks but right now what we're looking for is to give the planning board some effective tools when a solar farm comes in that they have what they need to in terms of understanding and can do a proper review of that project and make sure that all of the issues are addressed so uh any land policy and ordinance of the town of Durham should be by main law based on its comprehensive plan and back in 2018 the town went through a very extensive public participation process and set some specific recommendations for various policies but also kind of put a vision for what the town wants to be over the next 20 25 years and the three major themes that came out of that Community effort were first to really preserve DMs Ral character that's what

attracts people here and so that's a very widely uh held goal for the community is to protect that rural character second uh to to promote the Agriculture and Forestry of this community which is embedded into that rural fabric of the community and finally another uh important goal that came out of the public participation process was to protect durm environment uh those were kind of the three overarching goals and there weren't any specific policies uh related to solar Farms this is a relatively new phenomenon here in Maine and so part of it is uh like so many communities they're rushing to get something on the books so that when these major projects come in they can effectively deal with them and just just a note on that that's kind of what has spurred this discussion in Durham is that we don't have anything uh so any nothing feels inadequate and rather than getting into a position where we're being reactive and having

all these proposals coming through the goal is to develop something with the community right now that meets all the standards within the comp plan and meets the desires of the community so we're we're ready for future projects if if they do uh come to their so so if you do any research on the internet and you look at uh solar farms uh there's because these things have proliferated so rapidly over the last decade and it's kind of like cell towers 35 years ago 30 40 years ago cell towers were popping up all over and communities were uh trying to respond to that in a similar fashion so this is kind of the next wave of technology and and development that's occurring and and if you do some uh Googling on uh this issue if you look at like the city of Augusta if you've D driven up the the interstate and you go through auster you see all of these solar uh installations around every one of the interchanges and there's been

kind of a backlash in the community and they've actually talked about doing a moratorium so that they can develop some uh proper buffering in those types of uh of issues and one of the biggest uh impacts the most notable on any Community is the visual impacts of these facilities uh this is a project up in Pittsville Maine uh it's it's the industrial scale I'm not sure exactly the size of this but is probably over 100 acres and so if you put that in Open Fields here in Durham I think people would uh definitely notice that so uh and you can see with this particular installation no buffering whatsoever along this uh this is in hinley Maine and that was industrial scale uh there's kind of a medium uh range of these types of projects and this is community scale this is on route 201 in SCA heagan uh this uh Community scale system Serv serves the Hinkley school there's kind of a a private school complex there with

lots of buildings and so that that school facility program utilizes this solar field for uh for generation of electricity for that for that facility and this is one of the issues it's not just the visual it's also the glare that comes off of these so a lot of the communities like toson and others that we've looked at they have specific standards for using uh materials that

will not cause blay and so that's the type of impact and also uh another thing that Main aabon in particular has provided some guidance for communities uh these are placed in Wildlife quds uh what many ordinances require is a ground clearance in the fencing so that small mammals can uh pass through unimpeded as opposed to their historic pattern of of travel has been blocked completely so standard uh invasive species um Joe you mentioned being out in Montana I worked in Montana for five years and uh out there weed control they have a weed control district because they have cattle and there po you know these poisonous toxic uh weeds come in so developers routinely have to go out and uh and Survey uh for any exist existing

um invasive species of plants and then come up with a mitigation for eradicating that so uh many communities in Maine are now looking at where they what they call scarify you know 20 acres of land uh to make sure that that is not by bringing in materials and Equipment uh you're not bringing in invas invasive plant species uh so that's another issue and then storm water obviously you're disturbing uh many acres of land and making sure that the storm water is appropriately treated so uh then another big issue that many towns are looking at like Sal Towers is once they're no longer uh effective uh in on S you don't want to have these major infrastructure uh facilities in the community just abandoned uh and left there to to rust and rot so uh most of these communities uh in the ordinances have what they call a decommissioning plan and so what they will do is they'll look at okay once these panels are no longer

in producing enough energy to make it cost effective then there should be a specific plan for removal and recycling of those uh those panels uh the racking systems that hold them the wiring of the whole project the inverters and the Transformer equipment that's associated with one of these facilities the foundations for those uh solar array panels uh and the fencing uh obviously and then uh the access roads and then making sure that whoever the party is that is developing this and they whoever purchases it that they are financially responsible for those costs as opposed to putting that onto the community uh so that's that's usually part of one of these ordinances what they call a decommission plan and a performance guarantee a financial guarantee to make uh that has to be kept in place during the life of the facility uh another issues that's come up within the last month or is uh we've been contacted by uh developers of uh

energy storage systems uh and this is a little bit different they can be associated with a solar farm where they will store the energy that's uh that's generated by the solar facility and then release it into the uh the grid electrical grid uh and the state has adopted a a goal of of

really expanding the capacity of storage systems to help balance out the grid during peak times and when there are outages to try to give that aailable energy to to address any any outages in need so we have actually been contacted by someone to build one of these energy storage systems and again the town just does not have the understanding or the tools to effectively deal with these types of facilities we're still just kind of trying to get our mental arms around what are the issues involved some of the research that we've looked at these types of storage facilities can uh be very challenging for a fire department even in an urban setting so uh it seems like public water might be a requirement for having one of these in the community and effectively dealing with it and special training when these things burn they can go very hot and can release toxic gases so uh does the local

Durham Fire and Rescue the equipment and the uh training to deal with one of these types of facilities so those are issues we're just starting to get into and we're not sure whether this will include some uh part of energy storage systems but uh some of these on some scale are associate potentially associated with the solar farm so we have to address it in some form but we're not exactly sure and and like George had said earlier is that um not all energy storage is tied directly to a energy project like a solar array or wind farm or something some of this would just be to store energy from the grid uh build up the battery power during low cost times or low uh draw times and then have that so when during you have high peak times during the summer time when everyone's AC on are on and stuff like that so they could be completely separate facilities but like George said we're considering because

we're working now trying to fit this all in so it's a consideration and almost like electrical substation yeah and these are mostly currently being located in urban and in industrial sites but you you where high voltage lines are already but anywhere you have a power line potentially that is where they're going to be looking and we have actually had that is one inquiry for one of these in so uh with all of that background of understanding the issues are that the Conservation Commission has been looking at uh where we currently are with just a framework for a set of regulations and uh you know we're not going to provide you with draft ordinance language here tonight we have some of that in place but we're still working on it we really want to do is give you the bones of it the structure of what this ordinance these ordinance Provisions would be so the first thing is to categorize the different types of systems and and they

really are are mostly about size both in terms of the acreage uh area surface area but also the voltage many communities trying to limit uh the size of industrial facilities or or restrict them to certain parts of the community Durham really it isn't about how much energy is produced it's about what the size mostly is is the primary concern at this point and Durham's really not talking at this point about putting a size limit on these in terms of a certain once you go over a certain megawatt uh capacity then you're would

not allow that so what we're really looking at is what is the level of review that would have to occur and the level of Permitting so there basically three different scales of these things the first is small so Joel mentioned uh panels on your roof uh you're seeing more and more of the uh freestanding on a residential property where it looks like in an industrial but it's just a small installation and a lot of home businesses in Durham uh small businesses could theoretically have that so what we're looking at that scale uh to Simply have the standard electrical permitting process done through the code enforcement officer so that's uh that's one of the principles so something with less than 2,000 square feet of surface area could be approved by the code officer so homeowners or small businesses could do it without having to go to a board medium scale which we're defining and different towns have

different measurements for how they how they uh process these is somewhere between the 2,000 square fet and 20,000 square feet which is about a quarter of an acre uh we're looking at those and then one of those might be for a larger business or for a subdivision there lot there kind of a trend right now what they call Net Zero where subdivisions are going in and all the homes are super insulated they have heat pumps they're all they have uh solar panels so you might have a community or or a subdivision where they're creating a half an acre of solar panels to to basically generate all the electricity that energy that they need for their subdivision so that type of a project would go to the uh planning board as part of the subdivision review uh and uh it would basically or for a commercial would be handled by a site plan review where all they're looking at are are the design aspects buffering and those sorts

of things drainage uh for larger than that anything over a half an acre would be an additional process where the board would look at okay anything over a half an acre project could come in could propose 20 acres we've had at least one of those inquiries could be a mega hundreds 100 200 acre of CMP or one of its uh you know people looking to to do something on a larger scale so that would invol what they call a conditional use review where the planning board under those criteria has to decide is what is being proposed within the scale and intensity of use that's compatible with what's around it so obviously if you're an industrial park one of these types of large facilities is is uh is of the same scale if it's next to a single family residence that's a different matter so that is a first before any bigger real big project would go through the design process the planning board would first say okay what is the nature of this

project what is the nature of the location where it's being proposed and are there just some inherent reasons why this can't be located here from a use standpoint and then if it says yes there's a CMP substation right on the next parel like the one on is it on Poland Road uh in uh in p uh

so there it may be appropriate to put that there in some location in Europe but that would be that would happen first if the planning board gives it a conditional use permit then they would go through the detailed design or deal with that project so that's kind of the right here real quick so before we kind of get into the meat of like a little bit of what the standards would be for these I just wanted to kind of reiterate you know when we looked at this to decide where what sort of buckets we want to put things in small medium or large we were really thinking a lot about Durham's uh rural characteristic but also being able to still do things like produce your own energy and stuff like that so that's why we felt it was important to have that kind of you know standard code officer enforcement uh level small projects so if you want to put them on your roof or you need to put something small in your

backyard to provide for yourself and it's non-commercial that that just is a code enforcement officer permit like it is right now and then we the reason we went with square footage as opposed to megawatts a lot of times you hear about developments as like their megawatt size is that we felt that that was a little bit more in line with keeping with the Ral characteristic we were thinking more about the visual footprint and our thought process was you know if we're if the community is comfortable with 20,000 square feet um does it really matter how much electricity is being produced off of that footprint because panels are getting more more efficient electricity is the these are going to engine in a way that they can create more with less so we were saying well if we're comfortable with that quarter acre it doesn't really matter how many kilowatts are talking oh can you just so I just want to make a quick note because we

have the camera on we just if people can say their name and their street before they speak just because that's usually how we like to have that recorded that would be awesome J wor from garish Road uh square footage fenced or or pad if I

remember correctly it would be in from the within the fence line correct because you can fence off a bigger area than you plan to put a actually it would actually be if you think about a row of solar panels you usually add an angle to capture the Sun so what you would do is draw a vertical line so you're talking pan footprint just pan like you're saying these have to be spaced apart so that they don't block the sun of and so rather than say we're going to count all of that you're going to Discount the area between the but that has to be defined somewhere it is defined it will be defined yeah so we have the technical language that we're going to be working on uh we have some of it now and then we'll have those technical standards built in to give to the planning board but that's a really really good point we our last meeting for the Conservation Commission was all about determining technical language and

what needs to be put in and What needs to to be really detailed so we want to make sure when this is developed that everything all those questions are very clear so there's no opportunity for developers to take advantage of any sort of loopholes or stuff like that so we've had folks who work in um the permitting of these sorts of things come in and give us some feedback other communities come in and give us some feedback so George probably has a notebook this big of notes that we're that we're working on on um and then like I said this is just the first of of another Pro of another review so there'll be another opportunity to get more feedback after that sort of language is really uh fleshed out so it's a good question hi

John O'Brian I live at 643 Durham Road um I'm I'm in this uh at the utility scale um in my day job and and we do projects all over the country actually with uh I I do the advocacy so I turn people out to events like this it's kind of fun to you know participate in it in my own um town uh and and we see a lot

of different ordinances and you know like I said it's just the big ones it's just you know you said 100 200 Acres we're more at like the Thousand Acre end um but on the side I also have a project that I'm developing on Durham Road it's in Brunswick actually and so I'm dealing with their ordinance and it's what I would say is small um it's as much as you can put on the singlephase lines which is 167 kilow I'm actually doing 150 kilow but that you know that takes

up a quarter acre if I squeeze it all together and that's the most um efficient panels and you know that's enough for so50 Kow is enough for 18 households maybe so if you um divide that by 20 to get to your like you're not even necessarily going to provide enough for one household on that small scale that you have right there um you know and yeah it

like so a quarter with that but I I I want to I think that these numbers are a little arbitrary like when I see them and I'm thinking you know medium like my project would be in medium really the medium to me is is the community scale projects on the three-phase power lines which are around two megaw and that's going to be like your up to 20 acres and then and then your large scale your utility scale is what we call it at work that's going to be the ones that TI into the transmission lines and those are going to be above 5 megaw let's say but really

they're above 50 megaw um so I would you know I know that you like I get where you're coming from on the rural character um but I would say like from somebody that's going to be applying for a permit it it makes a lot more sense if they're defined a little more clearly from the developer standpoint um and so I I would almost have the tendency to be like okay small is residential or or commercial like say say small is feeding your service and not anyone else's service um like if it's a business and you use as much as five households or 20 households and it's just one solar array but it's feeding your business like that should count as the one size I would think maybe not um but then the community scale you know I would almost do it by like is there is it on single phase line or is it on three-phase line or is it on trans uh transmission line like those be categories maybe I'm just so just clarify you do understand we're

not saying you can't do those ARG all we're saying is the level of review that has to be applied to those different sizes and certainly if there are suggestions on different size capacity andic for saying oh you don't need to have a site plan review for that buffering isn't going to be a concern uh or uh you know fencing those types of requirements uh until you get up to a 20 acres there's no visual concerns I'm not sure that's necessarily what the Conservation Commission and public endur would think but you can certainly make any suggestions you're more than welcome especially from someone with your expertise yeah and we'll still working this in the Conservation Commission so like if this is the first year seeing of this and and you wanted to attend a meeting we made time for people to to give feedback um if you have technical language that you think we should consider that's a good time for for that

as well but like George said this isn't saying that you can't do those it's just saying at what point a certain different permit kicks in because like right now rooftop is just you know the cone enforcement officer signs off on it but for everything else we don't have any language at all so it's kind of like a nominal fee and then the planning board is kind of like we don't know if this meets standards we don't know if this leads soil and erosion control plan so that it would still be everything would still be potentially allowable but we' have standards at that point so that's kind of what this is for it's it's restrictive I mean it basically says that anything over uh half an acre is going to need a site plan review and that was intentional because of trying to keep a rural character to the town but yeah but there's still it's not that you can't move anything over half an acre just there's a sight plan with

us does that answer your question yeah yeah Brunswick it's um there's a couple different flags it's like I think if it's commercial then that's one thing if it's just for your own then that's another category but then also if it's over a quarter acre then it requires a major site plan review um it doesn't and

then if it's over something else then it needs a conditional use per yeah so the same principles that we're following I haven't seen past this slide but sounds like are you just considering solar and not wind farms yeah this is purely a solar ordinance um and I think the reason that the Direction came down focus on the solar ordinance it's just the prevalence and the speed that these are going up at and when you get into wind development it's it's inherently at a larger scale that triggers state level permits that a lot of smaller SC utility scale solar um doesn't so this is kind of like when you're driving around the state and you're seeing a lot of these like 20 or less acre projects pop up there for a lot of those it's there's not really it's not trigger a highle state permit so it's falling on the local municipality um and then and sometimes that's inadequate so that's why we're just focusing on on solar with this but

thank you for asking so do we have any other questions before we kind of move into some of the the med Poes here R 71 can you clarify what what uh acreage differences between small and medium you said quar 43,000 ft okay so you know 20,000

ft is just under half MH yeah so I guess we're we putting up square feet here yeah rather than acreage understand y but really would you'll understanding kind of like what this gentleman said here is for us large some people would still call that pretty small because they would say 20,000 over 20,000 Square fet that's not very large you know but that was deliberate just to say that is where it would kick in uh the the planning board conditionally Ed permit in the

others uh just the the guidelines for the standards that we're developing U and this just uh I forgot to show you the different what I stated verbally the code officer would do the small planning board site plan review for the medium and then an additional conditional review uh condition process for the larger ones uh so submission requirements this list of things that they would have to provide to the planning board uh would only apply to the medium and the large would not be the home based or small bu Spas so this list would be the requirements uh in operation and maintenance plan for this facility you know a lot of times these things just sit out there and there's nobody around so making sure that it's properly maintained electrically uh in terms of the uh the vegetation management those sorts of things they need to submit a operation and maintenance plan uh the energy system specifications have to be provided uh

and along with that a certification from qualified professionals that that this installation that they're proposing meets all safety codes uh also certification of the uh requirements of the main commission and CMP the the uh infrastructure that they're going to be connecting into they've got to obviously meet all of those standards and the planning board wants to make sure will want to make sure that they've gone through all of their required um permissions from those different agencies the Emergency Services plan for the fire chief uh and so they would have to get the fire one Community actually they bought some special fire operatus for the fire department because they just didn't have the capacity to deal with it and that would not just be for fire it would also be if people are out there working on it uh electrical problems uh they could be called out there for rescue as well and need need

to be able to get into the facility for one thing and also if there's you know a fire or something like a a brush fire that's going on coming toward it they have to be able to uh access it to shut it off so those are the types of Emergency Services plan uh visual impact assessment landscape architect um as we indicated for a lot of communities that are uh having a lot of public uh input on these things people are very concerned with the visual impacts and rather just having a simplistic uh buffering uh you know showing circles on a plan uh this really requires someone who's who's uh trained to do landscape architecture look at what are the views of this facility going to be from the neighbor from public roads and determine where buffering is required and then design it to make sure number one it's going to be effective and then number two it's going to be uh lasting uh and is it going to be you know kind of an artificial Arbor

hedge or is it going to be a naturalized landscape buffer to to have it kind of fit into the character of the neighborhood and that's where a landscape architect comes in to be able to give the the applicant as well as the plan board uh a qualified opinion of what really makes sense for this particular project along with that comment actually so in u the fossil fuel industry it's really common that corporations form llc's and when it comes time to decommission your gas well in Pennsylvania they just bankrupt the LLC at w so um States like Pennsylvania require bonding that's on the list okay we'll get to there yeah so uh the vegetation management plan would look at in addition to invasive species like we talked about before it would also be the vegetation manage plan for that buffer to make sure that it's going to last and be taken care of uh and then the decommissioning plan which is what you

just referenced uh and a financial guarantee so basically the town most towns that do this are now requiring that they provide a performance guarantee Financial guarantee that has to be maintained uh for the perpetuity of the uh facility and and updated every five years with a new estimate yeah uh and then finally a public up so

uh part of the reason for sending everything to the planning board of any significant scale is to give the neighbors an opportunity to be you know talk about what this project is going to be where it's going to be and what the potential impacts on them are going to be uh you know if you have a farm uh chairman of the planning board John tal is you know he's he's on U spe world

right yeah and you know he's next to he he's near power line and he's trying to Envision a solar farm 20 acres 100 acres or whatever what that's going to do to his views U it's not that they should be able to say you can't do it because it's going TOA but they should have some input into say okay yeah I do want to see some Landscaping and so in a lot in some of the communities that are uh some of the developers of these solar Farms if you've been in Pennsylvania there's a project down there where one of these companies is to get land owners to let them do the projects they're selling the landscaping and they're telling this this farmer that you know we're going to have you're going to have a nice facility when it's done so the public Outreach plan is also part of the potential requirements and then the per actual performance standards so that was all about what documents do they have to submit what

types of plans uh the standards would require 100 foot property line setback George before sorry before we go into performance standards did anyone have questions about submission requirements what some of these words might mean up here or or whether they think it's an inadequate list or there should possibly anything removed any any feedback on that we can come back to it again later but I figured we'd just take a brief moment to solicit feedback on this slide if anyone had well I I was thinking about some of

these things as they came up there and thinking could I do my project with these in place at at a quarter acre scale and I would probably not choose Durham to do a small what I think is a small one but it fits into medium um and then when when number one came up on the next slide then it's like that's a killer like I'm I'm not I have I have not that clearance around the edges um and I just I don't know it's kind of a shame but I think that it skews the projects toward the like larger I I would almost say like if it's on three-phase line that would be to me a large community scale project um and then like the single phase line ones you're really I mean there the margins are so tight there it's hard to make it work as it is and any more hurdles they're just I don't I don't see it happening um but you know if that's if you want the bigger ones and you don't want the smaller ones or I don't know I

don't know it's just it would be tough with these rules what do you want to encourage as opposed to project is a quarter acre yeah it's small so that would count of small you're buffering so it sounds to me like what you're saying is that these requirements kind of kill the middle category the medium in this yeah in this classification because yours could be almost twice as b y still be small quter would be 10,000 put that your project would fall in the medium between 202 yeah I almost I almost think like um

these might make sense for large but the medium is so small in my opinion here that why would the large you know because we're talking even a Thousand Acre one has the same rules as a as a tenth of an acre line when you categorize the medium and large together right here so taking notes here I just want to make sure I encapsulate your your comment well it sounds like what you're kind of advocating for is that WID from the the bucket for medium

should be larger than what we're suggesting uh I think the the minimum size on medium should be higher and the standard would be the same for both yeah and then to treat both medium en large the same in these two slides yeah so back to the issue of the set back on the 100 foot set back just understand that would be the panels to the property line then they would have the fencing outside that and then they would have the 50ft buffer so the 50ft buffer and the fencing would be within the 100 foot set back just to clarify okay they're

the cost for any one of those bullets the theant and so that's one thing that we made sure that this was going to be um you know standards in here so when the applicant is applying if there's a service that the town is going to need to get like a third party reviewer or something like that it would that's falling on the applicant to provide for that so it's not costing the town money to evaluate in that way you're also ensuring that the person

want wanting to create this is well financed mhm that's something there that's one of the criteria for conditional use because they have to proove financial and Technical capacity so 100 foot setback for uh for the equipment itself uh limits on top soil removal you know if you have a 208 site want to make sure they don't go in and farm off all the top soil uh remove all of that and again they can have a plan that shows what they're going to do uh invasive species survey before and after construction and a mitigation plan if they discovered that they've created it uh mitigation of surface glare from panels is another standard that will be included potentially uh 8ot agricultural

style security fencing with the ground clearance for smaller mammals and if you look around at some of the facilities in the area you'll there no consistency in the type of fencing that they're doing some have very robust chain lck fences with uh anti- craw guards some just have like looks like just a 4ot high fence around it so this would call for for security purposes an 8 foot but have it be an a with an agricultural design as opposed to a industrial chain link fence uh maximum solar array height of 15 ft uh the 50ft Vegeta buffer outside the security fencing where it's needed per a visual impact analysis uh particularly focusing on roads and neighbors and having the planning board have discretion on where those buffers are required and they can even reduce the WID of a buffer if it makes sense in a particular location say you have an access road that's going to it um and then to uh require all

utilities to be placed underground except where above ground is required by the utility companies and so we have another slide of standards that we're going to continue on to so numbers 10 through 19 after this but I want to take a quick moment like we have on the other slides here and stop here if there's any questions about this sort of stuff name and road yeah Juliet Kath Royals Road um

100 foot setep back that's from the fence no to from the property line to the panels or inverters any of the facility so you have 100 foot set back then going to be clearance to the fence which might be 10 ft 20 ft so so you could have your panels I mean you could have your inverters in the middle of the project Y and only require 100 feet from those it would be from it would be from any of the equipment associated with the project so panels or the in but not the fence is exempt from that just be from the equ the equipment okay is going to be as close to the power lines as you can get it the distance so it could be the edge of the panels then to the property one would be 100 feet so that's right probably like the closest thing to that parcel Edge feet

okay then the then the fencing and the buffering can go closer and so some of the things we wanted to here's where the reason we came on some of these so for example like limiting a top soil removal once top soil is removed and you have kind of lower quality spils left behind those are more um likely to promote invasive species in terms of vegetation so we want to make sure we're keeping the top soil intact there um you know invasive species surveys we thought that was a really important component to add in before construction and after there are a lot of invasive plant species on the landscape so there could be the proposed project that's proposing to take place where there are already invasive plant species and those cases we're not necessarily saying the applicant should have to make it remove everything before

but at the same time we want to make sure that the activities of the project don't increase the prevalence of invasive plant species so if they're bringing in their own fill or bringing in equipment that ends up having seeds from invasive plants on and that is established after the Project's created it would be on them to come up with the post construction um monitoring and and potentially removal program for that um can I add to that yeah please do the other reason for the top soil liation is that when you have that dat commissioning plan you're really looking for that site to be restored to its original condition so if they've taken off 20 acres of top soil uh and then it's left with a gravel pad that's going to be there for perpetuity so part of the reason to not allow them to mine the top soil is for the future project yeah exactly and so we said uh 8ot agricultural style fencing just

because we're thinking a lot about the visual impacts of these and you know we it's kind of funny to think about what we want our fence to look like if there's going to be a wall of panels behind it you might not be concerned about the visual but we were thinking that something that has a more agricultural style fencing kind of like what you might see around like a pen with horse with um uh cattle kind of that blocky type fencing with wooden post a better fit and then with that clearance underneath so the fence won't come directly to the ground to allow things like small Ms to move in and out yes visual you're going to have to Define that pretty specifically because my version of looking at something is a different from your version of looking at something and her position looking at it is different than my position looking it's a sticky one it's going to require

like one of the examples of the slides that George showed earlier where there was defensing and you start thinking about like 100 foot is not very far in terms of a visual buffer so if you're like oh it's going to be 100 feet from the road so it's going to be buffered not really you're going to see it just fine and so that's where we were talking about the use of um some of these uh what did you just call it here visual impact assessments by the architecture and some some examples that George has shown at some of our meetings where like these crosssections where they're establishing a tree community and a and a shrub Community between the the road and between the the part uh the panel array and stuff like that because I think we've all driven by projects where they're right up against the road and they're pretty visually obstructive to some folks and we've driven by other projects where there's a full forest and

they left a 300t buffer and so you can barely see panels in the background or they're on the backs like over on um Leeds Junction Road heading to Leeds it's on the back side of a hill you only know it's there going up on the hill behind there it's like barely no exactly so if once the construction equipment's gone people might drive by and never notice it and so our thought process is like projects you don't see are the best ones you know um and so that's why there we wanted to have a little bit of um you know ability for the planning board to have some standards but then also make some some calls in there is like does this fit that neighborhood does this fit those those standards is it up to one person to decide this you contracted a

person that that's going to do landscaping with his view yeah let's dive let's dive into that yeah okay so here is some research from Coryville Pennsylvania uh in big you know Lancaster area big uh agricultural Community tourism is huge so they're very concerned with visual impacts of these things and and as I said the solar companies that going into this area really want to be able to do their projects so they're approaching the community and saying look Landscaping is going to be part of this so they this is you know the the developers are approaching this from the standpoint and so here's an example of a project in Coryville where they went uh before the community and the planning board and put indidual buffer designed by a landscape architect uh and so they as part of their submission to planning board will provide a uh Landscaping plan and and the again prepared by a qualified landscape architect and the planning

board will be able to hire a peer reviewer someone independent that can look at that and say yes these plants are are appropriate for this location or no you know getting getting some uh some dwarf junipers from Walmart is not really going to cut it uh and then uh so the way ultimately it'll be the planning board that will make the decision based on the input of the experts and considering comments from the neighbors and the public so it will be somewhat there'll be you can't eliminate all subjectivity but at the same time you can't have a precise design that you impose on everybody going into this because you need some Flex design flexibility so this will require well prepared Plans by people who know what they're talking about and then the planning board will process that with public input and come to the final design that's that's how it works and and so with this example here like what we really like about this that

George has shown is like this is a well-developed plan done by a professional they're showing an aerial footage of what things look like literally showing pictures of what the species that are planted are showing the buffer and then showing a side array here and how you know the the shrub beer species are going to be planted in between trees and stuff like that and so that's what we're really looking for but like what George had said is like it would be really hard for us to recommend an coordinance that said you will establish a visual buffer 6 and 1 half feet tall within three years because you get into things like soil characteristics and sight characteristics so then it's just making sure that there's an understanding that a robust buffer is expected and that there's language in there so that the planning board can use that to defend a decision when they're telling someone no you can't do that or yes you can or no

you have to do more so we think that this could be something that could help with with those sorts of things and to the point earlier would there being assurances from their from the applicant that they're providing um the ability for us to then have the planning board hire someone else to certify whether this passes the straight face test or whether it's actually applicable much like like with our developments when we have you know another engineering firm review the firms work so and this is the type of view analysis that the landscape architect would do and the planning board and the neighbors could see to show what the uh issues and effectiveness of the buffer is going to be so that's the type of analysis that would go into that issue yeah and that kind of like this is where we're saying that we want those standards to be broad enough to allow the plan board to make those decisions because like could the

example like heading to Le and like do you need to establish that huge robust vegetative buffer if it's on the going to be most on the back side of a hill anyways you know and so we don't want it to be um so restrictive that you can't

apply our standards but we want to make sure that there are standards so you can have some flexibility there I think that those requirements on the landscape designer coming in um are also way too much for uh what you're considering a medium project to deal with um because even a even a big house

or a business just for themselves is going to fall into that category and they're going to say well I guess I can't cover my whole bill and I'm just going to have to put some on my roof or whatever um because I can't afford to go through these steps and I also think that you know like the um the best solar

project is the one you can't see um you know it has it you know we don't like seeing multi- Acres or hundreds of Acres especially um of of glass compared to grass or Forest but you know a medium project that's only a tenth of an acre in this case um maybe uh is like why is

that worse than a house or a PO Barn you know and and do we requ houses and po barns to have 100 foot setbacks and and Arab or whatever um screening uh you know it's just it's like are are the solar farms getting picked on a little bit here um it's it just seems you know like they're getting more scrutiny although I would say your 100 foot if a utility scale project comes in here they're going to love you for that rule 100 feet is nothing for them so I've I've seen um where they'll do it

based on whether it's a road that they're up against that's less like you can go real close to a road versus you know a neighboring property um and especially they'll do like a setback from a house on that property like you've got to be 300 feet or so um and that's even workable 300 so if we're talking on the Thousand Acre scale like that's nothing

bring a good point so when the the question you asked about like why is one thing allowed to go in without certain buffers or the other and that's that's the at the will of the community and so that's why we have this community process where we get those that sort of feedback because it's a fair question you know why why do small houses not have a different standard than large houses so we totally understand that and that's why we're here as you can see I'm taking we're taking notes on this stuff so that's really good feedback I also appreciate the feedback there talking about the concerns with the buffer being small for utility scale too I I noted that as well so I'd say the the height of 15 feet is doable on um Community

scale where they're connecting to distribution lines but the guys that are connecting in utility the utility scale lines and transmission lines um those projects are it's pushing 15 I've seen ordinances up to 25 ft Max um if they're using bigger panels and if they're doing what's called two panel on portrait orientation with single axis trackers I know I'm getting kind of no no I understand yeah if they're doing two panel on portrait and they're 60 Dees um those ones are going to be above 15 ft so you know that's not the majority right now but I think it's going to get to that and um the taller means the wider the aisles because they have to space them out um and that's going to enable Agra voltaics easier so it's combining Agriculture and solar um because you've got more ground in between equipment that you can run you know Machinery through if you're going to do mechanized farming um so that that would actually

improve uh your your agricultural like uh priority I would say I mean it is going to be a little bit more visually obstructive but I mean I don't know there's a property rights thing here too it's like you know can I not put up what I want to do on my property because these rules it's kind of like it's a little suffocating but I know I know I get it there's a you got to have a balance you have the question trackers too they're tall look at the three in in Brunswick those are jum yeah yeah I mean we Pi they set you back a little bit when you look at yeah we picked the 2,000 sare ft for personal use because we thought you know that you know that can fit roughly a 40 to 50 kilowatt system and the average household is you know 7 to eight so that's you know five or six times what the average house would used it seemed adequate we could talk about increasing that I suppose yeah and that's kind of

where we found that because it's like for phcl Michael and I both have solar panels on our roof you know my roof is 30 foot by 20 or something like that and it's 10 I think it's 10 Kow hour 10 K system on there and so so we definitely like are hearing on the property right side of things like definitely want to be able to produce your own electricity and if you don't have a self facing roof or you don't have a good angled roof we want you to be able to put that uh array on the ground to to meet your needs where we get into things getting more complicated like everything with land uses when you start getting into that income generating like when you start you because when you're talking a little bit about um well seems like there are different rules here there like there are also different rules for like businesses that are based out of your home and things like that too so that's why there's this feels like this

second level is coming in here because this is kind of now an income generating type thing and kind of gets bended into something differently than you know just a home or or Agriculture and that's based off of you know the what our comprehens the plan has kind of guided us for as well but all really good stuff you know I I really appreciate your point about the Sol the tracking panels and you figure when they're making that full sweep and reaching the peak of their angle they might be higher than that so there may be some validity in looking at a standard that says you know maybe the foot uh height difference could be different for the tracking panels as for like the width the higher panels in the width for you know I think you said it was Agro voltaics or um you know I think that with things like that I think it's a great idea to open up those opportunities but like I've heard people say like there's not nearly

enough sheep to graze all the the ground in between panels right now so that might leave it open for that but without a plan you know I would hate to see oh we have these huge tall panels with these super wide areas and we said it's okay because someone might Farm it and then that never really happen so like that's the other side of the coin too there so um but all good stuff to consider and like we were saying earlier like feel free to also come to a meeting and share any of this via email or anything like that because this is this is really feedback so and someone with your expertise is really help to the process just to kind of look at it and give this this type of feedback it's very helpful Julia do for the commission as well okay uh going on lighting minimized and shielded uh 4 set back from residences for noise generating equipment we were kind of talking about similar approach uh access and contact information posted

for the fire department emergencies high voltage warning signs posted uh facility to be well maintained and free of Hazards so that if uh code officer or fire department goes out and does inspections and they see problems the ordinance gives them the uh ability to legally a notice of violation and deal with it minor modifications can be approved by the code officer uh any substantial changes would have to go back to the plan board but it does allow some flexibility you know if they have to move an inverter or add an inverter

those types of minor changes the code officer could approve those without sending back to board uh code officer to be notified of ownership changes of the facility and with that the new owners have to provide written acknowledgement of all the requirements that they have to meet uh any breach of approval of the performance the financial guarantee would be caused for uh basically

determination of a breach of their approval and the town could outorder them to stop operations until they come back into compliance and then finally a time limit for the de decommissioning and enforcement of that so those are the that we've looked at for standards and as Joe said earlier we've looked at a lot of different ordinances and picked from some and picked from others to get the best package that we can come up with and we're still in the drafting stage but wanted to bring out these this is the framework that the town is looking at and get some public input on that before we go any further Juliet yeah uh what is the definition of the noise generating what noise does it

generate like would it be a Tracker TR track a little B guess do we have a def deci level for what's considered noise in there well there are decibal limits I think but in terms of defining which equipment we'll have to look to see whether we have specific that that's a good point these are just descriptions these are not the technical language but that's a good point to to look for that because even high volage like when I walk under them I hear a hum but only when I'm right underneath them and so you know coming up with a standard I think is is important there the comprehensive plan does have language already about noise um so we want those to our ordinance and the comprehensive plan language to be consistent and this was what was in some of thean St

qualified people there to answer planning board questions town can have a PE reviewer to say yes that generates a lot of noise you have to be careful about that that is okay so the planning board will have some discretion on all of these

performance the first plan like what that would to the planning board what they have done to reach out to the neighbors um and then they would have that presentation they obviously have to do uh neighbor notifications as part of the process for the site plan review or for conditional use review but I think this is really calling for a little bit more than that to say go out and meet with the neighbors and hear what their concerns are and then come back and report to the planning board what you've actually come up with uh in terms of how you're going to address some of those concerns in advance rather than waiting till the public meeting Neighbors come in and start complaining and then you have to deal with it it's much more effective from developing Community standpoint to go and meet with the neighbors first then you know coming in and you have a difficult time from someone you try to meet there but some

people you can uh but at least PL know you need the effort and the process will be that much harder along that's what we one I was just going to say so in our um land use ordinance it looks like noise limits generally mean uh 45 Deb from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and and 55

DB from 7 A.M to 7M so probably make sure that our coordinates adopted something in line of like breaking that threshold would be considered a noise producing distance yeah I got to read what the distance is here there is a distance yeah um so if there if it if it

isn't this say shall be measured at at least four feet above ground at the property boundary generally at the property line yeah and so we would definitely we'll definitely make sure that anything would either defer to our existing ordinance or or be explicitly defined and this is kind of like what George was saying with with our ordinances it's kind of all getting tied into one land use plan as opposed to a separate ordinance and so a lot we just got to make sure we're that's all Codi but it's definitely something we'll go through meticulously I have one other thing I think um so all of these standards that we've gone through um are for both Med and large and the difference between the medium and large is the medium just has site plan review and the large has conditional use and they have the same standards just perance standard two different tyes

any of this but just in terms of the next steps in the process uh the Conservation Commission has reviewed the research and is continuing to do that and take the public input and then we'll make a recommendation to the planning board on a policy uh that will happen later this month uh first of next month uh then the planning board will review that draft they're also working on a housing policy housing density based on that new state affordable housing law so the planning board has been working on that part of it while the Conservation Commission is looking at solar so the planning board will review pretty much wrapped up their work on the uh housing policy and then um they look at what the Conservation Commission has done on the solar and then we'll review that and make a decide if they want are comfortable moving forward to the select board with a recommendation for land ordinance amendments for the town

meeting uh and so then the select board will look at that by the end of January and determine uh if they're comfortable moving forward with the recommendations for the housing deity as well as the Soler uh then if approved by the select board they put it on the draft warrant articles that are sent out to the in town report in February and then the Amendments with the formal amendments would be posted for public review during that same time frame and then the planning board under main laws required to hold a formal public advertised public hearing uh no more than 30 days town meeting and no less than seven days before the town meeting and then there will be a vote on these amendments on April 6th that's the process y that gets our ducks in a row and then the state's going to come up with a whole different set of things and lay them down on top of us after we get organized well the nice thing is do they or do they not so

with this C me we we're a home rule home law rule home rule authori so the Loc municipality is the the first step in the regular regulatory land so if our standards exceed the restrictions of the state with in reference to this we can still use utilize our standards so if the state of main comes and then says you know no this is the you need at least a 50 foot buffer R says 100 like we're good there so it is designed to allow those local municipalities to really craft ordinances that that work for them to change your small medium and large definition and all of a sudden that but as we saw with the housing density the state uh law does preempt

local Authority so they could come in and say look we really need solar you you can't require some of these things that you're requiring that's what they did with the housing de you can't require larger law sizes those sorts of things so it's it's just the way it is yeah there's that's why you have a state legislature and representes put behind this and and so our thought process with the ordinance though is that we would rather have something crafted for the future versus versus nothing because right now it's I think it' be a $250 fee and do do what you want um you know and so we want to want to avoid that so what I want to point out here though is just so everyone understands like we're before this step so we're getting feedback right now from people um most of everything you here is

open for the public and there is a public comment period in any of this so if if you give feedback tonight and then the Conservation Commission makes a recommendation to the planning board and you don't like what was recommended you can make public comment during the public comment period at the planning board meeting to raise your concerns uh then when it you can come to the select board meeting that's open for public comment and you can raise your concerns there and then once it's approved and the articles are sent out and the everything's ready for public review this this last public uh meeting is really just explaining what the orance means so at that point the the warrant language is kind of set in stone and that's what's going to be voted at so at that last meeting it's more of you know can you explain this can you uh what would this mean what would that mean but leading up to that that is still where

there's the public input Point like we're having tonight so just letting you all know that you can continue to share public input through essentially J February really um so I just want everyone to know that it's not just like speak now forever one your pece there's there's a lot to digest here there's other meetings you can watch and come up with questions and you can always email recommendations to the Conservation Commission or the planning board as well so and especially with some of this stuff like we will say like it gets into the weeds with technical language and so especially if you have expertise in it and you can send a recommendation like this is what I think some technical language should look like or here some technical concerns I have more than welcome to send that along for for consideration will the draft ordinance be on the town website at all for you or

well whatever goes to the planning board will be posted their packet every month is posted so whatever goes to the planning board in uh for the J their January meeting which is January 3rd will be posted on the website assuming you folks are ready to go

storage yes okay so as I said uh this draft that we've got so far only mentions so storage in the definition of solar energy systems and I think the uh the intent of that is to say it would include uh the storage systems that are associated with a Sol this this graph that we've got so far does not address storage systems separately have to the lake size in storage that's right I mean it's all over the bo several different types that which is attached to the yeah that's all we that's all we've looked at and all we've covered so far and not a lot of detail on that part of it uh theoretically the Emergency Services plan has to be approved by Chief so they could look at those potential fire hazard aspects of it and advise the planning board get a consultant to uh advise them on those issues so we don't have as Commission in it too we don't have as much specifics on energy storage systems at this point but we're trying

to put something together so are we this ordinance would include or um allow for storage with the PB or yes at this point it does but all that would meet the standards here but a standalone storage project came in I don't know it would then it would be right where it is now which they can come in now and it would only be addressed by the conditional use as well as the uh site plan review standards however uh as the planning board is looking at that they would look to some of this language to see what are appropriate standards for these types of facili wouldn't be as strong as you have it right in your ordinance and a lot of this is um is the town able to defend its decisions so either a developer comes in and uh and is denied their permit and so they go to court to challenge the planning board decision or the developer gets their approval and neighbors Su to stop the project so having all of

these types of specific standards helps you when you get into a court situation as opposed to just general uh subjective criteria that's much harder to defend a decision in either Direction that's why why we're here that's why we're

medium and large in the same set of Standards I think they need to be separated I think that the medium size is too small and too restrictive and I think that the large size is not restriced enough things like buffers setbacks things like that and but also in the large you need to allow for industrial

type equipment so for instance the 15t height in that case is too restricted and that I think that our friend there is correct that you're pushing everything either into small or large by doing it this way do you have and you don't have to answer this now do you have I just made all that up I don't no it's all right no no this is what this is for like this is all about getting this sort of information here do you if you think of a recommendation in terms of what you think the threshold for sizes should be so I think that the thresholds are really based on how much energy you can produce not the square footage and so um you you already said that you know you based the 2,000 square feet on Plenty of capacity for personal use you know home use and that it doesn't sound like you really have a good answer for the medium size you know like what uh say a home

business that had um so like uh the guy that does building you know um you know what his kind of needs would be um if he were going to try to power his business with so um and that you need better information on that and maybe you have a kind of an answer for that yeah my my recommendation for the thresholds would be if so you're requiring a bunch of um

you know your interconnection proof or your your like your proof that you're good with the with the utility regulator right so that was I thought one of the criteria um so I would say for the small I would require that they present their interconnection agree or their net their net billing agreement that proves that it's just one household and and if it's just one one service one M um Power you

know if if the project is just for a single service that counts as small and and if it's for multiple but it's still just on single phase that's going to be under quarter acre and I think or or roughly so I would almost say like quarter acre and Below or um and and stipulate that it's it's more

than one uh service that you're providing for that's that's category let's say um and then okay so but what if you have a home business that has a pretty large energy requirement I think if it's just one then that's that's the the lowest so but I think that that doesn't meet what it is that the town is trying to accomplish by limiting size it's just one and under a quarter acre maybe right but a quarter acre is a little bigger than I mean quite a bit bigger than what your your small was um but I'd almost break it into four though if it's if it's serving just one unit one service under a quarter acre that's level one if it's um multiple and

is on single phase that's level two if it's multiple on on three phase that that's going to be up to like 2 megawatt or 2 five megawatt 20 acres that that would be three and then utility scale would be four which is on like the transmission lines but it's I don't know acre wise yeah so just for clarification here our medium size is up to 20,000 ft which is half which is a half acre and so when we are talking about that medium size the idea there would be that that would capture um home regular old homes

whether they're just running or if a home's running a business or if it's a let's say a 10 house subdivision that wants to produce enough electricity for itself you know we're basing that off of the fact that you know our understanding is that you know if just the to the

panels that I have on my roof cover my house and that's you know we're in the several hundred square feet you extrapolate that out for for most homes and that would cover that and the reason we left that in medium is because we're saying like it's not just the one home but it might be you know the mechanic or a farm that has a little drawing a little bit more needs and stuff like that so that's why we went up to that 20,000 square foot and I understand we we had a long discussion about talking acreage versus um Kil kilowatt hours or

kilowatts or or or power output and the reason we were really coming back to acreage is because of the visual um aspect we we felt like that is what meets more so with the town's desire to remain have that world characteristic but that if all of a sudden tomorrow new panel comes out that's twice as efficient we shouldn't tell that developer oh now you can only put half as many panels up because you You' created efficiency the marketplace is provided more efficiency you can't capture that we want you to limit your footprint size if you come up if you invent a panel tonight that's cranking out twice as much power we still want you to be able to put a a be allowed to put that Halfacre of panels up and not get punished for having more efficiency so that's kind of why we went with the the the acreage there and then we also thought about for the future for decommissioning or for repowering if someone puts up their P panels and then

great efficiencies come down the line and it's worth the money to pull those panels down Recycling and put new panels out to to create more electricity without a larger footprint we didn't want to dissuade that so that's kind of why we went with the square footage so we've had a long discussion about it and I'm glad to hear other people are thinking about that as well though I think the voters too you know the late people in public who haven't thought about this a lot 20,000 sare ft means a lot more than saying an 80 Kow system I mean you know exactly what an 80 Kow system landies would take but you but you know that a me like a megawatt system is going to take five to six acres but I can visualize a football field but people people in the public who haven't thought about this a lot would want the size is a sort of a concrete they have more of a concrete understanding of what it's going to look

like than if we say this is an 80 kilowatt system or 100 kilowatt system or I mean that doesn't mean anything to most people and that's one thing we get to I'll get to the comments here but that's one thing we get to a lot in town when we're talking about ordinances is making them as understandable for the regular old citizens so it's like if I'm reading a piece of because like um someone came to our last board meeting our last uh Conservation Commission meeting said the industry talks in kilowatt out kilowatts and megawatts not square footage and the thing is is like Michael just said if I read an ordinance that says this allows up to a Halfacre of development that most of us can visualize that more than this allows 250 megaw or I think that the acreage thing everybody says well my I have five acres so this would be that big on my land I agree with that the things kind of specifically that I thought were too

restrictive in medium had to do with uh some of the financial stuff yeah and things like that you know for we had a question there just uh D loveage Snow Road um yeah this the size I think is a way to think about it not kilowatts because as you said Joe the increasing efficiency it's going to be outdated essentially as soon as it's passed if we're only limiting it by kilowatt hours um to have it as something that could be used down the line and not have to be readdressed with pretty much any future project I think we do have to come to some determination about the footprint and it which I I'll talk about later I have some comments about that but I didn't want to talk talk about something that just come up which especially where it gets a gray area of income um I have a rooftop solar system on a new house and only on my garage built to maximize efficiency um I generate income from it because I sell

carbon credits because I go beyond net metering I'm certainly not a commercial solar farm um but anytime you get into generation and you get into WEA not it's just being used in the house um that would mean net metering zero to Zer I would lose all that energy to CMP for free which I have no interest in giving them um so that's just one of those kind of gray areas where it could you know whether if you're setting a standard of how much you generate it could be a percentage of income um it's beer money for us but you know just knows that's that that could add up um but yeah it's just um yeah it just it get there's there's grayer areas um in terms of something other than the there fewer gray areas when we're talking about SS and I think so to to ask a question here is what you're getting at let's say I put panels on every square inch of my house even though I'm and so now I'm just generating a bunch of I'm not

familiar with your program but sounds like you're generating extra for carbon and so you're saying that that could are you concerned that that could feel a little bit more business use type at some point or are you concerned that it might say Hey you now that because you're making money there yeah it was just there was a I don't remember if it was a statement a comment or a clarification where it came up about generating income from solar um and I think we should be incentivizing maximizing um rooftop and things that don't have an impact you can't see my house from the road no one cares how many solar panels I have but if you see a ne's house you see their house regardless of solar panels I think we should be incentivizing maximizing how much were getting from existing structures and income could be a limiting factor I would have had to use fewer panels yeah I think to get to that is right now there there is no

language requiring anything other than your the code enforcement officer permit for things that aren't rooftop but I guess if you ran into a situation where you had over 2,000 square fet of rooftop that might trigger the medium size that point yeah that's sort of my concern is that seems like a lot of roof but it would but you know if we're talking about putting it on I think we want to limit how much other stuff is being used up for these and I think that's I want make some comments about later I think you're right I think we want to encourage rooftop VI I think it's a good it's already that it has the lowest cost but you said ear they have to put more on the roof I was like sounds like a good idea you know I less cost our thought was that the 2,000 ft would support a 40 kwatt system which is you know if the average rooftop is 8 kilow it's still quite a bit of buffer for the average household does the

utilities and the our company have a set of dropping rules lines whatever you want call categories in other words your net net billing is is one house ones that of billing you've got the solar Farms that had originally had up to 10 people buying into them as a limit

that's probably changed by now but are there as the stuff coming down from the top I don't have a good definition that we need to consider I mean my understanding is you can put rooftop all on your house and use it for multiple residents use the credit for multiple residents that's true and any we CMP system if you're in CMP that's my understanding yeah that would just be sorry interr be a Cod officer top and so

that kind of we want that to be it's like if you want to fill your roof with panels as long as the code enforcement officer says your house isn't going to collapse and you've got the electrical cap capacity and you know C PR will probably want you have the right size Transformer or whatever on your pole that's fine like we want we wanted this to incentivize but also you know a large

barn yeah and it's more than 2,000 square ft yeah what about the school like if the school decides and so that's I think that's where I I understand the question there is like so maybe rooftop is different and there could be some we could explore some language there for if you're fixing it to an existing structure if there's an exemption yeah because you know I don't want to tell someone stop putting panels on your roof because it's like and again none of this says you can't do it you have to go to the plan board for

and it's not just that it's a lot of those financial requirements it sounds like your feedback is that if it's really easy to put it on your roof we should make sure that still easy to put on your roof you have over 2,000 square feet and which I to both space and income and so my point was on the income level because even if you mention if there's any income from it you could that might have been a Miss no that's fine I just to clarify that that might have me missp speaking when I was talking about income generating that was probably the wrong no clature used there um but thanks for yeah I'm not pointing fingers on it oh no that's fine you can point fingers right I encourage it I point fingers that myself why don't we just like get rid of the just say rooftop like no other limits well what if people can't put it on the rooftop because they a south facing house they need to have ground based ground based

has to be part of it I think what you're saying Juliet is you still allow for the people to do a residential Solar Development for their home and Business on you know the fixed arrays on the ground or the trackers like we see it like an auto Bond and stuff like that but we could also didn't still say there is an exemption for rooftops if you're exceeding 2000 rooftop period is exempt or or it's category

installations small yeah but what if it's ground based because they Ro can't support it how big can it be I think that would just then be back into the 2,000 square feet but so if you have a bigger roof you can put more in your roof but if you don't have a good roof you can't we're treating people treating people differently trackers has a much bigger Visual and other impact than 2,000t true and I I would also wonder how much many two how much people have over 2,000 feet of roof I don't think that that's going to be a huge thing but I think it's still in still good thing to ask CU you know you see some sprawling old chicken Barns and and houses and barns and this and that you know so if the goal is to maintain the Royal character yeah we want to encourage yeah yes I agree yeah so I think that we'll definitely have to discuss like a rooftop exemption there for anyone who has that put a limit in to be

evaluated subject to the visual and all the other stuff a lot of block blocking things in there to work with Brunswick um treats rooftop as basically like the the lowest like you don't have to get special approval um it's really like what we're talking about you know they talk about as ground based and then they have these rules um I I think that it would be great to be consistent with neighboring municipalities and Brunswick does have

their uh their like next step up from small start at a quarter acre um and so you don't have to under a quarter acre you don't have to get the major development review you don't have to get the um visual like professional

George you go back have can you go back to our small medium and large and so what you're saying in in in Brunswick is everything you say quarter acre that would say that everything up to 10,000 square feet is treated as a code enforcement officer type thing so the same as a rooftop it's uh all you need is a building permit and electrical permit it's it's treated it's the permit is um the new construction residential that's what you need for a building perit and they talk about like what other zoning um things apply to it within their ordinance but it's not 100 foot setbacks from roads and it's not like a professional um vegetation person doing a simulated Yeah couple differences between dur these other communities like top is they have industrial areas of those communities so a lot of their regulations are recognizing yeah not just the size but also the types of settings that they're going Durham has

none of that anywhere and so I I'm right I'm noting that feedback for sure but when we were thinking about this we were thinking about the fact that it's like we don't have an industrial Zone we don't have a downtown like it's agriculture this is in downtown

besides a get and go yeah maybe we need a Get Go zone right no talking about the rules within a Zone that's you're saying it still qualifies withit 20,000 sareet or 2,000 we're talking ground you're talking the impact that's right right so tree clearing panels fence ACC Road all of that is part of that 20 or

essentially the drip edge not the between them around well that's different thans because they count the between theels yeah so it's like you're measuring like the panel is angled at this you're measuring from the back of the panel to the ground and the the pan to the ground I think that's weird yeah yeah no I don't I think that's weird that's fair I think that's weird I mean I think if you're taking up a certain amount of area with your panels that's the area that's your impact not because your panels are like this or like this and that changes how many panels you can have that's what we're doing going straight down I know I understand that saying I think that's I do too I so what you're advocating for is if started I just want to make sure I understand so if we're saying let's just it's a 1 acre um footprint correct what you're advocating for is that should be from fence line to fence line within the

road or where the panels the in other words when you go from the edge of this panel to the edge of the back counting the clear clees the inverters the aisles because that's part of the you know that in other words that's what makes the impact is the amount of space they take up on but the balance of that these thresholds are pretty low so we're not trying to penalize by saying oh in the space between those has to be included in the 2,000 square ft or the 20,000 ft so that was kind of we felt more comfortable putting these lower because we not have you seen other ordinances that only count the panel space yes that's what toson yeah and so that's where we from um and so I want to get to your question or comment next Julia but like so where I think about this is thinking about that panel footprint and not punishing I don't I don't know if I should use the word punish but not counting the space in between panels is

that you know when you start getting to that let's say um housing development level where they might not have a really convenient way to just lay the panels all out in rows or stuff like that and you get to like a cluster here and maybe a cluster there and you start getting with that big wide space in between they not really necessarily impacting that it's kind of the thought process there um so that's where you're thinking more of like the square footage of panels but I I understand what you're saying is that it might feel funky we we went this was you know we looked to Tops some a fair amount because they had developed a really robust ordinance that has been kind of a framework for a lot of other ordinances in the region and it's kind of been propped up throughout the state is like a successful ordinance um so that's kind of where we got that information but you know we're here to hear the Derm voice too so and jul so

that makes sense for 2et projects to be whatever wide and 100 right so when you're driving down the road a lot of roof yeah and so like in my opinion a project a solar project is the total size of that project that's the impact visually clearing trees grading decommissioning all of that is looked at that entire project and so where I get a little bit caught in the weeds here is that like so if I have a road that comes in and I left a 100 foot buffer of woods and then the the the array is behind there but I put a fence around that wood that a f starting at the beginning of my road are you now saying well we don't count from fence to fence but we count from clearing to clearing but what if they didn't have to clear anything because it was a field on the back side of that wood line so that's that's kind of where we were thinking about the panel square footage being the important part there Al so the

fence should only a good developer won't include any unused space in the fence that' be there should be only like 10 to 20 ft between the fence and the panels have that sort of issue and a lot of times you're going to have to clear trees around the edge

a footprint yeah exactly also it's everything in there it would be really hard to measure sort of that too if we're just talking the panels well so we do know it's working though because topsum uses it and so some they're figuring it out so it might be worth having the people from their energy committe and Conservation Commission or planning board come back to us or at least get an email from them or something like that to explain because like they're they're successfully it's it's working there and the developers are figuring out how to make it work so well I think the developers are probably liking it more yeah this is just to explain this is a diagram that shows how you are going apply and culate the surface area so it's basically the footprint under the panel not the surface area of the panel you and if it's a Tracker then it's wider once you get the trackers though you're into the large anyway like those start at one

Mega well I guess yeah the theace well if it's a Tracker you would probably count it at the widest which is when it's flat you know which could be and so and I guess to to to like your point about the space in between being used for agreable takes or whatever this could be in a way using our language to say Well they're actually going to space it up a bunch apart for that space for cropping throw crops or or anything like that in between um it doesn't get to the 15ot question which we're going to have to discuss a little bit more there but I I think the the difference between whether it includes the aisles or not is kind of mov though because the categories are so small and and you know when I'm looking at this from I on the day to day and so I I just think there either needs to be a fourth category added and just treat like the largest two categories in the way that you're treating medium and

large or adjust these a decent amount yeah I understand what you're saying I mean admittedly what we're saying is that almost everything utility scale is going to be bumped into the the large category and that's kind of how it's designed I'm feedback there is what you're saying is that maybe adjust that and then add there's another philosophical difference for the town of Durham in its Zone from Bruns TOS

most and that is yeah there there's no commercial zones in this town and so you can put a commercial use anywhere within the community if you meet the conditional use criteria so what that has done is people are very ens to what goes in beside them so it's going to be a little bit potentially more sensitive here Bruns where you have zoning that says you you buy into this area you know what you're getting here you can get anything anywhere and that's why this town has historically put virtually everything through the planning board other than a single family bullet yeah and I think that another thing with the zoning differences is just the the expectation for a rural community is that you know drive around the entire town and it feels like it has a pretty similar look and feel you know 136 125 are a little bit more congested but so there at least it feels like from most of the feedback we get from the

community is like there's that expectation to always have your visual area occupied primarily by Green Space or agriculture or single use family homes and so I feel like in in some of the surrounding communities that are more developed top some front white Freeport folks have the understanding that there's development popped up throughout town because of those zones there's just a bit of a different expectation based off of like what we got for feedback in the comprehensive plan and stuff like that so um but I hear what you're saying for sure we had didn't specifically mention it but um the ordinance would prohibit solar medium and large solar arrays and resource protection areas that's the only zoning that we have what about op no so the only put in is in resource

protection no medum Mar otherwise it's C catch can you can put it anywhere at this um I think other people have mentioned it but adding like a fourth tier of larger scale and increasing the setbacks like mentioned I think maybe 4 or so maybe um maybe but increasing the setbacks increasing the height of the panels I personally think 15 ft is okay what is what is large scale for you like well super large yeah so can 20 acres probably would be my um that's only about me I

would say more like 100 acres or something maybe that's not and so the the the push back I will give there is from a lot of back I get in Durham I mean we all live here but would be that like like 100 acres seems like a pretty large impact to be the minimum threshold for large 20 acres you figure 20 football fields cleared and developed seems like a pretty that like that seems large in itself right there so yeah I was just adding something because right now our large like like aity come in and have the same 100 foot buffer and like what you were saying so add something whatever that is but so maybe at a fourth scale bigger

buffer excess of yeah whatever that is something or what you're saying is that our standard if you're a half acre or your 120 Acres it's 100 foot sou Portland put in where they're doing their whole city how big an area did they I'm not sure how big is big and admittedly we don't often look towards like the Portlands or the Auburn or stuff like that when we're developing our ordinances we're mostly looking at yeah so it's a if but it's a good question the transmission lines are there you can go big exactly if you don't have the Transmissions lines there so expensive and absorbing to put in that you won't yeah well that's part of what drove this discussion is that I believe that there are portions of dur that have the the the big what is it free Phase or whatever transmission yeah the transmission lines that could accommodate the monster monstrously large I guess I shouldn't use that negative adjective the larger projects

you know how many acres is that figure that out yeah it's a half acre again this doesn't say you can't do it have go to so George if something goes to the planning board under this if this language would be adopted and something to the tune of a 100 Acre development goes to the planning board is the planning board then just tied into that 100 foot buffer or is that when they start saying well the landscape architect is building a case to us and we're deciding whether that is well first thing is there's for anything 100 acres you're going to be plot of discussion at the conditional use review stage because the standard that they have to meet is the planning board has to make a determination that this thing is would the scale and intensity of use of the surrounding uses so there may be a place along the power line where there's nothing around it and it's isolated and and even then you know they're going to be there going to be

some neighbors on the roads leading to it they're going to be talking about the planing board will first have to say does this really fit and I'm I'm skeptical that 100 Acre uh solar farm is going to be very hard to meet that standard in this town just based on what I've seen big farm field but if we have this policy and it doesn't have any limits then I think that could be a hard argument develop came in and said the

large solar policy so it sounds like you're advocating for adding another policy or change we wouldn't call it Garg but we would just change the definition of LGE yeah and we were just talking I think it might be smart to look at the utility or the state I think they've got thresholds um I think you were mentioning that too a earlier I don't know what it is now

acres it goes by they just I think yeah they just disallowed five AC there four levels B that's on the like net billing so like they do a one two three and four but they used to let you go up to five megawatts the the new state law I think dropped it down to 2 megawatt max once you're up to the big transmission lines though you're like at a 50 megawatt project there's kind of of a gap in between where it's not really econom so it might be that might from them what what

they that's hundreds of Acres policy is this in many ways this is I feel like trying establish a basis for something on on on the books and kind of making sure that we have something in place and so if if in the future the community wants to feels like there's more concern about those very large development pressures or that sort of thing and we want to make additions to the the policy I think that that's that's an option but at this point I think that the reason we crafted a policy of this scale is just to kind of prepare ourselves for what are the current pressures you know I don't know what the developers knocking on the door of durh were looking at I don't think they were looking at 200 acre 150 acre developments I think they were more so looking at what we're seeing pop up in a lot of other municipalities so admittedly this policy is trying to capture that sort of thing and just put something on the books other than a $250

permit yes sir Che we have any idea how much of our wiring terms a three phase we even justify that shows it there's like a solar sighting map someone developed that kind of shows you where all the three phase are and those sorts of things so you can kind of get an idea as to whether this is where you should invest your time um I think I glanced it at one point and remember seeing portions of dur it's easy to

tell it's the ones with the so there's the middle and then there's the two outside ones they're on a crossbar all the other ones if they're single phase they're just on a pole and it's a so if it's a t if it's a t pole then yeah although sometimes they'll put those in just to get it away from the if there's three wires running down the question my question was how often do we have those in dur I me is are we spending a lot of time thinking about huge projects when it's just not going toen because you don't have a three line aot well running running from the Quaker Meeting House all the way to Lisbon

that's all I don't know about all the big did for fire safety emergency looking at those power lines so that's where the power Lin this is the transmission line getting this cor so we need to figure out suggestion is figure out how

does have a fair amount of resource protection um is fairly has a fair amount of resource protection zoning yeah from this whole portion of the the town in this runaround Pond area um so that area would be taken out of the discussion for

quick point out the kind of irony in the resource protection and like the um the the want in the survey of Environmental Protection you know and then the uh retaining the rural character I mean rural means the low population right but if we're if we're discouraging in any way um renewable energy that's going to protect the environment going to protect our resources what what it isn't discouraging is housing that's G to you know raise the population with every house and and is going to decrease the rural character I guess so it's kind of it's a weird thing and so I think that that's part of the reason why we're trying to develop as opposed to like a Prohibition

or outright Banning or whatever is because I think that at least from the Conservation Commission standpoint we understand it's striking a balance to everyone's going to go home tonight and turn their light switch on and that electricity has to come from somewhere and you fall into the not in my backyard like I'd rather not have a solar panel here but i' I'm okay with a Coal Fired plant getting fired up for for my for my football game so we understand that that is a um a really serious discussion to

have um and so I don't know if I have a good answer for you but I'm just it's not like we're trying to come at this as like you know no and then the other thing too is our comprehensive plan does talk about um maintaining like individual property rights too so we do understand like people want to be able to generate income from their property that they might not want to farm anymore they might have a land resource that they want to capture value from and it shouldn't be you know a rule saying well no we get to decide exactly what you do so we're trying really hard to strike a balance there because it's like I'm gonna turn the lights on tonight and I get that yeah so few comments um both big

picture and more in depth um first I've lived in I'm new to Durham two years it was in Palo for 18 years um I let me applaud the town and Conservation Commission for being active about projects um I just want to make a note public officials just got a compliment start that butter you off so um I do think I have found that since I moved here I've been I was on the Conservation Commission in pel for more than enough time but I've been involved seeing the town working a little more proactively uh in General on topics like this and that I do think the town is worth being applauded for because when it comes to a project on the table it's always it's always the vocal minority that is going to win that argument because they're the ones dominating a a council meeting or Sight board meeting so I think this is really helpful um that doesn't mean I don't have criticisms of the plan and I know we're in an early stage um personally just you

know I think distributed solar is the most efficient cheapest least impactful way to generate energy at this time I love what it looks like because I know what it's doing at an impact much less than almost anything else we could do right now especially locally um whenever we're looking at you know utility scale totally different distributed energy less impact and also less TR cost and loss during transmission um I think um

but that also means that removing things like Forest cover and productive Farmland to generate energy is problematic um that's hard to do because we do have property rights and we do have zoning um um but I think reducing impacts of a project should be a priority we we put that off for this

this April meeting because we thought we wanted to get something on the books and we thought that if we have mitigation fees and we have restrictions on location like you can't cut this Woods down or you can't put your solar farm on Prime Farmland that it might be more contentious and it might be more difficult to get it past but we we recognize that that's an issue and we want to I agree with that statement totally but I think there's a more Progressive way to look at it which is incentivizing projects that are going to be better for the town yeah and so that's kind of a little bit what Michael was getting as so we had a pretty long discussion about this because if we look at Topson they essentially have like this mitigation fee system which makes it so some areas where they might you know maybe it's a Brownfield or maybe it's a um landfill or something like that there's a monetary incentive to put there versus

putting it on farmland or a project that involves clearing and you know in Duram we have a lot of prime Farmland soils we have a lot of large undeveloped uh undeveloped Forest blocks that we're concerned about but to Michael's Point um that was adding in essentially these like pseudo zoning type ordinances on top of just getting footprint management language established and so when we first brought that to the planning board they were like this kind of seems like we need to get some basic standards down first for you know what are the electrical standards what's the footprint what's the impact that sort of stuff and then at the following year explore options for how do you incentivize putting it on top of you know contaminated soils versus how do you decentivize putting it on top of prime farmland or you know saying you know is this is there incentive to do a project in area that doesn't require 150

acres of of conversion of forest to that so that's definitely on our radar it's just it's a lot and and frankly it's like you know it's like we're volunteer organization we're dealing with you know the the the planning board's already dealing with the the affordable housing thing which is very busy and contentious so in an effort to make sure we try to get one portion right we kind of carve this out first with that I mean we had we have had those discussions and we we're going to try to focus on that for a future future year because agree like that's why the the the the the foot the the toe we dipped into that was trying to make the rooftop the best option and then we can focus on those incentives for locations at at at a next year um we're just concerned like Michael said if we added in hey here's a new ordinance and we're establishing these pseudo zones and we're establishing an inl fee program but we don't have an

account for that to go to it was just getting really messy really quick but not that we don't want to get into it it's just kind of we have to compartmentalize yeah we were spending some time looking at the topsum ordinance because they have mitigation fees so a higher fee in locations that have higher value habitat and that was something that really int you know intrigued us but we don't really as this town doesn't have the mechanism right now to handle like what we do the mitigation um it might require a whole process of developing it different ordinance for handling mitigation fees and we don't we don't have any zoning and Duram that's the biggest issue in in top some they had zoning already established and they had a rural Zone and a you know a industrial Zone and they could set those mitigation fees based on you know the the value of that land to conservation and when we get to the point where we wanted to start exploring

that we also realize that you know we didn't have this framework ready to go of like here's the this outside of resource protection here's what durm values as a as a habitat or whatever and we just just didn't feel like there was enough time for us to have an adequate public participation process to say how do we structure the prime Development Area versus the the three times normal mitigation fee Development Area we just didn't feel like we could get public input in that and we didn't want to just come here and say hey here's your new development Zone that we made up without asking you know so that's kind of why that is on our radar though so I know I said a lot of words but I hope you understand I do and I and I get that um I don't think it's always about up zones and and laying out mitigation plans and payments I think there is a way to encourage if I'm a developer and I I was approached when I purchased Land by a

developer just wasn't something we were looking to do at the time um it was hey this is how easy it's going to be to do here you know and that's great because as soon as you make it easy they'll become you mentioned not making it too hard and it depends what the town's goals are there are ways to say this is something that we want want to encourage or not and there is a way to sort of play with wording about trying to say you know if you do this we're going to allow that so maybe one of the ways to think about what I'm hearing a lot of the negative comments are or the criticism excuse me are are of the um the sizing and that's such a you know the sizing we're going to have to come up with some arbitrary numbers but there may be not if it's this big or if it's

this big this is the set of of things we're going to encourage to let a developer look at where they want to package it and so maybe it's not just about footprint but because you know one thing I want to comment on is footprint is not just fence line it's not just

solar panels it's certainly not drip lines um impact especially from a community level um are infrastructure and distance to uh adequate lines and we've seen too often development occur where it was easy which is sort of behind that hill but then we have a power line come over it that then needs a right away through another neighbor who says no um I think two of the things that were really important to me were mentioned in there that I want to reiterate as part of those things that was the um minimizing the impact the weight out outside the footprint and that was the um um uh try to make some notes Here the um uh mention of uh

shielding for light pollution light pollution impact goes far beyond boundaries of a of a project um habitat fragmentation by power lines is just as much an issue if not a greater one because overall footprint uh calculated from The Edge into a forest is a bigger issue than an actual chunk of the forest taken out by solar battles so I kept thinking about ways to sort of say you know we're not I know what you're saying that we have to sort of get something on the books but I hate to see the thought being boxed into as if this each project was operating in a vacuum because it's not um and I don't I don't know the great way to do that and I hear what you're saying about maybe that's the next step yeah but I think we need to find a way to not operate each project in a vacuum with a yes or no vote on everything and I 100% understand what you're saying because things that we had talked about like Roberta had brought up is like

project location like outside of the footprint is in a a large travel Corridor connecting to unfragmented Habitat types so that project might only be an acre but if it's now cutting off to 150 250,000 acre parcels and that's

the only and we know that there's a lot of wildlife going across the road there that's problematic um we just didn't feel like we had the time to get a public conversation like what we're having now to adequately address those concerns and so rather than saying let's the entire discussion to next year knowing that we already have people looking to develop we said well let's just come up with something for footprint come up with something for construction standards and then say but on the roof is always the best option so totally hear what you're saying it's just we felt like that was going to be a multiple town meeting Town input survey type thing and we just weren't going to be able to get it done um no I understand that part of it yeah but I understand what you're saying too about you know shielding for light pollution not just for but also for you know when they get moist and wet at night and it

looks like good habitat to land on or things like that you know those are are attracted by I mean there could be very easy standards of lighting not just shielding but I'd like to see um uh temperature warmer lights reduce insect accumulation reduce bird disorientation the warmer the light the less likely it is to attract bound tail moths um I've been working with I worked on with the team doing trying to get the city of bath to change lighting to reduce and you know we talked about all the great things dark sky Birds bats and it all came down to The Brighter the light the whiter the light the more brown tail Ms are attracted to an uh and concentrated and so I think there's more to you know I I some of the things that we put in that like shielding I think that's a perfect example of something that should be that I apology for and I really want to sort of reiterate the value but I do think color and intensity of Lights is

important because those a lot of things we don't think about such as what happens beyond the surface area that's being lit um and and um um I'm forgetting the range of Kelvin that the that the warmer lights are uh less encouraging to Crown ta moth in particular not that they aren't going to be around because of it but it does increase concentrations which could be a real issue for a neighbor who has an allergy yeah understand yeah um usually

we don't um or I'm a developer we don't um include any lights for their especially um for solar installations very security lighting around entrances Gates um for the panel itself not necessarily but with some of the storage um facilities that I've seen a lot of those can need to be lighted for security reasons we're not dealing with

that talking about storage and so like if we have we mentioned in there there's already a line about shielded light it it's already been in the presentation it's already I don't know the exact technical word and I actually um I wonder if you can say something like minimize lighting like this is just solar needed like something I don't think it's needed right and if it's I mean we don't generally like panels but there are there are there's other infrastruct that involves lighting including roads entry roads um uh transmission station you know there are things involved with solar that involve lighting um drive-thru panel and you can see infrastructure that has lights on it um and I think by using being careful

with some of the things we are requiring now we can do some things that minimize impact and again lighting is a big impact outside of the footprint if we all so what we've T what you've mentioned is that we have to Focus right now on the footprint um I get that and that makes sense because the next step would be where that footprint lives yeah but that footprint is not that fence line doesn't draw a straight line up and the footprint ends yeah and lighting is one of those um additional infrastructure such as connection to the grid is another big aspect of it Road access those are all impacts so I think those are important to consider um with footprint and I don't know how to do that with making a set standard I'm just saying I think we need to consider it no I understand what you're saying especially when you say like okay so it's on the back end of a field but now you have a larger access road you have

longer lines you have more potentially more lights like definitely I definitely hear where you're coming from with that I don't have a proposal of how that's done I just thinking but it's a good observation back to the slide the generalized description of the Lang working now do talk about limiting the as well as right I think there should be a very specific or or there should be something about color and intensity and it's usually done by Kelvin and I don't remember it but the warmer so what you're saying is there would be a standard written in there so folks folks who are developing know that like there's a certain bul that you're putting in that light as opposed to an LED or something like that they're LEDs it's a certain range of color the range of color has less impact Beyond um it

minimizes the footprint of that the Real the true footprint not the if you have any literature on that feel free to send it our way that would Jo should we send email to you I would say to Theiss George what's on the January 3 the planning board is going to meet on January 3rd I'm assuming you folks are going to have one more meeting to dve this fin December 20th the 20th

yeah and those are all posted on the town calendar um the Conservation Commission meetings aren't recorded we take notes uh but they are open to the public uh we're a little bit more informal if folks show up for public comment we kind of are hey you know you want to give some public comment we raise your hand we acknow you December 20th 6:30 here at the Town Office office we also have an opening on the

other pressing questions or anything like that I think we could probably wrap up um especially knowing that there's other opportunities to participate I do want to say thank you a lot for participation today I mean I hope you all know I'm not just doodling to make it look like I'm taking notes I've got a lot of notes Here for consideration um definitely a lot for us to discuss at our next meeting but I mean this sort of participation is really what you know is the root of local rural main democracy so we really appreciate appreciate the Insight from folks in the town we're we're better as a collective than we are as individuals trying to work on something thank you thank

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