CONWAY — For its fifth hearing on BlueWave Solar’s plans for a solar array on Roaring Brook Road, the Planning Board reviewed a revised design that eliminated 20% of the panels and continued the discussion to a sixth hearing later this month.
The initial application for the project on Ronald Boyden’s farmland described a 4.99-megawatt system with solar panels set 10 feet above the ground, along with a battery energy storage system, a 20-foot-wide gravel access road and a stormwater basin. The most recent designs show a 3.99-megawatt system.
The solar array would be a dual-use system, allowing landowners to continue using the site for farming, with animals able to graze under the panels. The solar panels would be spaced with enough room for sunshine to reach the field below, according to Melinda Costello, a civil engineer with Weston & Sampson. Instead of fixed panels, the solar panels would move to follow the sun throughout the day.
The slope of the solar panels has sparked discussion at previous hearings and triggered BlueWave Solar to remove 20% of the panels from the design.
The town’s bylaw for commercial solar photovoltaic systems requires that the systems sit on slopes with grades of less than 15% while allowing the Planning Board to consider issuing waivers for slopes up to 18% “based on site-specific parameters.”
While board members interpreted the slope mentioned in the bylaw as the slope of the ground beneath the proposed panels, BlueWave Solar had followed a different measuring method, but agreed to adjust its interpretation and remove the panels sitting on slopes above 18%, which accounted for 20% of the total panels.
Per the revised design, the total project area spans 27 acres, with the solar panels covering 5.2 acres. The majority of the removed panels came from the center of the project area.
According to Costello, after the 20% were taken out, 90% of the remaining panels sit on slopes between 0% and 15%, 9.8% sit on slopes between 15% and 18%, and the last 0.2% sit on slopes above 18%. The Planning Board plans to vote on whether to grant the waiver for the slopes between 15% and 18% at a future meeting.
Planning Board Chair George Forcier noted that the bylaw does not give much guidance for the waiver beyond the “site-specific parameters.” He highlighted the vegetation on the site, the fact that only a small portion of the site will be “physically disturbed,” and the separated layout of the panels to reduce the the concentration of water runoff as potential parameters for the board to consider.
“There’s a lot of opinion baked into whether to grant the waiver or not,” added peer reviewer Chris Chamberland.
At the July hearing, Planning Board member Jeff Lacy suggested BlueWave Solar move the proposed site for the battery energy storage system behind a barn on the property “to ease the visual burden.” After agreeing to talk it over, Costello said on Tuesday night that Lacy’s suggested new spot falls outside of the area outlined in the lease agreement and would require an amendment to the lease and negotiations that the landowner is not interested in. Joel Lindsay, vice president of project development at BlueWave Solar, claimed the landowner’s reasoning against the move was not strictly related to the lease.
“It’s more his vision of how he wants to use that [property],” Lindsay said. “He doesn’t want us to have the [equipment] pad there.”
According to Forcier, Fire Chief Christopher Herrmann pointed out that the battery energy storage system needs to be 1.5 times the size of the barn and placed 60 feet away.
“The presumption is if the barn catches fire and the wall falls over, it’s not going to land on top of the [battery energy storage system],” Forcier said. “That’s something to think about.”
Lindsay claimed BlueWave Solar’s proposed screening for the battery energy storage system would be more effective than moving the unit. Costello proposed two options: a 7-foot tall “modern-looking” stockade fence or a 7-foot fence filled in with “faux hedge” material.
Planning Board member Cheryl Case said the fake hedge fences she has seen “look very not green, they look green-blue or green-yellow.”
“We’re hopeful that we can find some way of screening it where it is,” Lindsay said. “It may not be exactly what we suggested tonight.”
While the engineers have increased the screening from their original design to comply with the town’s bylaw that requires “large-scale solar facilities” to include a 30-foot screen of native trees and shrubs, Forcier asked at the last hearing if the screening could stretch along Roaring Brook Road from Deerfield River Portage to Boyden’s barns to block Roaring Brook Road travelers from seeing the array. The town’s bylaw requires “an effective visual barrier” from adjacent roads, driveways and abutting properties.
Lindsay said Forcier’s idea for extended screening would not work with the landowner’s farming operations and claimed it would “be difficult to make that be overly effective.”
“We’re proposing what we think is a reasonable amount of screening that is responsive to the bylaw that requires that we have effectiveness proportional to its cost,” Lindsay said.
Near the end of the hearing, abutter Tim Luce chimed in to say he has “a hard time hearing it said that the landowner doesn’t want this or that changed in the plan.”
“If he didn’t want to lose land to grow crops,” Luce said, “he shouldn’t have agreed to this thing in the first place. … I don’t think that should be considered.”
Looking ahead, the board plans to review the written version of BlueWave Solar’s latest proposal, bring up further questions and consider taking a “straw vote” regarding whether to grant a slope waiver at the next hearing, scheduled for Monday, Aug. 31, at 7 p.m. According to Forcier, the board is approaching “the end of the fact-gathering phase” of public hearings before the deliberations will begin.
Luce suggested the board conduct more outreach to spread the word to the public as it moves closer to a decision, which Forcier called a “good idea.” While the first hearing for the project drew 50 attendees, only three took their seats at Town Hall for the fifth hearing. Two of them were not Conway residents.
“It’s a sparse crowd,” Luce said. “Maybe people have lost sight of this project.”
