WHATELY — Belchertown-based Hyperion Systems LLC detailed its plans to install a 2.14-acre solar array at Chang Farm on Thursday night, when the Zoning Board of Appeals held its first public hearing for the project.
According to the special permit application, the array would be located at 299 River Road and include 960 solar panels standing 10 feet high. The panels would be separated into 10 rows spaced 27 feet apart to allow for farming. According to Doug Serrill, the landscape architect for the project with Berkshire Design Group, Sidney Chang of Chang Farm plans to plant strawberries under the solar panels for the first three years after the panels are installed before switching to asparagus.
“The ethos or mantra of Hyperion is food first, then energy,” explained Jake Marley, who manages the solar company. “The real intent there is fitting an energy system within an agricultural practice and not the other way around.”
Forest surrounds the site of the proposed array, creating a natural screen for the solar panels, Serrill said. The array would sit on slopes with a grade below 15%, meeting the town’s bylaw requirement, and construction would not entail any excavation, site grading or soil disturbance beyond the farm’s typical operations, he added.
The array would also include four inverters within a chain-link fence, with an attached sign listing who to call in the event of an issue. If the solar project is installed, a system would remotely monitor the arrays 24/7 to catch any issues, and licensed professionals would perform “system checkups” virtually and in-person at the site.
ZBA Chair Debra Carney thanked Serrill for his presentation of the proposal, calling it “very thorough, very detailed [and] very helpful.”
The town’s bylaw reads that, “All facilities must be located at least 100 feet from any wetland or priority habitat area as delineated in accordance with the Massachusetts Endangered Species Act regulations at 321 CMR 10.00 or successor regulation.” According to Serrill, the closest solar panel post falls within 42.5 feet of vegetative wetlands.
However, given that the 20 posts within the wetland buffer cover 1.4 square feet of the wetland area, the Conservation Commission found the project’s impact on the wetlands to be minimal and approved the layout on the condition that the wetland area be marked with flags during construction, Serrill said.
Serrill, on behalf of the applicant, argued that the project satisfies the bylaw because the language only refers to the Endangered Species Act, not the Wetlands Protection Act that regulates wetland setbacks. He added that no habitats for species designated as rare under the Endangered Species Act lie within the site, therefore meeting the bylaw.
“It is reasonable to infer that the intent of this provision is to regulate wetlands that have rare species present,” Serrill said, “which is not the case at 299 River Road.”
“I just sometimes wonder why we have protected areas if you can violate protected areas,” ZBA member Robert Smith said.
While ZBA Vice Chair Roger Lipton said the Conservation Commission’s approval was sufficient enough for him to not “drill down on this issue anymore,” Carney and Smith decided to enlist town counsel’s legal insight.
“The issue for me is that there’s a plausible counterargument, and it all has to do with what that clause modifies and the fact that the coordinating conjunction is an ‘or’ not an ‘and,'” Carney said. “There’s a real linguistic puzzle here, but it is a puzzle, so it’s not clear. … It’s a very well-designed and presented project, but there is a dilemma that could result in creating a precedent.”
Smith also brought up the cadmium in the solar panels, a naturally occurring metal that can pose health risks if people inhale it or consume foods with “rarely seen” levels of it, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Cadmium can be found in soil and rocks and, according to Marley, is often in electronics.
Based on feedback Marley said he has heard from soil scientists, he added, “You’d have to take a panel, put it through a chipper in really fine pieces, spread it across the field, plow it into the soil and wait some number of years for the [cadmium] to really bind into the soils and take a hold.” Marley then agreed to send the ZBA further information on cadmium, including testing that Hyperion Systems LLC completed for the members to review.
Smith said his questions during the hearing came from his concern about setting risky precedents.
“I thought your presentation was excellent,” Smith continued. “I think it’s a great idea.”
The ZBA continued the hearing to its next meeting on Thursday, Dec. 3, at 6 p.m. In the meantime, the members will visit the site of the proposed array on Sunday, Nov. 15, at 10 a.m. The site visit is open to the public and will be for “visual purposes only,” Carney said, meaning the ZBA will not discuss the project or take comments from abutters.
