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Planning Board discusses solar by-law at public hearing

Date: 2/6/2012

Feb. 6, 2012

By Chris Maza

chrism@thereminder.com

EAST LONGMEADOW — No amount of discussion was going to convince the Planning Board to add residential districts to the solar array by-law going before the Annual Town Meeting.

Despite some objections to the omission of residential zones from a proposed by-law permitting ground-mounted photovoltaic arrays, Planning Board Chair Peter Punderson indicated at the Jan. 31 public hearing that no significant changes would be made to the 10-page document.

“We’re not going to get into a ton of discussion and change what we have written,” he said. “We’re going to take what everyone says under advisement, making notes as we go along. There are a lot of pages here, we’ve gone through it line by line already and we don’t want to sit here and, so to speak, negotiate a change at this time.”

Alex Cotter, a member of East Longmeadow High School’s Environmental Club, said the by-law was too restrictive to those wishing to benefit from the use of solar technology.

“Reading through this, it seemed a little over-regulated and almost discouraging to anyone who wanted to do solar panels on their yard and for businesses that wanted to do that,” he said. “I was just hoping you could make it a little more encouraging for people.”

Resident Ralph Page told the board that he felt that some small-scale solar facilities should be allowed on residential property, using a photo example of a solar array used to heat a pool. Page said that because the proposed by-law does not make a distinction between large-scale and small-scale photovoltaic arrays, town residents were done a disservice.

“I personally don’t see a problem with this being screened in a person’s residential back yard to heat their pool,” he said. “You’re saying that this won’t be allowed whatsoever. A small unit used to heat a pool, a small unit used for personal consumption, I believe, should be allowed in a residential zone.”

Planning Board member George Kingston added that the matter was carefully considered and that if use of solar arrays in industrial and industrial garden districts is successful, the issue of allowing such structures on residential property may be considered.

“We did carefully consider including residential on large parcels. After a lot of discussion, I think the board felt by doing industrial and industrial garden park, we would get experience doing these installations,” he said. “There’s nothing that says that if the experience is positive that this could not be extended at a future date. But we felt until we saw what these looked like in town, it would not be appropriate to put them in residential because of the potential impact of putting something that looks industrial in a residential area on home values.”

Conversely, Page expressed concerns about the use of solar arrays in the industrial district, given what he understood the current proposed setback requirements to be.

“I have concern about putting this in an industrial zone with only a 25-foot minimum setback,” he said. “If we’re concerned about the looks of a large capacity, 25-feet off of the street is not a lot of distance. The industrial zone is basically toward the center of town. I think it’s something to consider. I would ask the board to consider changing the buffers if we’re going to keep it in industrial, maybe doubling the minimum distance.”

Addressing Page’s concerns, Punderson explained that there are stipulations in the by-law requiring a 50-foot setback from residential abutters.

James Driscoll, chair of the Board of Selectmen and the Green Committee, also criticized the board’s decision not to include residential zoning.

“We didn’t have to re-invent the wheel on this. It’s done throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts successfully,” he said. “Secondly, I think you should at least include municipal property because just about all of our municipal property is in residential areas and by eliminating that out of it, we’re potentially costing the town hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue in alternative energy costs.”

Punderson responded by saying that whether it was the municipality or a private citizen, everyone must abide by the same by-law.

Marilyn Richards, former chair of the Planning Board, as well as town attorney James Donahue, also expressed concerns with repetitiveness and redundancy of some of the by-law’s language.

Copies of the proposed by-law are available at the offices of the Planning Board, Board of Selectmen and town clerk.



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