Savoy ZBA Sets Public Hearing on Wind Project
 |
The renewable energy company still needs a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals for its application that was submitted in February. As part of the process, the ZBA will hold a public hearing on the project April 10 at 6:30 p.m. in the Savoy fire station.
"We expect it'll take a couple meetings of the Zoning Board to go through all of the issues; we expect there'll be questions coming up," said Don McCauley, an attorney and president of Minuteman, during an interview with iBerkshires on Friday. "We think the application is complete, and we're hopeful that the ZBA will approve it."
The project is expected to generate 35,000 megawatt hours worth of electricity per year, enough to power some 3,000 homes. The 2.5-megawatt Clipper Liberty C99 turbines are more than 400 feet tall and about 15 feet wide at the base. Their blade span is about half the length of a football field.
Marshall Rosenthal, a ZBA member, sees a number of outstanding issues with Minuteman's proposal, and expects to have some questions answered before the project moves beyond his board. Rosenthal submitted a memorandum that states his misgivings at the ZBA's meeting earlier this month.
"I feel like the Minuteman application, as lengthy and impressive looking as it is, is severely deficient in explaining what kind of changes they plan to make physically to the road infrastructure and to land impact,” said Rosenthal in an interview last week.
Rosenthal is particularly concerned about damage to town roads, which McCauley described as in a state of severe disrepair, as well as the dangers posed to both the town's wetlands, aquifer and to the drivers of trucks that are toting heavy machinery and construction materials to the site.
Minuteman's trucks would be using Route 116, and then turning onto upper Loop Road and Chapel Road, paved ways, and then Brier and Harwood roads, which are unpaved, said McCauley. McCauley wouldn't say, however, what his engineers expect to happen to the roads, but said he will be supplying that information at the public hearing.
"I think if [the project is] allowed to happen, it's a real recipe for disaster. I an see an 10-wheeler, somehow its brakes failing, or the road itself crumbling out from under it, and it winding up down in the ravine, maybe killing the driver. I can see that in my mind's eye ... I don't even want to see that in actuality," said Rosenthal.
Rosenthal described this backroad route as "severely winding, and at the same time, it goes up and down, up and down, up and down, like a little roller coaster." He couldn't conceive how a truck carrying wind-turbine components could navigate it.
"If this application was granted without these issues being addressed at all, and if something terrible and untoward were to occur, that the board could certainly be held accountable for negligence [and] reckless endangerment.”
McCauley said that if there is any damage done to the roads, then Minuteman will pay for repairs.
"There will be certain periods of high usage when we're pouring the foundations for the turbines. Other than that, the use of the roads will be spread out. And once it's built, there will really be no impact on the roads after that," said McCauley.
He also said there would be no impact to Savoy's wetlands.
"We're using the existing roads; we're not going to be changing the impact of existing roads on the wetlands; we're not going to be creating new roads on wetlands," said McCauley said. On the proposed wind farm site, "There are scattered wetlands on the property and the project will be designed to avoid them."
He said that nothing out of the ordinary has turned up in environmental studies.
Rosenthal was concerned that his board hasn't yet moved on hiring an independent engineer to review Minuteman's application, which would be paid for by the wind company, as is written in the bylaw. Should the ZBA greenlight the project, it will still have to be reviewed by the Conservation Commission and the state, McCauley noted.
He said that he didn't think the project would trigger any special state review.
The 293-acre project site is located on land owned by logger Harold "Butch" Malloy, from whom Minuteman will lease space. Malloy is also the man who, with the help of McCauley, drafted the town's wind bylaw, which passed muster with residents in a 155-56 vote on Jan. 3, 2008.
Malloy is also the chairman of the Savoy Conservation Commission. Rosenthal called the bylaw "the most permissive ... in the cosmos."
If and when the site becomes operational, energy produced there will feed back into the grid, which is operated by Western Massachusetts Electric Co., and accounted for by ISO New England. Minuteman will contract with a third party who will then be the owners of the power, said McCauley.
The town will likely reap a monetary award from Minuteman, as well. It's been referred to as a payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, but that's a misnomer as Minuteman is a private entity, and can be taxed.
Thus, the town and Minuteman will come to an agreement to fix the taxes on the property. McCauley met the Selectmen this Tuesday to discuss the matter.
"What we'll be doing is fixing the taxes on the property for a period of years so that both sides are not subject to the uncertainties of valuation issues going forward," said McCauley, who pegged the annual payment to the town at about $220,000. "We would like to enter into that agreement with the town this year, prior to construction.”
Rosenthal said he had a number of other concerns that he would raise at the next meeting. Meanwhile, McCauley said that the application is up to snuff, and he expects it to pass.
"We've been working on it for four years, and we're expecting to have this in operation by 2010," said McCauley.
Contact Noah Hoffenberg at hoff1013@gmail.com.
