What began as regulatory considerations became an impassioned policy discussion of community solar at this week’s Planning Board hearing on a proposed solar photovoltaic bylaw.
According to Kara McGuire Minar, Planning Board chairman, the impetus for a solar bylaw was to apply some local regulation to the potential development of solar energy installations in town, with an eye toward balancing Massachusetts law, which requires “no unreasonable prohibition” of solar installations, with what is appropriate for abutters.
Town counsel Mark Lanza and Planning Board member Peter Brooks, both land use attorneys, differed on how the law might be interpreted for commercial solar installations in residential or agricultural districts if not defined.
In his view, Brooks said, unless it is specifically allowed by local bylaws, commercial solar installations would not be allowed in residential districts.
“In my opinion, a town may ban from residential/agricultural zones and regulate in commercial,” Brooks said.
Lanza said he “had concerns” about limiting installations to commercial districts.
“We’ve seen lots of lawsuits [over permitting something not specifically written into local zoning], but not one on commercial solar installations. Harvard doesn’t want to be the first,” he said. “In my opinion, err on the side of caution. Put regulation in residential/agricultural district –setbacks, heights. To say ‘not in residential/agricultural districts,’ that causes me some discomfort.”
Planning Board member Michelle Catalina, who has been spearheading the bylaw development, said she, along with many others, first thought Massachusetts law allowed commercial solar installations in any area, regardless of zoning. Recent rulings from the Attorney General on bylaws from a few other towns have led her to imagine appearing before the Annual Town Meeting “not arguing that if we don’t do this we won’t have protection, but rather if we want to allow solar, we have to write it in.”
Without using a formal definition of “commercial solar,” the board seemed in agreement that large-scale, for-profit arrays could or should be relegated to the commercial district, but the discussion quickly moved to smaller-scale, shared systems. There was disagreement from a few residents about what was or wasn’t “commercial” and what might be appropriate in residential areas, questions that were raised by the possibility of “community solar gardens”: installations by resident-subscribers whose homes or small business locations were ill-suited for on-site solar access.
Referring to a proposal to construct a community solar garden on Woodchuck Hill Road, Oak Hill Road resident Susan Tarrant said, “It doesn’t seem a neighborly act.”
“There is no effect on the investors’ own homes,” she said.
Tarrant also objected to using “garden” for an array of solar panels.
“Think again before we take a step that will hurt a Harvard neighbor,” she said.
In a statement read to the board, Jim Elkind, Slough Road resident and member of the Energy Advisory Committee, said, “In my opinion, and that of the director of the Green Communities division of the Department of Energy Resources, this draft bylaw is overly restrictive” and “would result in Harvard suffering from higher electricity prices over time, not lower.”
Elkind listed several reasons for believing solar energy was preferable to fossil fuel generated electricity before saying, “It is reasonable to assume solar will continue to get cheaper. It would be doing a good thing for the town to help make solar energy possible.”
“I’m concerned that our zoning bylaw be ‘ours.’ What do we know about what we want?” asked Worth Robbins , who has been working on community solar garden possibilities for residents. (Robbins is a co-owner of the Harvard Press.) “Green Community, which required a two-thirds vote, passed by voice vote–it didn’t need to be counted–16 months ago.”
Robbins said the realization that more than half the people who wanted to participate in Solarize Harvard didn’t have the solar access required, led to the idea of a shared community system.
“We need to find a way not to have built-in constraints that keep us from doing what we actually want to do,” he said.
Robbins suggested the Planning Board look at Colorado legislation that differentiates between large-scale commercial arrays and ones that were “shared for the benefit of the community.”
“I am concerned, however, that by painting all ground-mount solar with one broad brush, characterizing everything 20 kilowatts and up as ‘commercial,’ we will stop or drastically impede development of community-sized shared facilities that can enable continuation of adaptation by the majority of our residents and businesses that cannot put solar on their own properties,” he said.
“My recommendation is to establish two categories of solar facility: commercial and community solar garden,” Robbins said in a letter to the board.
In a document he submitted to the board earlier, Oak Hill Road resident Jim Saalfield had argued that “the most powerful tool we have to slow environmental degradation (conservation) is being pushed into the background while politicians and their solar business colleagues share ‘subsidies’ that come out of the pocket of people who are not benefitting.”
At the Monday night hearing, Saalfield said solar gardens are, “absolutely a commercial enterprise that benefits only those in the scheme. Absolutely the enemy of open space, land conservation, that denudes conservation land.”
Saalfield said it has not been proven that solar energy is environmentally friendly.
“From a policy point of view, it is very dicey,” he said.
“This discussion is getting off the rails,” said Old Littleton Road resident Stephen Strong, a principal of Solar Design Associates. “I don’t know anyone in this room who is going to give up electricity, and solar is the best way to produce it.”
“They’re blasting off the mountaintops in Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. They’re producing spent uranium in Plymouth, creating [health hazards with coal],” Strong said. “[Former CIA director R. James Woolsey] has called dependence on fossil fuels our greatest national security risk. Yet, we are fussing over whether solar is sufficiently environmentally friendly.”
Bringing the discussion back to the local level, Woodchuck Hill resident Robin Calderwood said, “As evidenced by the Master Plan, land conservation is a huge priority for the town. I am uncomfortable with having these [solar gardens] distributed around town – one or two in every neighborhood.”
The Planning Board will continue the public hearing on a proposed solar bylaw at its next meeting March 19.
