After three months of trying to craft a solar photovoltaic protective bylaw in the midst of changing state and community signals, the Planning Board decided Monday to send it back to the drawing board.
The April 28 Town Meeting Warrant, which has already gone to the printer, will include an article to adopt a solar bylaw, but the Planning Board will not recommend its passage, with the expectation that the town may choose to “take no action” on the article.
The Planning Board is not abandoning the idea of a solar bylaw. Members said they wanted more time to understand the issues, to know where the state is going on zoning policy, and to get a broader sense of what the town wants. Estimates of six months to a year before putting a bylaw before the town were mentioned.
As the bylaw was evolving, the landscape was shifting quickly and has yet to settle.
Three months ago, it appeared that Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40A section 3, which says, “No zoning ordinance or by-law shall prohibit or unreasonably regulate the installation of solar energy systems or the building of structures that facilitate the collection of solar energy, except where necessary to protect the public health, safety or welfare,” meant that a megawatt-capacity commercial solar array would be allowed anywhere a company could find available land. These large systems were going up in nearby towns, and the state attorney general’s office had not ruled on local zoning bylaws that tried to restrict or regulate them. Fear of the same happening in Harvard led Planning Board member Michelle Catalina to initiate a regulatory bylaw.
Without an existing model from similar towns or from the state, Catalina consulted other municipal planning boards, state offices, and local groups. Her goal was to have ready for the upcoming Town Meeting a bylaw that protected the town from unregulated large commercial systems, but would not unduly restrict something the town might want.
The process was slow. Information gathering, careful deliberation, the board’s learning curve, and divining the state’s interpretations of attempts to regulate the fast-moving solar photovoltaic environment were time-consuming. Open Meeting Law requirements meant the board could discuss the developing draft only at its twice monthly meetings. Between meetings, no more than two members could work together on revisions.
Signals began coming from the state that restricting installations to commercial and/or already-cleared land might be upheld, and the initial pressure for a bylaw eased.
The Community Solar Garden proposal brought up other considerations and concerns.
Most state and federal incentives that make photovoltaic installations financially feasible are tax incentives available only to taxpayers. This has made solar more accessible to property owners and businesses, but to municipalities only through third-party commercial agreements. Virtual net metering expands possible solar energy to owners whose property is not suitable or economic for solar and to non-property owners like renters. The Community Solar Garden model in Harvard was trying to bridge the gap between private accessory use and commercial with an aggregated accessory use model made possible through virtual net metering.
The two March Planning Board meetings gave considerable time to community input, which led the board to consider a multi-tiered approach to solar regulation, but left little time to do so.
In the three-month process, several factors brought a change to the board’s priorities: a broader understanding of solar photovoltaic installations, economics, and possibilities; signals from the state that communities might not be as threatened as originally thought; impassioned input from opponents and proponents of the town’s one concrete solar project proposal; and the possible luxury of time. The board’s focus changed from restriction to expansion.
This week, member Rich Marcello advocated the board develop an energy policy first and then a bylaw. “We should set a policy, and I would like to make solar available to everybody in town who wants it…make sure solar is available to all through multiple means,” he said. “…There are lots of smart people in this town on this topic, so let’s engage the town and come up with a community vision.”
Chairman Kara McGuire Minar said the committee had made “a good faith effort” but it was hard to know where the state was going.
“We’re skating where the puck is” not where it’s going, she said. Minar thought the board hadn’t had “an opportunity to get wider community input.”
The board ran out of time to pursue its developing ideas before Town Meeting.
Meanwhile, the status of the Community Solar Garden is left hanging. Permit for construction on back acreage at 50 Woodchuck Hill Road was denied March 12 by the building inspector, citing an understanding that, “…the proposed Solar Farm would sell electricity it produces to the grid. This installation must be considered a commercial business operation and not an allowed use in the AR zoning district.”
That interpretation was challenged in a March 19 response letter, which read in part, “…this Community Solar installation actually has no sales involved at all. The sun-generated power is credited directly to each individual shareholder to offset their power consumption in exactly the same way it would if the system were installed on the shareholder’s own roof.”
In a brief March 26 letter, the building inspector confirmed his decision to deny the permit.
Eligibility for some of the state and federal incentives that make the Community Solar Garden project feasible begin to expire in August.
