Public meeting addresses community’s concerns
By Tim Rowland
A solar farm on the edge of the historic, maritime hamlet of Essex drew considerable interest at a public meeting Tuesday evening at the Whallonsburg Grange, but by the end of the evening most in the audience seemed satisfied the array would be out of sight and of minimal impact to the community.
Some said the development did serve as a wake-up call for those concerned about preserving the look and feel of the rural and largely undeveloped community.
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The 25-acre solar farm is spearheaded by Community Power Group of Washington, D.C., a 15-year-old firm with projects in 20 states across the country.
CPG founder Mike Borkowski said he decided to take the unusual step of appearing at an informational meeting himself due to his affinity for the Adirondacks and to head off what he said was growing misinformation about the project.
“This area is pretty near and dear to my heart and I at least wanted to make sure that everybody has the facts,” he told an audience of about 40 people, along with more that joined online.
About the project
The project is just west of the hamlet on the south side of Route 22 on fallow farm fields known as Hickory Hill, and will generate enough power for 600 to 800 homes. Known as a community solar project, power users served by NYSEG will be able to indirectly tap in to the energy produced by the array in exchange for a 5% to 10% discount on their bills.
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Borkowski said the project has been in the works since 2020, but only recently came to light in the general public — leading to fears that it was attempting to avoid community scrutiny. Instead, he said that such projects have to go through years of environmental and logistical paces to even know if the project is feasible.
On the environmental side, multiple hurdles must be cleared, from wetlands study to placing spotters in the field multiple times a year to count birds. This work has primarily been through the Adirondack Park Agency, which has accepted CPG’s application as complete, but has not given final approval.
So too does the company have to work out connection logistics with NYSEG, which can be trickier than it might seem. The transmission wires need to be big, but not too big, for solar to patch in, and substations must have capacity to handle the load.
Working all these details out takes time. “There’s nothing nefarious, no one is trying to hide anything,” Borkowski said. “We’re just trying to get through all these processes.”
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Residents’ concerns
Residents had concerns ranging from rain runoff to the development’s tax structure, but most critical seemed to be visibility. Borkowski said the project is 300 feet back from Route 22 behind a screen of trees and will be hidden in summer and barely discernible in winter. From the south, he said there is “zero chance” it will be visible from School Street.
While Borkowski said the company has no interest in cutting buffering trees, residents worried there was no legal prohibition against doing so. Borkowski said he’s amenable to language in the permitting process that called for the planting of trees if the neighboring properties were cut — although he didn’t anticipate that happening. “One of the reasons the APA liked this site is that you can’t see it,” he said.
Essex resident Tom Duca said the town is fortunate that this particular project represents “best case scenarios” — a hidden site, a contractor adhering to best practices and a property owner who through the years has generated considerable community goodwill.
“We’re grateful for all of those things,” Duca said. But it has also served as a reminder that situations change the community, which is in the process of revising its comprehensive plan, needs to be prepared. “The town plan is 20-some years old — we weren’t talking about solar farms back when it was written,” he said.
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Many solar arrays have been approved in the park in recent years, most in the Champlain Valley, which had the twin attributes of open land and adequate transmission infrastructure. Industry watchers say the flurry of solar farms was fueled by state benchmarks for decreasing carbon emissions by 2030. Future solar developments may be limited by power-grid capacity, which is reaching the point that future power loads cannot be added without cost-prohibitive upgrades to the system.
Borkowski said his project is expected to break ground by fall and take several months to complete, and several more to become operational.
I am disappointed in this article. While the meeting at the Essex Grange on February 11th may have answered questions about how solar operates and the vetting process for environmental and ecological concerns, it was a “PITCH” for solar energy, made by the CEO of the solar company. It was in no way an open forum for discussion on the many conflicting opinions extant. There are many of us who are not opposed to solar per se. (We are even interested in it. ) However, we did not leave the meeting feeling satisfied that there had been an opportunity to be “heard.” There has never been an opportunity for an. open discussion.
Many of us are opposed to solar on THIS site, which we do not think is appropriate for a solar field.
The solar field is to be located in “Resource Management” lands that are contiguous to the Historic Registry town of Essex NY. It is not a shed in the back yard. It is 22 acres on land across from the Fire Station. It will have an impact on the actual town Essex as Essex changes and grows in the coming years. Of all the thousands and thousands of acres that could be possible solar farm sites, this is a poor choice. Not only will there be no direct benefit to Essex itself, it is a small change operation for Solar. It won’t even yield that much energy – 3.9 MW — as opposed to 40 from another site in the ADKS.
I think you could have done better in your understanding of the purpose of that meeting and what was and what was NOT said at the Grange that night.
Regards,
Lawson Allen