 Okay. We are now recording. Great. Thank you, Stephanie. I think we're all set. Great. Okay. Well, thank you. Thanks everybody for being here. Happy rainy day. It's no way to. And let's get going with the. December 16th, 2022. The meeting of the town of Amherst, solar bylaw working group. To get things going, let me. Oh, for the. Janet. You're on tap to do the minutes today. Yes, I heard that when I listened to the recording from the last meeting, I'm very excited. We're excited about your excitement. I'm excited. I'm excited. I know it's my favorite thing for me to do, but it's good. It will build. It will build characters. All right. I appreciate that. I'll just write that down. And we do know that. Laura is not able to join us today. So we're not expecting her, but otherwise we have a full house, don't we? Yes, we are down. Chris breast strip as well. So she's not able to join us today. Yeah. Okay. I was going to mention that. Yes. People know there's. Chris is. Planning department has had some people leave and. A lot of. Hope she's doing okay with, with all the work that I'm sure is piling up. But just to let everybody know that she has not been able to provide any additional drafting. For us to review today on the bylaw itself. So we'll have some extra time. During that period of the agenda. For some discussion. We thought we would probably. While it could fit into Stephanie's updates, we'll instead. Move a discussion about the GZA. Proposed survey. Questions to the part of the agenda there was to look at the bylaws just so we have some dedicated time to that. And keep Stephanie's other updates. More relatively shorter, I guess. So. I apologize. Let me just. Get myself organized with the. My agenda here. Okay. So. I guess the first order of business is to review and approve. Or suggest any amendments to the minutes. Of our last meeting. December 2nd. So those were included in the package. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And have people had time to review those and. Have. Does anybody have any. Amendments or revisions or questions or concerns. Raised by. The draft minutes. And let me, who was that? That was. Martha. Yeah. I apologize. Actually, I didn't. I apologize. Yeah, sorry about that. I'm like spacing out a little bit here. Yeah, I didn't have an opportunity to, to review yet. So they can, we can review them next time. Yeah, I was going to say I didn't. Yeah. Apologize for that. I was, I was out of commission with a painfully obsessed tooth for almost a week. So that's why I was a little late getting them into. Stephanie for. A couple of days ago. Okay, great. So we'll put that on the agenda for. Next meeting. To review and approve. Hopefully both sets of minutes last week, last. Meetings and this meetings. Okay. So let's move on to staff updates. Stephanie. Sure. So. The solar bylaw. Assessment. I'm sorry, the solar assessment review. Is, is been moving along the, the questions have been reviewed by the ECAC who had some comments. I've received a few comments for the survey questions from. A few department heads. And so today will be your turn. So the goal is to get. Those compiled and out to Adrian by early next week. And then she will. Gather all the comments and the feedback and she'll revise the survey questions. And then another final draft will go out for our final review. By, by this group, the ECAC and the department heads, just to make sure that that final, final version is. Acceptable for distribution. Great. So again, very importantly, we want to get to that today in terms of this first round the comments. To, to Stephanie, to GCA for today, so they can review that, but we'll be able to look at it one more time. Maybe it. Either prior or after our next meeting, depending on when GCA turns that around. Right. Yeah. It may probably realistically, it may be in January. Yeah. Okay, great. Super. Thank you, Stephanie. Anything else? No. Okay. Yeah. Not directly relevant. Yeah. Okay, great. And yeah, is this about the staff updates on Janet? Just a question. So you started out saying the solar assessment, but then it sounded like you were talking about the survey. Well, the survey is for the solar assessment. It's part of the, so it's, it's part of the work of GCA in doing the solar assessment. Oh, okay. So it's, so is there other updates on their like more technical assessment? Just we've, we've met, we've just honed in on, they'll be getting something, you know, probably a draft. Probably in early January for you to take a look at for the mapping. But that's, you know, it's, it's moving along. You know, we've, we had a subsequent meeting at the beginning of the month. Dwayne was part of that as well. And Chris Brestrup was part of that as well. So it's moving along. I guess I, I don't have too much more to add. Yeah, I think they, I mean, we'd, we'd review their methodology, which looked sound their, their, their use of a grid grid method as opposed to a parcel method, which I think we discussed here at the previous meeting. And then some of their methodologies with regard to factors by which they'll wait different parts of land on a technical basis. And that all seems sound what we're waiting for, sort of what this all might look like. With at least the, the first draft of their, of their assessment for, for some feedback. Great. Okay. Great. And Chris is not with us today. So no, no updates from her. Yep. And I know we will have a conversation. After we go through committee updates. So we don't need an update from Jack specifically on the water report. We'll dedicate some time to that afterwards. But are there any other updates from. From committee. From, from people, the working group here. That lia's from other committees. No. Okay. Yep. I would nothing really from me, except that we also are reviewing or have provided some review of the. GZA comments. And. Continue to do some, some, some other work, but I don't think we have anything. Nothing specifically related to the bylaw. Okay. With that. Why don't we turn our. Attention to, we did have. The opportunity to review and talk to Jack and, and with regard to the draft report provided by the water supply protection committee. And then a final. Report, which is greatly appreciated. And we just touched on a little bit last week, but we thought we'd spend a little bit more time. Now, if Jack, so if Jack's can do so. To bring us up to date, I guess on the, on the report, the findings. The, how you might have addressed some of our specific questions and things like that. And so forth. And we can have a discussion about the. Findings and the outcomes and what, what this. What the implications are with regard to the work of this group ahead. Yeah. If Stephanie wants to put up the review comments. What's it, what's it called. Combined comments combined. November 4th. And then I'll, I'll just, you know, hunt and pack and do the best I can in terms of. The, the, the white paper responded to the questions. Thanks, Stephanie. And you will see that. Okay. Yes. Okay. Okay. So with regard to. All right. Comment number one. Can the committee provide a summary of the key provisions in these regulations and bylaws that pertain directly. About in the case implication to solar development. I think we added a paragraph. And again, these are two documents. This is going to be hard to switch. But we did kind of flush out. We put a paragraph in about, you know, the water supply. You know, Amherst drinking water reservoirs. Tributaries wetlands bordering. Natural resource areas. And the regulations that apply. And then it again, this is beyond the scope of, of the water supply, you know, protection committee. Because it goes more, you know, with regard to wetlands protection act and another, you know, water supply. So, but there is a paragraph. Within the white paper that takes care of that. I don't know if there's any questions with regard to that or not. And then with regard to, you know, does the federal SWP, the SWP, as we call it. Already speak to the more robust measures of monitoring required for solar development or is this something additional that a town needs to oversee and it's permitting and zoning. So, you know, basically, you know, we put in there. What is the standard procedure and, and it's, it is weekly monitoring or site observations after, you know, a major, you know, rain event. I think that's pretty standard within the swips. So that's going to be the frequency. You know, it'll be minimally weekly. So, you know, it's going to be a, it's going to be a, it's going to be a, it's going to be a, it's going to be a, it's going to be a weekly monitoring project and that'll be incumbent on the developer to provide those services, you know, as, as proposed. Then item three, when you reference post construction period, how long after construction does this period last? What is a milestone that ends this period. Vegetation established or do you suggest such inspections last for a long time period or only after large rain events? I'll say, so this one, I, you know, I, because this is kind of like a shotgun sort of thing, but I know that, you know, typically when, when, you know, wetland restoration projects are involved, it lasts, you know, one or two years thereafter. And I think, you know, beyond that, you know, you can, you can, you know, rely on stabilized conditions involved. And so I can't really point in, you know, readily within the, within the white paper how that was addressed, but just from personal knowledge. I know that's how it would be addressed. So is WSPC aware of any solar panels on the market that would meet these requirements? Or would this provision essentially eliminate solar installations in the water sheds? I believe that the, you know, the solar panels do not, you know, yield leaching of PFAS at this point in time, but it's always a nice little checkpoint to provide, you know, in front of the developer, you know, as part of the bylaw. Yeah, can I ask about that? Because I think I put that in there and I didn't, I'm not sure if I saw any edits sort of on the, it sort of still was in your report. I mean, it's pretty draconian, right? I mean, PFAS is a PFAS, I don't, I'm not an expert, but my understanding is in PFAS is already a lot of things that you might not even know that they're in. And I just, when you say that the PFAS, the recommendation or the report suggests that the solar panel shouldn't include any PFAS, is that include even in the encapsulated stuff that's in the solar cell and the circuitry and so forth. It's well encapsulated because I mean, it may turn very well turned out that there are some PFAS in there just because of all the different components in there, but they're all, and, you know, maybe just standard practice that these array, these modules have some degree of these chemicals in them, but to the extent that they don't reach out. I'm just a little bit concerned of a language like this, it's just, if manufacturers around the world, we're not going to change that. And if all of a sudden developers need to find panels that don't have PFAS and that information may not even be that readily available, or it may turn out that just there aren't any solar panels that don't have any PFAS in it, whether that's going to be a concern. Yeah, I think we probably should, you know, put an asterisk here and just keep that on our radar for further, you know, research. But my understanding is that they, you know, generally these things don't contain PFAS, but, you know, I can't guarantee that, but it's a good question and worthy of, you know, additional assessment by our group. Number five, might this be battery storage housing must be located above the 100 year? Might this be into context where the 100 year floodplain is an amorous, how apical is this to our public wells? Yeah, I think this is, this is a fairly, you know, we're not going to put anything within the 100 year floodplain, regardless. So I'm not sure. And again, our public wells are, you know, focused in the area there in the south portion of the town. But I think, you know, when we're outside the floodplain, we also, you know, the floodplain probably is going to be associated with the Rivers Protection Act, which is another 200 foot buffer. So I think this is just by the abundance of sort of regulations around this that this will probably be covered. But again, I can't, you know, I, you know, I can't identify a particular portion within the white paper that we clarified this at this point. But if anybody has any questions at the end of this, you know, certainly bring it up and I can pull it out if we addressed it. And then drainage consideration is this. Yeah, we provided the article was distributed. And, and again, I think the article, you know, was kind of like on a micro scale with regard to dripping from each individual. So the panel and I think we're kind of looking at, you know, project scale issues with regard to, you know, the runoff. And so, you know, it was a research paper and I don't know how applicable it was. But Dwayne, you had a chance to look at it. I don't know if you had any comments on it or not, but. Stephanie, could you roll it back to the question on page two? I'm kind of lost. Okay. Thank you. And I just want to remind Jack that and everyone else that the paper, the article was forwarded and is part of your packet for this meeting. And it's also posted on the web page. Yeah. So I don't know, Dwayne, if he had any, anything to add. And you're, if you perused it or not, but. I, I looked at it. I didn't really read it enough to really extract anything useful. At this point. Okay. Yeah. Again, I think we, you know, it's, it's kind of incorporated. Yeah. You know, within the, the white paper. If we go down to drinking water sources. I think Dan has his hand up Dwayne. Oh, sorry. Dan, you're muted. Yeah. Sorry about that. I took a look at the article. And it does, it looks at it. A variety of scales from the sub water shed to the basin scale. So it is pretty comprehensive in that regard, but they used a SWAT model. For this, which is highly dependent on soil type and climate. And they modeled a region of race in Greece, which has a very different soil and climate from Massachusetts. So when they talk about the scales at which is CD detectable increases or decreases referring to the question there, I would say I wouldn't, I wouldn't make any. No, for instance, from the model as to what scale we would see those kinds of changes. Good. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Okay. So on the drinking water resources. If you want to scroll up there, Stephanie. All right. So why does the ad can reservoir watershed to include almost no land in Amherst? I think we have addressed that in past. Meetings. It is what it is. Might you add further justification as why there's no discernment around the surrounding is limited to a hundred feet. Why are there considerations? I'm sorry, Janet has her hand up. Oh, Janet. Yes. So just getting back to the, I actually was, I did scan through that article and I wondered why are we reading about solar arrays on farmland in Greece. And so that this sort of it grounds me. It did talk about an increase of flood risk and surface runoff and increase of discharges into rivers. And so I wouldn't discount that. I wouldn't, I, I didn't know why. I mean, I had the same reaction as Dan in a non-scientific way, which is like, what does this have to do with Amherst where we have lots of damp soils and poor drainage and a lot more rain and vegetation. So, but I think those things are sort of good to keep in mind as possible consequences because it comes up later in Aaron Jake's comments. So that's all. Yeah, Dan. Yeah, just to clarify my comment. I think the conclusions that they present in the article are valid that, you know, increases in runoff can occur, but specifically quantifying how much we expect them to occur based on the solar size. I wouldn't infer that from this article. And again, I think that, you know, we would ask, you know, a developer to account for that. And I think it's, you know, it doesn't seem beyond a typical, you know, engineering hurdle to, to control stormwater and mitigate the effect of, you know, say, you know, the farmland going to a solar field or forest going to a solar field and we kind of address that somewhat, you know, later in the, in the white paper. So, all right, so just moving on. Might you, okay. No disturbance. Okay. So, so the disturbance zone there again, we were, we're looking at real contaminant sources like septic systems and underground storage tanks. And, you know, for, for, for decades and decades, it's been, you know, 100 foot buffer to private wells. And so we just accepted that because, you know, for the solar installation, because the contaminant sources there we really, you know, there are minimal, you know, no one sources of runoff from solar panels. Again, these are on roofs everywhere and never has been brought up to a level of concern. So, with that said, we'll go on to the next one. Did the committee consider the need to consider soil types conditions as it relates to subsurface flow? So, so that would all be taken care of in the stormwater, you know, management report for the developer. It would all be accommodated. You know, that's, that's just a project specific study that would have to be addressed within each individual project. Did the committee consider the role of forest cover for filtering the groundwater moving, you know, not just sediment but pollutants including, you know, other toxic minus solar array replacing for have a significant impact on the ability of the forest. You know, I, you know, forests are good. Grasslands are good. We're still, you know, there's still a grass, you know, vegetative cover around and beneath the solar panels, you know, to my experience. And that that adds a lot with forest land is more, but I don't think it comprises to the level of significant in terms of pollutants, which we're talking about, you know, rainfall at this point. And so I see Janet has her name and up. So, um, when I was comparing the draft report to the final report, it seemed like a lot of the concerns that Evan Aaron, Jake's about filtration and how water moves underground through forests and, you know, the pros, you know, pros and cons of that. I mean, so question 10 is really asking sort of about that. And so I was kind of, I don't know if it's jumping ahead too much, but I was sort of taken aback by what was taken out of the draft report, much of which seemed to address Aaron Jake's concerns. And I was wondering why all those, all that was taken out. And there's just pages missing about how water moves underground and the benefits of forests and when you cut the forest, how, you know, all those, the soils change and, you know, also to the movement of water changes, the weather changes, the transpiration changes as less cloud cover. And so I just, I don't know if we should talk about that here, but I think that this question 10 really goes to the chain that, you know, the difference between having a old forest, not old growth, but an older forest and a meadow or, you know, is kind of dramatic in the draft discussion that was removed and also Aaron Jake's comments. So I was super interested in that issue. Yeah, so, you know, I think that we all agree that the recharge is going to increase and the runoff is going to increase if there's a force to solar field conversion. If it's a agricultural to solar field conversion, then things are probably going to say, you know, pretty much the same, although there would probably be, you know, slight increase in runoff and perhaps, you know, recharge. But all in all, these, the factors that we're talking about for projects on the scale of 10, 20, 30 acres. I think the, our subcommittee didn't really feel like that rose to the level of significance in terms of, you know, the water budget, you know, given that there's a valid storm water prevention plan, you know, in place. So this question is more about filtration. Yeah, but you, what are we filtering? You know, what, what are we, I mean, this is, this is, you know, are we talking, what contaminants are we talking about? So we have established that solar fields, the panels themselves, do not serve as a significant contaminant source. So I guess, I guess, I guess we could talk about this more when we get to the Aaron Jake section, but it seemed to me sediments. And so I've seen, and so the report never really addressed the sediments issue, but we can wait and get back, go to, to our Aaron's part, I guess, when we get there. Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, we can talk about it now, Jenna, because, you know, any development project is going to need to control storm water by, you know, the, you know, with, you know, with a sweat, you know, so this is, you know, fairly standard that any project that is disturbing, you know, greater than an acre of area is going to require the storm water management plan. Swip and, you know, so, you know, this doesn't really separate itself from any other development that we have seen, you know, within the town. So you, you obviously, you know, can follow up with another question, but I, if I'm not understanding what your question is, I apologize. So, Martha. Yeah, just following up on that. I guess my concern when I try to picture this is the, what happens during the construction phase. I mean, I think we know that. One says that the acreage. And so the concern I think with contaminants, yeah. Yeah, I, you, you chopped out there. I'm sorry. I didn't hear if you can, if you can repeat. Yeah, that the, that typically one says that the size of the disturbed area due to the construction phase is about twice the area of the eventual solar panels. So, you know, 20 acres of solar panels means 40 acres of disturbed land. And so I think the concern about the, the filtration and the, you know, contaminants and the soil disturbing and so on is more about how the construction is done. And so, and so maybe the question is more when we do the construction phase, you know, is there, are there any additional constraints that we could put in about how the construction is done or, you know, the care that has to be taken or so on, rather than the, what happens once the solar panels and the grass are established. So in response to that, I know that the, the, the, our, our subcommittee suggested. We're not going to be implementing phases of the development. You know, maybe there's a 40 acre array that's, that's approved. And we suggested implementing it in 10 acre faces. And I guess I don't, you know, I'm not sure I agree with the doubling of. You know, 20 acres of disturbance for a 10 acre solar field. That seems like a stretch to me. That's what I've read in various articles. So. Yeah, I know there'd be an access road and then a buffer around, but, you know, in terms of actual disturbance. You know, and maybe, you know, you're, you're, you're looking at, you know, clearing additional. You know, trees, if it's a conversion of forest land to solar field. So, you know, the, the, the, the panels receive the, you know, adequate light. That's a possibility, but it's going to be on a site by site. You know, basis. So Dan has his hand up. Yeah. Yeah, our solar developers required to. Submit an erosion and sediment control plan. And they are installing on these facilities. And in that case with that, not. Provide, you know, environmental protections. Against construction related on off issues. Correct. Yeah. They, they need to provide, you know, for the. You know, general permit for, for construction projects. They would need to account for storm storm water control. You know, for the construction. So that's all in place already. And, you know, I think for us, you know, we just emphasize the monitoring that we would like to have done. And the reporting and just kind of stay on top of that. And, you know, provide extra measures. As we deem necessary. Okay. So. Okay. I think we can move on to item 11. Did the storm. Did the committee consider how regulations or bylaws should address the ground slope and how storm water should be controlled or monitored? I think we discussed this and it doesn't really. Relate to, to our charge. To me. I mean, I feel like this is more of. A view shed issues, you know, more than anything. And I think we were talking, you know, it might have been the last meeting, but you can engineer anything, you know, for any sort of environment, but. You know, you really need to account for the same. You get to meet the same standards for, you know, with regard to runoff and. You know, preventing, you know. You know, sedimentation, et cetera. And, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, our water bodies and wetlands and things like that. So, but I don't think it's going to come into, you know, we didn't address it. This wasn't in our purview. So again, battery storage item 12 here, the committee offers specific guidance from mass DEP. I think we're leaning on the fire department. For this, but. You know, I, the battery technology, I think is. Has evolved. In the last few years. And I think we're leaning on the fire department. For this, but. You know, I. The battery technology, I think is. In the last few years and just the literature, the research sort of reports haven't really caught up to it, but. You know, there's a lot there. And maybe I'll just go through these and people have a, you know, questions about the battery storage. Is it possible to have the maps include a more few more street names to help orient. Yeah, I'm not sure what that was about. But I think the committee provided the number of acres of water. That's going to, I think we're going to have a GIS overlay. On that. Much of the Lawrence swamp watershed are wet. So we're to stand the solar could not be built in these areas. Yeah. So the DEP. Has put out a guidance document there. With regards to the solar. I have to look at the references here, but it is a. Heavily reference document within, within the white paper. I'm just looking with the date of it. Yeah, maybe, you know, 2015, perhaps. Maybe 2011, but. It's geared toward. You know that situation with, with item, you know, 15. So we, you know, we just, we, we accepted that. And incorporated with, you know, within the white paper. But for battery storage, I think we put it an additional, we might have doubled it. The buffer. Is my, my recollection. Because of the additional sort of concerns associated with battery storage versus solar panels. But, you know, the whole battery storage thing. I, you know, I, I do not envision water being applied to suppress, you know, a fire situation for battery storage. I think the, you know, sensors and shut off mechanisms that are the, you know, the new technology for these things really reduce the threat of battery storage, sort of emitting contaminants to the environment. But again, there are no state or federal. Guidelines on these, on these features because it's such an evolving and an emerging technology. So we just all need to stay on top of that. Any questions with regard to battery storage. I don't know if you have a question, but I did want to point out that at our meeting in January. Chris Baskin from the fire department will be meeting with us to talk about fire safety issues. Around battery storage. So just a heads up that that's coming. Yeah, that'd be very helpful. Sure. Item 16 storm water impacts the white paper provides two examples. Of solar construction that were particularly problematic and led to a lot of costs and fines might they committee add a bit more insight as to what went wrong with these projects and lessons learned regarding how a bio may prevent this bad practice or regulatory oversight in the future. Also, if there are any examples of good solar project construction practices, please reference them. So I'm going. Yeah, I'm looking in the paper here. if I could jump in. That was my question. And there wasn't really any more detail about what went wrong in Williamsburg and Southampton. And you did reference like two projects that went well, but not with any detail. So it was nice to know there are projects going well, but no reason, I didn't know why. So, but like what went wrong in detail, what worked well in detail. So I didn't think there was, you know, I kind of wanted more detail. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, when something works well, that, you know, there's not, there's not a lot, you know, to say, because, you know, it's a, you know, solar panels, you know, at its most, you know, base level is a construction project. And construction projects are monitored, you know, via, you know, a myriad of regulations as it is. And in the solar panel installations kind of fall underneath those. So, but the ones that I think were problematic were a little bit not well presented to the local, you know, governing bodies with regard to existing site conditions. So like, you know, the Williamsburg one was a gravel pit that had any didn't even have any established vegetation. And, you know, so that was a problem right from the get go. And so, so the solar went on top of it. But I think, you know, regardless of whether there was solar or not, there would have been a kind of a bad scenario, you know, coming out of that because they just, they didn't, they didn't have proper, you know, characterization and mitigative, you know, measures put in place, you know, for that project site. Yeah, I'm kind of... Martha had a question as well. Yeah, Martha. A comment? Yeah, yeah, for the Williamsburg again, I mean, I know you've said, Jack, you apparently have some knowledge about the conditions on the gravel pit and so on. But the only reference was to the newspaper article on the Gazette. And surely if the EPA put on a million dollar fine, there must be some documentation somewhere about that. And I wondered if there would be just some reference to some of that documentation that could be provided. Yeah, well, I know, I mean, I personally watched a YouTube video on but the site, you know, site owners with the guard, the situation, it came very, you know, it was very apparent to me that the whole permitting process was just, you know, inadequate, you know, from the beginning because it just began with no pre-existing conditions or they didn't account for pre-existing conditions. And so, you know, that one's very unique and it was certainly a nightmare. But I can't imagine that scenario really being encountered within Amherst. But again, you know, our bylaw want to, you know, we'll want to make sure that we understand, you know, the existing conditions prior to the development. Did Williamsburg have a solar bylaw in place at that time? That I don't know. I mean, again, like our ZBA is handling, you know, or to this point has handled, you know, solar installations in Amherst. So, but I'm not, I'm not sure. So, Jack, from what just looking at it from the, from the, the role that we're playing, our, we need to think about it as we draft the bylaws and work with Chris on drafting the bylaw. We need to sort of address of whether reference to getting the right permit is sufficient for our bylaw. Or if there's anything special, unique about solar that we want to pull out and suggest that is above and beyond or something that we want to highlight, perhaps to stress in the permitting. If there's anything relevant that's different about solar construction than other construction. Is that my, is that sort of the understanding of, of sort of what our role is here in terms of connecting our bylaw with already existing permitting procedures for construction projects in town? Yeah, I don't think that the subcommittee identified, you know, major issues associated with, with the solar fields, other than what is already in place from a regulatory standpoint. Here, I just pulled up the appropriate section. And, you know, a lot of us just, you know, poor, you know, implementation by the contractors or, or a poor design that slipped through, you know, the, the, the local permitting authority review of that were just, you know, any project site that allows sediment to, to, you know, escape and, and, you know, runoff into, you know, you know, public ways and, you know, wetland buffers and everything. I mean, that shouldn't happen for any construction project. And I think everything is, should be, you know, in place because this is, you know, we're not reinventing the wheel here. So I don't think we need to go above and beyond, you know, existing, you know, regulations that are, that are enforced by the, you know, Clean Water Act, Weather Protection Act, and those sorts of things. So I do, I'm looking at our document now. And so we are noting that the, you know, Hampshire College had a 2.5 megawatt installation, no incidents, and then a 4 megawatt array, you know, a 38 acre property 340 Montague Road was built in 2018-19, you know, no incidents. So I mean, this is, we're not, this is, you know, to me and to our subcommittee, this is not, you know, like a new and unusual sort of project development. But again, you know, we are, you know, have to be wary about the change of a particular piece of property, you know, and its impact on the town, you know, from, from a, from a, you know, from the bylaw perspective. So the Amherst Fire Department, we might even skip this section because they're going to speak with us next month. Jack, Janet has her hand up. Hey, Janet. Oh, thanks. Dwayne's question makes me think of something else, because I know in North Amherst there, that forest is sort of like a water supply protection district, but there's no particular protections. And I think the master plan sort of identified that as a forest reserve that should be protected. So did the water supply protection committee ever look at like, oh, should we be protecting water supply from development? You know, should we, should we have certain things not built on there, like not specifically solar, but that can include houses or, you know, what any kind of development? Like, was that part of the conversation? Or were you just focusing on solar? And no, it definitely was. I mean, and we were going from the MAS DEP guidelines for solar installations, you know, for, for water, public water supply situations where they were, they were looking like within zone one, within 400 feet of a public water supply well. And so they were, this is a very intimate sort of situation that the MAS DEP looked at. And, you know, and they were, I think, you know, that's incorporated in the white paper, but the two can definitely coexist. So that, you know, that was the MAS DEP's, you know, definitely came through with regard to their conclusions and recommendations. Okay. So you were hewing close to the deal. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Because, you know, we're kind of relying on is like, you know, this, this white paper, I think, and I'm really happy with it. I thought we did a lot there and actually presented it to the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, and they were pleased to get it and thanked us. And again, we had a lot of, you know, hydrogeologists, hydrogeologists, you know, involved with this and, you know, using our experience and things like that. So just but again, the MAS DEP document with regard to solar development within water supply protection areas weighed heavily within the white paper in our conclusions. So I'm just going to skip the Amherst Fire Department now because they're going to, I think, speak to this better. But we, well, let me, let me look at it real quick here. Okay. Well, there's no, I'm not sure what this is because there's no questions, but anyway, I don't anticipate with regard to the emergency response for, you know, a solar or battery installation that we're going to apply water. I think during the research, someone mentioned, you know, like a fire hazard, you know, but I think when you have solar on top of a grass, you know, substrate there, that the potential for having a large sort of fire event is, you know, minimal compared to what might happen if you have a forest fire sort of thing. I think the energy is lacking there. But again, I have, you know, I think this is going to be more geared toward the battery storage situation. And, you know, we'll definitely want, you know, each of the battery installations to be self-contained with all the sensors and shut off mechanisms, you know, when a certain temperature is, is, is sensitive. I believe that technology is a different place. But again, documentation to that effect is something that we have to keep our eye on moving forward. Moving to Steve Roos' comment, some of the calculations done by the Talent Energies and Climate Action Committee showed that amount of solar energy needed not, needed, cannot come from the rooftop. So yeah, so that's kind of beyond our purview. Yeah, these, you know, the, you know, we're not, we're not addressing the, you know, solar energy needs or, you know, production. We're just looking at, you know, water protection type issues. And Steve was not suggesting that you should be just clarified the attribution of the statement. I think it towards the beginning of the report that wasn't his, it came straight from the state. And in the redraft it did, it was corrected. So, okay, yep. All right, I appreciate that. Ed Martha, before Jack goes on, do you have a comment on that? Yes, on that very sentence. I mean, the correct, the correction, I mean, I agree with, with, with Steve and so on. But in the correction, the word solely or only was eliminated. And so the sentence then reads that the, of course you scroll down, but the sentence simply really reads that the, that the, that the solar needed cannot come from rooftops and built environments as if it cannot come at all. And the word only or solely needs to be inserted again, I would say. What page are we on? That was, it was back in the beginning. It's, it's, it was the introductory paragraph. Yeah, not on these comments, but on the, on the report itself. It's the sentence that Steve was referring to, and it got corrected appropriately except that it now reads that the, you know, solar cannot come from rooftops or developed areas and it should say cannot come only from rooftops or developed areas. It makes it sound as if you're going to disregard any developed areas totally. So I, you know, I think we take that, you know, internally within our group, but I don't think that I don't think that we're going to do rigid revisions to this. So it's going to be always changing if we try to keep up. So I think we just kind of, you know, it is what it is. And your comments are noted for sure, Martha. So looking at Tim Randiers, the Board of Health comment. Okay, so his item one monitor report any issues throughout the lifespan of an installation by the operators and report to as WSPC and be a Board of Health on any impacts as the project progresses on time inspection during construction until vegetation establishment can help with managing during the initial years, but long-term monitoring store-bound impacts and soil loss should be incorporated as a solar bylaw. This will recognize impacts on a stormwater and soil loss that can be identified and addressed beyond the installation years. So yeah, so I think, you know, one to two years beyond the installation is kind of a standard practice. But, you know, perhaps, you know, the working group here wants to consider checking in for every, you know, solar installation, installation, you know, every maybe two years or something. But yeah, check in on it on some sort of annual or multi-annual basis, you know, wouldn't, you know, I think would be prudent, because, you know, things do change. So, you know, we have droughts. We have all kinds of climate phenomena to kind of, you know, keep our eyes on. Janet? So, this reminds me of a conversation I had with Michael DiCiara from Shootsbury. And he said that on their array, they were lucky to get grass after five years, that they had a lot of problems with erosion and establishing vegetation. I don't know why. And it seems like if the industry practice or the town practices one to two years and the grass or the field or whatever is being planted isn't established, we definitely would want to take a longer view. And maybe that should be in the bylaw somehow, you know. Because, you know, if you might have some grass that's not really, you know, controlling runoff after a year or two. And I'm not sure if their problems in Shootsbury were slope or poor maintenance or anything like that. Yeah. What you're saying makes sense to me because, you know, a lot can, you know, it might take longer to establish some good vegetation or something could happen where there's a big storm and all of a sudden half your stuff is washed away. Well, that sounds reminiscent of the Williamsburg thing where they just didn't have the topsoil and the ability of the surface soil supporting vegetation there. So, you know, all that is, you know, something I think we can control, you know, within the bylaw that, that, you know, vegetation is, you know, establishment of vegetation is paramount and key to the erosion and control and, you know, general storm water, you know, management plan for the project. And then some runoff, BMPs should be part of the solar bylaw and such large, larger installations that can act as impervious cover that accelerates encounter. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess, you know, say if, you know, in my mind, considering this, if we have a, you know, we, the white paper suggested 10 acre increments, that's certainly up for, you know, discussion. But if you have 10 acre, 10 acre, and 10 acres, 30 acres, and they're all like, you know, each one is upgrading of the other, you know, you know, we need to be diligent with regard to the runoff and the runoff, you know, when it comes along, you know, the access road, it can do some, you know, cutting and things like that. So we just have to take, you know, a holistic sort of view of, you know, contiguous sort of, you know, solar development. And that's what comes to mind, you know, for this, but, you know, impervious cover, I would not consider a solar installation as an impervious cover. There's grass beneath, around, and the drip line of the solar panels, I don't think are serious enough to be, you know, erosive in terms of the velocity, you know, generated thereof. So, but I know things can channel along, you know, access roads and things like that. So that's, I think, what we need to be mindful of. And then Martha's got a section here. Okay. I question the assumption and the initial paragraph and, okay, you, I think we already, did we address that? Martha, maybe you just want to take over this, your comments here and I end. Oh, I, as I recall, everything was pretty well addressed. You're kind. You're breaking up, Martha. The discussion, us or in the reply, regarding the battery storage placement might have us slightly bigger and no disturbance stone or something from a private well than just the solar installation. But I don't think there's anything critical here that you haven't addressed. Okay. Thank you. So moving down. Okay. So are we getting into Aaron jocks? Here. So, I just want to say that, you know, a lot of Aaron's comments were, we're not within the purview of the Water Supply Protection Committee. They're kind of, you know, other things that we would want to consider with regard to the general environmental impact of a development that, you know, depending on the conversion of whether it's already developed land or agricultural or forest land, you know, each of those will have a different level of, you know, impact. So, but because, you know, I think, I mean, generally, I, you know, just it was the subcommittees feeling that her, her comments were, you know, there are going to be changes, but are these changes with regard to different factors? And I'm just thinking like temperature and and things like that. Are they significant or not? And I, you know, and I just, I think, you know, many of them are not going to raise the level of significance where it would be a concern within, you know, like an environmental impact study. I mean, it's going to be, it's going to be different. I mean, there's going to be good changes. And there's going to be, you know, changes that are going to, you know, compromise, you know, the existing, you know, ecosystem. But and I don't know, you know, if we want to dive into it, you know, right now, and we, I guess we'd have to pull up her comments. Are these, so do you have or Stephanie, are these the entirety of Stephanie's comments? Or some of the errands? That's okay. I did used to be Welland's administrator. So that's okay. I know. Yeah. Actually, yeah, I do. I don't know how I guess I could try to do a split screen. I don't know how successful I will be. So let's see. Okay, I'm going to stop sharing this for a moment or in page five. So sorry, bear with me a second here. I'll come back so you can see me fumble. Let's see. Do you want Erin's references or? Well, the committee went through her comments. We did go through her comments and I can just from recollection kind of generally address them. But a lot of them I think need to be tabled for, you know, a future meeting where we're kind of talking about. Would it be more helpful to go through her comments as they are in the context of the paper? Or because I have the draft that she actually wrote her comments in the draft, which you all received. Might that be a little easier? Yeah, Duane, whatever you want. Maybe just to refresh your memory and set the stage for what we might need to discuss as well. My reaction was similar to you, Jack, in terms of some very good comments, but a lot of it wasn't really applicable to the Water Supply Protection Committee, but useful for us as a working group. And so I would agree maybe we can just not spend too much time on it, but just take a look at it quickly and see where we might want to just have discussions on some of these issues that she raises at a future meeting. So I'll share the screen with her comments on the actual paper. I think so. Okay, all right. You should all be seeing that now. And Janet has a comment, by the way. She has her hand up. Yeah. So I think we should invite Erin to come and talk about her comments, because I think she has a lot to say. And also some of the stuff is not her comments aren't directly in terms of the Water Supply Questions, but a lot of them are in terms of how water moves through soil and organisms and soil and filtration and compaction and things like that. And so I think that we can sort of sit here and parse through what is a little beyond, but all that information seems like stuff we should know as a committee. But I also think her comments were quite like there's a lot of detail to them. I thought maybe we should have invite her in to talk about them and what she saw missing from this report. And the information we need to know as a committee. Yeah. And to that, and Janet, I'm just saying we had three hydrogeologists on the subcommittee. And so we were really focused on water resource protection. And a lot of Erin's comments were based on more surface water, atmospheric biological impacts of that that we need to discuss. And so, but I agree, I would love to have her join us if she feels so moved. One of the things that jumps out at me is sort of like a kind of a big point, which is forested land. It contributes water to groundwater deeper. And it kind of mitigates like if there's a drought, it maintains the groundwater better. If there's a lot of rain, it kind of retains it in a different way or gives off. So I think that those kind of macro comments would be super useful for us to hear. Yeah. Okay, well, I think we addressed, you know, from a water budget perspective, I think we addressed that, you know, removal of forest is going to create a higher groundwater table, more runoff because we're lacking the evapotranspiration budget that the forest produce. So we're going to have more recharge, more runoff. And I think that's pretty clear. So, you know, and that's what we were, you know, you know, establishing, you know, there. And then we know that runoff can be engineered. The higher groundwater, you know, is an issue that maybe there's going to be, you know, slight increase of wetland area resulting, you know, down gradient. If there is an existing wetland because of the higher recharge. But the other things I just, you know, I think there's, you know, whether things are measurable or not is became up as a question with regard to some of their comments. So there's going to be changes. But are they measurable? Are they significant? That's, I think, what the takeaway was. So, Dwayne, I don't know what you want. Do you want still want to go through this? Well, let me ask Stephanie, I guess, one, whether it would be appropriate to invite Aaron to a meeting to, you know, spend an agenda topic on her insights, comments, and thoughts, not just specifically on this paper, but generally from her role. And if that's appropriate, then whether the other folks on the committee, the working group would suggest that we go ahead and do that. I'm all in favor of hearing more, you know, expertise. I can you remind me of what her role is in town? Aaron's the wetlands administrator. Exactly. Okay, so and she's the staff liaison to the Conservation Commission. Yeah, okay. So you do have other, I mean, you've been inviting other folks, you've got Chris coming from the fire department. So it certainly makes sense to have Aaron come, you know, to invite Aaron to participate in a future session. Yep, I think that would be, that'd be great and probably a better way to address her substantial effort to put in these comments. I think it'd be better to have a discussion with her than try to review them and how they fit into this particular report. I think they're more have more broad impacts than just this water supply report. So you have a meeting on January 6th. Would you like me to invite her for January 20th? Just shoot for that date. I think that makes sense. Okay, I will ask her if she's available. Great. We'll just need to know the meeting time because I know there has to be discussion about that. I think actually today before you adjourn or at least at the next meeting. Exactly. I plan to get to that before we adjourn just to set up the next January meetings. Yeah, I guess the 6th is already set, but okay, great. Do you want me to go back to the document then or was that I think that might have been the comments at the end of the comp, the compiled comments, but I'm not, I can double check. I think that might have been all, Erin. No, Jenny, you had some resident comment as well. Okay, there, do you want me to go? Yeah, why don't we quickly address those? Okay, so you should be seeing Jenny Calyx. Yeah, great. Thank you. Yeah, so concerns about fire and battery storage systems are topics in the WSBC and our group and concom and perhaps other town discussions. I am passing on the materials that may be helpful. Yeah, we received her comments and the subcommittee, you know, definitely, you know, we'll review them and it didn't really change any of, again, it was a lot of, with regard to the National Fire Protection Association and that we had already referenced that and they're just new articles, but the same stuff. So, you know, we didn't really alter the paper based on that, but it appreciated the comments for sure. Just seeing, so the NFPA concerned about how to fight battery fires, they recently issued guidance online, it's possible to view the guidance purchased from Card Download, the journal is from the NFPA Association, provide a good overview of the challenges and how the standards address them, the enormity of the challenge to deal with these fires is apparent in the journal. Yeah, and I thought you should share this material with staff committees who may find it useful. So, but yeah, I mean, we're going to, you know, be talking with the fire department representative next meeting. So, but again, I, there were some disasters, you know, 10 years ago, and whenever this battery technology came out, I just, I just feel like we've come such a long way, you know, beyond that. But so the other one revisions to 527 CMR 1.00, Massachusetts Comprehensive Fire Safety Code and relating training opportunities and new code materials, energy storage systems, the current edition includes a chapter on the battery storage systems, but the board voted to adopt the recently published NFPA section, the new language expands the scope of the chapter address new energy storage technology and is based on recent testing conducted by NFPA's research foundation, the increased scope addresses energy storage systems, equipment, configuration protection state, same, so there's more references. Again, the subcommittee, you know, took a took a brief look at that, we had already dived into what NFPA had what six months ago. Again, this is always going to be a evolving topic, because it's such an emerging technology, but I, you know, the subcommittee felt like, you know, where the technology is moving the, you know, correct, you know, direction. And, you know, some of the disasters of, you know, years ago have been, you know, minimized. So with with with the current technology. And Eric, Eric's comment, should I read all this or yeah so okay so they mentioned failures there and now like a third or fourth line. The number of failures are in the vast minority. I mean, again, I'm just throwing the number out I think 99% of the projects are successful. Just just you know, because there are so many solar installations that have been constructed without consequence, there have been disasters and those those rise and you know, get our attention. But overall, I think, you know, I think we know what we're doing. And, you know, there's other issues here with regard to development of a piece of land in general, that, you know, and development was that, you know, apartment complex or something. I mean, it's just that, you know, conversion of forest land to anything is always going to be or agricultural land to anything is. So, you know, what we're looking at is solar impacts. And, you know, what we have the subcommittee found is like the solar array is not really introducing contaminants of concern. The battery storage, you know, facilities are, you know, kind of increase that risk. But I think the current knowledge with regard to, you know, merges response and fire protection, all that minimizes the impacts but it's certainly something we need to, you know, keep our eye on. So, you know, the reservoir areas, you know, they're mapped, they are, you know, what they are. Any project, you know, will need to mitigate runoff to any surface water body, you know, it's not unique to the solar rays. So, you know, there's abundance of regulations, I think, that speak to that, you know, aspect, you know, being within the, you know, Amherst's reservoir up there in North Amherst. I think Eric provides it a good and his colleague, I guess, provide a good review of issues. A lot of it has to do with sort of this notion of risk assessment of how do you, you know, life's full of uncertainties and there's no guarantees in life and in development. So, how do you do our best to mitigate as fully as possible situations where, as you say, Jack, the large majority of projects are fine, but if you go particularly bad, and how do you really, is there a way to quantify that, look at that, regulate around carefully, keep that in mind as we develop the language in the bylaw. And so I think these are all things that we should read carefully and take into account as we sort of move through the bylaw. I don't know if there's anything here that Jack, you have that particularly got integrated into the report or needs to be. Yeah, I think, you know, talking with the subcommittee that the aspect that was the that was the most concerned to us was how the construction was implemented and and and with regard to protection of the nearby, you know, wetlands and and and surface waters. From a groundwater perspective, it didn't raise any, you know, huge concerns due to lack of the contaminants and just the setbacks that that that we suggested, you know, that that that we do for septic systems and known contaminant sources. So, you know, I think we're looking here at more our conversion of land use, which is, you know, brings into viewsheds, you know, screening issues, access issues that those sorts of things, but it doesn't really fall upon, you know, water, you know, resource area of concern. But I see Janet has her. Yeah, let's do that. And then I do want to move on and have some time time. It's moving fast here. So I do want to have some time to review the GZA survey questions and then have time to close out the meeting by 130. So, Janet. So my big question was, like, why did the draft report drop like almost two pages that why did the final report drop almost two pages that were in the draft report because I thought it provided a lot of context and a lot of information. It was in the water quality, long term impacts of water quality. And this is in the draft on page seven from page seven to part of nine. It talks about forest, clear cutting erosion and climate change and, you know, what the forest is doing and its impact on groundwater and weather and clear cutting. And I know we're not talking, you know, about it. So I just why did that go away? Because I thought that was super useful information and would provide the town council and provided me with information. Like, why was that taken out? Yeah, I'm trying to have a nice chart to two charts. Long term. So the section that we're referring to is long term impacts of water quality. Yeah, in the draft on page seven, it says forest, clear cutting erosion and climate change. And there's like a page, there's almost two pages of text that isn't in the final draft unless it's hiding somewhere. Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't see it. I know we added. What I'm looking at is like we added. So I guess I just, maybe I, I don't know if you want to share your screen or am I, I mean, I printed both of these out. So, so maybe Stephanie, can we go to page seven of the draft or page seven of the final, I guess, or six of the final? Sure, just bear with me a second. Because what I'm looking at is the draft page seven. And there's a whole section on forest, clear cutting erosion and climate change. Do you want the draft then that Erin had commented on? Because that would be the draft that you're maybe looking at. And then I could show the final. Yeah, I just have, yeah, I just have the draft without her comments. So, okay, I'm just trying to be clear of which would be best to show the final version or the draft version. What would be the draft version if stuff is taken out of the final? Okay, let me, I'm going to open Erin's comments again. It's possible I confuse these, but I don't think so. So which are the pages that you feel were taken out? I'm going to go to water quality. And it's page seven on my draft, but my draft doesn't have Erin's comments on it. Let's just go to water quality. Okay, it's probably further down then. Yeah. Yeah, so you just, you just passed it. Sorry. So that red section says forest, clear cutting erosion and climate change. I have that in the draft, but I couldn't find that section in the final include like the charts with the little cow. Did she put that in? Yeah. Okay, I thought that was in the water supply protection committee's draft. Maybe my printout just incorporated those changes, which is odd. Yeah. So that, you know, again, that's more on a different sort of vector than what we were, you know, looking at with regard to, you know, water supply. So why don't we just leave that for when Erin comes then? I don't want to go. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Let me thank Jack for that really helpful review of the report and addressing and how our comments were addressed. I thought that was really helpful and did open up sort of ideas for when we sort of think about the bylaw language, the bylaw referencing already existing permits, but what the bylaw might say with regard to those permits where they meet, we may think they are inadequate or something needs to be added. And then to appreciate everybody's comments, both within our committee and from the town and from town constituents, I think some of them who are with us today. So appreciate all that. And Jack, thanks for the work on the subcommittee there and bringing that to us. Thank you. It's something we'll definitely important resource for us to work with. Okay, great. So let's move on to a agenda topic to to discuss and what feedback we want to give to GZA with regard to the survey draft that they've provided. And I think we need to do this at a relatively high level and then we can sort of maybe articulate these to GZA. And I do want people to understand as Stephanie indicated at the beginning, this is a draft. It's for our review and feedback. They will be making some changes here and we'll have one more chance to look at it as well. So appreciate folks looking at this. I think there were some comments that we've received already with regard to sort of the introduction and how this survey is being the context of the survey. And I think there are some good comments there with regard to better setting the stage of the purpose of the survey and the context of solar in the context around Massachusetts and climate change and so forth. But it may be helpful to bring up the survey draft. Sure. I also do want to make clear that we're working within GZA's scope of work and budget. And so we have to be mindful of that. We're also working with the idea that this survey would be distributed to constituents but be something that we would get a decent response back so that it wouldn't be a survey that would require huge commitments of individuals to respond to. So I think we want to keep that in mind as well. And I want to add to that, Dwayne. So there are a few things I talked to Adrienne about following some initial comments that I received. And first that this survey really gets to solar development in general. It's not just about ground mount solar. This is about solar development in the community. So it's widespread opinion on solar development. So includes rooftops as well as land use for solar. The questions were at least their initial design are really to sort of get to the range of opinion. And so that they do get to some things that might not even be feasible, but it's again to sort of gauge where the community is in their response to solar development. So that's just some initial feedback I wanted to give you. And then also these questions are going to be translated. So this is not meant to be a very long survey. It's meant to be short. And experience in town has been that if you have a survey that's too long, people do not respond. So it's meant to be getting to things in a sort of more succinct way. So I can just go over just what has been delivered again to Dwayne's point. I'm sorry that they are going to include more of an introduction. So I know that was addressed by a few people. So that will definitely be something that will go into the context more. So I'm going to get more to the questions. So again, looking to this question is getting to just where people in general feel about any type of solar development. And they're just going to be asked to sort of reorder these statements. And again, they're not to be, it's not meant to be that incredibly specific. It's just meant to sort of get to general feelings about solar development. For number two, I think the question, I think there were some clarifying questions that some people had given. And I think this will probably be revised as well. I mean, it's just to sort of get a sense of like, if there was going to be some other committee, would you want to be part of another committee, that kind of thing? How engaged would people want to be in sort of, you know, moving solar forward in the town? You know, we might have some kind of another solarized program, would someone want to be part of that? That's kind of what this question is getting to. I think number three is kind of self-evident about if we have workshops, will people come? Maybe we should, do you want to just like go section by section? Sure. Sure, and just stop. Yep, sure. And just get some thoughts on this. I mean, the general outline here is that they go through these general, trying to gauge general attitudes. And then it more goes into specifically, was it residential, municipal and commercial, municipal and residential, scale development. Okay, great. Yeah, Janet. So I really want to talk about this in depth and also like, are the outreach outreach to the community to figure out what the Amherst community values are and where people prefer solar, large-scale solar to go? I mean, that's the purpose of the survey as far as a solar by law working group. And it's one of our main tasks. I felt like this completely missed the mark, but I also have to say and I feel very conflicted is this isn't on our agenda as an agenda item. And so under the open meeting law, we really can't discuss it. There is ample time to give notice. It's not something that we had to sneak in at the last 24 hours or 48 hours, sort of that exception is. And so I really want to talk about this survey in depth. I really want to talk about our community outreach because I think this survey itself and any other outreach we have is so critical to the recommendations that our committee will make to the town council and how the by, we're going to draft the by law, but it's not on our agenda. And so we're in an open meeting law violation at this moment. And I just, I actually didn't really realize it until, you know, I thought, so I just, I just have to present that to the group. So Dwayne, we can put this on the January 6th agenda. I yeah, I also we are, but sorry if I could, Janet, please. So this was sent specifically to ECAC solar by law working group and to department heads. And initially at this stage, we were honestly looking just for individual feedback. We weren't looking for in depth discussion. I think because we had a gap in the agenda today is why this got moved forward. But we weren't looking for an in depth discussion at this point today. We just wanted feedback from everyone so that Adrian could look at all of the comments, put them together and then revise it based on the collective feedback and then get it back to the committees. That was her approach. So I can stop sharing now. I mean, if we feel like we're in a violation, then I should stop sharing. I mean, to some extent it maybe it could be covered under the Stephanie's updates, but maybe it goes beyond that. And so I'm not just remind me Stephanie time wise with regard to providing feedback to Adrian at AGCA. If we have a discussion on this on January 6, is that going to be workable? It's tight. But I think I think given Janet's concerns, I think it would be advisable to do so. And maybe and maybe we could even invite Adrian to come to that meeting. Is there any we meet next week? I can't. And we don't we'd have to legally post it. And I just it's already Friday. We'd have to post on Monday, which means the meeting would have to happen on Wednesday. Is there any without violating any rules? Is there any way we can between now and the next meeting gather comments from our working group to compile together to work from on at the next meeting? We can post comments on the in the resource page. Well, I well, first I would yeah, I mean, I would first want to gather your comments and put them together. And then I could put them in the in the resources. But also, I mean, I think you would all want want to see them too. I would say just we should just cleaner if we just do this for the January 6 meeting. I think I mean, to the extent that Adrian could be with us, it would it would maybe expedite us from we'll have a discussion that she can partake in and hear, which might be more helpful to her, her and more expedite than us then trying to translate that all into written comments. That thing gets delivered to her later. She actually now that I say that she may not be here. Hold on. I think she's I know she's going to be on vacation. Yeah. So she might not actually be here that week. She might not be available, but that doesn't mean you can't you know, I so I would say just we can if people get their comments to me. I can gather them into one document from this committee. They can be part of the meeting packet for January 6 and we can we can discuss them on January 6. Okay. Martha, please. Yes. Yes. I mean, I would like to speak here. I mean, I felt extremely disappointed and frustrated by the superficial nature of the whole packet of survey questions that came out. Remember if you ask trivial questions, you're going to get trivial answers. Whereas if you ask thoughtful questions, you'll get thoughtful answers. And if we want to have this be useful to to our whole process, there's got to be a different approach. I mean, I'm finding the whole process here and the lack of interaction very frustrating. And so as vice chair of this committee, I request that I have the opportunity to have some direct discussions with the Adrian or whoever is the PR consultant in preparing this and be the one who coordinates feedback from our committee. I mean, Dwayne normally this falls to you. You were a busy person. And so surely in this case, perhaps you could delegate some of the responsibility to your vice chair here to take over part of this role from from you. I mean, after all, I was selected for this committee in part because of my outreach experience as education officer of our professional society. And that was one of the things I had discussed with our town manager. And so I would like to have the opportunity to short circuit some of all this discussion and back and forth and bring some efficiency to the process by being able to to interact in the meantime between now and January 6 on this. Dwayne, if I may, I would be happy to try to schedule a meeting with Martha and Adrian next week. Yeah, I can reach out to her and see if we can do that. But I will say that it is not the responsibility of the purview of a committee member to be managing the consultant. You will work with you would have to work with me on that. So and I'm more than happy to. But you cannot work directly with a consultant, it would have to be with me. Yes. And that is certainly the case. But you know, normally we have the our committee chair be the one to do that. And I'm suggesting that that fall to the vice chair in this case. And obviously, it's in the role of advising, consulting, making suggestions or recommendations. And, you know, obviously, Stephanie, you were the one that that's in charge of, you know, the ultimate decision making. I'm appreciate the offer or request, Martha, and and certainly I'm supportive of it as well, particularly with Stephanie's suggestion. So that'd be that'd be great. And appreciate that. Okay. All right. And, you know, I would not, I mean, I'm happy to be part of that conversation as well, Stephanie. I don't think it precludes me or should preclude me. I certainly have some ideas here as well. I, as Martha says, we're all busy. But it'd be hard pressed for me to put a lot of written comments together, but a conversation with them with Adrian, with Martha, with you would be would be really helpful. All right. Jack, and then Janet. Oh, I think Janet had her hand up before me, but okay, okay, sorry. Thank you. Thank you, Jack. I, I, you know, I before. So in terms of process issues, which we can discuss, I was, I was taken aback by the survey partly because I had seen the excellent, excellent survey that the UMass clean energy extension had. And I thought, of course, they're going to build off of that. And so I wonder if a few of us could sit down, take that survey, take this survey, put it together, take the strengths of both. It's the solar bylaw working group, it's our charge to find to determine the community's values and their priorities in terms of citing solar. And I feel like we get caught up into this strange thing with the consultant who's going to talk to the consultant. I think we the consultant is supposed to be helping us put together a great survey to ascertain community values. And I would like to, I want that survey to be really strong. I want to be really great. I'm not super confident after seeing this, that the consultant has an expertise in this area. But we have this amazing UMass clean energy extension. It has a great focus group presence. It has packets for communities. And I'm just, I just think it wouldn't take much of, for two of us or three of us to sit down, put together a survey and hand it to the consultant saying, this is way one another. There's not a question in here about the community values of Amherst, you know, other than, I was just taken aback by the whole thing. And I would love to work off of the UMass extension one. And I would be happy to devote some time into that. I think it'd be easy because it's all written out for you to do. So I just don't want the consultant to drive the process. I don't want the relationships. I want this committee to function as a committee and put together a great survey with a consultant, but not under the consultant's schedule or expertise or whatever. I just feel super frustrated by that. And I feel like we have this resource, you know, in our, it's just sitting there for us to use. And that's why I sent it to everybody. Yeah. And certainly I'd be keen on helping out with that and trying to bring some questions from there to this survey. Do keep in mind that that survey that we developed was obviously free for the picking, but in and of itself is probably a bit more extensive and longer than we can afford to offer in terms of response rates that Stephanie got to. It wasn't meant for this type of thing specifically. So, but I agree with you. We really worked on that to try to get some more nuanced questions that try to get to preferences, goals and so forth in ways that hopefully got sort of some richer response. So I'm keen on making sure the consultant is well familiar with that and even parsing out some questions from there that might make sense to bring into this one. And I think Martha, you're pretty familiar with that as well or can be and I am and we can, it might be helpful, Stephanie, to just make sure Andrea knows that is be able to review that before we meet. Yeah. He hasn't already. All right. Okay, Jack. Yeah, I was going to say that I kind of gleamed over the survey Dwayne that your group produced and I'm just I'm just thinking like the number of neighbors that I have that would be able to complete it, you know, in any sort of qualified sense because it was super technical. I just think the average citizen of Amherst would just would draw a blank to so many of these things. So, but that's one. But I was also just kind of wanting to, you know, because of my mental limitations, but I just want to know drill down, you know, Martha and Jan at what specifically are you, are you, you know, getting at with regard to the deficiencies of the GZA survey? Because, you know, I'm not a survey expert. And I know that's a total, you know, it's a career for for many people and there's an art to it. And so I want to respect that. But I'm just wanting, again, specific sort of how is this deficient, what what has been you know, drafted? Could would you like me to? Can I can I just make a comment really quickly? Because one of the things I want to address about the questioning is that and really to Jack's point is these surveys have a tendency to be targeted to a particular demographic. And in this case, the survey is meant to be accessible to everybody. And in a lot of cases, that's not what happens. So even the process that I've talked about when we talked about having community gatherings, we're talking about making things available for people who might not even be able to read and write English, we're wanting to have interpretation, we're wanting people to be able to use pictures if they have to, so that they can maybe identify what's important to them. So these questions are meant to just get a kind of range of response. It's not meant to be, you do not want solar development in your backyard because, you know, of XYZ reason, it's meant to be general. And the way the questions are very intentionally worded is to sort of get that range of opinion. So and I would say to identifying where ground mount solar can go, I would really caution you as to how you're developing the solar bylaw, because from what Jonathan Murray said, you cannot be, if you're coming at it with an approach of being restrictive, then you're lining us up for our court case. I mean, that's just the direction you're going in, if that's how you're thinking about it. So I would really encourage you to be a little more broad-minded about this particular approach by this consultant. So that's all I wanted to say. And also, again, this is a draft, we're looking for feedback. This isn't the final survey. So your strong response is, I get them, but you know, take a deep breath because we're looking for this kind of feedback so that she can revise it. Okay, let's finish with Martha and then I want to give an example maybe in response to Jack. When the consultant made some questions for our town staff, and so I liked a little better the way they put it there. For instance, the question was to increasing solar development in Amherst and left a blank for you to say what you wanted. Martha, you cut out. I think you have to repeat what you said. I'm sorry. Sorry, I'll solve this stuff. I had to go. Hi, Robert. So thank you. Survey to town staff, my question was asked, it said, what are my top one to three concerns relative to? Sorry, not good. It's in Northwestern. Oh, development in Amherst and Leonard then. Yeah, but I mean, but it's better than having just kind of Oh, do I like solar rays? Are they ugly? Are they this or they that because that doesn't give us anything useful? Do you see the difference? Yeah, you cut out. I think sometimes using your cell phone in addition to the video might be a I think we got we got this and I actually have a very hard stop at 130. So, okay, let's let's move on if we can. I'm in rural war. Say, and so I Okay, Stephanie, if we can open it up to any public comments for comments, that would be great. So if anyone in the public wants to make a comment, please electronically raise your hand and I will allow you to speak. Eric, go ahead. You can unmute. Hello. Thank. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Great. I want to first of all, thank the committee for its really sedulous work on behalf of the water supply in town. I think there's really quite frankly, nothing more important than having clean, a potable water that we can count on. I wanted to ask make a couple of observations. First of all, how this committee's work and that of the ECAC and concom and and water supply protection committee, how the work of each committee interfaces with the town's master plan that after about seven or eight years was was adopted by the town council in 2018, I believe. And the one of the and one of the master plan areas was watershed protection philosophy. And it is stated very clearly that even with a large amount of preserved land surrounding Amherst surface water supplies, minimal changes in the land use impervious surface coverage and forested land within a watershed can greatly alter water quality, scatter development and frontage lot, construction, threatened Amherst drinking water. That's the first thing, how how the work of this committee interfaces with the overall I would hope governing master plan. Secondly, I live in North Amherst and North Amherst, based on the water supply protection committee's report, is law has the largest percentage of well driven, well based private homes in in the town upwards of 5% of the the of the towns in the houses in Amherst rely on wells and mostly they are in North Amherst. I would also make an observation that to date, the the the largest number of of solar fields and battery projects are located in North Amherst. So I think it I'm concerned because the most of the work of the water supply protection committee and the draft report really looks at public drinking water and unfortunately the board of health was supposed to have a seat at the table. The water supply in this solar by the working group and they declined to sit around and and think through implications of of of large scale solar on private wells because they have they are the regulators and the protectors of the private well systems, not the water supply protection committee. It's the board of health and a couple of other observations. I would say that the fact that the water supply protection committee's report says we can rely on a 100 foot buffer from well systems regarding solar fields things and that that has been the kind of the operating standard for quite quite for decades and I would say the things are changing drastically. They're changing every year so to rely I think it's too backward a look rather than forward looking. I would also say that and I think Jack you mentioned that we're not we're not reinventing the wheel here but I think that climate change is forcing us to reinvent the wheel and so I would say that that is we really can't just rely on what we see in our rear view mirror as as correct operating policies and finally Tim Randier's commentary from the board of health really does not and given that they are the protectors of the well systems and and Amherst does not really does not at all relate at all to the private well systems and that as a private well system owner I'm concerned that we really need to look at quality water supply in general and also include that not only public water supply but private water supplies so but again I'm very thankful that you're looking at this this very very serious issue very seriously so again thank you for your work. Thank you Eric Jack did you have response to that as your I see your hand up but yeah I just I just want to say that I I you know make want to make sure that we don't consider solar fields as an impervious sort of development it's far from that it is not even remotely you know you know close to like a parking lot or buildings or things like that it's it's it's more analogous to to a grassy field and so that's you know I hope I hope we all are clear on that point but also you know with with the private well supplies I think we're respectful of that and and again I mean you know if septic systems I think are you know that's the standard that we have to respect and and and that's that's been in in place for for many many years and it's 100 feet you know from a septic system to a private well and in the septic system who knows what goes into a somewhat septic system but we have established that a solar field does not have known contaminant sources you know qualified that they don't you know bring in PFAS and and other things and then we've already you know suggested you know doubling the the setbacks for for battery storage so I just want to make that that clear and invite by I'm respectful of someone that's on a private well and and but I just want to make sure that we were clear on the impervious statement and and what the current regulations you know for setbacks of known contaminant sources are within the state of massachusetts common well the massachusetts yep thanks jack um okay great um set me I don't see any more comments I don't see anybody anyone else has their hand raised nope okay seeing none let's and we're at time uh so um during the meeting we will be meeting next um on june 6th january 6th sorry whatever that's a really long time time is the are we going to stick with the 1130 for that meeting um I'm flexible so um come become that time so um uh does that work for you Dan say it again does that work for Dan because I thought he had constraints too I'm sorry what's the time 1130 on january 6th well we could go back to one 1130 is good for me it's fine 1130 is good okay and the uh the fire is it the fire chief or somebody from the fire it's it's a uh firefighter for the town um and so yes I'll invite chris and then erin for the 20th if she's available great yep and in the meantime I'll also schedule with adrian exactly okay we'll have a agenda item on the on the survey on the 6th as well so stephanie before you sign us all off the meeting maybe you and I could just speak briefly about the schedule um why don't I um I have to end the meeting so yeah let me just end the meeting yeah and you can you can follow up uh separately yeah i'll follow up with you separately okay happy holidays everyone yeah yeah have a great break and thanks everybody all the all the hard work and we'll be back uh see you in january bye bye that's good bye very holiday