 Okay, so we are now recording. Great. Thank you, Stephanie. And hello, everybody. Welcome. March 3rd meeting of the Amherst solar bylaw working group. Before we get going the. Meeting. Minute. Taking responsibility. Thanks to Martha for the minutes from last week. And that brings us to Jack. Yeah, great. Okay. So you're. On board with that. So thank you. Yeah. Okay. And just a heads up that means. Jen, it's next. Great. Okay. And do we have a full house? I think so. Great. Thank you. All right. Great. And welcome Adrian from a GZA. Who's going to be on the agenda shortly. And. We have two minutes. To approve. One now. Almost historic. But hopefully we'll get through both of those. But I do wonder, Stephanie, is it. Best at this point to move straight to Adrian. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How would you. It would be, I mean, if we could hold it. Off till after her presentation, I think. Just in consideration of our time. Yeah, I think that would make sense. For her, certainly. And for all of us. A good Chris is joining us as well. And let me just see. Who's with us from the. Outside public. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. I have a couple of participants. Okay. So. Again, just to outline what we're going to be working on today. We have. A. Presentation or, or discuss and discussion with Adrian again from GZA. This being more. Maybe a brief update on the public. Participation process, but more so. Focusing on the. Mapping. That is. Getting to an end point. To share that with us. And then we will. Do some of our normal things, reprove the minutes and so forth or review them. And then we do have, you know, the bulk of the time. We'll be with Chris. Again, doing a second reading. Of the submittal requirements. And then we have a portion of the bylaw that we looked at. Last time. And a first reading as we'll call it. And thank you so much again, Chris, for new draft. Language on the design standards. Section of the, of the bylaw. So we'll get into that. And then. Kind of a. Long standing item. That will. Really get today. Get to today is future topics. And then we'll get into the agenda. And then we'll get into the agenda. It's going to lead us through some ideas. She has there. And shared with us. But also open that up to what, to all of us as well. And that's. And rounded out obviously with. The next. Agenda for next meeting and. Public comment. So that sounds good with everybody. We'll proceed and go out of order from the agenda. And invite. Adrian to. Give us her presentation and discussion on the. On the. Solar assessment update and community outreach. Thank you, Adrian. Great. Thanks, Dwayne. Just a moment. I will share my screen. Right. Nice to be back with you all. So this is, as Dwayne said, an update on the outcome of the solar assessment, the map based process. And then an update on the upcoming public outreach. So our assessment purpose. What we were asked to do is to understand kind of where in Amherst solar could be cited and what that total. In the previous slide. So we looked at all these all land uses and all types of solar. So, you know, our ground, Mount residential and large scale. Rooftop canopy. So kind of all solar uses all, all land areas. And so we took kind of a multi-phase approach. Where first we filtered down the areas in Amherst were solar could be cited. into 30 foot by 30 foot grids, so that we could get a lot of resolution about the town. And we could also be making those decisions based only on kind of what is happening in that very limited geographic area versus making an assumption about an entire tax parcel from, you know, if it contains wetlands, but maybe not the whole parcel. So this allowed us to really get a lot more detail. And so we looked at where it could be cited that filtered out a lot of Amherst. From there, we looked at the feasibility of potential solar development. And so, you know, there's kind of a lot of ways to interpret feasibility, but we really thought about it as the possibility to do something easily or conveniently. So a high feasibility ranking might be easier to develop and a low feasibility ranking might be harder to develop. But it's not necessarily saying it definitely would go here and it definitely couldn't go there. It's kind of just a relative understanding of the challenge involved in preparing and implementing a site, a solar development. And then we also characterize kind of again, based on those areas that were left after we excluded parts of town, what land use is there today. Although this cover page is the highest level. So as I said, we overlaid the town with this 30 foot by 30 foot grid. From there, we excluded any grid squares that were owned by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College or Hampshire College. These organizations have their own renewable goals and are working towards those. So they kind of won't be influenced by the town's goals and the town's incentives. We also excluded grid squares where solar development's prohibited. So that is wetlands. The Wetland Protection Act and the town wetland protection by-law have pretty robust prohibitions on solar development in wetlands. And we also excluded any grid squares on properties that have a deed restriction against development. So that's a deed restriction in perpetuity. So that's conservation land, state forest and some other site. And then the logistically unfeasible, that's primarily rights of way. So both utility rights of way, railroads and roadways. And then we ranked the remaining grid squares on a series of characteristics and then looked again at that existing land use. So this is kind of why we went with the overlay with the grid. Maybe this whole property here would have been excluded because there's some wetlands. But in our analysis, we're able to exclude only the wetlands and still consider potential residential development elsewhere on the property. So that's really a benefit of this process. It also gives the assessment outcome a little bit more longevity because parcel boundaries can change and then, but these grids aren't really going to change that same way. So as I said, we prohibited wetlands and streams and then those deed restricted areas. The deed restricted areas may be considered Article 97 lands, but they weren't always. So that's what we looked at if they had a development restriction in perpetuity. They were prohibited from our list. And then those rights of way. All in all, we ended up with 6,632 acres of potentially developable area. So areas that were not categorically excluded. And that comes out to approximately one third of Amherst. There's about a little less than 18,000 acres in Amherst. So we come out right around one third of the town could support solar legally. So then the scoring. So we looked at four characteristics. And so we applied these, we looked at the slope for how steep the land is, the aspect with what kind of cardinal direction does it face. The capacity of the nearest three phase line. So if there's existing grid infrastructure to accept the electricity and then the distance to that nearest three phase line every grid square was assigned a ranking from zero which was the lowest to 10, the highest for each of those four categories independently. And then a final score was calculated again for every grid square that wasn't excluded. And that score integrated the four characteristics and came out with a final score from zero again low to 10 high. And our calculation, it didn't just take the average it used a least square approach. So it really bias the final score to low if there were a low score involved. So a site that had maybe three good scores and one really low one, it would look lower than if you had just averaged those four scores. And we did that because we knew we're coming out with at the end of the day some capacity estimate. And so we wanted to not really come up with this real pie in the sky number of like, oh yes, it could be pretty feasible high feasibility score on some huge acreage if there were really more on the ground challenges. So we kind of wanted to tamp down maybe some of that optimism so that we could come up with, provide more plausible numbers. And I know that ECAC will be looking at some recommendations and goals. And so we wanted to give them and you all a more tempered approach. So we kind of made some choices consistently to be somewhat conservative in the areas that we calculated. And then the last step was to classify the remaining areas as built or unbuilt environment and so here this uses the 2016 Massachusetts land use layer. The blacked out areas are the areas that are excluded. And during the ECAC meeting, there was a comment that this doesn't really look like two thirds excluded. So I'm going to try to zoom in. That's about as far as PowerPoint and let me go. But there's the large areas down here, Lauren Swamp is excluded. Holyoke State Forest down here on the Holyoke range is excluded. UMass, but there's also every road surface is excluded. And so there's a lot of the narrow strips of excluded areas that that kind of aggregates up to about two thirds of the area being excluded. It's kind of similar, if you look orange is residential, we know there's quite a bit of residential development in Amherst, but because it's small areas at this scale, it is sort of visually underrepresented, but in the calculations, it's arithmetically represented correctly. So what won't surprise you all is a lot of town is considered undeveloped as far as open space agriculture. And so in our report, we'll be breaking down those into more detail and more table format about each ranking in each land use area, but really this is the outcome in terms of excluded areas and current land use condition. This map will be hosted by the town. And so it'll be similar if you all, I'm sure many of you have used the zoning maps on the town GIS site, you can turn layers on and off, you can zoom in, you can click on a property and see a little bit about that property. This map will be similar to be able to zoom in and see a ranking, you know, there'll be the parcel layers on there. And then there'll be some other reference layers. So if you wanna kind of understand more about what's going on, we'll have the priority habitat there and bio core habitat and some other kind of reference layers so that individuals who might wanna maybe, you know, check out their property or stroll around their neighborhood can understand what's going on as well as developers who are initially screening a site can get that information. So we have designed a tool that kind of can be used by a diverse user group to get kind of different types of information that may be pertinent to them. I am gonna just stop here, I'm gonna exit my PowerPoint because I did get a question during the ECAC meeting about the priority habitat areas and the bio map areas that the, sorry, the menu is kind of blocking one of my tabs here. So there are some areas that are eligible or ineligible based on the presence of priority habitat and or bio core habitat, which bio core habitat includes several types of habitat, aquatic, forested. It's kind of like a little bit of a catch-all how I'm using bio core, but they're designated by, you know, the state division of Fish and Wildlife. And so that was brought up during our ECAC meeting. So I did wanna address it. Lands that are ineligible for the SMART program incentives due to the presence of that habitat that is limited to projects that are on a category two or three land use. And so that's not everywhere. There's category one land use, which covers lands that are currently in agricultural use or are considered important agricultural farmland, which the regulations define as prime soils, farmland soils, unique farmland soils. And then non-agricultural lands, which are already developed areas. So the category two lands is a little bit more limited in that it's lands that are not category one and have not previously been developed. So we did take that eligibility criteria into account, but we didn't just geographically exclude anywhere that had the priority habitat because that starts to really get down to a parcel by parcel decision about how much area on this parcel is considered this category. And so that comes down to a much more project specific decision. And we were looking at an aggregated area across town. So our final map product and our report will both have the ability to overlay those layers because they are important and they are part of the decision-making process, but they are not a kind of as blanket a statement as like a wetland exclusion. That's pretty blanket that solar panels can't go on wetlands. But solar panels can go in properties containing priority habitat in many, but not all cases. So just to try to capture where it's fairly straightforward and where it's much more complex, we included the straightforward things in this assessment and then the fairly complex will be optional add-ons by the user using the map. And it will be shown in our report and kind of discussed what that means. And then a final note, just before I open up for any questions, is that this is a map from the Department of Energy Resources. And so these kind of green and pink and gray areas, they're the areas that could be considered ineligible if they're category two or three lands. And they do largely line up with the areas we excluded. So this is Lawrence Swamp and this is the state forest land. So it's certainly as a consideration and it was a really great question by the ECAC member. So we did appreciate that giving us this opportunity to clarify, but a lot of the areas do overlap because which makes sense. Where are the rare species? Primarily in the conserved lands in the wetlands. And so it'll be kind of user optional to add that information to their consideration. With that, I'm gonna go back to the slides and then I'm going to pause a moment for questions. I apologize, I have one screen. So you will have to watch me watch you. Great. Thanks, Adrienne. Jen and I see your hand up. I'm sorry, I got a little bit lost in the categories into the SMART program. So the SMART program is excluding the category one lands and two, or the two and three, which ones were excluded? Two and three are excluded. And so category one lands were which lands and they can be have solar on it with some limitations? Yeah, the category one lands in the regulation there's agricultural category ones and non-agricultural category ones. Certainly if you had a project you would wanna go through kind of everything very closely but generally the agricultural lands are lands that are currently in agriculture have recently been in agriculture in the last five years or are underlaying by farmland soils. So that's your prime farmland, farmland of unique importance, statewide importance. So those are your agricultural ones and then there's kind of some kind of sub explanations of you can put on this size or 200% of the agricultural energy need. So those are in your agriculture category one. Your non-agricultural category one is kind of anywhere that's developed. Okay, so for the agricultural category ones can you put solar on the soils, the farm soils? Yeah, there's explanations and performance standards for development in the SMART program regulations. Okay. And so the ineligibility of a property due to the presence or extent of the presence of priority habitat or bio or habitat, those that ineligibility applies to your category two and three properties. And so again, that's why we didn't kind of apply that as a blanket across the town because there's a fair amount of decision-making and understanding is a given area category one, two or three because some of it has to do with the history of the site, the use of the site. And so that is just kind of beyond the scope of this project especially given that parcels can change and that priority habitat and that bio or habitat, those maps are updated by their parent agency somewhat regularly. So we're planning on including those, as I said, as reference layers but not as like an exclusionary criteria. So, okay, so at no point are you gonna say you can't build on the category two and threes. Right, we don't identify each land as category one, two or three because that's much more, that's not, it's not an exclusively geographic decision. So that would be like a property by property decision being made. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chris. So Adrian, when you say these are excluded from the SMART program, that means they're excluded from a certain type of tax incentive or financial benefit that would allow these large scale things to be built. It doesn't mean that they're prohibited, it just means that they wouldn't benefit from this SMART program, is that correct? Okay, thank you. Yeah, good distinction, yeah. Okay, great, yep. Okay, great, then I... Is there another? Are you again, Janet? Yeah, actually, I just, I really honed it on that SMART program because I was very just kind of confused. I was surprised that you didn't look at the college and university owned lands, partly because the colleges own land that isn't on their campuses, but also because those institutions seem to have the most rooftops and parking lots and buildings. And they also have the most, like a lot of them, I'm thinking about UMass and a little bit, maybe Hampshire College, they have a fair amount of open fields that aren't being farmed. And so I know, everybody has a plan, but I don't know that the plan is to cover every parking lot or the rooftops. And so, and it seems to me like a strategy for the town could be saying to UMass, well, most of your, or actually, Amherst College, like you're looking at geothermal and you're buying your solar power from up in Maine, a facility in Maine, but have you considered doing the rooftops or whatever? So I just think, I just expected those lands to be part of it, to the assessment. I've never heard that they would be excluded since they have a lot of land. I mean, Amherst College has land on Southeast Street that isn't part of their campus, technically. Yep, they do own a lot of land. The decision to exclude them was because they have their own targets and they are pursuing those. And so today they have maybe a lot of open space they're not using, but they may have plans that we're not privy to to use that. And so the town didn't want to, again, when thinking about how much solar is Amherst's fair share to generate and where could it go? They didn't want to rely on land that the University of the College may be earmarking for their own use and their own development down the road. So they wanted to limit it to more properties that, while they can't make any residential owner install solar that they could more directly incentivize or encourage compared to the University. So someone from the town said exclude that. And even if they have excess capacity on their plans we're not gonna see that. So who was that? Just speaking for UMass we could build out all the solar we wanted to and we would be far less than the energy that we need. I presume that's the same with the two colleges as well. Okay. Chris, did you have another question? I just wanted to elaborate. I just wanted to elaborate on that that we don't have control over the University or the colleges to make them do anything. So that's one of the reasons why we excluded their lands. Thank you. Great. Martha and then we'll continue. Yeah. Thank you for your overview. Can you tell us when the full report will be available to us? Will there be another presentation with the results? The full report is scheduled to be done by the end of April for your use in decision making on your final iteration of the bylaw throughout May. And so that final report will include the assessment information and also the community outreach information. Uh-huh. Okay. Anything between now and the end of April or? Not on the assessment. You know, we're continuing to do some calculations in terms of, like I said, kind of really being able to provide all the information to you all, but this is the outcome of the assessment. So now we're just kind of parsing out different results from this outcome. Okay. Thank you. Jenna, one last and then we'll continue. So I actually, I had, when we talked about this in the fall, I remember being told like there was gonna be this, you know, grid 30 by 30 thing. And then there was gonna be a second round of looking at parcels. And then, you know, so it's not just saying, you know, I happened to own like 10 acres of land. You know, 10, you know, it's like, you know, that parcel might get excluded for some reason. And so I had the impression there was gonna be sort of a second call after the grid thing where we could look parcel and parcel and say, oh, this is excluded for this reason or whatever, or there's wetlands in this and then it'll be in this little funny corner and it doesn't really work. And I also had the impression that we were able to show the first thing to the community. And so I'm just wondering like, are we gonna get that second comb through? And then what can the community actually see? Cause I know people are gonna be immediately in a meeting wanting to see what happens in their neighborhood and that'd be good to show them. Stephanie, did you have a comment on that first? I do actually. So when we were discussing the technical analysis and we were saying that we were looking at two options of how to create the map and one was by parcel and one was by the grid and that we decided on the grid, we never said that we would provide a parcel map as well. We were explaining that there were two different approaches and we were explaining why we ended up going with the grid versus the parcel. So I think it might have been a misinterpretation of what was stated. Will there be a parcel overlay though? At some point? Yeah. Okay. That final map that's hosted by the town that will have the parcel overlay. So you could zoom into your own parcel and say, oh, the back corner is excluded but the front faces south. It's pretty flat. That might be great. Or maybe, you know, my parcel slopes to the north. It's all kind of mediocre for solar. So that's where, yeah, that's where kind of a personal parcel investigation could go on. I just wanted to jump in and say that that's why the reason why we went with the grid is because it actually gives you more information on your parcel versus like a blanket categorization of what your parcel looks like, if that makes sense. Great. Let's carry on then. Okay. I'm going to minimize your faces so you don't have to again, watch me watch you. But we'll open it back up at the end. So our public participation plan, you've seen this infographic before, you know, this is a supported way to kind of try to not just inform your community but also get input back from the community involved them. And so this is underway. You will start to be seeing information about this project kind of throughout town. It's really starting to ramp up now. So under this informed category, right? Our website is live. We're going to be starting to advertise it soon. We're working closely with the town director of communication who, she and Stephanie are working closely and developing a press release that'll be going out on social media, traditional print media through email. We will be mailing postcards directly to residences with information about this project and a QR code so they can, you know, walk them back from the mailbox. They can scan it and get more information. As I said, the town social media will be updated. Flyers are going to be posted in public locations. They're also going to go out to the town network which is the town employees. And then employees, you know, like Stephanie and all her counterparts throughout town who support boards and committees and commissions will share that information with their boards and committees and commissions. And then flyers will also be posted at, you know, apartment complexes if they have an office or a laundry room, kind of those communal spaces. And then that inform kind of a category sums up with a virtual presentation. And so we'll be giving a presentation March 13th at 7 p.m. online. It'll be on the community calendar. Everyone can call in and listen and it'll be about the project, about the assessment piece and then also what the real focus is is how people can get involved during that presentation. There will be some polling asked of participants to get some, you know, kind of initial ideas and try to get a little bit of a commitment of people to come to the consult phase and the involve phase. So in consultation with the town, you know, we are going to be on Engage Amherst. We talked about this as we were developing the survey, you know, that we would have questions on Engage Amherst and so that should be up in the next couple of days and we'll have the opportunity for people to weigh in, comment with each other. We can comment. That information will be captured and included in the report. Pretty much any time we are getting information back from the community. So even during that public, the virtual meeting, the polls, that data will be downloaded and included in the report. And then we have the survey available online now. It'll start to be, you know, as I said, really advertised in the next couple of days. It's gonna run through this month. And it is available in four languages. So it's available in English, Spanish, traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese. And it's available now. Again, all those, the results of that, all that data will be, you know, compiled and included in the report for review. And then we have two interactive workshops planned. They're both in the Jones Library Woodbury Room. They're Saturday, March 18th and Thursday, March 23rd. And they are both two hours long. Saturday one's midday. The Thursday one's in the evening. And they are meant to be, they're actually, they're gonna be both the same. So people only have to come to one to get their opinion heard. And they're gonna have a series of interactive activities. And so we've designed this to be, you know, really safe place for people to voice their opinion, even if they're, you know, maybe a little bit nervous too. It's gonna be, yeah, unique kind of separate tables with different ways for them to vote on things. We are gonna have options and opportunities available for people with, you know, limited literacy or limited English to be able to participate. There'll be some interpretation available. And there'll be ways for them to interact, you know, for people to interact with each other kind of through, you know, written or voting. And then also, you know, we'll be there to answer questions. There'll be kind of an open-ended comment box. And there will be refreshments served and there will be some children's activities. So our goal is to really make it easy for people to come and participate. And they can stay for two hours, do every single activity, leave comments, talk to us, ask questions. Or they could come for five minutes while they're, you know, bring it, dropping their kids off at the library, run in, maybe do an activity or two and go on their way. So we've tried to design this so that people can be, can participate to the extent they're comfortable with and still have their opinion heard. Again, all that information will be kind of tallied up and included in the report. So our public outreach resources are live. The QR code and the link, they go to the same place at the top of the page, if the page is in English, but at the top of the page, you can pick to go to the Spanish simplified Chinese or traditional Chinese page. At the bottom, you can enter your email address and then you'll get added to an email list so that, you know, we'll send out a reminder. Hey, the meeting's tomorrow. You know, don't forget to log in. Hey, the meeting's tonight. It's a half an hour. So for people who are uniquely interested, they can get added to that list. And then, as I said, the director of communications and through other town employees, we'll also be disseminating that same information. Okay, with that, I'm going to stop sharing. I can see you all, but that is the communication plan and it's really ramping up and it'll go throughout March. We do have to close the survey at the end of March so that we can compile all of the data and get it to you, which will take some time because hopefully we'll have a lot of participation. Great, thank you, Adrienne. All right, any thoughts or comments for Adrienne? Martha? Yeah, thank you. I actually took a quick minute to check out your live site just before this meeting there. So glad to see that it's up and alive. And so I checked where you have the reference to the Massachusetts decarbonization roadmap, but it's only the original one from 2020. And so may I request to you and Stephanie too, that you add the link to the more modern 2022 reports, the clean energy goals for 2030, and then the one from December that has the clean energy goals out to 2050 because those have some sobering plots about what we have to do to get there from here. So quickly add those. Yeah, we can add the link to the 2022 report, yeah. Yeah, there's two of them, one that came out in June to 2030 and one that came out with goals for 2050 that was just in December. Okay, thank you. Janet? So in the ads thing, I also took a peek at the website and at the, I think it was, and I actually, when we were talking, when you were describing what our group is doing, I think we should add that we're also gonna be prioritizing locations for solar development, including large-scale ground night rooftop and parking lot canopies and doing a priority map for locations for large-scale solar. Cause I think nothing will get the residents' interest more knowing that this is coming out and I'm sure they're gonna wanna have input into that. So we're not just doing a bylaw, we're doing the priority map of locations for large-scale solar as well as prioritizing locations for solar development. And that might be the shortest way to say it, the second way I said it. Right, that's what we do wanna keep those, we have a link to the web, to your webpage. So we do wanna keep those short, but. Do we have a, so anyway, I just think the priority map and the priority locations is gonna be something of interest to people. Cause that's, I think that's what they're gonna probably give most of their input on. I'm happy to volunteer some of my neighbor's houses as well as my own, but. All right, great Adrian. Maybe some of us will see you at the public meetings and forums and so forth, which would be nice to meet in person, but I really appreciate the work that you've done for the town, working with Stephanie, Stephanie's leadership on this and look forward to the ramping up with the public. Very exciting, and then the results coming out soon thereafter. So this has been really helpful. Wonderful, thank you all. Thanks, Adrian. Okay, great. So let's move forward in, or maybe it's backwards in the agenda and start at the beginning. And we have two sets of minutes to review and approve if we can. The first one has been lingering for a while. This was January 6th. If you recall that was the meeting that the fire captain was at and provided us some useful information on the, particularly with regard to battery storage and safety issues. But have people, let's go with that one first. Have people had a chance to look at that in any comment or suggestions or a motion to accept those minutes of January 6th? Yeah, Martha. Can somebody remind us there was some particular question about those minutes that we had to check on? I think that got incorporated. It was a reference to the 10 feet. And so what had happened? Chris had asked a question and Chris Baskham had responded. So the way, I think it was attributed to Chris only because of the way it was written but what had happened was the person asking the question sort of it was just the topic that they were asking about with the dashed line. And then Chris Baskham's response was after. So I just clarified that it was Chris asking the question. Chris Baskham responding. And Chris Baskham did respond about the 10 feet. And what did he say? Whatever is in the minutes is what is captured. So I had sent everybody out the draft minutes. I can open it. Let me just take a quick look. So is the answer still 10 feet or? It's 10 feet. That's what he said. The guidance, right? He said the only measure, the only specified distance was 10 feet. Hold on, sorry. Let me just get back. What if a four should be 100 feet? Baskham responded combustibles are loud, no closer than 10 feet. But that is the stated distance. So he confirmed that 10 feet is the distance. Okay, thank you. It's up to you all. I think what his point was was that you all could recommend something to be further. He was just saying that for their regulations, combustibles are 10 feet and nothing, everything has to be cleared within that 10 feet. Okay. Well, I will have a motion that the minutes be approved then. Thank you, Martha. I can second that. That was Laura. Thank you. Okay, great. And in no particular order by voice vote, Breger. Yes. Hanner. Yes. Brooks. Yes. Gemsec. Yes. McGowan. Yes. Corcoran. Yes. Haglia Rulo. Yes. Okay. The minutes of January 6th are approved. Okay. And then also in our package were minutes from last meeting, February 28th, which I'm pulling up here. Yep. Anybody have any questions, suggested edits, concerns or a motion to accept or request that we put them on the screen? Chris. Yep. I thought there were minutes from February 17th. Am I wrong about that? What did I say? You said the 28th. Oh, I apologize. That's, no, hold on. Sorry. Nope. They're the 17th. 17th, that's right. They do say the 17th. Okay. Sorry. I was looking at my file folder of a file with your date on it. Chris, for the design standard. Sorry. Yeah. It was to 17. Sorry. Janet. I moved to accept the minutes of February 17th, 2023. Are people reading it right now or? No. Great. Thank you, Laura. Yeah, our people go ahead, Stephanie. Okay. And again, in no particular order, both voice vote, Brecker. Yes. Hanner. Yes. Brooks. Yes. Jempsack. Too many screens open. Yes. McGowan. Yes. Corcoran. Yes. And Peggy Rulo. Yes. Okay. Minutes are approved. Okay. Great. All right. Good. So we're caught up with minute, minute approvals, which was great. So let's move on. We'll do staff updates and then any committee updates. So Stephanie, anything at this point? I think that all of the updates I would have given you were covered in the presentation. So the big, the biggest being the community events that are coming up. So again, just to reiterate the dates, March, Monday, March 13th, will be the virtual meeting at seven o'clock. And on Saturday, March 18th, will be the first community event in the Woodbury Room of the Jones Library from 12 to two. And on Thursday, March 23rd, from six to 8 p.m. will be another same exact setup for another opportunity for the public to engage in the Woodbury Room at the Jones Library. And that's from six to eight on the 23rd of March. Great. Great, thank you. Yeah, Chris. So Stephanie, can you elaborate a little on the meeting on March 13th, because that wasn't one of the ones that Adrienne mentioned. And is that the same kind of meeting as the other two meetings or is that different? She did actually mention it. It's the, it's okay. It's the virtual presentation of the assessment. So it's basically giving the information, pretty much the information that you got today, explaining how the methodology, and then also giving an overview of the ways in which the public can get engaged to conduct the survey, to attend the events. So it's kind of the informational session. It'll be about an hour long, but all of the opportunities for response will be during the, you know, either online or at the two community sessions at the Woodbury room. Great. Any other staff updates, Chris or Stephanie, I think we're good. Great. I don't have any, nope. Great. Okay, thank you. Committee updates. Any committees that we're liaising with? I'll give a quick one from ECAC, which actually is really in also in Stephanie's staff jurisdiction as well. But ECAC is planning to have a presence in a booth and some activities or information at the sustainability festival that Stephanie coordinates for the town on the town commons, April 22nd. And so obviously something that we welcome people to visit us. And if there's any interest in sort of putting out any information about the working group, bylaw working group, I'm sure we can accommodate that with ECAC as well. A bit in the future to deal with right away, but we're starting to plan for that. Anything else from any of the other committees we're affiliated with? Great. Okay, so let's move on to the core of the agenda, which is Chris to lead us through the work that she and her group does for us to draft and sort of present the bylaw in the sections as we're moving through. And we've started this procedure recognizing it again. We're gonna read through everything again at the end when everything sort of compiled together. But for now we're trying to make progress section by section by having a read-through of the drafting that Stephanie, sorry, Chris is providing a sort of a first reading. We're introduced to the language of the new drafting that Chris has done and an opportunity to go back and do a second reading of that language the next week to provide Chris with some, any comments or edits after we've been able to digest the first reading. So thanks, Chris. And I know you've developed this new section on design standards. This would be the first reading for that. Should we do that first and then we'll go back and see if there was any comments or thoughts on sort of the second reading of the submittal requirements section that we read through last week or two weeks ago. I am sorry to say, I haven't had a chance to go back and edit the submittal requirements based on the comments that we received last week. I was kind of, how can I say this? My tour over the last two weeks has been detoured by a zoning amendment that has loomed large. And some of you will be familiar with that. But in any event, I apologize for that, but I do have this new section on design standards. And this was taken mostly from the Cape Cod Commission but also from Shootsbury's bylaw that we recently adopted. So let's try to go through this and we'll work on this. So it really lists, you know, items, different items that need to be addressed when reviewing a solar installation. So we'll start off and talk about each one. So the first one is access roads. And access roads can be, you know, fairly disruptive depending on what kind of landscape they're going through. But anyway, so access roads shall be planned and constructed in consultation with the town engineer and the department of public works and shall be planned and constructed to minimize grading, stormwater runoff, removal of stone walls and trees and to minimize impacts to natural and cultural resources. At the discretion of the permit granting authority, it's what PGA stands for, roads should be curved to the extent possible to limit direct views into the project, especially from scenic roads. So are there any comments on that section? No? Yeah. Can I see people? Sorry, yep, I was reading and not looking at hand. So yeah, and feel free also Chris just to call on people as well. Okay, okay. Martha? Yeah, this is a question that's triggered by this but it's also more general. I mean, thank you Chris for all this detail but what triggered me with the curved roads, there are a lot of things here and then in the screening and so on that are sort of nice to have, but how do they get prioritized compared to say the more important things of minimizing the grading and the removal of trees and so on? Curved roads, my picture is, oh my you have to impact more land area if you want to road the curve. Well, this is all at the discretion of the permit granting authority. So if there are reasons not to curve the road to have it be straight that have to do with the topography or cutting down of trees that would certainly be taken into consideration. These are really design standards, what it's gonna look like. So there will also be standards related to operation and management and maintenance and those will be dealing with things like erosion control and that type of thing. I don't think we cover erosion control in this section. So those are certainly very important things but these are also things that need to be taken into consideration. So I appreciate your comment but that will come in another section. Can I just jump into Chris just to sort of state and I'm sorry I can't find my racing hand feature so I apologize. That curved roads are important because if you have a straight road that's gonna contribute to the potential for a more concentrated runoff. So you'll get greater velocity and so the reason, that's a really important reason to have those to help alleviate severe erosion. Yes and so maybe saying that the curve roads for the extent possible isn't just then for the purpose of the views but also to help a limit erosion and whatever else. But okay, so I think it's just my general understanding that in the bylaw as a whole there will be a separate section that has the overall priorities that will then guide the permit granting authority when they make their discretionary decisions on some of these details that are in this section. Is that the true statement then? Yes, but I think that the permit granting authority makes its own priorities depending on the project. So we give them criteria that they use to evaluate the project and then they determine based on what's being presented to them, what the site is like, et cetera. What needs to be prioritized in certain instances. So I think it'll become clearer as things go on and you'll also, yeah, so I won't say any more about that. Okay, thank you. Great and before you go on, Stephanie, if you could just hit the magnifying up a couple of notches would be really helpful to me at least. Yeah. Down at the bottom right. Yeah, exactly, perfect, thank you. Awesome. So lighting, in general, most of these things aren't lit. There's no reason to light them, but there might be reason to light them if there is need to maintain them or repair them. So lighting, lighting of solar photovoltaic installations shall be consistent with local state and federal law. Lighting of other parts of the installation such as a pertinent structure shall be limited to that required for safety and operational purposes and shall be reasonably shielded from abutting properties. Where feasible, lighting of the solar photovoltaic installation shall be directed downward and shall incorporate full cutoff fixtures to reduce light pollution. That's usually a requirement of both the zoning board of appeals and the planning board. And then the second paragraph, lighting of solar photovoltaic installations shall be limited to nighttime maintenance and inspections by authorized personnel. So in other words, there won't be lighting every night just when there's a need to be there on the site to do something. All lighting shall comply with international dark sky standards, fixture of seal of approval, certification requirements. There should be no illumination when personnel are not on site. Okay, so are there things that people want to change or add there? Just real quickly for me, at least Chris, is maybe to, I know this whole bylaw tends to deal more with large scale ground mounted solar PV installations, but just maybe add that lighting for large scale ground mounted solar PV installations just so folks don't think they need to do this for their residential system. Right, yeah, got it. Okay, signage again. Sorry, Janet. So Chris, I was a little confused by this section because it seems to kind of restate or what our current bylaw says about lighting because it has to be downcast, dark sky compliant, not lit after business use, which arguably it'd be hard to understand. So I wondered if it needed to be here or is it here just as a signal to people? There's actually nothing in the zoning bylaw that talks about lighting in this way. We never managed to get a lighting section of the bylaw together. There are standards that the zoning board of appeals and the planning board relies on and they make it a condition of their permit approval, but there is really not much written down. There is a section that's kind of tacked on to the zoning board of appeals rules and regulations that talks about lighting and talks about dark sky compliance, but I felt that this would be a good thing to include here since we don't have a separate section of our bylaw that deals with lighting and we don't have a specific lighting standard that is written down at this time. Even though as I said, we practice that but we don't have it written. So that would be, this would be encompassing over the solar things. And so the building commissioner and any board could use it. Okay. Just real quick, quickly also Chris, unless it's in a different section, but is it with the lighting also be important for emergency personnel to have access to turn on at their discretion? Yes. So that would be maintenance, inspections and emergency. Okay. Right. Okay. I will include that. Sorry. I must say as an astronomer, I approve of having a statement in here about reference to the dark sky standards and down directed lighting. So that is an overall concern. Good. Again, signage is really not a generally an issue on these in these installations, but it's worthy of mentioning anyway. So signs on large scale ground mounted solar photo or photovoltaic installations shall comply with town of Amherst zoning by law, article eight. A sign consistent with town of Amherst zoning by law, article eight shall be required to identify the owner and provide a 24 hour emergency contact phone number of the installation owner or operator. Shall I just keep reading? Solar photovoltaic installations and maybe we should change that wording to be consistent with the large scale. So I will do that. Shall not be used for displaying any advertising except for reasonable identification. They're having a celebration next door. So you'll probably hear clapping. Someone is retiring. So anyway, these installations shall not be used for displaying any advertising except for reasonable identification of the manufacturer or operator of the solar photovoltaic installation. Again, perhaps that term should be coordinated. In addition to identification signs, the permit granting authority may permit signs for safety such as no trespassing signs and signs required to warn of danger. So maybe the may there should be shall, shall permit signs for safety. Mm-hmm. And then at the discretion of the permit granting authority exceptions may also be made for educational signs that provide information about the project. The permit granting authority shall determine the appropriate size, materials and placement of such educational signs. To the extent possible signs should be grouped together to reduce sign clutter. So new people have comments about this section. Laura has her hand up. I just have one comment. So Chris, I think the only other thing to add would be signage for battery storage for the requirements of the fire department. I know we talked about that when the fire department joined us. Yep. Making sure that they have instructions there. I think that should absolutely be a requirement. Thank you. Okay. Utility connections. Can you scroll up such stuff? Thanks. Reasonable efforts as determined by the permit granting authority shall be made to place all utility connections from these installations. Again, I'll coordinate that phrase underground depending on appropriate soil conditions, shape and topography of the site and any requirements of the utility provider. Electrical transformers for utility can internet connections may be above ground if required by the utility provider. Any comments on that? I guess I would, I'm not sure was this from Cape Codd maybe or? Yeah. I'm just wondering, and Laura may have some better sense on this, but it seems very unusual that these projects, certainly the wiring between the panels and so forth is generally underground or in conduits, but from the inverter to the three phase power, from my understanding of these solar projects are, the vast majority are overhead poles. And I'm wondering, Cape Codd may have some, obviously some different differences there. I am concerned about the cost of that associated with that to a solar developer. I agree with that, Dwayne. Yeah. So this is also wording that is used by, generally speaking by shootsberry. So maybe there's a way of ameliorating this or mitigating it to allow some overhead wires and maybe Laura could help with the wording of that, where necessary, but generally speaking, if it's possible to put the connections underground, are you able to come up with some language Laura that would make this acceptable? Yeah, I think it's just a matter of, we can certainly say there's a preference to have it underground, but I think making it a requirement is where you might, you know, arrive at a place where the economics of a project would no longer make sense. So a preference to have it underground, we're feasible. Yeah. And you could even say, yeah, we're, I don't know if it's economically feasible as well, but yes. And the permacranting authority has to evaluate the economics, so I'm a little bit reluctant to put that in. Yeah, maybe I don't think so. Just we're feasible. Yeah, I agree. Okay, glare. Solar panels to the maximum extent feasible shall be positioned and screened so as not to create glare and to minimize glare on surrounding occupied structures. The large-scale ground-mounted solar photovoltaic installation shall be positioned to minimize glare on any residents or public way. The applicant should submit ratings and technical specifications for the solar panels to ensure minimal reflectivity. The design of the installation shall prevent reflected solar radiation or glare from becoming a public nuisance or hazard to adjacent buildings, roadways or properties. Design efforts may include but not be limited to deliberate placement or arrangement on the site, anti-reflective materials, solar glare modeling and screening in addition to required landscaping. Any comments on this section? Dan, yep. Yeah, so this appears to me to be kind of very dependent upon adjoining land use. So what would happen, say, if they designed an array that didn't cause glare on any adjoining buildings and then someone built a building next door? Usually that's coming to the nuisance. That's what that's called. So when you come to the nuisance, you don't really have the same rights as people who have the same rights as people who existed there previously. Okay, so the wording in this document could not be used to defend adjoining, I guess, to how do I put it, used against the solar operator, essentially by adjoining property owners, right? I think you can always file a lawsuit, I think that the chances of winning the lawsuit and Janet may be able to comment on this are less if you actually moved to a situation where there was a problem. So we try to prevent problems in general from affecting houses or businesses, but if you choose to locate next to a place that might have such a problem, usually you don't have that much to argue about, and maybe we could ask Janet to elaborate on that. I don't really know much about that area, but I think that probably happens a lot with farmland, like people move next to farms and they basically say they smell, there's loud noises and things like that. I don't have a legal background in that. Okay. So this is all going to be reviewed by the town attorney before it goes to town council, so maybe that's a question that we could ask them. Sorry, I accidentally muted Dan, and I think he was about to say something, so. No, that's Chris just answering my question. So, okay. Sorry about that, Dan. Okay, I'm just making a note. Okay, visual impact. Now, this is a section that I was a little bit uncomfortable with, and so this is also a section that I would want to have KP Law look at, and I don't know how much power a town has to address visual impact, but I put it in here because it seems like, it seems like a worthwhile thing, but I'm not sure how much teeth it's going to have. And again, maybe Laura could help with this. Maybe she's had experience with this, but let's read through it anyway. So, and it's also something that we use for wireless telecommunication. We do have requirements for people who are coming to put in a wireless telecommunication poll with lots of antennae and things on top that they need to provide visual simulations and convince the town that they're not marring the landscape, but let's read through it and see what we think. So, a visual impact assessment shall be conducted that follows established protocols. Such assessment should include the following. Number one, a design narrative, a narrative that describes how the project has been configured or located and how it avoids or minimizes visual impacts. Maps and documentation of the analysis conducted shall accompany the narrative and be used to generally describe the anticipated visibility of the project. The narrative should provide details concerning alternative configurations or sites that were evaluated in the design process and the design mitigation strategies employed to reduce any visual impact to sensitive resources. Does anyone have any comments on that paragraph? Okay. Number two, inventory and inventory and description of the cultural and scenic resources located within the viewshed of the proposed activity, including historic structures and historic districts, scenic roads, cultural landscapes and vistas in parentheses, open areas that are visible from public roads, clothes prints, and recreational areas. Information on these resources may be found by searching MACRAS. That's a database of historic buildings and by reviewing the town's master plan, open space and recreation plan, historic preservation plan, and other local plans. Any comments? It looks like Janet has a comment. Just go, let's go through the whole thing. I thought I undid my hand, but. Okay. Three, visualizations and simulations. With input from the permit granting authority, the applicant shall utilize tools such as photo simulations and or viewshed analyses through renderings, line of sight studies, and or two or three dimensional visualizations, i.e. photo montage, video montage, animation produced through spatial information systems and geographic information systems to assess the visual impacts and describe the anticipated effect of the proposed project on the region's scenic and cultural resources. The number of simulations required will depend on the anticipated impact and the sensitivity of the resources present. Visual impact assessment should include consideration of all parts of the project, including all associated infrastructure. In the event more than one alternative is being considered, the visual impact of all alternatives should be evaluated by the applicant. The assessment should map locations along local public ways where the solar installation is visible above the visual horizon and anticipate locations such as high elevation points or across water bodies where distant views are possible. Conferring with town of Amherst's staff to identify points of view of particular interest were concerned to be documented at the time of the visual impact assessment. Number four, visual mitigation. Propose mitigation measures as applicable. Mitigation may include careful sighting, sighting away from scenic resources and key view sheds, curvilinear access roads and screening. Okay, what comments do we have for that? Go ahead, Dan. This is really kind of about this entire section. This seems very expensive. And I'm concerned that having such a detailed analysis of visual impact could discourage solar development. And perhaps someone who has a little bit more experience like Laura could weigh in on how burdensome is this really to a solar developments. So again, I think it's okay if we say it's a preference, but I mean, you're always going to do the visualizations of the site and present that. I think like, you know, I'm looking at like things like the number of simulations required will depend on the anticipated impact of the sensitivity of the resources present. Yeah. I mean, I think later on we go to address like landscaping, but yeah, I think it needs to be suggestions. I mean, I think you can ask as a preference for them to do certain things. So in this stuff is, I just need to see like, Chris, where did you get the language for three-dimensional visualizations, video montage? No one really ever does that. Well, people do it for architecture. Yeah, I've never seen them for solar. I'm not sure about solar, but I know they do it for architecture and it's fairly common like Berkshire design group can whip these things out and so can Cune-Riddle. They don't seem to have much trouble presenting things like flyovers and showing a building from all different sides. And it seems to be like a current way of presenting information, but this may be excessive. So. Yeah, it feels excessive. I've never seen that in solar. I've never seen, I get for architecture, but I've never seen it for solar. Essentially what's typically done is, you'll do like an advance of having like, you'd have like an altar with like the orientation of the panels. I can look a little bit more deeply and see what is typically done that's above that, but I do think we're asking a lot here. It could be that this is a requirement where the visual aspect of something is particularly important and not in other parts of town. So there's probably a lot of conversation that we can have about this section and maybe people can think about it and come back at the next meeting and we'll talk about it a little more. How's that? That sounds good to me, but let's hear from Jack. Yeah, my kind of same question that Laura had with regard to, you mentioned the Cape Con Commission. So where you were using Cape Con Commission in town of Schuetsbury for the overall kind of template for this. So I was just wondering where you got some of the nuts and bolts because you were kind of reaching over to wireless towers and talking about architectural things. And it seems like this seems to be kind of reaching out to other sources. And so, yeah, limiting it and discussing it, next meeting sounds like a good idea. Great Janet. So looking at just the number three, I think it's pretty flexible because it's pretty much what the planning board would do or the ZBA might ask someone for. And I think Chris is right, is the architect show us like, what does this building look like from 30 yards away or looking at it from Kendrick Park and things like that. So usually we get that and if we don't get that, we ask for it because it does have impact depending on your point of view. So I think that it's something that the planning board of the ZBA could ask for anyway and get. It seems really specific, but it's also the language is very flexible and saying it could include this, like things like this. And so I think that, you know, I don't think the planning board would go mad with it or the ZBA, so that's one thought is, but I also think, you know, this section on design standards and performance standards is a really key section which is gonna be things that we really care about with large scale solar installations. And I don't know if we have a question that would come out. I don't think we have a question in the survey, but I wonder if this issue about visual impact, if it's really important to the town people, this section is really important to have in. We have a lot of scenic roads, we have a lot of natural beauty, we have the holy oaks and people climbing them and staring and hopefully going to eat atkins afterwards. So I think this is an important issue, but I sort of wish, I wonder if there's a way to, if it's really important to residents, then I think we leave it in and realize it's flexible. So I'm sort of, that's my thoughts. Thanks, Janet. Jack, are you up again? No, okay. No, sorry. Yeah, okay, great. Let me just put in my two cents and then we'll move on is, and we can definitely worthy section to talk about again next time. And my thought is maybe to have sort of some minimum requirements, which could be based on what the state of the art of solar industry is now in terms of what they're commonly do with regard to photo simulation or visual visualization, but then sort of at the discretion of the PGA, sorry, what was that again? PGA. PGA, having, you know, depending on the sensitivity of the view shed and so forth and the who would be affected, then to have the ability to require some additional higher quality and informative visualizations. But we can all discuss that next time. But Dan? Yeah, I think having strict requirements regarding aesthetic aspects of these projects, to me personally, snacks and NIMBYism, you know, if you want clean energy, you know, you have to tolerate the infrastructure for it. So I think what Janet was talking about is a really good idea, but you need to know where the people of Amherst stand on this as opposed to what my opinion is, right? And I think that would really inform how they write this section. Great, thanks. And I guess this section, this specific section three is not restricting. It's just what's required by the applicant to provide to the town for, to be able to help to review the project. It comes a little bit later, I think, Chris, in terms of what the remedies are to mitigate visual impact. Yeah, and sometimes these don't have to be, you know, fly-throughs, video fly-throughs. They can be as simple as giving a cross-section of topography over a certain distance and showing view lines. You know, these are things that I did in graduate school when I was studying landscape architecture. They're not that hard to do just to show like, if you have a scenic road and you have a solar array on a hill, well, how much of that solar array you're gonna see from this scenic road and are there things that you can do with, you know, planting in front of it that can screen it from the road? So, you know, it doesn't have to be a fly-through. It could be as simple as a cross-section, okay? So the next section is fencing. So I think fencing is important to the people who build these things, but in any event, appropriate measures shall be taken to prevent the solar arrays from being damaged or tampered with by individuals trying to access the area of the installation. So that's like acknowledging that the installer and the operator has a stake in keeping these things safe. The method of securing the site shall be subject to the approval of the permit granting authority. The need for fencing shall be determined by the applicant unless such fencing is needed to comply with town bylaws and or as required per national electric code. I think maybe the state has some requirements too, but I'm not sure and Laura might know about this. If installed, such fencing shall be no more than eight feet tall. The ones that we've seen here have been seven feet tall. The Cape Cod Commission had up to 10 feet tall, but I thought eight feet would be reasonable for ammers, but that's certainly something we can talk about. And shall be placed at least six inches off the ground to allow migration of wildlife and shall have an emergency access system padlock or box at each gate. Again, the six inches off the ground is up to conversation because I know in at least one instance in Amherst we've had nine inches off the ground and Stephanie may remember which one this is. I think it was the Hope-it-Hill solar that had a requirement for nine inches off the ground, so that's something we could say six to nine inches, whatever. The fence shall be consistent with the character of surrounding properties set back from roadway frontage and public areas and screened by vegetation. So do people have comments about this section? Laura has her hand up. Oh, sorry. So I guess my only comment is I have not yet seen, so when developers build a project and they sell it to an asset owner, I have never encountered a situation where you have a larger ground mount system and a fence is not required because they wanna protect their asset from random people. I mean, you can't just go approach a solar farm. There is like electrical equipment that could be dangerous and they also wanna prevent damage to the farm itself. What I don't know is, I know they may have their own fencing requirements, but I think this is just really standard. I think they would want that. So you don't see any problems with this? No, I don't. The only thing I question is whether we're, the dictation of the height, we might have to be flexible on that. I mean, some asset owners might want it at 10 feet, I'm not sure. Maybe they, maybe we could say no more than eight feet tall unless permitted by permit granting authority. And that gives the applicant an opportunity to talk to the permit granting authority and tell them reasons why they need something that's taller than that. I think that's a good idea. Okay. Screening. The large-scale ground mounted solar photovoltaic installation shall be designed to minimize its visibility, including preserving natural vegetation to the maximum extent possible. Blending in equipment with the surroundings, adding vegetative buffers and or fencing to provide an effective visual barrier from adjacent roads and driveways and from abutting dwellings. The installation shall be effectively screened year-round from all public and private ways and from adjacent residential lots. The permit granting authority may alter or waive this requirement if such screening would have a detrimental impact on the operation and performance of the array. Where existing vegetation in the setbacks is insufficient to achieve year-round screening, additional screening shall be provided, including but not limited to planting of dense, vegetative screening, fencing, berms, use of natural ground elevations and or land contouring, all depending on site-specific conditions. Tree cutting within the required setback area shall not be permitted if it would reduce to any degree the effectiveness of the year-round screening. If additional plantings are required for screening, a planting plan shall be submitted showing the types, sizes and locations of material to be used. Using a diversity of plant species native to New England and shall be subject to the approval of the permit granting authority. Plantings shall include a variety of native trees and shrubs of varying heights staggered to effectively screen the installation from view during construction and operations. The depth of the vegetative screen shall be a minimum of 50 feet unless otherwise approved by the PGA. At least 75% of the planting shall consist of evergreens and shall be evenly spaced throughout the setback area. I think Schuetsbury used 30 feet, but Cape Cod or one other group said 50 feet. So that's also a number that's open to debate. Additional plantings should include native plants that provide food, pollen and or shelter for native wildlife and or follow a food forest model. Which I don't really know what that is, but that was something that was in the Cape Cod bylaw. Integrating trees, shrubs, perennial plants and ground covers to mimic a native woodland that creates habitat for local wildlife and provides food for humans and wildlife. Use of invasive plants as identified in the most recent version of the Massachusetts prohibited plant list maintained by the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources is prohibited. Cultivars of native plants may be acceptable if sourcing of native species is not possible. That's the end of that section. Oh, no, there's a couple more things. Planting of the vegetative screening shall be completed prior to connection of the installation. Plants shall be maintained and replaced if unhealthy by the owner operator of the installation for the life of the installation. Large scale ground mounted solar photovoltaic installations shall not be approved unless the system design provides screening and buffers to adequately protect scenic vistas and view sheds from residential uses. That doesn't really make sense. Public streets and any waterways or water bodies. There's something odd about the wording of this, which I noticed when I was writing it, but I'm not sure how to fix it to adequately protect scenic vistas and view sheds, comma, and to adequately protect residential uses public streets, probably something like that. Okay, any comments on this section? I do, Dwayne, you're on mute. Laura, had her hand up first. Sorry, Laura. So a couple of things. So, Chris, if you scroll up top a little bit higher up, okay, right there. Where did it go? Tree cutting within the required setback area shall not be permitted to reduce to any degree the effectiveness of your own screening. The only concern there is that one of the requirements, obviously of building a large scale solar facility is that there's no shading on the farm itself. So if there are trees in the setback area that cast shade on the PV panels, we couldn't say that. And then my other comment is, go further down a little bit to the last part. Okay, so, and I tend to agree with Dan, this last section here, that they shall not be improved unless it provides screening and buffers to adequately protect scenic vistas. I think it's completely fine to require landscaping requirements, shrubs, things like that. But I also wanna be careful because I don't, I based on our attorney's review of sort of the land law in the US, I don't, excuse me, Massachusetts, I don't really reject a solar PV installation because we don't like how it looks or because we can see it from a certain point. So, I've never seen a developer say no to any plantings and things like that. So I think we can do that, but I would say, I don't know, I would not have that language be as strong, that would be my suggestion. Yeah, okay. And then the other piece, yeah, the other piece I would add to that would be not just putting in, I don't think this is, I don't necessarily know what's right here, but I think any system that we use, that the town does approve, it's not just- I can't hear you. Oh, really? Okay, I'll get closer. When we do require vegetation, we need to require that they maintain the vegetation. As in you can't just plant trees and not, you know, in the middle of July and say, yeah, I planted trees and walk away, you know, there has to be some sort of management of vegetation as well. Yeah, I think it says in the paragraph above where, let's see, planting a vegetative screening shall be completed prior to its connection. And then plants shall be maintained and replaced if unhealthy by the owner for the life of the installation. So does that capture? Yeah, that's great, yeah. Okay, all right. Great, thank you, Laura. Yep, Janet. Just in terms of Laura's concerns about, I think the third, the second to last paragraph about shall not be approved, I think there's mitigation or flexibility in the word adequately. It's not saying there can't be any view of the solar array from the view shed, but it has to be adequately protecting it. So there's some flexibility there and some sort of softening. So that's just one point. I'm not sure if it will satisfy her concern, but I think that's kind of soft language that gives a discretion. I had a, you know, this is also like, is this important to people? I think the more you screen, the more support you have for solar. And I think that, you know, I feel this way about design standards for buildings. It's like, it could be big and ugly or it could be big and beautiful and people will support big one. It's pretty more than one. It's just ugly. So I think this might be an important section and an important concern for people in town, but a very tiny point I wanted to make on that one is I wondered if you would want to require the removal of invasive plants. I think we, I think the planning board once required somebody to remove some plants in a parking lot. And I just wondered if that's part of the maintenance of it or not. I just kind of, I just remembered that. That would be a big ask. I think especially if this thing were really large, the hope is that when you plant something below the solar panels that you nurture it enough so it grows well and doesn't allow invasive species to come in, but then to ask the operator to come in and actually remove invasive species from a large area. I don't know if that's a reasonable requirement. That's a good point. Great, I had one comment, Chris. So this section has to do with screening. So it's a peripheral area around the array and screening it from visualization, particularly that was in the previous section. I am also, and I think it may go in this design category or maybe it fits somewhere else, but within the array, what's the habitat encouraged and the planting that's encouraged within the array, I think is also something we might address. And I'm thinking here, because some developers might put gravel, some developers might put grass. And I think we wanna, I'm not sure about prohibit those things, but certainly encourage and maybe give preferential treatment to developers on these larger arrays to plant native species and particularly pollinator-friendly species and species that are supportive of wildlife. We're gonna raise the fences up a bit so wildlife can use these areas as well, but there may be a section, maybe it's not in screening, but it's another section that talks about the ground, treatment of ground within the array. Yep. And to that point, which I was scratching my head a little bit on the very first paragraph in the screening section, where it says shall be, the installation shall be designed to minimize its visibility, including preserving natural vegetation and so forth. That is probably also focused and applicable to the screening area, but we might make that clear and then have a separate section that would be on the internal area. That's probably a better term for that. Yep, okay, got it. All right, this is super, Chris, thank you. Okay, one more sentence here. Control of vegetation, synthetic herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers may not be used to control vegetation or animals, except as otherwise approved by the Permit Granting Authority. So some bylaws have blanket prohibition on the use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. I know that in the Hickory Ridge installation, there was a need to use herbicides. And it had to do with, I think it had to do with clearing the site for the solar array. And maybe Stephanie knows more about this than I do, but there was a need for the applicant to go back to the zoning board of appeals to ask permission to use herbicides to clear the ground. And I think it had to do with the ability to plant what was actually wanted there. So they wanted to wipe out what was there that was bad and then plant something better. And so we wanna make sure that there's that ability to do that. We don't wanna say you can't use herbicides at all. And maybe there's some language that should be put here having to do with watershed protection. I know when I read through the Water Supply Protection Committee report, there was concern about using synthetic herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers near water supplies. So maybe there's some added language that needs to go in about that. I'll just add on to that, that in our clean energy extension, our pollinator friendly certification for PV, pollinator friendly PV certification, we talk about the use of herbicide there too. And it's similarly, you're able to use it, but under very strict and necessary circumstances, there's not a categorical exclusion, but there's also recognition that there are some cases where you just can't otherwise get this habitat established without first applying some herbicide from my understanding. Could you send me a reference to that? Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Okay, Laura. Okay, sorry, my question to you, Chris, was is this language, I just wanna make sure that we prohibit this synthetic pesticides, et cetera, with all forms of development and Amherst and not just solar. This is language that I got from the Water Supply Protection Committee, and I think I also got it from Cape Cod. So we do not prohibit use of these materials in all cases of development in Amherst. I think they are possibly prohibited in areas that are adjacent to wetlands, so within 100 feet of wetlands or water supply, but we don't prohibit it everywhere in Amherst. Yeah, so I guess one other follow-up point there, because certainly in sensitive watershed areas, we absolutely wanna do this, but just two points, it makes complete sense by Cape Cod would do this, because we're Cape Cod and we're basically at sea level, but I also wanna note that while we're utilizing the Cape Cod bylaw, Cape Cod is notoriously one of the most cost prohibitive and difficult places to put solar in the state, you do not have a lot of solar in Cape Cod. So I just want us to sort of take all the language with a grain of salt. So I guess my comment there is, I think we should treat solar just like we treat other types of development. And if we don't require it for other types of development, I think we can give a strong preference, but that's just my thought. Great, thank you. Jack? Yeah, I just think that we are generally as a society kind of moving away from the herbicides, but besides fertilizers in general, and that there's a way around that in terms, I think, planning appropriate vegetation to begin with. And then, but I just think it's fairly standard in terms of best management practices of the other bylaws that we have at our disposal to review. Great, Martha? Yeah, Justin in response to that point about do we prohibit synthetic pesticides, et cetera, in other cases, I think where as Jack says, we're moving in that direction and maybe we should or maybe in a few years, we will be prohibiting the use of these pesticides and other forms of development too. So I think it doesn't harm us to put that in here right now. I know in our neighborhood, somebody hired a herd of goats to take out all the poison ivy and apparently it worked pretty well and they didn't have to use pesticides. So there are alternatives. All right, good. Laura, did you have your hand up again? I'm sorry. Just one more quick. I would say that I wasn't aware of that. I agree with Jack and Martha. So I think that's good to include. But I also would go, I think one of the things that I would suggest, including would be, and I don't know if it's here or not, but that we would give preference to solar farms that incorporate Agrivoltaics. And I think that's sort of the next wave here is that I'm working with another number of developers now who are incorporating like actual bee farming on the site or growing vegetation, like actual farm plants around the solar arrays. So if that's, I don't know if it's here, Chris or somewhere else. I do think that that's very much in the spirit of sort of our goals of a community. Great, yeah. And I'm not sure where that, where we might, where that issue of preference, at least on farm agricultural land to have preference for dual use array configurations. I'm not sure where that would go in the structure of the bylaw, but I agree that's something we might wanna look at. Sorry, Jack, is your hand up again? Be great. Add that, yeah, fertilizers, you know, different ballgame in general versus herbicides pesticides, but it seems like this section needs a little bit of work, but I mean, just looking at the other bylaws, it's, we're probably paying more attention to this and it's all good, but we'll have Chris, let Chris have some fun with this one. All right, super. All right, good. Make sure you put your hand down when you're done and don't have another comment, which is helpful, but so I know I know Janet. So this actually ties into what I wanted to talk about later and it seems like this section of design and performance standards, we need to leave open because if we as a committee make a recommendation that large scale arrays are okay on prime soils or soils of statewide importance, but we're gonna require dual use farming and what kind. So that could be a performance standard saying a plan for dual use farming, that for a vegetable or a herd of animals and things like that and similar for forestry. If we're allowing trees to be cut, is there some kind of wildlife corridors to be set up or some plantings and things like that? So I think this section, I think we just leave open for kind of later discussions, but I do have a question in that same idea, Chris. When I looked at the outline, there's gonna be, there were also sections for storm, preparedness, land clearing, erosion control, noise control and mitigation. I'm not, is that coming later? Or okay, I know your time pressure is more than maybe most since I spend a lot of time in meetings with you and it seems almost weekly now. So or bi-weekly. So I think that this design and performance standards we may be filling in with different things that we wanna control or require. And that of course would go back to the application requirements. If we're requiring dual use, then the applicant has to obviously put together a plan for that. And so anyway, I just, there's more to come, I think, but we're sallying on. Great. Okay, this is great. And I think starting to get into some of the conversations we've all been waiting for in terms of making this bylaw really appropriate for Amherst and address some of the important issues that we all recognize are in front of us and now coming to fruition. Anything to wrap up Chris or is this, we're at the end, right, of the draft? Yeah, we're at the end. And I'll go back and edit this based on our conversation today and also edit the one that we went over previously, the submitter requirements based on comments that I received and hopefully have those for you next time. And maybe I'll have more, another new one, we'll see. Okay, okay, but this is great and really appreciate your ability to draft this for us and walk us through it. So, great. Okay, we're, as usual, running out of time. What I propose looking at the agenda here is that we take five minutes. Janet, for you to introduce your topic to us in terms of future topics, allow for others to bring forward some additional topics. And then we go to public comment. Thank you so much. I'm not sure if everybody had a chance to read through my memo, but I've been looking at the natural working land sections of the 2025 to 2030 climate action plan. And then also at the Amherst climate plan and resilience plan that ECAC put together. And I'm not sure if the town council endorsed, but I think they did. And so when I read those plans, which talk about increased community access to farmland, more local food production, protecting all these lands that sequit the farmlands and forests and wetlands that are sequestering carbon and increasing protection. My reaction is, okay, we need to protect that. And so the question to me isn't solar versus farmland, solar versus forest, but how do we do all three? How do we get solar? How do we keep our farmland? And how do we protect our forests? And so that's my question and my issue. And so I think to get to that question, like do we want to allow solar on prime soils and soils of great statewide importance? Do we wanna allow a large scale array on a forest area? We need to talk and look at what the importance of those are or how you can do it in a way that doesn't compromise the values that we wanna keep. And so I have been talking to some people who are involved in regional and statewide agriculture, who have been looking at this issue. I've been looking at maps of Amherst land and the Pioneer Valley. And I grew up in an area which had tons of farming on Long Island for feeding basically New York. And now we just provide, that's been all covered up except for some vineyards and things like that. And so I do have this personal sense of urgency not losing a resource that's kind of amazing and we sort of take it for granted. So my proposal is basically to have us look at farms, farm soils, farmland, what the current thinking is, how can we do both on the same piece of land or can we or some lands do we wanna set aside? And then also the same for forests. And I have some ideas for speakers and I would love to work with someone about that to kind of put together maybe a session on each and then talk about like how we can do everything, how we can really have it all if that's possible. I think that's it. I mean, in terms of the forest land, we might be limiting the size of arrays. We might be making sure they're not in a wildlife corridor. We might be saying no, we might be requiring some kind of offsets or mitigation. And so it'd be good to look at what people are doing on that as well as what the state is thinking. Cause I think the state is gonna come out with some guidance too. I didn't know how fast I spoke, I tried. No, that's a good summary of your thoughts and concerns and memo and proposal I guess. Let's hear from, okay. Martha had her hand up first. Okay, Martha, then Laura and then Jack. Oh, sorry, I missed you, Chris too, but it's okay. Regarding the farmlands, I've had some conversations with Dave Zomack and he has offered to come and speak to our group about the farmlands in Amherst and I would highly recommend that. I think it would help if we had just some general things like how much is the acreage of farmland? How many different kinds of farms? What kinds are they? Do we have mainly vegetable farms or orchards or hay fields and cattle? And then we would be able to get some assessment of what might be appropriate for dual use. Maybe he can tell us something about the soil analysis. I know Deerfield, there was news in the paper that they'd done their soil analysis so on so that we could do things that would be relevant to the farmers here in Amherst to encourage solar with the needs of the specific farms in mind and what might work for dual use or what we might want to say that would be helpful or what requirements to put in. So I would like to request that we take Dave Zomack up on his offer. He's the conservation director for Amherst and invite him to come and give a presentation with an overview of our local farmlands and ability to ask him questions. Great, thank you, Martha. And we did follow up with Dave Zomack and he's on board to do that. Oh, good. So he did follow up, yeah, talk with you. Okay, yeah. And that being said, I would suggest, I mean, Dave Zomack is the, what's his full title conservation director? He's also the assistant town manager. I was just gonna say if we get some specific things that we want him to present. Exactly. So he's ahead of time so that he can, you know, really utilize his time well. Yeah, I think beyond, I mean, he can speak to a lot of the issues beyond farms too in terms of conservation land more generally as well. And to your point, not just of what the farms are, but what's already conserved in the town with regard to farmland, forest lands and open space and so forth. So I don't know, I'll work with Stephanie in terms of scheduling that as soon as maybe next meeting or the following meeting, depending on Dave's availability. Okay, good. Yes, well, I will. But to Stephanie's point, I think we'd be best off having a sort of a set of subjects we want Dave to cover for us. Yes, well, I'll send Dwayne and Stephanie, I'll send you my little list of questions then. Yeah, well, we certainly had your email on that. Okay, Laura, yep. So just one comment, I think, philosophically, I agree with the desire to preserve rich agricultural farmland, but I can tell you that I've seen this play out a lot of times across the country where when you have farmers who are not able to make a living with whatever products they're farming, they move to solar. And I don't think it's our place to, and we're just setting ourselves up for a big legal battle, to tell a farmer of prime agricultural land that you can't do something unless we have an alternative solution that provides the same economic return. So I would just say, would you try carefully there because I speak to so many farmers across the country who they do solar on part of their ag land so they can make ends meet, the price of soybeans, corn, whatever it might be, have plummeted or they're aging farmers and they're considering doing solar or selling it to a residential developer. So I think we need to just be mindful about how we proceed. I think having Dave here is a great idea, but I just wanna make sure we're also realistic and we'll look right down. Great, thanks. Jack? Yeah, I guess along the same vein of Laura, but also more importantly, I think that solar is more like barring the land versus a more permanent type of development that we would see during residential or commercial industrial development. And it kind of gives me a little bit of relief knowing that in 30 years with the economic climate changing or our knowledge of climate sustainability needs that it becomes more viable at that point. But yeah, I do with a little bit concerned about us telling landowners that they have good soil that they need to farm it. Anyway, and again, I've said this before, I think Amherst is fairly adequately protective of them with regard to conservation areas and designation of existing farmlands and areas through various programs. Great, I think Dave Zomac could illuminate that for us as a group, so thank you. Okay, let's finish up with Janet and then I wanna open it up for any public comments. So I appreciate what people are saying. So that's actually why I think we need to do with some sessions on this because when I was talking to the statewide people, they were talking about like farmers need money. And at the same time, a lot of farmers are looking for land, it's expensive and the solar kind of conversions make the land more valuable. And so, and they kept on saying not just sheep. And some lands really need to be, so I think that nuanced look is something that farmers and people in the industry can give us. I would like to see us maybe as homework read ECAC's the Climate Action Plan sections on farmland and also the state plan, the 2020, 2030 about natural or working lands. And both of these plans are really long, so I could send out the page numbers because it gives you a different background and it's kind of complicated and it's nuanced. So I thought that would be a good background or homework if I can assign that. But I could also talk to the people I've talked to about coming to speak at a meeting too. And also maybe Jonathan Thompson from the Harvard Forest who's been working on this issue for Forest. Great, thank you. Okay, very good, really good conversation. Stephanie, if you can invite any public comment and we'll take it, we'll go over time a little bit if people can drop off, obviously. Sure, Jenny has her hand up. So Jenny Callak can go ahead and unmute. Thank you, Steph. Thank you, everybody. Exciting day with a live website. Very quickly, the website links to sustaining Amherst of the webpage in the town. I had a look over there and I know everybody's busy in town. First, noticed it was stale, but then when I actually clicked on some of the links, there's one that goes to a casino website. There's one that goes to a Russian shopping website. So maybe, you know, whatever y'all decide, you could remove that link. Yeah, Jenny, you can talk to me about that offline. So tell me and let me know which rather than taking the time for this meeting, we can talk about that. Okay, I just don't think- Thank you for the heads up. It's already live. And actually, my computer said some of those sites are dangerous. So I think the sooner you can get it off and then just think about fixing it. That would be great. And the other suggestion was with the solar assessment, I didn't hear anything about environmental justice overlay. And that's an important overlay that the state has done. It could be useful for people to be able to look at that overlay when they look at the assessment. So thank you very much. Thank you, Jenny. And is there anyone else from the attendee list who would like to speak or ask a question? I'm not seeing anybody else. All right, great. Okay, so we can close out the meeting. And it just, we're on schedule to meet again in two weeks on March 17th, again at 1130. And look forward to continuing going through the bylaw. And Stephanie, I guess you'll work with Dave Zomac in terms of what meets his calendar, maybe that 17th of the following meeting would be great. We'll try to get him for the next meeting. Great, okay. All right, very good. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, everyone. Pause.