 And you are now recording. Okay. Well, thank you, Stephanie. And. Welcome back everybody to the October 7th, 2022. Meeting of the solar bylaw working group. And I hope everybody's doing well. I don't. We have a quorum, which is great. We have just a couple of people maybe in the. Public attendees. We're just one at the moment, it looks like, but maybe more will join us. There's actually it looks like Chris. Maybe in that category at this point, Stephanie. So maybe move her into the panelist room. When you get a chance, but. But great. Hopefully everybody's doing well. And thanks Stephanie for pulling the agenda together and the. Meeting documents that were distributed this morning. So maybe didn't have a long time to look at those, but let's start through the agenda. Which I will get in front of me. Sorry. It's open in one of these windows and I'm sure it's the minutes to start. Yep. So we actually have, well, let me first say that. Laura, you're on tap for minutes today. Did that work for you? Yep. Great. Thank you. And just to. Set the stage that. That means we cycled once through everybody on the minute. So we're back to. Bob. Hopefully feeling better two weeks from now. And you're on tap for the minutes then for the next next meeting. Okay, great. All right. So, as you recall, we have two sets of minutes to. Comment on and approve. Which were both distributed today. So two meetings ago and then last meeting. Has had people had a chance to review them. And would we be ready to vote on them or does anybody have any comments? Let's go with the first one first, the October 5th. Sorry. Reading the wrong thing. What's eight August. August 31st. August 31st. August 31st minutes first. Anybody have any. Any questions or comments or requests for any amendments on that? If helpful, we can bring them up on the screen, but. If not, we don't need to. Let me let me know if anybody wants to see them. Okay. Without. Seemingly any. Comments on the minutes themselves. Might we hear a motion to accept the minutes? Okay. Sorry, Martha, I saw Janet's hand go up. Okay, that's fine. Accept the minutes. Great. Okay. Yeah, I'm not sure if a hand trumps a voice, but the hand went up first. So. Has provided a motion to accept the minutes and Martha, you seconding that. Yes, I second. So we'll need a voice vote for approval. So I'll start with Jack. Approve. Bob. Yes. Breaker. Yes. Hannah. Yes. McGowan. Yes. Paglia Rulo. Okay. The minutes are approved. Great. And then. Maybe fresher in our minds is two weeks ago. So we had the minutes from September 23rd. And then we also distributed this morning. Any thoughts or comments on those minutes or. Request for edits or modifications. Or to put them up on the screen. Cause I'm just, I'm sorry. Who made the motion to approve the last minutes. Yeah, that was Janet. Seconded by Martha. Do we have a motion to accept the minutes from September 23rd? Okay. Okay. Can somebody tell me what the red. The text in red means. Good questions. Let me open them and take a look. What's it. I think it was on the, the questions for the attorney. And I think it was what maybe what you had added Dwayne or what people had. From the previous meeting. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. And so those were the ones that were pending discussion. Is that. Satisfactory. And then any. Motion to accept. The. Sorry. The September 23rd minutes. I'll move to approve. All right. Do we hear a second? I'll second. Okay. We'll go with Martha on that. I was muted. Okay. So if you could unmute and give me a voice vote. Jim sick. Approve. Brooks. Yes. Breger. Yes. Hannah. Yes. McGowan. Yes. Taglia Rulo. Yes. Minutes are approved from the 23rd of September. And Stephanie, thank you for your work on both of those sets of minutes were rather long and complex. And I guess you had to spend quite a lot of time getting it all together. So thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Great. Before we move to staff updates, I just wanted to. Let folks know. About if you don't know already about two applicable. Public. Opportunities hearings and. Information coming along these topics from our state government. Many of you probably get are on these emails, but just want to make sure as well as anybody in the public. So EA. Energy environmental affairs. Secretary is having public hearings on their 20, 20, 50 clean energy and climate plan. The first one was last evening, which I listened to very informative and helpful. This, the, there's one going on actually, I think right now. But then there is an opportunity. Then all three of these public hearings are the same. It's a presentation and then an opportunity for public comment. There's the last, last of the three identical sessions. Is October 11th. You can find out more information from EA on that or ask me, I can send you the email. And then also importantly, and applicable to what we're doing is a DOER. Department of. Department of energy resources is holding public. Workshops on their technical potential for solar study for this. For potential, but technical potential for solar study. Where we'll. No doubt learn more information about. What that technical consultant is doing. They did do a survey. On public perceptions. And maybe there'll be some information about that. I don't know whether this includes. Opportunities for public. Engage public comment and engagement, but I think it may be. And so they're holding again to two sessions. I think. Identical to each other. Well, October 5th, which already happened. I did not attend that. If anybody did, I'd be interested in hearing. But then the, the second one. And the last one is October 11th. Six o'clock in the evening. So if people are interested in that. You can find that out at DOER. Or I can email you that. Hey, Dwayne, can you tell me the time for the EA. Workshop on the 11th. Anybody know offhand, I, I failed to write that part down. It's fine. We can leave it. Laura, I can fill that in. Thanks. Great. Okay. With that, let's move on to staff updates. And we'll start with, with Stephanie. We will have a chance to talk about the. The solar study for, for Amherst a bit later. So we don't need to go into any detail on that at this point. Sure. I want to. I won't go into any big detail, but I will just say that we have entered into a contract with. GCA geo, geo environmental. And I will, I can discuss that a little more further down. When it comes up as an item, agenda item. And I don't, there's other things going on, but I just sort of feel like what's relevant to this group. That's probably the most important piece. Absolutely. Yep. Thank you. All right. And Chris, thanks. Good. Welcome. And good, good for you to be here. Thanks. Any. Staff. Updates on the planning department side. Do know I do have an agenda item later on that I want to. So discussing a little bit more. Detail and get sort of a better understanding about how the planning department is going to interact with us. With regard to actually starting to outline draft the, the bylaw, but we'll get to that later. But any other updates. That would be helpful for us. Just two things. One is that the shoots very planning board is going to hold a virtual public hearing. On Monday, October 17th at 7pm. And they're going to be discussing two amendments to this shoots very zoning bylaw. Both of which appear to have a lot to do with solar. I don't have a link. And I went on their website. Yesterday, I think to look for a link. And they haven't posted it yet, but they did send out this public notice. So I thought you might be able to do that. But I don't know if I can do that. I don't know if you can do that. I haven't posted it yet, but they did send out this public notice. So I thought you might be interested Monday, October 17th at 7. The shoots very planning board. And that, and that may, you know, Have discussions that will be helpful to us. And then the second thing is that Janet and I had a conversation or email exchange about drafting the text of the zoning amendment. And she's got some things that she's written and she's going to be taking notes on my own. And so I'll be starting, you know, seriously about writing the text of the zoning by law amendment, acknowledging the fact that we won't have the site assessment done when we're starting this, but we'll, you know, be discussing it and both things will inform each other as we go along. So I'm looking forward to getting Janet's material and I'm going to be starting into this drafting next week. Okay. So I'm going to start with the zoning amendment. And just for clarification there, that is the, the solar bylaw that we're, we're, we as a working group are pulling together. Yes, that's right. As a working group. Right. Okay. When you say amendment, is that you say it's amendment because it's amending the broader by law bylaws of the, of the town. That's how we refer to it. Yeah. It's zoning amendment in the sense that it will be a section that's added to the zoning by law. Yeah. So that relates to a topic later off later on that I have in terms of just getting, getting going on. You know, I feel like a college student, it's actually like time to start writing the paper. So, so yeah, I'd be very interested in hearing a bit more from, from you Chris and Janet on that a little bit later in our agenda. Great. All right. Before we move on to the next and more substantial agenda item. Just open the opportunity for any of the. Members of the working group that are, you know, sort of more official liaisons from their committees or. Commissions. Anything to update. On that. I don't think the planning board has anything on its docket about this, except the zoning board of appeals is looking at a. Application for battery storage facility. On one 16. And that seems super interesting. Interesting to me. Yeah, we're looking at the conservation. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Well, I don't think it's really large, but it's, it's that lot where. Annie's greenhouse used to be. And I know I have no details on it other than I've just seen reference to it. It's a, it's actually a decent size storage facility, but it doesn't take up a big footprint. So. I can't. What I'm realizing here. I think what Jack did before it's difficult to take notes and talk at the same time. Be more quiet, but yes, we're looking at the same thing too. I think it was continued. So I'll have probably a more. Both of them. Obviously the concom just looks it up from the perspective of. You know, protecting water, water resources and. Construction runoff and things like that. But. Yeah. And I can. I, I, I. I don't know what I'm realizing here. I think what Jack did before it's difficult to take notes and talk at the same time. So. Be more quiet, but yes, we're looking at the same thing too. And I, I actually have been involved in. The sighting of a battery storage facility, not as. Like an owner, but just kind of, you know. Hearing more of the issues that. Some local developers are thinking for these. These are more like DG distributed generation of battery storage is smaller. And some of the things that they're facing in terms of challenges and. I did speak with. Mike judge who has been, who was at DOR for set, I think, for 17 years. He's now moved on to another group. And I was just sort of chatting with him about something else. And the topic of batteries came up and he was saying that storage is. That no one has really written bylaws on storage because it's just so new. And they're learning so much more. So anyways. And I, you know, Christine could maybe correct me if I'm wrong. I think the ZBA is just operating under that one sentence about energy facilities in the zoning bylaw. You know, you have to get a special permit if you're building something like that. And there's no standards. There's no conditions for battery storage. And so. I guess that reinforces why we're here. And anyway, so I just thought that was, you know, that we're basically operating off of a sentence in the bylaw without standards or performance standards or setbacks or, you know, other than the normal setbacks and things that would apply. Yeah. I think one thing that would be interesting is, because I think, you know, these facilities and. I actually think it'd be great if the group could tour. I know a lot of solar storage facilities that I could get us into in the state. And actually a really cool one. And I think that's something that we're going to be able to do. In actually a number of them. I'll just do close proximity, but. There's one of the largest landowners in eastern mass. Is there also the, the biggest cranberry grower. They give everything to ocean spring. They've done a series of solar arrays with battery storage. And for the most part, these facilities are. Simple, you know, they're like little boxes, but they're obviously critical to the grid. So, you know, you can store it and then deploy it when it's, you know, when it's needed and, you know, you get more bang for your buck that way. But some of the issues that are facing. Battery storage facilities would be like. Heating, ventilating and cooling. That's critical. Making sure temperate, you know, like those types of things. And, you know, you also know, and I'll get into this when I talk about sort of the different types of things. And I'll get into this, but. There's multiple sign off just like the risk for solar. You know, you have the developer who's doing it. And, you know, they're signing off. Then you get these basically tests from independent third parties that go out and they submit their results to. Not only the ultimate owner of the project, battery storage facility, but they also submit the results to the utility. So, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, there's a grid and ever source reviewing these things. And then. And then you finally get approval. So there's, there already are multiple checks in place as far as like health and safety are concerned. But like, I hear you, Jenna, I'm like, you know, what's the setback? Do we, you know, Is it different than solar all that? So anyways. Yeah. All right. Great. Well, I guess it's a. Ahead of us. It seems like it's something that we can track and help to inform us. As we, as we move forward with, with, with the bylaws, because my, my guess is that project's going to be going through. The special process, I guess. Prior to, to the, to any of our bylaws being, being codified. All right. Great. Okay. Anything else, sir? Great. Okay. Then let me move on to. Our next agenda topic, which is really. The opportunity for us as a working group to respond to. And, and ask any questions. On to the. Water supply protection committee. And let me start this by really thanking Jack and his. Committee. For preparing this. White paper. I thought it was very, very helpful. Informative. Fairly well detailed. Set up sort of the. Environment of regulations and impact issues. Associated with solar. In, in our watershed areas. And the concerns. And some uncertainties about. About, about solar in these areas. So I thought it was really helpful document. And white paper for us to, to have as a working group. As we start deliberating on the zoning bylaws and particularly how that. When we get into sort of particular issues with regard to solar and battery in, in the wet. Water protection areas. So really thank you, Jack on that. My thought is that we really don't need a summary. Of the white paper because I think we all had the opportunity to read it. I did receive. A number of. Response response to our request for any questions. Which then I compiled with Stephanie's input as well. Into. An aggregated document that we can look at shortly. But importantly, we want to. Finalize this set of questions. That we want to ask the committee to consider. In there. And we need to finalize that today. Because the committee is. Is required or, or intends to finalize. Their report before we meet, meet next. And so I want to go through that. And see if there's any, if we can reach a consensus to move this forward as a, as a. Consensus document. Set of questions to, to the. S. W. S. P. C. But before I do that, let me, if Jack, if you don't mind, maybe I can just give you the floor for a second. Again, not for a summary of the document, but maybe just to. Just describe a little bit in terms of what the intent to the white paper was for our committee. For our working group, as well as. A bit more in terms of your next steps where this document sort of goes from here and next steps. And then, and then we can look at, look at our set of questions. Yeah, so we met. Oh geez. I don't know if it was a week or two weeks ago, but. It's hard to keep track. Yeah. Right. So, but anyway, so. You know, this was, you know, you know, vetted within the, the subcommittee within the waters like protection committee. Based on the, on the solar and water resources impact. Issues. And so we were just really, you know, attentive to, you know, providing as many references as possible on the different. Topics that we identified as being in the high points and the high points were, you know, the construction monitoring and kind of stormwater impacts that result from these projects. And then of course, you know, groundwater quality. And then groundwater quantity. So those are the main things. And then, you know, we, we have a couple of different. You know, types of drinking water supplies within Amherst, we have the, you know, we have. The Adkins Reservoir, you know, which is our surface water supply. And then we have, you know, several municipal, municipal wells. So those are, those stand out big and then, but we then, I think. We have a very small segment of private wells within town. So we wanted to speak to that as well. And so, you know, we're pulling from all sorts of, you know, best available tech, you know. You know, information that we have from preexisting, you know, regulations and guidelines to guide us in terms of what would be appropriate in terms of, you know, number one setbacks, I guess, and, and then just, you know, best management, management practices with regard to how we can protect our water resources in the event of a solar development. And we also address the battery issues. And again, that, you know, we, and we, I think everybody knows that this is a moving, evolving topic. You know, next week, there may be another, you know, paper on battery storage that, that, that may or may not tell us something, but it's just, you know, it's something that is kind of interesting that there's not a single, you know, bylaw within that's been written within the state or, or any state that I, that I'm, that we're aware of. But so this is, you know, just trying to do a very practical approach about, you know, what we know there, there have been some horrific sort of accidents with batteries. And I think that kind of taints the approach moving forward, but that, that happened, you know, years ago, and we're much smarter now. And I think there's a lot of, you know, sensor and prevention measures within each of the battery units. And it's not like we're going to be dousing water to put out a fire in the event that it would happen. I think the, the progress of the shutdown mechanisms is much more advanced. And, you know, we acknowledge that, you know, our emergency response personnel need special training for this. You know, if they don't, if they're not familiar with it. And, but anyway, we, you know, we probably went a little bit beyond the straight kind of water resources impact. And I guess we, you know, we'd be interested, you know, in the questions that you provided. But if you want us to go a little bit further and other, you know, aspects of this, we, we certainly can, but we tried to, you know, stick with the water resources impact, and we even offered some suggestions to setbacks based on the mass DEP guidelines for municipal water supplies, which are, you know, several orders of magnitude with regard to the, what a private well would, would, would, would require. And so it was just a scaling issue there. But we, we, you know, provided, I think some reasonable suggestions on that. Great. Thank you. And just in terms of timing, just to confirm, you're looking for the committee would be looking for our questions and appreciate bringing it forward to the working group questions. And then, you know, again, we, I think we have to be careful. We don't want to overburden you with way too many questions and research that would need to be done that is beyond the scope of the time of the committee members. But you're basically looking to finalize this work, receive our feedback and then provide a final report, sort of in what timeframe. Yes, I think we put it out to, to, you know, the town staff Chris, you know, Stephanie, forgetting the name, the wetland agent, sorry. But, you know, we're, we never, we, we didn't get feedback from the town. Experts within town hall. So, so we're going to get your comments and we're going to get comments from Stephanie, Chris, the wetland agent, again, I can't remember her name, but apologize for that. And then we'll finalize it. And then I guess it kind of comes back to this group. And then gets, you know, process. So, you know, I guess it's, it's pretty going to be fairly efficient because you have seen it, I was thinking that maybe we, we would have every, you know, Chris's and Stephanie's comments before we presented it to you, but this is probably going to move it a little bit faster. So. Okay, great. And so just to be clear, this is really written with, obviously for the, for the town generally, but with with our working group in mind as a, as a resource for our working group to have at our disposal as particularly as we deliberate and craft the bylaws with regard to the solar development, particularly in our water protection zones or areas. Yeah, I think it, I think, I think it's fairly unique. And it's, you know, what, what, what we did, I don't know. I think it's quite like this in terms of, you know, Framing a solar development and how it may or may not impact. You know, the, the, you know, mainly water resources, but great. So hopefully, you know, it's, it's people can use it and it will improve our judgment and decisions. No moving forward. Great. Okay, thanks. Stephanie. Thanks, Dwayne. Jack, just for people to know the wetlands administrators, Aaron shock. So just to give her a call out there. So I think we have until the 20th to get the responses. I think your next meeting is on the 20th. So we were asked to get all feedback by then. And I didn't know what the next steps were. So wasn't clear that it was coming back to us or not. Just that it was only coming back as a final document. It was just what I had heard. So I don't know if that's true. And then. I think that was our intent. Yeah. You know, and then. I mean, we can't. I'm just a little bit. I just want to. Have, you know, a little note of caution there that. You know, things are always changing, especially with the battery thing. So we're not going to be able to get. You know, the article that was posted, you know, that was posted yesterday. You know, in there. And it's just, and. And I think we get the gist of what the issues are. On these things. And so it's. I think we would. You know, I'm looking for. The, you know, So the bylaw. Working group there just to, if you, if there's something that we've missed, then that's really important that. And then maybe we can grab that. And add that into that. And then, you know. But the conclusions are pretty solid. You know, so I just. But we want to make sure that. Since we're into it, you know, knee deep that. If there's something additional that you, that, that. This working group wants us to, to speak to them. We will see if we can do it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Wayne, would it be helpful for me to share my screen with the questions so that people, you could go actually go through them. That was going to be my next step. And I was about to do that, but it makes sense. Definitely. Sure. You just tell me to scroll down when you need me to. Yeah. Okay. And. Yeah, just so people know the process here. I provided some questions. I just wanted to make sure that. Martha and from Janet. I did take some. Discretion at editing or, or recomposing a little bit. The questions that I received that I didn't write myself. To try to put them one in a little bit more question form. Which was sort of our charge to, to, to, to provide to the. The committee. Water committee. And also to scrub out some of the, some of the comment, some of the commentary that I thought was, was useful, but not necessarily. Within the purview of the. Of. Jack and his committees work, but we can sort of revisit that as we go, as we go through these. And so. I guess I can take a lead on these first set of questions as these were the ones that I had sort of put together. If that would be any idea here is that, you know, I don't think we need to. Edit in real time, the questions themselves, but just in terms of the, just the questions. We can be open to any additional questions that people come up with, but I don't want to. I don't want to have a floodgate of that because we, we have limited time and we need to finish this up today. And we have other agenda items. Okay. Janet, before we get going yet. Sorry, I had some questions for page three, but. Lead on. I'm jumping into earlier. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So the first set of questions that I had sort of put together with, you know, as I was reading through it, I had some questions came to my mind and areas that would be helpful. There was reference to, you know, the CMR. 22.2. Which seemed quite important in terms of the, the, some key provisions. I thought it'd be helpful if possible with the committee could sort of just summarize what those key provisions were in those regulations and whether it wasn't clear whether those were specific to solar or battery. Certainly solar or whether they were just more with regard to watershed protection, but any more detail or, or discussion on that would be helpful. And I'm not, Jack, I'm not necessarily looking for an, I don't think we're looking for answers yet, but certainly if you need clarification of any of these questions would, would be, be good to hear that. Yeah, I can give it like a, you know, 30 second response. If you'd like, or I can just, we can just go through the questions. Let's do that because that I think ultimately, I think it would be helpful maybe just at the final report came back came in with just a couple of extra sentences. Okay. On these issues. So it's documented beyond this recording. Okay. And Janet, do you still have your hand up or is that new? It's, it's, it's my, I'm sorry, it's my old question. Your old hand. Okay. Okay. Yeah, then, then I had a. Well, I don't think I have to talk about each question. I did want the third question I had there. You did talk about and the report talked about. You talked about specific monitoring. And talked about both during construction and post construction. It never really defined the period that was considered to be post construction. And I, you know, my sense is there's maybe, I don't know, maybe three phases construction. And then, you know, a period of time, which may be a year or two where there's kind of reestablishment of the, of the vegetative growth and so forth. And so, you know, I think it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a major operation for many, many years after that. And it didn't really differentiate on that in terms of monitoring and so forth. And it, it. I wasn't clear whether the recommendation from the committee was that these regular. Inspections and so forth, which were pretty. You know, frequent, certainly during construction. But even after, even in the post construction timeframe. You know, you know, it was a really good project or sort of through this establishment phase. So just some thoughts on that. I would understand sort of it. There's a major rain event. Maybe there's some inspection of this, of the sites, even after their, after they've been around for many, many years, but, but otherwise it didn't, I wasn't clear whether. The intent was to inspect these things regularly once they're really well established. Sorry, Stephanie, if you can scroll down then. Yeah, to the next page. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, you talked about. Sort of a talked about obviously PFAS is a major concern and issue, particularly anything that would get into the water supply. But also the report talked earlier about how, at least for the solar panels, these things are really well encapsulated into the, into the panels themselves, very well protected. But then there was sort of this. Recommendation that was sort of like a bit out of the, not out of the blue, but a little bit unexpected, I guess that, oh, let's just, you know, it seemed like with all caution, let's just say no solar collectors that have any PFAS in them could be in, could be located in these watershed areas. And I guess my question was, I don't know about the chemistry, all the chemistry in the solar collectors, but my, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some PFAS and because of PFAS is used for so many different things that could, could indeed be encapsulated in some of the sub structures of the, of the solar panels. And so I, I just, before we would sort of consider just a ban on any solar collectors with PFAS, I'd be just curious if there's any knowledge about whether there's any commercial solar solar panels that don't have PFAS. Yeah, I can look, I can certainly look into that. Okay. And I think right now, just to give everyone a context as to where we are with panel, panel manufacturing as a nation, we have this massive Inflation Reduction Act that just passed at the federal level, providing huge amounts of dollars for renewables. And one of the main ways that they're incenting this renewable development, particularly solar, is to ensure that the panels are manufactured domestically. So right now, solar manufacturers, installers and owners are pushing for panels that have been made in the United States. So I think there's two questions here. One, are PFAS, you know, can you, you know, is it, are you allowed to manufacture panels on shore that include that? And two, I think your question is valid, you know, how, you know, are there any commercial panels that, that don't include these and Jack, you might know this. Sorry, I didn't raise my hand guys. I'm sorry. I'm like taking notes and pivoting. Are there any, I'll remember this. Thank you. Are there any panels that, you know, what's the, how difficult would it be to source panels without those? Yeah, I think, and again, we're not sort of looking for answers right now, but just any, any, and maybe it's something we have to research further. But go ahead, Jack. I just wanted to say it's kind of, because in our review, we really didn't find contaminant sources. You know, within the solar panel development themselves, but we did find references that, you know, PFAS could be there, but it's not documented. So just out of abundance of caution, we put it in there because we certainly don't want, you know, PFAS leaching into the environment from a new installation. So yeah, go ahead, Martha. It seems that maybe the more interesting aspect of the question is whether there are any coatings or adhesives or something that was not part of the solar panel manufacturer, but was put on as a coding for some reason that might have included some chemicals that we didn't want. So maybe that's the more interesting thing to investigate. In terms of PFAS potentially being exterior to the encapsulated part of the collector. Yeah. All right. All right. Janet, I presume that's a new hand, right? Yes, it's, I'm more organized. And the PFAS front, I was wondering about adding that to the battery storage facility. And also if there is a fire, you know, a required, did they think about a requirement that the firefighters don't use anything involving PFAS in terms of, you know, what they're spraying on there? Yeah, I think there was some. Yeah. Yeah, I think we referenced that, Janet. Yeah, I recall reading that that made sense. I mean, that's where PFAS, I think started in the firefighting phone and would not make sense to spray that. And I think there was, I do recall reference somewhere in the white paper. All right, great. Yes. So, okay, then it just, I was, I was reading that for the battery storage housing must be, should be located above the 100 year floodplain. Just to, if it's recently easily known, I presume, probably Chris would note this or could find out the information. I was just trying to get some sense of how relevant that was to our, you know, primary watersheds, the, the, the Atkins, the Lawrence swamp. And the third one, which I'm blocking on, as well as the private wells and sort of north, north, what was northeast Amherst, whether are those, are those well above the 100 year floodplain at this point or maybe, or maybe not. So I just wondering how applicable that was in terms of a concern we need to really address. It doesn't hurt to put it in the bylaw, but I'm just wondering how relevant it is, but Chris. I just wanted to say that if anything is proposed in the 100 year floodplain, the conservation commission would get wind of it. Generally speaking, we don't allow things to be built or placed in the 100 year floodplain. If they are, then there are certain requirements, but I doubt that the conservation commission would allow anything to be placed in the 100 year floodplain, especially battery storage, you know, things like bridge abutments and that kind of thing that have to be in the floodplain can be there, but otherwise, you know, I would say it's very remotely possible that anything related to battery storage could be placed in the floodplain, but maybe it's a question that we need to have definitively answered. Yeah, okay. And would Chris, so would you, not that you need to dig it out right now, but are there maps I presume that we could look at that would define the 100 year floodplain zones for them? Yes, we have two levels of maps right now. We have the old maps that were done in the 1980s, and we're working on getting new maps approved, and we're very close to being able to do that. In fact, we have a deadline of February 9th of 2023 to get our new maps approved, and we do have them available if people want to look at them. But yes, we do have maps that show where the 100 year floodplain is, and those maps are relied upon by the Conservation Commission in their evaluation of whether something's being proposed in the floodplain or not. Okay, good. I mean, to me it sounds like that that layer assuming it's sort of a GIS layer would be helpful, even for us to put on to the solar assessment mapping, even though it's more to do with batteries, it would just give us a clear demarcation of where those that flood zone is, maybe even if it's not adopted yet, maybe we can say it's tentative so that we could have a visual on that as well. I think Mike Warner is working on that. Mike Warner and IT, yep. All right, great. Yep, Laura. I was going to say that two things, the Conservation Commission always looks at the 100 year floodplain before we are, you know, as part of any project, and Aaron in particular, you know, services it to the Conservation Committee before we are evaluating any project within a wetland area, a water protection area. And the second thing is the last thing any developer or asset owner wants is to have a major investment within the 100 year floodplain, especially in the climate environment that we are at right now. And we would, I mean, just because it popped in my head, I mean, obviously battery storage, I can definitely see that not wanting to be in the flood zone, in the 100 year flood zone. Would that be similarly relevant to the solar development itself, solar installation? So for the most part, 100 year floodplans are avoided with all solar development. That being said, I have seen some that have been constructed with the proper precautions. So they have to be higher, you know, you're anticipating that that flooding event would occur. Yeah. And, you know, there's new technology coming about with solar constantly, like floating panels, things like that. So, you know. Yep. Yep. Okay, great. Jack. Yeah, so this was taken verbatim from the Master Department of Public Water Supplies. And they, you know, they spoke to batteries because the leaching, you know, threat exists, you know, more so than the solar. And then I think, you know, the solar that they were addressing was more, say, in support of the local, you know, the pumping and other ancillary equipment for, for, for a, a noticeable well. And so, you know, I don't think they were really that large, but that, you know, at least they, they knew that, you know, battery was a little bit different than the solar panels. But I think everything that everybody said, you know, makes, you know, a lot of sense here. So. All right, great. And then I just, in reading the white paper, you did reference this one article during all of which I did search for, even as an academic, I couldn't, I found this article, but it didn't give me the full article. So I was, you know, I was, and it was, it was an important remark, I guess, in the white paper with regard to, you know, potentially that there could be modeled effects of detectable increases in river discharge from increasing solar on land cover. And, and so, you know, I, you know, actually I can understand that, but I did raise the question and maybe if it's, if it's relatively easy to find that article and provide any more information of whether that either modeled, it seemed like it was a modeled impact, but do keep in mind that is sort of my question raises that, depending on the context of this modeling and analysis that was done, you know, whether it was really an impact that is detectable from very, very large solar arrays that are quite prevalent in other parts of the country versus, you know, still large but still relatively small arrays that we tend to build in Massachusetts. And whether, if there was, could be, if there was any information from that paper just to either caveat or, or discuss a little bit more in terms of what scale of arrays they were modeling there. And then also the slope, I'm not sure if this was considered on flat land or with some slope. Okay. Okay, a couple more hands. Yep. Okay, Chris. So I just wanted to note that in Massachusetts developers are required to keep drainage on site. They're required to not increase the volume or the rate of runoff of from a site. So they have to, you know, provide catchment areas where water can be contained for a period of time and then allow it to exit the site at the rate that it's currently exiting the site. So I don't imagine that this type of effect would be true in Massachusetts that you would have an increase in river discharge as a result of solar because the solar, you know, will provide these basins to contain the runoff from at least the 100-year storm. Interesting. Okay. And so that's not just during construction, Chris, but during construction. That's for the duration. Yes. It's a requirement of DEP, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I guess, I guess my understanding from the, from Jack's new or the committee's white paper. And that journal article, this was more. This also was the, and I guess you're getting at this, Chris, but it wasn't that there was more. To the extent that the solar rate replaced a forest say, there was more water that had to run off. Because less water was being transpired by the trees and so forth. And it's not, it's not. It's not a de minimis amount that the trees uptake and, and so forth. So the, the, it seems like the total volume of water may increase, but you're saying that with these catch basements and storage and so forth, that the rate of that discharge would be maintained as, as, as a business as usual, or at least in the, in the previous use of the land. That's correct. All right. Interesting. Okay. So that would imply that. The solar developers or their consultants would, would have to do, would do hydrology tests on these soils and so forth before the development starts. Okay. All right, great. Janet. I would add a piggyback question, which I wondered when I read the article, you know, because the, you know, water that goes, you know, that's being absorbed in a forest or a well developed field or shrubs, there's a lot of filtration. And so my question was, is there any difference in the quality of the water being discharged into the river? So it's one thing to hold water in a catch basin and then slowly release it, but my understanding from seeing a lecture is that the water that goes through the forest system and the roots and the fun guy and the whole community is very clean and there's like uptake of minerals and, you know, even chemicals and the water that comes out as cleaner and more pure than if you just hold it in a catch basin and slowly release it. So my question is, is there a difference in water quality? Like the piggyback question is, is there a difference in the water quality of what's going into the river or the drinking water system? Collection. Perfect. And I did note your question that specific question is, is coming up, but it's relevant to this ahead of time. I'm sorry. Yep. Okay. And I guess, you know, that in my mind, at least that would also, you know, relate to whether this is, you know, one relatively small patch and a huge expanse of forest. Or is it, you know, cutting down a primary track of forest that is between is where water is flowing through. Okay. Great. Great question. All right. Any other questions that that's. The primary questions I had come up with in the review and, and we can move on to. I think these came from you, Janet. With a little bit of editing from me, just to put them sort of in more clear question forms. And I guess I was also curious. And Janet, you can. Tell me if I'm not capturing if I didn't capture your questions correctly, but the first one was just, I was kind of curious too that Atkins reservoir, particularly is only a small, small amount of the Atkins watershed area, protection area is in Amherst. The rest is in. The rest of the Atkins watershed area, I believe. And so. I presume our bylaw wouldn't. Pertain to the shoots very side, but I guess there was a question of whether. Whether that, that map. Jack does. Really capture. You know, based the way that water flows and so forth does capture really the, the catchment basement basin. Yeah. I mean, we're going to have, you know, we, let me see. I know we provided the maps there. Yeah. Yeah. And they're, they're at the end of the. Yes. Yeah. So, so the purple line there on. Figure four or three, figure three. Is what is estimated as, you know, being the watershed. Yeah. So that, you know, that's fairly well known. It's based on topography. And again, we have these other protected, you know, we have the zone. Yeah. Which is just a setback from, from. You know, the drainage perennial drainage. Going into the Atkins reservoir. So. Yeah, I'm not sure what the question is. Given figure three. Showing where the watershed boundary is. Yeah. Was that just the basis of your question, Jen? And just. Assuring your current. Your. Actually. This document that's really just a little bit in Amherst. It's in this water protected watershed area. I'm not sure this question is, it looks different than what I sent you. So my question basically was how much land. Are we is, you know, in Amherst heading, you know, is so how much land are we talking about that in, in the Atkins reservoir system? Like I just, it was this whole idea of scope. Like I just think. You know, there's a huge watershed. And then there's a sort of smaller, protection zone by the state and regulations. And it just struck to me that there was, I was just wondering how many acres of land are in that little piece. That in the watershed for, for Amherst. And then I just, you know, I, the question to me then is like, okay, what are we talking about? And then. You know, how many, I know the state is sort of saying. You know, a hundred feet, 200 feet or whatever, but isn't all of the water protected. I mean, I know the state is sort of saying, you know, a hundred feet, 200 feet or whatever, but isn't all that water from that system or that part going into the reservoir. And so the state, all those waters infiltrating coming from the watershed, and the state is only protecting a number from the reservoir itself. And so I just kind of wondered how big is that. You know, watershed piece in Amherst, and then we're only protecting part of it. The state regulations only protect part of that, but a lot of, you know, water can be coming in from further back. Is that, I know that's, you know, I mean, like you. Okay. I just eyeballing it, you know, it looks like, you know, a couple hundred acres. You know, it not, not a lot. So, you know, that's not going to be a huge driver, I don't think. So, you know, it's not going to be a big driver, but it's not going to be a big driver. So, you know, it's not going to be a big driver with our, because it affects such a small area, but, you know, we definitely want to protect that. And then in terms of the, you know, my part of town. You know, it also just struck me like with the Lawrence swamp, it seems unbuildable of any solar array and most of the watershed area, but I didn't know if I was correct. Cause I just didn't know where we were. Cause the maps didn't have words and things like that. So, you know, I don't know, I don't know if I was correct or not. I don't know if I was correct or not. The white paper should include that like, you know, where the watershed is, where the roads are, and then where the protection areas are, which are much smaller. But I did have this question of like, can you build anything in the water, the Lawrence swamp area? Cause it just seems really wet from what I. Yeah. And that was a little later question. I think was that in the London swamp region. There are obviously places that is literally a swamp. And, and I can't imagine that solar development would go there. But looking at the map, it's a much broader extent of area that I presume also goes beyond just the wet. The area that is, you know, perennially wet. And I guess just a little bit more. Yeah. I think that's a good indication of, of, of the extent of this Lawrence swamp area, swamp area. In terms of what's being, what's, what's being protected and, and, in terms of both areas that are wet, as well as areas that are outside that areas that are permanently wet, essentially, or mostly always wet. But they're still part of this watershed. Chris, you may have some. I wanted to say a couple of things, a few things. There's a watershed protection zoning district that's established around the Amherst portion of Atkins reservoir. And you can see why that is there. If you look at the topography map that's on our embers GIS. And you have to kind of zoom out so you get the actual contour lines, but you can see clearly that there's a high point kind of surrounding Atkins reservoir and then everything that hits on to the high point, the east slope of it goes into the Atkins reservoir, but the west slope goes elsewhere. So it's clearly delineated in my mind why that watershed protection district is there. So I encourage you to look at the zoning map for the watershed protection district and also look at the topo map for that area around Atkins. And the other thing is that the Lawrence swamp is mostly a hundred year floodplain and whatever isn't a hundred year floodplain is most probably bordering vegetated wetland. And there's very little area in between those things that would allow a large scale solar array to be built there. So, and there is also an aquifer recharge protection district over that whole area of the Lawrence swamp. So there are multiple layers of protection of that area. I don't think we need to worry about solar arrays being built in the Lawrence swamp or very close to it. I think these will be things that my personal thought is we don't have to burden the water committee on this. This will be things that will come out in our solar solar assessment mapping where we see all these different areas, the watersheds and everything that will be well mapped together that we can start getting these visuals together and sort of understand topographies and so forth and why they're defined this way. Martha and then Jack. Okay, well, I think that Chris answered most of my question. I was the one that asked about the boundaries with the Atkins reservoir and why there was very little in Amherst, but Chris, I think your answer is, is the topography on that. But then on a related point about the filtration of the forests was interesting. My family's here and we went over to Quaban yesterday. And so we went into the DCR's visitor center and looked at their exhibit on protecting the quality of water in the Quaban and so on. And they had quite a lot in their display about how they, after the last really serious drought, they had really worked on trying to restore the forests and so on to protect the quality of the water. And I thought it was interesting and after I actually took a picture of one of their little write-ups. And I don't know, Stephanie, whether you would be willing to have me just share screen and show that temporarily or. That's up to Dwayne. Yeah, maybe not. Let's not take the time now. I'm just mentioning it that they were making a big point then about how they really were emphasizing protecting the forests surrounding the Quaban in order to really improve the quality of the water there. Yeah. Okay, great. And yeah, my apologies, Mark. That's okay. We're getting emanate from you. That's fine. Yeah, Dwayne, I agree. I think this is the first time we've been looking at maps. And so we're all kind of getting, you know, cited and jumping to conclusions. And I was like, you know, and there's always, you know, more information you can put on these, but, but it's not a, it shouldn't be a huge effort, but if it is, you know, we won't do it. But if it's not, we can definitely put the overlay of the flood plain things and the, you know, wetlands and buffer on there. But again, we're going to see that eventually anyway. But I did want to speak to the water quality issue. So, you know, there's forests, you know, and then what we have determined is that the solar field is equivalent to a grassland. So, you know, I've not seen a lot of, of, of complaints about grassland is in terms of being protective of water quality because there's filtration going on, you know, through, through that, you know, ecosystem as well, you know, as well as the forest. I mean, and actually I can tell you that there's huge issues with the amount of forest plantings that have occurred around a lot of the existing reservoirs within Massachusetts, particularly the red pines because of their demand on, on the groundwater and the, you know, the evapotranspiration uptake. So they actually, the state I know is like struggling with like getting rid of, you know, all these pines they, they planted, you know, adjacent to the reservoirs. So, you know, it's a mixed bag, but you know, grassland versus forest, I think it's all good as long as we're not putting, you know, we're not putting chemicals down on the ground. I think either one in the soil is always there as well doing its thing in terms of that absorption. So, you know, I think that, you know, just standing back, grassland is, is also fairly protective of groundwater. I just want to say that. Great. Okay. Great Laura and then we'll go on. I just want to say one thing. It's totally reasonable from the perspective of the working group and I've seen this many times in multiple states to require that any developer actually you can, you can do things like require pollinator habitat. You can require plantings of certain vegetation that are very helpful to going beyond and restoring water quality. So as Jack mentioned, it's equivalent to grassland. You could make it better than that. There's all kinds of things that are very reasonable to ask developers to do and that I see, you know, across the board. So. Great. Yeah, we did actually ask our legal council. To confirm that in terms of putting those sort of requirements in place. I don't know if it has to be a requirement. It could be a strong suggestion. Everything's in negotiation. So, you know, that's, that's what I've seen. Great. All right. Good. I guess. Jack. Martha did bring up a question that's worthy. To maybe get a little bit more information from the committee on with regard to this no disturbance zone around private wells. Now, obviously, as you said, these are orders of magnitudes less. Yeah. Less draw of water and supply to people. But nonetheless, I think they're primarily for individual homes. And. Yeah. You sort of recommended a hundred foot. No disturbance zone. Around those. I do recognize that somebody wants to put a PV array in their backyard. A hundred foot, you know, these yards are not that huge. So you might, anything too much larger might. Not enable them to put up a solar panel. At least ground mounted or maybe even. On the roof. But I guess maybe just. Just as you put that out there of a hundred foot feet. Maybe just a little bit of a discussion of why that seemed to be appropriate. Martha, it was that sort of captured the question. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was more, you know, picturing the drainage and the soil types and so on, whether the water always percolate straight down or whether. If you have an impervious kind of a. You know, you know, I think Martha said drains more sideways. And again, it, you know, in my picture, it's more the disruption during the construction when you maybe have heavy equipment in there and you've disrupted the soil and so on. In a large setting. So that was just a question. Yeah. Right. I'm Jack. You know, that hundred foot distance is kind of hardwired. You know, for, for years and years and years with regard to a home. And what the protective radius you would want, say to a septic system, a fuel tank, all these known contaminant sources, whereas a solar field is does not have, is not a qualified as a contaminant source. So we thought that a hundred foot buffer at a minimum is good battery. So we, we, we, we say, we suggested, you know, larger, but then, you know, obviously the construction. You know, that has to be protective. You know, in terms of runoff and things like that. And that's. We didn't speak to that. We'll, we'll. We certainly will then. All right, good. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. And we talked a little bit already about the, the soil types and whether there should be any discrimination of these setbacks and so forth or, or rules with regard that are differentiated by a soil types and. And I think you also had. Slopes as well somewhere here or soil types, you know, whether it's sandy soil or clay soil or bedrock, in terms of what the implications of that with regard to the direction and rate of flows. Okay. I think we covered the issue with regard to forest cover for filtering. Stormwater. I guess that the, there was discussion that stormwater section. About. Controlling runoff and monitoring runoff. But I guess the question that. Martha raised of whether that should also be differentiated in any way by slope. So maybe something to think about there. All right. And I guess just on the battery storage. You know, I applaud you and the committee, Jack, for an area that's so new and fast changing that you actually provided quite a bit of useful information. But I guess as we start thinking about our technical. Consultant that we're going to be working with. If there's any guidance that the committee can provide in terms of what the gaps are. Of information on, on, on regulations. On, on zoning or, or concerns with regard to battery storage, that our technical consultant should be. Directed to help bring some of that information forward. That would be, that would be helpful. Okay. And I think we're on to Janet's. Questions that she provided sort of in an email, but I think I. Extracted the questions reason reasonably. The first one, I think we addressed already, and I think, you know, we'll get this all mapping done. In our own exercises, but. And I would say only if it's very easy for the committee, just to add a few more street names to help orient the reader. I enjoyed trying to navigate a little bit, but it was, it was kind of hard. But again, we, you know, only if it's relatively straightforward. Again, I think this, this second question. Only if, if, if easy, but you know, once we get this all mapped ourselves, GIS will tell us these areas. Pretty, pretty readily. And I think we addressed that other one. So with that, let me, let me, before turning to Janet. Just for everybody else. Let's any thing. Any question burning questions. Do you think we're missing? Did we want to raise and bring forward to the committee? Now's the chance, but then otherwise I want to agree on sending this forward to Jack and to the committee as a. Response from this working group. Janet. You're muted. I'm muted. Sorry. I really appreciate the question, putting this questions together in the work of this committee, because I really, they really dove into it. One question I had was, you know, they talked about the two on page three, the Williamsburg and South Hampton things. And I don't know if you were just being like sensitive to nerves of these people who lived or the companies, but I didn't actually understand what was wrong. And so, you know, I figured you really had to work it up to get a million dollar farm fine from, from DEP or wherever got sued. And so I just wondered if they could be a little more specific about like, did they not put their erosion controls in where the slopes to great, like what happened that was wrong and what didn't they do. So we can sort of learn from that experience. And then that I wondered if it was just very slopey land and at the committee had thought about putting a recommendation about percentage of slope. So. And I guess I just were the same lines. I do wonder whether there was any, apart from the water committee, was there any report filed more formally to identify what went wrong and what, what some of the remedies might be in the future. Jack. Yeah, I mean, we knew that that was out there. And, you know, with their, with regard to the q amp a part, you know, we definitely wanted to speak to it a little bit, but I, but I, I do know that it kind of fell into the, the realm of the, of the permating and construction monitoring and things like that, that I know that Williamsburg was a gravel extraction site. And that was not accounted for at all during the process that that particular solar field was approved. So they go in and they have no, no protective cover, no, no, no turf of any type where they're putting the solar panels on it. This is a recipe for disaster. And I think, you know, Amherst, I think is fortunate to have the resources, the town resources to kind of have some oversight there. But, you know, one thing that I do want to say is like, we're trying to push that more on the developer here with regard to being diligent with regard to, you know, weekly reports going out after, you know, substantial rainfall events, that sort of thing. And put the onus on the developer in that respect, because we certainly don't want that to happen. Those sorts of things to happen in Amherst. All right, good. I think that's a great point. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. The details about what weren't wrong, you know, like more, you know, because you know it in your head, but I just, I was just dying to know, like what happened. Yeah, we can do a few, a few bullets, perhaps. And kind of yeah. And let out a little bit. Great. Okay. Thank you. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Two, our set of questions or maybe embedded in one of the other questions or just put out there as an additional question. And so let me suggest that with that. Addition. To this set of questions. Are we. Are there any other questions that anybody else has that want to Let me ask that question. Great. So with that, our people approving and Stephanie, I could use your guidance of whether we need a motion here or whether we can just agree to agree to take this document of our set of questions from the solar bylaw working group as a response back to the Water Supplied Protection Committee in our review of their report and request them to the extent that they are able to address our questions in their final report. I think you can just agree that they're complete. The questions are complete. Yeah. Anybody have any issues with agreeing that they are complete? Okay, great. I think I will. I do like Janet, your addition of just asking a little bit more details of if there could be some documentation, bullets on what might be lessons learned from the two projects that want to arrive it. But other than that, we'll forward this on, I'll add that and then get that to Stephanie and then she can forward that on to Jack and the committee. Super. All right. Great. And we were at 220 ish. So we're good. And let's move on to the next agenda item, which is really an update from Stephanie on the solar assessment update. You mentioned before, I'm not sure if there's a whole lot more to say than that, but go ahead. Yeah. Well, actually, so I have met with the consultants a few times. Since I'm in the contract. And so next steps are to, they're going to put together an initial set of questions and they're going to send them to me. And then at your meeting, your next meeting on the 21st, they would like to appear before you. They won't be there for the full meeting. It'll vary very quick. So because, you know, we have a certain amount of time that we have them for. So they'll provide the set of questions to me. I'll get them to you ahead of time. You can take a look and then you should, if there's revisions or whatever, you can just, or you have questions when they appear before you, you can have a discussion with them then. They'll appear before you to present the project, the project intent, the status and also the purpose of the questions. So they won't be there for very long, but then they will get that information and feedback from you. So you should be prepared ahead of the meeting. I will make sure, you won't get them the day before, I promise. In fact, they're supposed to get them to me by close of business today. So I will get them out to you as soon as possible. You can have some time to take a look, have your questions ahead of time, have them ready for that meeting. They'll take your questions or your responses to the questions and additions or edits if you have them. And then they will also be going to the Energy and Climate Action Committee at their next meeting, which is I think on the 26th. So they'll start with you, they'll go to the ECAC, and then they will be meeting with, they'll take your feedback from both committees on those questions, then they will be meeting with department heads. So at the beginning of November, they'll be meeting with the department heads to look over the set of questions. Are these the questions for the survey of residents? Yes. Oh, okay. Sorry, I should have been more specific. Sorry about that. Okay, good clarification. So this would be their proposed set of questions for a survey for the residents or constituents, I should say probably of the town that we can then opine on, I guess. Correct. Great. Yeah. Super, yep. Martha. Do I, this seems a little sudden. I mean, at the moment, we know nothing about the consultants and nothing about what they are proposing to study really other than the general things. And this will be our introduction, but you're saying we also have to have all our questions for how they survey the community? I mean, it seems that that's a separate topic that we haven't had any discussion about yet. So Martha, just to clarify, they are providing questions for a survey that's gonna go out to the public. They're doing their work according to the proposal that was submitted to the town. And the town as the project manager is overseeing the implementation of that work. One of the things that they are to do is to provide, is to conduct a survey of the town residents. And you all are getting an opportunity to take a look at the questions on that survey before they submit it to, or distribute it to the community members. So you all will have an opportunity to look at those questions in advance of the meeting that are on the survey. And you will be able to weigh in and lend your feedback to the list of questions before it gets distributed. I mean, it had been my understanding from our discussions previously that the process of the solar assessment, and I had also had the impression that was in our work plan, was that they were going to do their work on their solar siting technical assessment first and then have the community outreach. And my concern partly is that community members, I think need some information in order to be able to give their reasoned feedback in the best possible way. And I had envisioned that maybe we were going to have some kind of more expert opinion type of discussions. I know Laura, you're going to be presenting something to our meeting next time. And we might want to have the battery consultant, a battery consultant talk. I don't know whether that will be Chris's technical expert or somebody else. And there might be other aspects of the zoning and so on. So it just seems a little bit compressed and sudden compared to what I had been anticipating. That's all. So Martha, I can say that. So the process right now is to go before you, go before the ECAC, and then to bring that before department heads, which isn't until November. So the timeline before it would actually even go out to the public is going to be further down the road. It's not next week and it's not even right after your next meeting. And I think it's one of those things where they're simultaneously going to have to be doing some work. They only have six months with which to pull this all together. So they'll kind of be doing something simultaneously. So I think the way my guess is that they'll probably have some information. Again, we'll have to sort of iron this out a little more specifically. When we meet, we've only spoken twice and it's just been very basic. First of it was just the first meeting was literally just reviewing some of the contract items and talking about some missing pieces. So that's kind of the timeline. It's not going to happen next week. Great. Yep, Laura? I think Stephanie sort of responded based on what I was going to say. I think my understanding this entire time is that you have a third party group of professionals who know their trade in terms of surveying a community objectively. I think it's great. We get to look at some of the questions in advance. But I think my opinion as a member of this group is that I would never want to have any say in how they conduct their process. Because how you conduct your process can obviously very much influence the results. So my understanding of this survey is going to get a pulse on how the community thinks of solar development and their values associated with that. Let's all. Before I go to Janet, Stephanie, do you think part of this set of questions or initial back and forth with the consultant would also elucidate a little bit more in terms of their process for doing the surveying in terms just how they propose to conduct the survey, be it strictly by mail or some public forums or focus groups? It'll be broad-scale dissemination. It won't be just one specific pathway. But also they will be, like I said, when they appear before you on the 21st, they would give you some of an overview. So they'll give you some information. They'll give you sort of the background of the survey questions and what their intention is for the survey. Great. OK, Janet? So I know the RFP went out and they've come back to you. Do they have a process already? Like this is the process that we are doing. Has that already been designed in terms of who they're going to talk to and forums or what groups they think they have to work with or the community participation officers or how to do outreach to the UMass students? And is that already a package that they've already designed? Are they in the process of designing that? And then I have a second idea. Yeah, some of that I think there are a few community forums built into their proposal. And I think there's always a little bit of flexibility when you're working with the consultant if there's things that sort of come up. Like, for instance, them coming before you at this meeting, how we discussed it was, well, if they don't take up a whole meeting's worth of time, then it's because basically they're billing for their time. So there may be other opportunities where maybe we want to meet with some particular community groups and that time may come from somewhere else. It might come from a meeting with me. You might skip a week and they use that time for meeting with a group. So some of it is kind of being a little refined as we go along, but I think that's part of the, you can certainly provide some input when you hear from them next meeting. So they've already have a, can we look at their proposal that they sent to you that you accepted so that would give us sort of a grounding in what their plan is? Yeah, I planned on sending it out with the next packet. I didn't want to include it in this one because you already had enough, but I can include it. Now that we've got a contract with them, I couldn't do it before the contract was signed. So now that it is, I can. The other thing that comes to my mind is I think both in Athol and maybe in the UMass extension things, there is a whole list of community questions, community survey questions. So I think that would be useful for us to look at. And it's hard to pull, those are really long documents. You don't know if we can pull those out or just say, here's the document, the questions are at page 137. But so I think that'd be great to get that early so we can kind of mull on their proposed questions. The other thing I would like to do is I'm really interested in what the community thinks and I kind of love community process. So if the consultants are meeting with a group or a focus group or, I don't know, a church group or something, I would love to just be sort of a fly on the wall and listen to that. I think other members would be maybe interested too. So we don't, I don't think there's gonna be that many separate meetings. They don't, there's not enough room in the budget for that, quite honestly. So there's gonna be a few public forums and several groups will be asked to, we'll be given the information of when those forums are going to occur. And I think as far as the survey, the survey is going to go out, it's gonna be very broadly disseminated. And I think that's an opportunity when we get the feedback, they'll have to, they'll probably have to compile the feedback and you can certainly have a look at the feedback once they receive it. But it's not gonna be, there aren't gonna be 25 meetings. No, I think so. And then are they presenting information to the community about where, you know, where Solak could go or where the best targets are or is there gonna be like a package of information or is that? I think the, we haven't gotten to exactly how they're gonna format those forums yet. That's kind of down the road. So I think we're starting with the questions. That's, I feel like we're getting a little bit of our head over ourselves with their process. I mean, we know that they're going to have forums but how they will present that to the public. We don't have that information quite yet. We just know that they're going to but I don't have the specifics at this point. So. Great. Chris. Yeah, I just wanted to encourage people to look at that DOER survey that came out, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago and I think you were all copied on an email that included a link to that. So that can give you an idea of what kinds of questions might be included on the consultants list. There might be other questions or fewer. I don't really know. But the other thing I wanted to say is we don't wanna hit people with too many questions because if too many questions, they're not gonna bother to answer the survey. So you have to keep it kind of limited but look at that DOER survey. I thought that was a good start. Maybe it didn't include everything, but it was a good start. Yeah, I'll just add to that. Cause I provided some input to that DOER survey as they were sort of putting that together. And it was certainly much better, much, much better than it was in the first rendition that we saw. It was also informed. We did make sure that those consultants had access to the survey that the Clean Energy Extension at UMass had put together. So, and I noticed in the questions that it did draw somewhat from there. That being said, just so you know, the Clean Energy Extension survey was a lengthy survey. We estimated it would take folks 20, 30 minutes to fill out in its entirety. Whereas the DOER survey consultants were aiming for like a, I forget what they said, but like a five minutes, seven minutes, the most phone call. And so, and we have to sort of keep that in mind for what our consultants will suggest for our survey as well. Okay, great. Okay, so that then we'll look forward to that at our next meeting to have the consultants join us for a short period of time. And you're saying Stephanie, that prior to that meeting in the, when the meeting package, you'll provide us with their draft set of questions that they're currently considering for the survey. We can then read ahead of time and think about some comments. Yes. Okay. All right, great. All right, anything else on the solar assessment? Great. Okay. So let's then spend maybe 10 minutes or so and then get to us through the ending and part of the meeting. Just laying, it's sort of starting to think about the primary work that we have in front of us, which is really our work plan and to develop the bylaw itself, the draft bylaw. And I wanted to get sort of a better, a running start on that at this point, if you will. As I mentioned before, it's sort of like the college student that's like really wanting, wants to get ready to start actually writing their paper. And this is going to be a long paper over a long period of time. But I want to just sort of work together at this point to have, to discuss and have a better sense of what we understand is in front of us and how this will play out. And so I sort of broke this down into two parts. One is sort of developing this outline to at least frame our, the bylaw and how are we going to sort of work on developing this outline that we can then start working from. And then looking at, okay, what is going to be our process for deliberation to actually make decisions and put specifics into that outline in terms of things that we can all agree on or agree to disagree, but make decisions. And so just to guide this a little bit, my sense, starting first in terms of just in my mind, let's just think about outlining what's the scope of the bylaw and how are we going to work on that once we have an hour outline, then I think we can sort of start thinking about starting to put language together and holding blanks of specifics that we have to make decisions on. But I want to sort of understand that process and how that will play out. So I think in the past, we did reference the PVPC, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission guide as potentially a good starting point for a bylaw outline. And I think I forget who it was, who's the PVPC connection we have? Is that you, Jack? I think there was some suggestion that we might try to get an editable version of the PV, of the Pioneer Valley Planning Committee Commission's guide so that we can start extracting in a more convenient way some language with regard to an outline. As I was looking through the guide, there is, it's not like there's an outline embedded in there in certain sections that they provide some language to start an outline, but coming as a PDF, it would be kind of inefficient, I guess, to sort of create an outline. But I'm wondering whether two things, one is whether we're good to sort of work with the PVPC outline as a starting point. And then second, if we can get an editable version of that, if anybody's reached out. But then third, and maybe it precedes everything, is just I want to have a conversation with Chris, particularly about the planning department. And, you know, are we, is this something we should be doing as a committee? Or is this something that the staff at the planning department might take on for us as a staff person to sort of create this outline for us? But let's first hear from Stephanie. Sure, I just wanted to say that I worked with the PVPC on their regional climate action plan. And I know Catherine Rete very well. And I know Eric Weiss who worked on the draft. So I can actually send them an email. In fact, I can do it right now. Well, this meeting is even happening, if you don't mind. So I wonder if I could jump in. So you mentioned you'd already started. Yeah, I've already, they sent me a hard copy of this long document. And then basically I never got like a word version. And, you know, I think like, when I was looking at this for the first time, I thought like, oh, it's just going to be like a sample by-law. And they're going to, you know, it won't be so hard. And so what I've actually been doing and it's taken longer than I thought is I've just broken into the PDF and I've copied all the stuff. And I, you know, pull out these, I'm just, I'm basically, the outline, if you look at this by-law is the gray sections that are in bracket, in boxes. And so I have to eliminate all the language around it. And occasionally I just, I hate like lengthy verbose legal language where I think everybody falls asleep and doesn't understand it. So sometimes I'm just tightening it up. So I've been fighting through that. And then I got completely, you know, harrowing experience with, you know, letter A and subsection two and, you know, like, and so I'm trying to, so I'm really just working with this kind of thing. And I'm hoping to, I was planning to get that to the planning department this week, but I fell behind. And so my, what I can provide to Chris is basically this. And then the other thing is, is as you read through it, like the non, they're kind of like doing this great discussion, like, oh, you could do this, you could do that kind of thing. And so I'm not sure how this will, you know, how we can talk about the by-law or whatever or the draft or what the planning department will do, whatever I present them with. But there are these like funny points where, you know, and oh, by the way, the PVPC people told me this is basically what they took is Belcher Town as a model. And but they also, you know, they kind of open up this discussion saying you could do this, you can do that. And so I think also there's, you know, there's language, there's all these points to make decisions like Palmer decided solar, large scale solar can go in residential, but not their industrial districts. So they wanted to save that for like jobs. And Athol, you know, was said no to this percentage slopes and this and that. And then, you know, Shootsbury decided to section off their entire town into like six sections. You can put one field in each section to kind of like spread the pain, you know, as they perceived it or whatever, you know, whatever. So no one part of town had too many, whatever. And so those kind of decision points, you know, like the by-law doesn't sort of say, oh, you could do this or this or that. But I think when we were looking at this issue on the planning board, our chair put together kind of a, I think Doug put this together saying, you know, this people are saying 50 feet setback, 100 foot setback, they're regulating this. And so I think that kind of chart would be useful when we're looking at the framework and then thinking, and then, you know, if you want to regulate this, it may not fit into the framework and that that's all the craft and art and pain of, you know, I look, I happily pass along to Christine Breston and her people, but I'm also happy to work with them on that. So I'm hoping to get to Chris next week, this thing in better, like literally better format without, you know, just the gray areas. And I'm writing questions in, like, do you want to do this or that or look at shoots, Barry and things like that. So I don't want to present all that chatter to this group until the planning department looks at and just says, you know, this, here's a better way to present it or here are ideas. And here's where, you know, kind of things. So I'm just, I feel like I'm like a week or two behind where I thought I'd be. All right, Chris, then we can discuss all that. So I think Janet, you know, has a lot of good ideas about this. We actually had a discussion at the planning board several months ago where we took the, well, it was the Palmer bylaw and went through it kind of topic by topic and said, well, Palmer is doing things this way. Some other town is doing things this way. What does Amherst think about that? And it was really interesting to have that discussion and I would encourage this group to have that discussion about those decision points because then we might be able to kind of, maybe not all get on the same page, but at least kind of have a direction that we're going. So I would be willing to lead that kind of discussion and I think we should do it sooner rather than later. The other thing is I'm looking forward to getting Janet's, you know, whatever she's worked up, but the planning department has, you know, a lot of experience writing zoning bylaws. And, you know, we've just come out of writing one on floodplain. We wrote a pretty lengthy one on accessory dwelling units last year. And I think we had seven bylaws that we wrote last year, but anyway, there's kind of a, I don't know, there are topics that are included as topic headings. You always have an intent and purpose of the bylaw. Why are you writing this? You know, and then you list below it reasons why you're writing it. You have definitions. You have applicability. Where's this applicable? You have, then you list out all your regulations or your requirements. Then you might have a section on what submittals are required to, you know, put something forth to either the planning board or the zoning board of appeals. And then you have a statement about enforcement, you know, who enforces this and how does it enforce and what are the penalties, et cetera. Then you might have in particular for the solar situation, you would have a section on abandonment and decommissioning. So those are kind of general sections. And there may be other sections that we wanna interlace in this, but that was kind of my first go at it. So what we usually do is the planning department puts together a draft of whatever it is we're working on. And then we circulated among ourselves and we get the building commissioner involved to make sure that things are sort of, I don't know, kosher, if you wanna say that, that they kind of fit in with the zoning regime. And then we present it to whatever group we're going to present it to. So we would come and present it to you. Of course we would send you something ahead of time that you could, you know, edit right up or red mark or whatever you would like to do. And Janet has experienced this. And so has Jack working with the planning board on this kind of process. So that's kind of how I would recommend going ahead with this rather than having you all take pieces of it and try to write it yourselves. I suggest that there'd be one central point of, you know, drafting and then we bring it to you every meeting or every other meeting or however you think would be best to discuss what we're doing. So that's kind of how I'm imagining it. And then of course we would involve other people as well in our staff. We'd talked to Aaron Jock, who's the wetlands administrator and, you know, maybe others here who could give us good input. But that's kind of how I'm envisioning this process going forward. Okay, that's really helpful and also good to hear about the process and the not only support but to some extent leadership from the planning department to work through this might, and so this clarifies a little bit to me as sort of chair of this us steer working group of, you know, how do we, you know, volunteers pull off something like this in our spare time whereas I'm relieved to a large extent that, you know, a lot of the writing, drafting and so forth will come to us. And I believe that it's our job as, you know my understanding is our job is develop us a bylaw to recommend to you and to the town but you're saying that a lot of this will be drafted by your planning department for us to react to and provide our, through that process provide our recommendations and our feedback back to the town. I see a lot of hands which I think okay, which could take us out to the end which I'm a little concerned about but let me just, before going to that let me just say that, you know, my, I think this meshes reasonably well with what I had proposed to sort of start us out with which is basically let's get sort of an outline of the whole thing, Christine as you said and PVPC sort of lays it out and hear the sections that are typically in any bylaw but then specifically a solar bylaw with sort of some, in my mind it's like with some language and sort of yellow highlights of all the key decision, the specifications that we actually, you know, differentiate one town versus another in terms of setbacks or rules and regulations and so forth and that we would then on a meeting by meeting basis you know, hone in on one or two sections of meeting and try to, you know, with the guidance from Chris or any staff people you want to bring in sort of walk us through that and have us, you know, potentially opine on those numbers, discuss those specifications, maybe put stuff on hold to say let's go research and find out what other towns have done on this and then come back with some, again, I'm not sure if we're always going to meet and reach a consensus on everything but at least some decisions and recommendations that would then come from this group. So is that sound, and I see this playing out sort of pretty much starting as soon as you guys are ready Chris and Janet in terms of draft and maybe it's not the next meeting but the next meeting to sort of start having a beginning sections, they don't necessarily need to go into order, maybe it makes sense to do some of the definitions at the end or something but at least to start actually looking at some language and knowing sort of the decision points that we need to make. I would say that I would maybe next week or next meeting, I thought it would be helpful to have just a very high level conversation amongst us just to air our various different issues and concerns and principles if you will of just a high level discussion as we embark on this endeavor of sort of some of our high level principles that we wanna try to uphold in this bylaw and recognizing and being transparent and recognizing sort of the trade-offs that are inherent in this type of regulatory scheme and obviously not make decisions but just so we all sort of aware of the various dimensions of concerns, impacts and principles that we are trying to uphold as we move forward. And so if people think that's a good idea we'll maybe have a brief discussion on that at the next meeting before we launch into the language. Let me go with Stephanie, Jack, Martha and Lara and then we'll try to close out with some planning for next time in public input. Stephanie muted, you're muted. Sorry, very quick procedurally. I just wanna remind you all that you are representing committees very specifically. So when you get drafts you should be taking them back to your committees to get their input and review and then bringing the comments back from your committees as well. Good, thank you for that. Yeah, that's important. Okay, Jack. Yeah, I figure that Chris has the most experience of anyone here with the bylaws and was hoping that she would take the lead, but I was wondering who the point person might be within your staff. And also I was wondering about it seems like when I was on the plane where we kind of struggled with the CRC kind of steering the boat versus your department versus the planning board sort of thing. And I was just wondering about CRC input and when that comes, if ever that will come up. That's a great question. Yeah, go ahead, Chris. I'm not envisioning that we would bring anything to the CRC until we had something fleshed out. I feel like they don't really have a role until we know what we're doing. So at this point it would be too much of a ping-pong game if we were to try to do this with the CRC. So I'm thinking the planning department staff will work with the solar bylaw working group and come up with a solid draft and then eventually it'll go to the CRC to make sure that they are aware of what we're doing. But in general, I think they're aware of what we're doing. So I don't feel like we need to have constant input from them. And they're also very busy doing other things. Okay, I do wanna be conscious of public input and we messed up on that last time in terms of going over time. So can I ask Martha and Laura just to be real quick and then we can move to public input? Yes, I just fully agree with Chris taking the lead in the planning department, making a good outline, Dwayne, everything you said and stressed that we should go section by section starting soon and maybe suggest that we all review the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission's document before next time. That's it. Yeah, thank you. Laura. One final question is when do we expect to have the draft outlined by next meeting for us to review? I guess the question is when Janet plans to get it to Christine so we can have something to work with. Yeah, and I would just add to that, if maybe you're too far into it, Janet, but if it's still helpful for Stephanie or someone to reach out to Eric or... I think I'm okay. I think I'm okay. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm okay and I can just pass it. My goal is to finish up whatever I'm doing next week, hand it to Chris and that's it. So I don't think it's that helpful at this point because I think I have everything sort of in word. I've deleted all the excess language and then it's still a little ugly, but it's in shape. I'm sorry, Laura, I interrupted you though. I just want to know timing. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, I think we'll... I think next time if we can maybe see the state of the outline and talk a little bit about the principles that we're going to be keeping in our minds moving forward, my sense is that would be good for next meeting and then the following meeting maybe have the first section or two that for us to sort of dive into. So if that works out with the planning department in terms of staffing and so forth. But let me just say we do have a schedule for the next meeting. I think now we're going basically every other week on Fridays one to three. So I think we're good with that. I think we're good with the agenda items. I think we've covered that. I've written some down from the course of the meeting. So Stephanie, I wouldn't mind seeing if there's any public comment before we're too much over time. Okay. If anyone from the public is interested in making a comment or asking a question, please digitally raise your hand. Lenore, can you unmute? Am I unmuted? Yes, you are. Can you hear me? Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm in transit. I'm on a phone with body reception. So forgive me if even what I'm saying is missing point. But anyway, thank you for pulling together your care, concern, your expertise and your time. I just want to highlight a couple of things that I heard is, is to just, it's so tricky because you're a committee in Amherst in this little town dealing with something that is a regional and global issue. So I'm just reminding us of the obvious of not working in isolation. So when you were talking about the watershed and shoots, very shoots very is a wonderful neighbor to like bring in here. They have redrafted their bylaw and there's a lot to learn from from them and also from the other towns of course that you were talking about. And, and the other piece about not working in isolation is there's a lot going on on the state level, a lot changing a lot of movement around solar. And so just for us to keep in touch with that, because that's going to wind up impacting maybe not today, but in the future, which is what you're writing bylaw for. And, and I wanted to make a note. You were talking about how grasslands are close to forest in their function of filtering and cleaning water. And et cetera. But that's not entirely true in everything that I've studied on this issue. If you were to put it in a scale in a hierarchy, older forest do the best job of that. But of course we don't have any of those. Evolving forests are next. And we sort of have those. Most of our forests are working for us. That would be next. Grasslands would be next after that, unless you're talking about the old planes that the buffalo roams, which are not. And then man made planting, which is what you're talking about in terms of pollinator habitats, which is wonderful and creating that vegetation around solar rays. But that is not anything like what a forest can do, because as soon as you disrupt the soil in any kind of building, as Jack was saying, when you don't have that ground cover, you, you're disturbing everything above and below that. Not to mention the most important part of the forest in terms of the communication is the mycorrhizal fungal network. And that works in all of this, not only filtering water, but in our resilience to drought or resilience to floods, you have to assume things are just going to get worse. So there's this intelligence that guides these ecosystems that is very different than when we think, okay, well, we'll just plant some trees and make up for it. It's not the same thing. And the last thing I just want to say is, I agree that it would really be good to have more details on what went wrong in, in different towns all over the state, even though they might be different from ours, just so that you can have that in mind, you know, what, what actually, what were the things in Williamsburg because, because, because just because the state requires certain procedures doesn't mean that they're being carried out. So that's just the other thing that I wanted to bring up and I will stop talking now and thank you very much. Thank you. Jenny, did you have a question? So I think that's it for public comment. Great. Okay. Awesome. Okay. I still do before we close, I see Laura and Janet and Chris's hands still up. Are those still valid hands? Yeah. Okay. Yep. Janet. It occurred to me when we were talking about the bylaw in the sections, it might be really helpful to have us get a list of what we see or me Chris sees the planning department sees at key decision points like, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of language is just the language, but you know, what are key decision points that we need to sort of decide or make recommendations as a group. And that might be helpful to frame the discussion, like what are the things that we have to at some point just deal with and what information do we need? You know, if we had that list and we can think, oh, we need information that will help us understand this or make a decision. So I thought that might be helpful. Great. Yeah. My thought, and maybe I'm wrong, but my thought is we do that as we dive into section by section. Because I think every section is going to have some of those decision points and potentially further research we want to do to, to reach, reach those decisions. Chris. Oh, I just wanted to say that I think, you know, it's good to look at what went wrong in various places. So we can put in regulations to avoid the things that went wrong or put in guardrails. But I also feel like we need to look at what went right. And there are probably installations that were done well and didn't have, you know, major problems. And I think we should try to find those examples as well. So we could learn from them because they may have done things in a way that we wouldn't necessarily know about or, you know, I, I wouldn't know about, and I would like to know, I would like to find out what went right in certain places that turned out well. That's all. Great. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Just before we sign off just for. For next. Next meeting. The 21st of October. Laura, you were on agenda for a presentation formal or informal however you'd like to make it, but on, on, on elucidate a little bit from your experience and knowledge of sort of the economic drivers of solar development. I'm also just with what Chris just said, whether if there's any guidance you can give us on, on projects, projects we might reach out to that have sort of been good examples of at least in terms of construction process have gone well, but I think the main purpose was sort of this economic driver of what, you know, what, what are solar developers looking for needing to make projects be able to move forward economically. Does that sound okay? Laura, we appreciate it that thank you. And then we will also have the solar consultants with us. And, and start on the some discussion on the high level principles with regard to as we go into this process of, of developing the bylaws and maybe talk a little bit about the, the process again with the, with the planning staff and timeline on that in terms of getting, getting sections and the outline and sections and maybe Jen if you or Chris are able to sort of presented that at next, the next meeting of sort of the outline that we have as our starting point that would be really helpful. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your Friday afternoon and a long weekend. Looks like a nice weekend. So enjoying. Thank you everybody for, for all the work on this. Okay. I hear by adjourn the meeting. Okay. All right. Thank you.