 Okay. And we are now recording. New kitty. All right. Hello. This is a BCAC meeting and we have a lot on the agenda today. So let's go ahead and, and get started. First thing on schedule is to look at the. Well, first thing is to find a recorder. So. Let's see. Last time it was Jesse. And I know. Don, if you're up to it, I know where I know you have to leave a little early. So we're going to end this meeting today at that point. Are you okay to take notes or. Yeah, I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm happy to get. I'm sorry. I do have to leave at six, 15, but that's. That's okay. We're all exhausted. I don't like we're all going to benefit from that. Yeah, I don't think I have much to say anyway. So I'll just write. It's okay. Good. Okay. All right. So in that case, are there any comments I can share the, I can share the minutes if anybody wants me to here, I'll just do it. Share. And if there are any comments. We accepted the minutes. We've had an update. I don't see anything that I needed to change. These are actually really nice notes. So thank you. I think it was Jesse, right? Maybe I could add just one thing under section six CCAC member updates. Yep. Go ahead. The roof gave presentation. Just add at the Hitchcock center. To eight people. Okay. You got that Stephanie. I do. All right. Thank you. Anything else. If there's nothing else. I'll move to accept the minutes. I'll move to accept the minutes. Second. I'll second that Steve roof. All right. And. Please be sure you are unmuted and on camera. Goldner. Yes. Allison. Yes. Roof. Yes. D. Yes. Yes. Okay. Minutes are approved. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next on the agenda is always public comment. Do we have any public here today? We do. We do. Martha, if you want to say anything. Martha got anything for us today. Here. Martha, you can go in ahead and unmute even if you don't have anything to say just to say hello. Okay. I'll say hello. Yes. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. So. I'm on to updates. Let's start with transportation Stella. Uh, no, I haven't written the letters yet. That'll be an after finals thing. Yeah. Yeah. I did pass my comprehensive exams. So now I'm a PhD candidate. Yeah. Yeah, I understand. This is the, for several of us. This is the end of the semester and, uh, it's been a really hectic, uh, a few weeks. So, um, but I am looking forward to getting that, um, Uh, that letter and the anti idling letter, that's actually, you're actually on this schedule twice then as, as update and as five. So we'll just, we'll come back to that next time then. So. Yeah. Okay. Um, okay. So. Uh, Don, anything on pace? Uh, I, I'm, I'm not in academia, but in my business, the end of the year is awful, absolutely awful. Yeah. How many clients are trying to close deals and. Something about the tax code, I think. Most everything. So the answer is. No, like Stella. All right. But that has started. We have a, I think we have a pace program now. So next year. We do. That's something for us to definitely jump into. And I have fallen down on the job on contacting, um, Stephanie to reach out to, um, the appropriate people. So, okay. Cool. That's okay. Um, slow, but steady progress. Uh, okay. Solar bylaw draft. We have a draft. I admit I have not had time to read it. It is long. So Dwayne, do you have a, I understand you have some PowerPoints for us? I do have not, not, not. Believe me, I didn't go overboard, but, um, I did just to help, um, organize and, and, uh, moderate this discussion. I put together short PowerPoint with, I think some salient. Points to get to help sort of put this in context and then, um, sort of highlight some of the key areas of the bylaw. Uh, and then we have in the packet, the bylaws, the draft bylaw itself. As well as the, um, Trans middle, um, memo from the. Working group to the town manager. Uh, that provides a fair amount of context as well. So we can reference those, uh, but I can, um, go through the PowerPoint and use that to, um, Uh, bring forward, uh, sort of where, where we're at and what, what sort of, what's it in the bylaw. Um, so if that's okay. Uh, share screen. Yeah, that sounds great. Go ahead and just let's keep in mind that the, if I remember right, the time scale for this is that we need to have feedback sort of end of January, early February. Or no. No. Um, no. So this, uh, the process is that it goes to the council. And they will refer to CRC. Um, and then that'll be an opportunity for comment. So, and it won't be coming you to use specifically. No, I know that, but the time scale for when we should have our, if we're going to have comments. It's just that if, I mean, you can, I think what we decided at the last meeting was certainly that you could work on your comments now, but there's no, you don't have an absolute deadline. I guess is what I'm trying to say. There's no pressure. It's really highly unlikely that they're going to come anywhere near any kind of a decision making in January. So I'm just saying that if you, you know, there's no pressure. There's no absolute pressure, but it's nice to have a time to aim for it to have our discussion wrapped up. So maybe late, maybe early February or something like that. We should, and certainly on this draft, but they may make, I mean, they may make changes. They may not make changes. I mean, I really don't, I don't, I think we were asking them to sort of take a look. And there have been two recent decisions on the Pelham and the Shootsbury solar bylaws that because technically we're a city, so we actually won't have our bylaw reviewed by the attorney general. However, those decisions certainly play into how the legal framework works. And I would think that when our legal counsel reviews our solar bylaw draft at whatever point it goes to them, that they will certainly reference these decisions in terms of looking at ours and what they think may or may not be potentially problematic. So I'm not aware of those decisions, what transpired there. I was going to maybe reference them in the discussion too, because I think they're really quite relevant. I'm no lawyer. But I think, I think our stands is distinct from Pelham and Shootsbury and sort of the issues that were raised by the AG office. That being said, the AG is looking at this very carefully and with a critical lens with regard to fitting into the Dover amendment as it's called, which I'll get to in a moment. Okay, go ahead then. All right. So does that look like a PowerPoint to you? Yes, it does. Okay. So I have a couple slides just on giving some background on this and then a couple slides that go into sort of what the content or some of the key sections are not in detail, but just sort of section headings of some of the key sections. And then one slide, I think each on particularly how the working group and the draft bylaw addresses issues with regard to solar on in force, on forest land and solar on farmland, which is not at all the extent of what we looked at, but is areas that were discussed and certainly are of interest. I think the area of sort of protection of drinking water is another area that I can, I can touch on. Okay. Oh, isn't that advancing? Okay, there we go. So this, this is, you know, as we started this working group, we had several, but an initial meeting with the town council, legal council to really carefully review the laws that we have to work under. And primarily this is the state context here is the mass general law chapter 40 a section three referred to as the Dover amendment. And the Dover amendment itself is not specific to solar, but specific with regard to limiting the authority of municipalities to regulate zoning on for certain protected or exempted uses, including these, these things listed here, such as agriculture, religious use, education, et cetera, childcare and solar is enumerated specifically in that list as well. There is some thought and discussion that this was put forward in the maybe 80s or 90s when it was more with regard to protecting ability for homeowners and building owners to put solar on their buildings or nearby their buildings. But it prevails to this very day with regard to larger scale solar development and the limiting the authority of municipalities to zone in any way that would unduly limit solar development at all scales in Massachusetts. And so the specific language with regard to solar in this section is in the highlight there that says no zoning ordinance or bylaw shall prohibit or unreasonably regulate the installation of solar energy systems or the building of structures that facilitate the collection of solar energy except where necessary to protect the public health, safety and welfare. And so that's pretty explicit. The first part of that is quite explicit. No bylaw shall prohibit or unreasonably regulate solar installations. The second part with regard to except where necessary to protect public health, safety and welfare is I think where there is potentially wiggle room but also where very strict interpretation of that has been demonstrated by the attorney general's office, particularly now with shoots vary in Pelham where there has been rejections essentially of language in those bylaws that have recently been put forward to the AG's office for review with the some of the provisions that specifically do regulate and in the AG's case unduly and the arguments that have been made with regard to protecting public health, safety and welfare have not have at least fallen flat with regard to the AG's office review of those bylaws that have been put forward or draft bylaws that have been put forward. So that was the context that we were working under and I think it was very clear in messaging from the town legal council that public health, safety and welfare while that did give rationale could be could be used for rationale. There had to be very clear justification and tying any specific regulation or restriction on solar development to these things health, safety and welfare. But just to clarify, we're not considered a municipality we're considered a town so somehow this is different for us or is the same. Well, we're a municipality I guess that was new to me we're a city I guess I was the new structure of the government now, but but municipality my my understanding municipality is incorporates both cities and towns. Okay, so this does apply to Amherst as well this applies to Amherst. Apparently the AG office doesn't need to review our bylaw which I wasn't aware of but they don't need to review it and it still needs to it still needs to meet these the state law. Right. Because what will happen is it'll be challenged in court. Yeah. Although we don't need to get AG approval. Somebody could bring a lawsuit saying our bylaw violates the statute. Yeah. Yeah. And part of is that towns have automatic review of their bylaws by the Attorney General's office. Yeah. I think that's a good point. Yeah. But cities do not. And Amherst is a town is a city known as a town of Amherst. All right. Got it. Thank you. Okay. Just for additional background. We had a great working group. Really. Honored to, to, to, to meet these people and work with these people. Yeah. I think that's a good point. Yeah. I think that's a good point. All right. All right. So four of the members members were specifically. Designated to be represent committees within the town. Janet McGowan from the planning committee. Sorry. Planning board. Myself from ecac. Laura. Packley or Rulo. From the conservation commission. And I might add also that Laura brought. Wonderful. Expertise as a solar developer herself. And also was a member of the water supply and water supply and water supply team. Or the working group. And then Jack gem sick from water supply protection committee. And then. Unaffiliated. Affiliated. Members unaffiliated with other, other committees. We're selected by the town manager as well. Including Martha. Hannah. Who's with us. Today and has joined many ecac calls as well. Bob Rooks and Dan corkran. the working group at the beginning and Martha served as the vice chair and was selected as vice chair. And so, I appreciate not only meeting Martha, but also her leadership on this as well. Okay, to get going, we did make good use of existing bylaws that were either model bylaws or some written bylaws to help us sort of think about the scope and language of the bylaw. The Pioneer Valley Planning Commission has a solar best practices guide which has a very useful guideline for solar bylaws specifically that was reviewed and used quite a bit. DOER itself has a model solar bylaw. We found that the Cape Cod Commission model for large-scale solar bylaw was quite applicable and useful. And then we also referenced and tracked ongoing, recent and ongoing bylaws that had been passed by their towns, not necessarily approved by the AGs yet, but in Athol and Shootsbury particularly, given their proximity especially. The bylaw was about 20 pages or so. It has as a good regulation or bylaw, it's broken down into different sections, appropriately enumerated and so forth. There's some sort of administrative ones in terms of definitions and stuff like that. But some of the key ones for us to keep in mind and we can reference the bylaw itself to look at some of the detail here as needed. But the bylaw starts off with some nexus statements around forest, particularly around forest land and farmland. The purpose of those nexus statements is really to demonstrate or to put forward values that are incorporated in these bylaws to help defend if you will any regulations that are forthcoming in the or any restrictions that are forthcoming in the regulations with regard to public health, safety and welfare to set up your justification for these issues in these nexus statements so that when there are some restrictions in all zoning is to some extent, some restrictions that there is some basis for that referencing in terms of its impact on public health, safety and welfare. So those are sort of starting off sort of broad statements and also very clearly states the position of Amherst with regard to addressing the climate emergency. There's a whole list of submittal requirements that applicants would need to submit to the town. And we can go through those but they're pretty cookie cutter but some are more specific maybe to solar. There's a whole set of design standards with regard to the design of the array and the layout and so forth. And let me also just back up and say the bylaw, the applicability of the bylaw is to arrays in Amherst that are equal to or over 250 kW. So this is about an acre in size but 250 kW. That's what this bylaw is about. Other smaller projects would not be subject to this bylaw and that would include essentially building mounted building mounted systems or parking canopies, for example. The special requirements which I'll go to in a little bit more detail with regard to installations in forest land and on farmland. There's a section about maximizing ecosystem services of the of a array design designed with regard to the land around it and between the arrays to use that area to maximize to the extent possible ecosystem services. There's a short section on battery energy storage systems. Keep in mind all these projects 250 and over will by definition or by regulation by the state require some degree of onsite battery energy or energy storage. And so there is a short section with regard to that that being said, it's a relatively short section that is there's a separate bylaw that Christine Brestrup and her department are working on specifically for battery energy storage be it standalone or within a solar system. There's a section on stormwater management and erosion control and sedimentation control. This is a specific issue not somewhat during operation but primarily with regard to the construction phase and the early operation phase between the before the land growth and vegetative growth might be fully established. And as with any construction project sedimentation control and erosion is very important, particularly also with regard to stormwater management particularly as we see more frequent and more severe rainfalls. And certainly there's been some a few projects that have run into problems with regard to erosion control that were not well controlled in this manner. There's a section on protection of drinking water supplies to address both public water drinking supplies which are our big reservoirs and wells but also a section that deals specifically with more personal or individual wells that we have particularly in North Amherst. And then there's a section on abandonment and decommissioning of these arrays. All right, and then this is not all the sections there's some other sections I just didn't feel like some of them weren't that critical for us to I didn't think was critical to put in front of you. Okay, so just one slide each I think on forest land and farmland with regard to how the working group came out with regard to our recommendations in this draft bylaw on dealing with solar in these two areas. So for forest land and do keep in mind that there's already significant amounts of forest land in Amherst that is off limits to solar because it's in protected status, it's conservation land and so forth. So that land is already off the table. This is land that is not protected in that way but could be open to solar development. For forest land, for those lands that are designated per Massachusetts maps as core habitat are critical to natural landscapes or as priority habitat or estimated habitat as defined by the Endangered Species Act, Massachusetts. Those are off limits to forest clearing on those lands. For other forest land, there's not any prohibition but there are setbacks for clearings that are over five acres and these setbacks are longer or deeper than what we had for setbacks in non forest land, which was 50 feet. For forest land, there would be a hundred foot buffer of unclear land shall be maintained between the solar array and any public roads or residential property lines. For non forest, it's really 50 feet. So that's where we ended up really on forest land. On farm land, and let me just finish this and then we'll discuss to your heart's content. On farm land, our goal was really to maintain active and productive farm land and farming, recognizing that there's pressures to take farming out of, farm land out of farming and develop it for other reasons and solar can actually provide opportunities for farmers to be able to maintain farming by having additional revenue sources. Now this is not applicable for all farm land but for farm land and there's a decent amount of this in Amherst, for land that is categorized as prime farm land or farm land of statewide importance and there's maps designating this. It has to do with the soils and which is currently being actively farmed or has been actively farmed in the last five years for any solar array that is over five acres. So this is not applicable if a farmer wants to put a relatively small array somewhere on their farm but for any larger array five acres over five acres it must be designed as an agrivoltaic also known as a dual use solar project also known as an agrivoltaic solar generation solar unit for the smart program and must meet the criteria the definition of those terms that the state has which are robust in nature. Now we did provide an out. It's hard to make a requirement that's 100%. We did provide an out that if an applicant can demonstrate that for some reason an agrivoltaic system is technically or financially infeasible based on some third party specialist analysis then the town can provide an exemption to this requirement. That being said, agrivoltaics are being built now. There's the technologies there and I think while we would wanna maintain that exemption it would be a fairly high bar. So the idea is that if a farm does a farm in prime soils and so forth and that is being actively farmed wants to move forward with solar they need to do it as an agrivoltaic array which means that they maintain their farmland in productive agriculture along with the solar array. There's also provisions with regard to soil management particularly with regard to farmland. This is to some extent also required by DOER in their agrivoltaic program and so forth but we wanted to make that explicit as well. And so for all such lands meaning prime farmland or farmland of statewide importance and regardless of whether active farming has been there or not those soils shall be managed and conserved so that the land remains suitable for future farming activities and there's provisions within the bylaw that provides a set of soil conservation and management requirements along with reporting requirements for agrivoltaic arrays which is not meant to be burdensome but basically that the applicant would need to also provide the reporting that they need to provide they need to provide any how to DOER to the state if they're qualified as an agrivoltaic array that that reporting is also provided to the town. That reporting demonstrates that the farm is being maintained in active farming along with other things. So I think that's what I have in terms of the that was this last slide. So let me happy to happy to dig into any of those other sections in more detail any of these sections or hear what people have to thoughts people have as I think Stephanie mentioned the by the bylaw was submitted delivered to the town council on Monday Tuesday, Tuesday evening. And so on Monday and so it's in process now but obviously there's an opportunity for ECAC to cogitate on this and offer any comments that we would want to agree to. Questions. Thank you for that Dwayne. That was a really nice presentation that really helped me understand. Steve or go ahead. Don, I have to wave my hands every now and then are the lights turn off on me? Oh, go ahead. All I wanted to say was that thanks a lot Dwayne and Martha's still here. Thanks Martha. You guys did a tremendous job balancing all sorts of interests and you seem to have done it fairly and quite well to be able to come up with a bylaw that hopefully will pass muster legally whether or not one has to get AG approval for it. I did read it through since I am a lawyer it's one of the things I did do before this meeting and it's really good. It's really good. A lot of the thing, I mean the decommissioning is a big, big deal. It's a big deal with the oil wells and other drilling out west. I mean, we're seeing stuff now about wanting to jack up how much money one has to put in as a surety to be able to decommission these things. It's a huge deal. A lot of the other stuff is practical stuff that is pretty much in any kind of development where a special permit is required whether it's stormwater control or how one's siting or setback requirements but I don't wanna go on and on but I think you did a fantastic job both you and Martha and the whole committee. Thanks Don. And let me also identify both Stephanie and Christine Restra particularly for her leadership and expertise in the actual language and drafting and the completeness and her knowledge of all the components of bylaws. The working group worked very hard in reviewing and directing her language and so forth and particularly as it came down to some more interesting portions of it but it hats off to Christine for her work on this as well. But thank you Don. I think the way I advised you on the next of statements that's a great idea to try to at least put some legislative history into when anybody who has to judge judges whether something, what public health welfare, what that actually means in any particular situation. I found that to be great also. Yeah, great. And the town council advised us on that as well. I will say there was voluminous other materials in the next of statements that we decided not to include both from internally and from other people. We sort of ran out a little bit of time with regard to making decisions and editing a lot of language that I don't think would have been universally acceptable to everybody on the working group but we tried to hone it in on the key areas where we thought the AG's office or any other legal concerns might be raised particularly on farms and forests. No question. Yeah. Pushing it too far could end up blowing up the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. To some extent, less is better. What's that architect? Less is more, no less is a bore. But who knows, it's okay. Go on, Steve. Stephanie, I did have a question. My understanding is that towns automatically have their bylaws reviewed by the attorney general and cities do not. So if when Amherst passes a solar bylaw will it immediately become law and then therefore only be subject to challenge by lawsuits in the courts or is there a way that the attorney general might weigh in on the law? That's my understanding. Okay. Is that, yes, because we are, so before the charter that was our process was that the attorney general's office had to review any of our draft bylaws. And now that we are technically a city that is no longer the case. So the assumption is cities are better equipped to write. I don't know what the assumption is. I can't speak to this. I mean, for me it's fairly new. So Don probably knows way more about this than I do. Yes. The answer is it's a fallacy of sophistication, I suppose. But yeah, but I caution everybody and I know Stephanie and town council cautioned you all and Christine, taking a look at what the AG does because they're in this all the time. Taking a look at what the AG thinks meets the threshold of protecting the public health, safety and welfare and taking that into account is important because they spend a lot of time taking a look at that with respect to any potential challenges down the road. And I know your council does that. So I'll leave it at that. I think I was gonna say that when I was wetlands administrator, you know, when we were when the commission was dealing with anything it was just decisions should be defensible. So when drafting the bylaw, you want a bylaw that will be defensible. Yeah. I've got a couple of other thoughts. I've read the attorney general's decision on the shootsbury bylaw that came out just before Thanksgiving. I have not yet seen the Pelham ones. The attorney general in shootsbury rejected their bylaw primarily for some reasons that certain maps weren't properly shared as part of the zoning development process. But the second half of the letter to shootsbury was a series of sort of warnings and concerns raised by the attorney general about sort of saying you better watch out, make sure they don't conflict over these points. And the three points in there caught my attention. And it says, I'm looking at my notes here that the supreme judicial court, this is I think the attorney general citing the supreme judicial court in the tracer lane study case, which was the only case on the Dover amendment and solar that has gone to the supreme judicial course the tracer lane one. It says that the weather a bylaw facility violates section three, the Dover amendment prohibition against unreasonable regulation of solar system and related structure will turn in part on whether the bylaw promotes rather than restricts the legislative goal. And in that case, it was referring to the Massachusetts 2050 decarbonization roadmap that was out at the time of the decision. So that caught my attention. The Amherst bylaw draft bylaw by my reading does not promote solar in any way more than what is the status quo, rather it builds on a series of restrictions to restrict from the status quo. And that worries me a fair bit. And I'll come back to that in a second. The other thing that I saw in the attorney general letter to Schuetsbury was a statement they said that the court, and I think this was the Massachusetts land court they're referring to in this statement that the court determined that the bylaws stated purpose of the rural residential district, agriculture, open space and area for lower density single family residential use were legitimate municipal goals but did not qualify as public health safety or welfare. So that one really caught my eye that I'm not quite sure how much authority or weight that carries, but it'd be quite amazing if the court's ruled that open space agriculture do not qualify as public health and safety and welfare at least as far as the Dover amendment goes. I'm curious if you, anybody has had a chance to digest and understand that, that amazing. Thank you Steve, because I was actually going to ask the same question if anybody knew why Pelham and Schuetsbury had been rejected. So this is, you said there were three things or two, I got two out of that. That was two, you're correct. The third thing, oh yeah, that they said the attorney general said that Schuetsbury did not establish in the bylaw that there is sufficient remaining land available for large scale solar installations. And that's consistent with the Tracer Lane. Tracer Lane restricted it to less than one to 2% of total town area. And this decision is saying Schuetsbury is similar that they did not show that there was sufficient remaining land available for large scale solar installations if all of the bylaw restrictions went into effect. So that also suggests that to be strong the Amherst solar bylaw should demonstrate that there is sufficient remaining land available for solar installations. Trouble is courts haven't said anything about what sufficient is other than 2% of land area is not sufficient. Interesting. So that, yeah, so those are some, I think interesting questions and not being a lawyer those things seem pretty strong to me and kind of the fact that if agriculture and open space are not considered public health safety and welfare, then an awful lot of what's written in those nexus statements in the draft solar bylaw may be for not, maybe moot points if the courts would rule, sorry, those are not considered necessary for public health safety and welfare. Sorry, I don't wanna get into the weeds on a legal discussion, but and I don't know that much about Schuetsbury or Pelham's solar bylaw, but one of the things I did notice about Amherst solar bylaw is that there are no districts looking at that chart. There are no districts in Amherst where solar is prohibited and you can do it in any district, you just need a special permit. And I don't know whether Schuetsbury said, if it's an agricultural district, you can't put solar there. So I don't know if the comparison is the same, Steve, but by making every district in Amherst available with a special permit, I think that goes a long way to address that issue. I think you're right. And I got that sense too, because Schuetsbury definitely did restrict it to one out of eight districts, I think. And so there were definite prohibitions in certain districts. And I don't know about Pelham, but that was the case in the Tracer Lane study as well. There was restrictions, outright bans on solar and all but one or two. And that's a huge, huge difference when you get before a court. I think I've said enough. Interesting. So I had a couple of thoughts and suggestions and that ECAC could mull over and consider. And I think I would think it would be wonderful if the solar bylaw had some form of encouragement of solar development in town in the appropriate places. And that goes hand in hand with discouraging solar in the most, the sensitive places that you want to save. And by directing solar to the most appropriate places for solar, you can better preserve the places that are best preserved. And so I have some ideas to express on that when the time is appropriate. I thought the other thing that would be helpful in the solar bylaw would be an analysis that sort of gives some estimates of amount of land that's available for large-scale solar, ground-mounted solar developments, kind of under two-end member cases. One is what's available under the current status quo, the current rules. And then what would be the land available under the most stringent application of an Amherst solar bylaw? So that would kind of give two-end members of a range of land that's available and whether it's anywhere near the sufficient, sufficiency as the court has used that word. I mean, I don't see that analysis necessarily going in the bylaw, but as a contribution of ECAC to inform the council and other parties with regard to the implications of the bylaw. That's something that conceivably could be done under the ECAC purview. That sounds like a good idea. I just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly that the idea is how much land would be available with or without the bylaw. Yes, yeah, sort of without the bylaw and then the most restrictive interpretation of the bylaw, sort of the worst case scenario of the bylaw. That was just the way I looked at it, sort of two-end member situations. I mean, it sounds like the bylaw has some pretty definite things like we could figure out how much land is removed from potential development due to it being the protected habitats that you mentioned, Dwayne. Those are not subject to interpretation. Those are just subject to the lines drawn in the maps. Other things are subject to interpretation or PGA approval. So that would require a little bit more interpretation to figure out how much land. I mean, you could look at farmland and say, okay, well, you get less megawatts per acre if you do agrivoltaics than if you did strict solar and not have a farm field anymore. Right, yep, that would be another way. All right. Does anybody want to hear my idea for promoting solar? Yeah. All right, yeah. I've been looking at the solar technical feasible study that came out earlier this summer and there's aspects of it that I don't like, but what I think they did do well was come up with a rating system for all parcels. It's a parcel-based system, which is different than the GZA study that the town had done because the GZA was based on a 30 by 30 foot square and the GZA also did not distinguish between ground-mounted or canopy or building-mounted, whereas the technical study for across Massachusetts did have a specific category for ground-mounted and for every parcel, they give it a score and was it six different categories, agriculture, biodiversity, ecosystems, CO2, which is the sequestration potential of that parcel for absorbing CO2, grid connectivity and then slope for steepness. And so they give them letter grades, A being the best grade for solar development. So an A in agriculture means that land is not valuable as agriculture and would be more valuable or suitable for solar and likewise, biodiversity. And A, score for ground-mounted and biodiversity means that land does not have special biodiversity features to it. A C score, the lowest score would indicate that it has high biodiversity value. So these data are available on an online map that you can browse parcel by parcel and the data are also available as a GIS data set so you can go through and do better analysis on sort of a town basis. So my thinking goes along the lines of those parcels that get very high grade point average for these six different categories. Somehow we can relax the restrictions or provide other incentives for solar on those parcels and keep the strong restrictions for the parcels that don't score as high as suitable for solar, meaning that they have other better uses like biodiversity or agriculture. Yeah, thanks, Steve. Well, get Don's legal sense of that, but I guess that was something that we, based on your input, we did consider sort of discuss with Stephanie as well. And I think on merits that there's something maybe there. I'm not sure if it goes in the bylaw or something in terms of incentives that are outside the bylaw. I think the general thought was that the town wants to look at every piece of land and every solar project carefully and thoroughly. And that those sites that do are being proposed in those grade A areas are likely to get through this permitting process and review committees of conservation committee and all the other committees more expeditiously because they are lands that are less of concern with regard to solar development. So there's something probably built in to the process, not explicit, but sort of built into the process that would make those parcels easier. Now, to your point, it's not sort of maybe explicit to promote developers to specifically look at those areas, but they're generally out there looking at lands that are gonna cause lease trouble for them in terms of permitting. And so maybe there's something without explicit, citing of that technical study maps, which are also a bit problematic because they're subject to change and the data subject to change. And I'm not sure exactly how granular their data was and so forth that the town probably would not want to give any carte blanche streamlining for certain parcels without seeing an application and seeing, and then actually doing the site walks and so forth to confirm what DOER's technical potential map said. All right, Dwayne, thank you. I was not implying carte blanche for any parcel. Okay, let me go to, I think Don had his hand up and then Stephanie, if that's okay. And then we should probably, we only have a few more minutes, 15 minutes left after that I suspect. So let's move on to the rest of the agenda and come back to this again next time. This is gonna be an ongoing discussion. Thank you. You know what I can pass. Go ahead, Don. No, I can pass. Okay, go ahead, Stephanie. I think I was, and I don't know if Don was gonna say this. My only concern would be to be very careful about spot zoning, which I don't think is allowed. So I think that's one thing when you're talking about that, I guess in the way that you were describing it, it sounded very specific to specific parcels because ultimately that's ends up what you're looking at. So I would just wanna be careful about that. I mean, part of the GZA map and the reason why we did it, the way we did it was not to identify specific parcels but areas where solar is more feasible. If we had actually done it by on a parcel basis we would have come up with very little available area for solar development in town. So, which is why we went the GZA route that we did. All right, Dwayne, are you saying something because you're muted? Just to my wife. Oh, okay. So, lips moving. All right, so in that case, why don't we come back to this next time and let's move on to, I just had it in front of me and now I've lost it. Oh, there it is. The draft letter which Stella doesn't have ready, so. Right, so that's not ready but then we have the community climate bank update. Okay, so I did a little more work on that and I think what I'm gonna do, Stephanie, is just with you prepare a little note since Laura is at COP and I think I have an idea of what happened finally. So, I followed up a little bit more to figure out where the climate bank is. This big announcement that was made last June or July by the governor, there's this great climate bank that we can all, the municipalities can make use of. Well, I did a little more, after being sent back to the governors, it's quite funny. It's in a division, some new division of climate innovation and mitigation or something like that, that the phone number is the same phone number as the governor's office. So, I kept getting people from the governor's office calling me and telling me to call the governor's office at the same number that I had reached them at in the first place. So, I started to get a little suspicious and I looked at what was on the legislative agenda that had the main climate bank in it. And sure enough, this was never passed as far as I can tell. So, there are two bills in process to fund the climate bank and it's in joint committee. And I just today wrote to Joe Comerford and Mindy Dome to ask what is going on with this thing? I don't think it exists. I don't think it's been funded. I think it was just some idea that, it's sort of outrageous what was said in this advertisement that it was now available in a new program. As far as I can tell, it doesn't really exist at all. So, and it's on the mass housing website too, but the only information about it is the governor's initial, the same announcement. You always get sent back to the same video for announcing everything that leads back to that video. So, I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist yet and it should just be on our radar. And so that's what I'm, I'll write a little note, two lines just pointing that out that we didn't realize this didn't actually exist yet and that it should be on our radar for the future, but it's not there yet. So something to- Actually, Laurie, it probably exists. It just doesn't have any funds. No funds. It can't function. And nobody, and nobody running it because again, phone number is the governor, right? So it's the same. There's nobody, you know, it has no funding. It has nobody in charge of anything. So, all right. So that's where that is. And next thing, unless there are more to say about that, the educational series. Okay, so this is important in my mind that we did want to get started on some sort of, just some sort of, you know, more, we need to be doing more outreach, more talking to the public. And so in the built environment seem to be the obvious thing to do. Has, does anyone have anything to report on that? Has anyone done any follow up on that? Go ahead, Stephanie. So I did reach out to Greg Garrison from Northeast Solar. And he said he is more than happy to do a presentation. January 17th is his availability, earliest availability. I gave him a few dates of upcoming meetings and that was the one he chose. So... I won't be here for that. Oh, okay. But that's okay. If I would love, I can listen to the recording. So if we have a quorum, I'd be happy to have him do it on the 17th. Okay. The question is, who's gonna be here on the 17th? All right, so we need to find out who's, will you be there? We just have to make sure we have a quorum. So it looks like at least three. And I, I'd be there. Okay. All right, so we probably have a quorum. The other news there is that on the 18th of this month we're finally interviewing new members of the ECAC. So hopefully we'll have a full committee sometime shortly after that. Lori, can I, I'm sorry. Can I just go back real quick? Yeah. Greg said that he's willing to discuss financing or how solar fits into the state's renewable energy goals or any other topic that you all see fit. So I would want to have some guidance from you all on what you'd like him to focus on. I told him an hour. I really didn't want to ask him to do more. I mean, at one point we had talked about him doing more. And I feel like an hour is, you know, generous this time. So my thoughts there, I mean, the thing that I really want to know is, is personally, and I suspect other people are in the same place is, okay, I want to support solar. My house, you know, what is the best way for me to do that? Especially if my house is not a good candidate for putting solar on the roof, right? And yes, how do things get financed? Yeah, how do I know that a company, you know, there are these things you can buy into and there's no way to know what's real and what's not. What are the legitimate options and how much should I expect to save for them? You know, for a homeowner, I think that's the first thing for a homeowner. You know, what is available? And then we can talk later also about maybe doing more for business owners. Maybe he can do both in one hour. I don't know. For people who have larger buildings, it sounds like it's a slightly different set of incentives and this sort of thing, right? Yeah, we want him to talk about the financing options too. Yeah. You know, I mean, first there's the question, can I put solar on? If I can't, what can I do? And then if I can, what are the financing mechanisms to do so? And how much do I expect to, you know, what is this gonna cost me or save me in the long run, right, that's the big question I always have. That's what I've been having the hardest time figuring out. Because, you know, if you buy into a solar farm, you end up, I think the result is I end up saving about 10% on my, if I'm lucky, on my... Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I would also add to that. So just his, an update on the net metering situation. Yeah. Where does that stand? Are there bottlenecks in that? I'm, is there, I'm always not quite figured out whether, you know, if on a personal level, if I had solar on my roof and over-generated, can I net meter my credits on a personal level to my neighbor? I don't, I'm not sure if you can or can't. I think you can actually. I think you can, but I'd like to hear that and hear if there's been some experience with that. I know you can't do it across different utility territories, but to your neighbor, to a family member who lives nearby, that would be of interest to me at least. Right. Yeah, I think, I think that's, that's probably... I think we want to encourage, I think Steve's brought up or others brought up, you know, if you have a roof that can accommodate 20 kilowatts, why not put up 20 kilowatts, even if you only need 10 kilowatts and find a neighbor to work with. Oh, that'd be cool. Wouldn't that be cool? I would be happy to finance one of my neighbors. It's called, it's called community. Okay. I think that's plenty. So yeah, something along those lines for the first, I think it would be great. And then we don't have a lot of time today, but I would like to brainstorm, you know, what's the next thing and who would we ask for the next? So this is Greg Garrison, Northeast Solar, right? Correct. Yep. And then is there a follow-up to this that we want to think about? I just have a quick question, if that's okay. And Stephanie, you may know the answer, you may not. You know, what will the effect be, if any, if our community choice agricultural project gets accepted and approved? What effect, if any, is there on people who are generating solar right now that are sending it, you know, to the grid? Yeah, it won't change, it won't change their agreements and their structure of what they've set up. It won't change that at all. So does that mean you have to opt out? I mean, if you're like- You have to, yes. So when the CCA gets established, at least currently, this might change because I know there was some potential legislation that might change it. But right now, people have to opt out of participating in the CCA. And because we can't send our power to the CCA, if you will. It has to keep going where it's going. Right, it's still, right. So the grid, the utility still is involved in the distribution. Right. So that won't change. I don't think you have to opt out, do you? I'm a little bit- You have to opt out when the CCA gets approved. Anyone who is a current ever-sourced customer has to opt out. If you have a separate structure and you're not going through the utility, I think you would have to opt in if you have something that you're getting your, if you're getting your, if you have another source. Are we talking just about solar, people solar on there? No, we're talking about your electricity delivery. So this is just, this is just about electricity, not about solar, it's just about electricity. So for Don, or anybody who has solar that basically balances out their electric grid, electric bill over the course of the year, they would also be opted in automatically to the community choice aggregation. And they would, but they would just continue to net meter to zero and not really have any change in their life. But their electric supplier to the extent that on some months, there's energy coming in would be the CCA, but it would be netted out over the course of a year. It's really confusing to me. Yeah, I'm confused. There's going to be a lot of information sessions that are going to be coming up relatively soon. Right. Sorry, I asked the, I mean, it just- Oh, it's a good question. It's really confusing, yeah. Let's please, since we're short on time, let's please put a discussion of the CCA process on the schedule for next time. I don't think we can yet because it doesn't exist and we don't know what that's going to be. So I think it's premature. Okay, but maybe just an update. There was this problem of there was some legislation that hadn't been passed yet, I think, or rules maybe that they were talking about. And maybe this is what you're talking about because I'm still a little confused here about making it an opt-in instead of an opt-out thing when the CCA came online. That was one of the proposed changes. And I don't know the status of that right now. Okay, maybe we should put- I can find out. Status of CCA opt-in, opt-out on next agenda. Maybe we can get an update on that for someone from you, Stephanie. I can, yeah, I can talk to our consultant there, totally on top of all of that. Right, because if there's something that we need to do to pipe in and say, hey, this needs to be an opt-out, not an opt-in, it means people need to be opted in automatically, right? You need to be in the thing unless they opt out. All right, so with that, we have staff updates and EKAC member updates. All right, we'll be quick. So two main things. I submitted the Green Communities Annual Report and I'm happy to say that we were 19% below our baseline energy usage and which was, the goal is 20%, which we were, last year we were at 22, I think, 0.5%, 22%. So we have actually gone up in energy usage a bit, but the overall goal for Green Communities is to be 20% below your baseline. So 19% is pretty darn close. So we're actually doing fairly well, even though we went up, I think that's, I think there were a few reasons, but I'm not gonna get into it all now and I have to look into it a little more. So that's one of the things. And then the other thing that I wanted to report out was that I did submit an application for a Metagrant for Technical Assistance to change it a little bit to look at the proposal by Ben Weil and his students on how we can retrofit the Town Hall. I think we need a little more guidance. They gave us kind of a pathway that we narrowed down, but I think we need a little more guidance on that. And also doing anything to the building envelope for the Town Hall, even though I believe Ben felt that that's fairly straightforward, I think given the complexity of the structure, our facilities manager is really concerned and I think we wanna have another opinion on how we might address the attic space, which is very complicated because it's all open right now. There's a very thin layer of insulation with a pretty minimal R value in the roof space. So it would take someone, somewhat of a Marvel comic character who could get in there to swing around the rafters and lay out some kind of fabric and then fill in with insulation. So we have to sort of figure that out, but that's what the technical assistance is gonna be asking for, is to get another opinion that might actually bring us to a next phase for like a design of both the system and addressing the insulation. So there's more, but we have short on time. And anything we'll just push to next week. Real quick, Stephanie, to look at, because we did it in our house is foam. They coat the whole ceiling with foam and then paint it over, it's incredibly good. Yeah, again, I think it's just accessing the space to do that because remember, it's very pitched and there's a lot of scaffolding and stuff that's up there. So it's not easy to navigate that space. Okay. Let's move on to ECAC member updates. I have one if no one else does. I just wanted to say that I have finished the rewiring America heat pump advocate or electrification coach program, their beta tested version. And if assuming my schedule allows next semester, I will actually be participating in the facilitation of their next session in January and February, but it depends on, it all depends on their timing. Congratulations. If I don't do it. Did you get a badge? I don't have a badge. They didn't send me anything yet. They said they would. But I'm supposed to get a certificate, but I haven't gotten it yet. But I'm actually very much looking forward to doing this in the future. If not, it's not this semester because like it seems just busy. And I think that's all I wanted to say. Is there anyone else other member updates? If not, we open it to public again. Martha, Martha has her hand up. Just so my notes are clear since 10 is items for next meeting. Yeah, I'm sorry. We've been sort of going through them as we've been along. We've had the status of the CCA opt-in out on the next agenda. We had the letter, Stella's letter on idling. We're going to continue talking about the solar bio law, finish that discussion. And was there anything else that I missed? I'm going to finally get you something on pace. Yeah, not a problem. Okay. And pace and maybe the solar, just maybe the educational series, just nail that down, get an update on where that is and start making flyers for it. Thank you. That's it. I think that's it. I'm sure we'll think of other things in this course of the week. All right, go ahead, Martha. Thank you, Don. I just can't resist making a few comments then about the solar by law, right? Having suffered through it along with Dwayne for too many months to count. But so a few things I felt that we really were trying to make, encourage the use of solar on farmland. It was June 9th, I had to look back. It was our June 9th meeting when we had the panel of experts come and talk about the dual use on the agricultural land and about the smart incentives and so on. And I must admit that I got really jazzed about it. And I felt even though the section looks like it has a bundle of requirements, really the requirements are not meant to push the thing away. They're really meant to kind of encourage and help. And here we are in Amherst with the technical assistance from UMass. It seems like a great opportunity to take advantage of it and to help encourage the solar on the farmland. And after all, farming really is an important part of our local economy. I mean, you think about the farmer's markets and all the people who buy shares for the summer and so on. So I felt that that was something really positive. Stephen answer to your thinking that we didn't really encourage solar. I don't know, maybe we didn't say enough but I thought we were doing it. Regarding forests, there really is a change in thinking over these past few years. As we experience climate change, which means alternate droughts and floods and you've seen the deluges we had this summer that really impacted farmland and Hadley at least and so on. There's a real change that I believe is part of the health safety and welfare of our residents. And you have to have what one would call climate resilience or think about what are the things we need to do on our land to help protect from floods basically or other things. And that certainly forests play a big role in that and point out that right on our town website right now there's an announcement about an EPA grant to help our community develop nature-based resilience in the face of climate change and go read it. Nature-based to me means you have to look at your open lands and see what we need to do in terms of climate resilience and that really is part of health safety and welfare. So the forests, they have roles in many different ways that we have to consider. Some few other things to say about that. If you look at the GZA public report and other surveys that have been done of the public and asking homeowners, would they put solar on the roof? And if yes, why? And if not, what are the drawbacks? And the thing that comes across the biggest is the upfront cost. That's just way out of everything else. People often say that yes, the reason they wanna do it is for the sake of the environment. And to some extent, they say yes to save money, but it's the upfront cost that's the problem. And so maybe that's something that the ECA could think about. And I know Dwayne, you had mentioned about the credit union that gives low-cost loans at this point. And maybe other banks could be convinced to do so if the town really launched a campaign. But I think what I'm saying is we need to think about the reasons people are resistant and see what we could do about it on that score. Also then about what lands in Amherst are appropriate, don't forget about the niche report. That was the previous report and survey of Amherst of what lands would make sense to put solar on. And they talked about focusing then on the built environment on the many parking lots on the land that was barren or not very good, like that gravel quarry up there on Route 116 south that I guess is in Amherst or Steve, that's 17 acres that Hampshire College owns and so on that is mentioned in the niche report. So there really are areas to think about and parking lots are really a really good future thing to think about right now. The problem is the financial incentives, but I know the schools are thinking about it and it's something to consider for the future. Okay, Martha, I'm gonna thank you. I think we have to go because I know Don has to go and go on at that point. Well, yes. I really appreciate your input on all of this. So thank you very much. Yes. Well, you know, there will be further discussions. I'm sure. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Martha. All right. So with that, knowing that Don has to go and we're all exhausted. See you all in two weeks. Sounds good. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Great. All right. Everybody be well. Yep. Thank you.