 Okay, we are now recording. Great. Thank you, Stephanie. And welcome everybody to the June 23 2023. Meeting of the 10 of them are solar. Bylaw working group. Thanks for being here. And let me just check. I know Laura is. I think somewhere in DC airports. Trying to make our way back. Through thunderstorms there. And. May join us later. May not be able to join us depending on flights. Are we missing anybody else? No. Okay, great. Dan. But I think. Yeah, Dan. Yeah. Might not be available today. Okay. Okay, great. Okay. Okay. And the first order of business. Oh, good. Yep. First order of business is the minute taker today. Which. We went a bit out of order. So we're reverting back to Jack if you're so able. And willing today. Jack, are you okay for the minutes? I don't. I'm going to do a good job at it. I'm kind of like not up to par. Stephanie knows. Okay. It would be a huge, it'd be a huge struggle for me. Okay. To do it quite frankly. Personal situation. Yep. No worries. No worries. Okay. That takes us to Laura, who's obviously not here. So then it would next in order would be back to the top of the list that we started. Hey, Dwayne. Dwayne, I'm here. I can do next week, but I'm not going to stay for the full meeting today. Exactly. Okay. Okay. Good. Good that you can join us. And so that brings us to Bob if you're is Bob here. Yeah. Bob, are you able to take minutes today? Yes. Yes. Great. Okay. Awesome. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah. Okay. So I'll make note of that. Okay. And. Then Laura, you'll be on deck next next week. Okay. Okay. So. Looking at the agenda to set the stage for today. We'll have two sets of minutes. If we can to review and approve. We'll have our normal staff updates, committee updates. We don't have a whole lot of time. To really go through language of the bylaw today. And then we'll have a meeting. Obviously that will be our primary task. Moving forward after today in my mind, given the summer and the end of the summer deadline, essentially. But Chris will give us a bit of an overview of where we stand and where we need, need to be. Need to get to, to sort of get us all on board and ready to dig into the bylaws. After, after this meeting. We'll be looking at a new topic or a main topic segment today. And we're on a schedule here with availability of Mark Warner, the GIS. Expert for the town. We'll be providing an introduction, no review of the, of the solar mapping tool. With additional layers associated with it. And we'll all have an opportunity to, to. Get an understanding of what he's been able to put together for us. As a tool. And use that for some, some discussion analysis. And then that'll be at a sharp start at 1215. And he has a cut off at 115. So that'll be that an hour. And then. We'll end the meeting with some. A quick agenda items and then open for public. Comments. All right. Okay, great. So first order of business. If people have had a chance to review. The minutes from last week, sorry, last meeting and the meeting before that one. May 26, and then six, nine, June 9th. Any comments, discussion. On. Let's first take up the May 26 minutes. Or do I hear a motion to accept those minutes? And I'm the one thing we're missing. I think. I don't know exactly who, who I have in my notes. Yeah. Okay. So those were from Janet. Yeah. Thank you, Janet. I think I forgot to sign them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'll make a motion to accept my minutes from May 26. I don't think there's a problem with that. Okay. In the crowd, but. Yeah. Okay. We have more at the second. So, okay. Okay. And by a voice vote, Breger. Yes. Jem sec. I'm pulling. I'm going to stay. Okay. Corcoran. Yes. Hannah. Yes. McGowan. Yes. Brooks. Yes. Paglia Rulo. Yes. Okay. The minutes are approved. All right. Thank you. And then we had, uh, I would say somewhat abbreviated minutes from our last meeting, which was essentially the. Educational. Program on aggravable tags from our three speakers. The minutes really just reflect that we had that presentation and that those are available. Uh, and a few other minor things, but, um, any thoughts or comments or a motion on the minutes. From. June 9th. Janet. So I, I thought we weren't going to do minutes in that meeting. And I was ruining that because it was such an informative meeting. And then when you did those minutes. I almost rude that because they don't really comply with the open meeting law requirement that somebody who didn't attend the meeting could get the gist of what happened. And so I wonder if you could just bulk them up a little bit. I don't think it's enough just to reference, um, the presentations because there was so much information that came out during it. And so, you know, the lawyer and me and just, you know, the members of the public who give them access. And frankly, actually I go back and read old minutes all the time, not every day, but it's very useful to me to go back and see that, you know, compared to my, you know, checkered notes. So I wonder if join if you could just put some more flesh on those bones. I mean, I know it's asking for more. Any other comments on that? I'm not. Yeah, I have a comment. So I'm not sure my understanding was, because when people present and I'm taking notes. Um, I thought the minutes were supposed to be just sort of high level, but the recordings are where you get. Like all of the meat, because I think it's really difficult to take, at least in my experience to take. Detailed notes when someone's presenting a lot of information really quickly. I don't know. I mean, you have a better understanding of what the minutes should represent, but that would be good to know if I'm, if I'm taking minutes and it's a presenter, like for example, Bob today. It's a lot of fast typing. Yeah, my, my thought maybe Stephanie. Good. Let her let her know her thoughts, but was that. Minutes on a external speaker speaking to PowerPoint slides. Was. I'm not sure it seems like there's a much better record of that. Um, with their PowerPoint slides and the, and the recording, then trying to take notes and interpret what they said external. Presenters. So I was a little bit. I was thinking that it would be more appropriate to post their slides. Um, and the recording and not necessarily try to. Um, transcribe or even, um, transcribe or even transcribe. Um, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Because they're speaking, they're, they're talking points. So, um, how we deal with it is that actually. A lot of committees deal with their minutes differently. However, um, we have had committees and I have, um, actually done this for the conservation commission, which has very detailed. Um, even legal proceedings. Um, some, just sort of summarized the gist of the discussion. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that would occur, those have to be actually recorded, but I don't think to, because you had the presentation, you had the slides in the packet, there are available to the public. Um, you also have the meeting recording. I really don't know that you have to get into. Detail about each speaker. So I, I just think it's maybe. Unnecessary work for Dwayne at this time. I think he doesn't really have to do that. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that's a good point, but that's, I think a summary is fine because it wasn't a legal proceeding or anything. And there were no votes taken. It was just basically presentation. Yeah. You want me to say something about that. If you, if you have anything to say. Um, I agree with Stephanie. Um, the only thing I would say is if members of the group. If you have any other comments, any other comments, any other comments or any other suggestions. That you might want to include some of the, uh, comments from the working group, but. Um, you know, other than that, I think that presentation stand on their own. I did happen to watch the whole thing. And I found it very informative and other people can do the same. So I don't really feel like you need a word to word for word. Transcription of what happened then. There. Great. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments with thoughts on that? Is that a hand? Martha. Okay. Real hand. Yeah. Well, first of all, let me say that our team. Did kind of a good summary. He put it in the end was Indy. He had attended and listened to the thing. And I don't know. I, I, I agree in general. Uh, I don't think that Jake. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think that. Marley really included all his slides. I think he just. All I saw was just for not really his. His talk. So I don't know the only possible compromise might be to take. Say, you know, two sentences about each that, you know, like Jerry Palomo really, you know, carefully reviewed all the smart. Uh, things in his slides are fairly complete and go referenced in terms of what he does. Uh, a description of a sentence or two about who he is and what he did. What he does. Um, I know that would be my only suggestion, but I wouldn't feel it was really necessary. Yep. Okay. Janet. You're muted. I do think we need more detail without a transcript. And so it's, um, the fact that somebody is not a member of the committee providing information doesn't really. Yeah. Yeah. And watching the video isn't an answer to open meeting law. There's no. Provision that says, Oh, you can, you have a four hour meeting. Everyone can watch that. Cause obviously people, the whole point of open meeting laws to help the public participate and understand. Without burdening them with what we do in the length of it. So I would put some more information and Jake had a lot to say, but you know, we had a lot of questions and comments too. And I think that. You know, you know, you know, you know, I think in between a transcript and a sentence or two has to be provided. And so, you know, That's just the law. And, you know, I know Jack and I have gone back and forth on this in two committees, but there's, it's just too thin. And people just, and it's also great information too. So anyway, so that's my comment. All right. Jack. Yeah. Did we discuss about. Do we have the slides from each of the presenters? Well, the slides are available on the website. Are you suggesting somehow incorporating them in the minutes? Yeah, just by reference. And I think we'd be all set. You know, wouldn't we? I was just going to offer to Dwayne, I'll work on them. And I'll add the link to the slides and I won't, I'm not going to wax lyrical because it's not meant to be a transcript. It's just meant to be a summary. So I don't think we need to have all the detail, but I will. I will work on them a little more. And you can vote on them at the next meeting if that works for people. Thank you. I think that's good. Okay. Extremely appreciated, Stephanie. Sure. Thank you. Okay. So we'll postpone that till next meeting. Okay. All right. Staff updates. Stephanie. The only real update I think I have is just. Right now we're collecting public comment for the community choice aggregation. So if people haven't submitted their support, we would love for you to please send an email. To me, you could either send an email directly to me and just sort of state your simple support. It doesn't have to be anything in great detail. For the community choice aggregation, the comment period ends on the 30th. So you have a week left to get comment to me. And so far we've had quite a bit. In fact, the consultants have said that we've received the most comment than any of their other aggregations. Okay. Yeah, great. Okay, which shouldn't. This way to anybody from adding, adding to the pile. Sure. So. Awesome. Good to hear, Stephanie. I thought I saw a hand. Okay. Yeah. Stephanie, you had. W, there was also the discussion at the ECAC this week about the. Expanded stretch code and people were being asked to. Let their town councilors know before the Monday meeting. Is that anything you'd wanted to mention or. I don't think that they were asking people. I think they were just talking amongst the committee members. Public to provide comment because that will be a process that will go through the town council. So people will have opportunity as they're weighing that decision about whether to recommend or adopt the specialized code. But yes, that will be before the council. And I think it will be on Monday. So that might be something folks are interested in. And the specialized stretch code is just an expanded. An expansion further expansion of the stretch energy code. Sorry. Janet quick question. Does that, is there going to be a requirement of like putting panels on new buildings or. You know, using heat pumps or is it this is a new stretch code or sort of forcing you into. Solar or. I think the ideas that when buildings are new construction would be solar ready. Or have solar. Okay. For the specs for the moving in towards the specialized code. I believe that's one of the differences. Great. Okay. Chris anything on your end, in terms of staff updates. I, I don't think I told you that the battery storage facility at 515 Sunderland road was approved by the zoning board of appeals that happened on the 25th of May. So I thought you might be interested in knowing that. Thank you. And I've also asked one of our staff people, Rob Wachilla who helped to draft the battery storage by law and where I've asked him to take a crack at drafting a battery storage by law for us. So that may be coming along in the next few months. Yes. Okay. All right. Any. Committee updates for many of us who liaise with committees. I have Zippo from the planning board. Okay. All right. And. Yeah, for me cake. I think. Stephanie mentioned the cake meeting also we talked about the. Valley green energy. EECAC is also putting drafting now, trying to final finalize a draft of its annual report, which should be available in another few weeks or meetings, I guess, until we get that approved. And I think that's it from the cake. Okay. Anybody else. Okay, great. So we thought we could spend maybe about 10 minutes or so, and then move over, move to Chris on on the where we stand with the bylaws but just a little bit of a discussion on the debriefing from our discussion on agrivoltaics. Last meeting. I agree. I think all three presenters presented useful and different information from each other. And. And I'm interested in hearing what people have to think from that. I guess what I, a couple of things. Just to point out one is. I want to be. Careful, or sort of differentiate between what I would consider more zoning bylaw zoning regulations and program regulations on agrivoltaics that do we are runs and and we learned a lot about agrivoltaics both nationally but specifically in Massachusetts. I think the sense that I know, and I think that we got from the speakers is that Massachusetts is has very rigorous standards and regulatory requirements to be eligible for agrivoltaics as the state defines it for the purpose of smart incentives. Very different from agrivoltaics as defined more generally across the country. And, you know, one thing we have to think about in terms of how we zone or develop bylaws for for agrivoltaics is how much do we just simply rely on the state and their roles and regulations with regard to the design of agrivoltaics and the requirements of agrivoltaics, recognizing that. Those, those are, we know what they are today we don't know what they will necessarily be in 10 years and to some extent I think the zoning rule should be somewhat evergreen if you will. So that's that's that's an issue. But any, any, any, let me hear from anybody else in terms of the, we don't want to start digging into the rules right now we'll get to drafting some of this in due time, but thoughts on the presentations and the information and questions that it raised. Martha you sent some questions. I do want to pick up on on Lars, follow up email I and Stephanie if you want to opine on this. Again, I think the protocol is really that we don't email the whole group together, but that that type of email goes to Stephanie and or myself for dissemination to the group, just moving forward. I felt that I wasn't saying any opinion at all that I was just listing things that were, you know, objective questions that's why I felt it was. Okay, but now, but I would be interested to hearing from each one of us as to what was each person sort of main takeaway from at all or sort of main impression. I mean, I guess, from my side I was most impressed with with Jake's presentation and the, and the kind of the complexity and the and the detailed care that has to go into each application in order to make it work. So that was my sort of main takeaway. Anyone else to go ahead, Janet. Um, I was, I'm always, I'm, I'm struck, I was struck by the complexity of the whole situation and the uncertainty. And, you know, how do you, um, You know, you know, what are your goals? Like if your goal is to keep land and production and what level of production. And how did we regulate that or monitor that when nobody knows what works in Massachusetts. And so, um, you know, we have like, you know, UMass a clean energy extension is doing, you know, for experimental things to see like what works in mass and how far apart and, you know, angles and all that good stuff and what plants are doing well. With also the, you know, it has to be multi year because plants, you know, obviously do well different years and different conditions and so. Um, so given the uncertainty does dual use using work in mass and how what's the best way to work. What do you do? Like what do we do in Amherst saying, okay, you know, we want to require dual use. But how do you, how do you do that and uncertainty and then, you know, like Duane's program is also giving people advice for how to do dual use in this face of this uncertainty and so that makes me nervous and I'm concerned about like, so what if the requirement doesn't work what if the the farm situation isn't good but the all the all the solar arrays are in there. And so, and you know my understanding is no one's going to be pulling solar arrays out in 30 years I mean I just, I don't think the crisis will be over and I think when you have a huge investment like that. You know, making money is, and it makes sense just to continue so whatever we decide these facilities are we consider them permanent and so how do we get the energy off the solar array and how do we keep those the land in production. So I just, I was just struck by the uncertainty of it. Go ahead, Jack. Yeah, I was definitely encouraged by. The loss of these dual use situations, and was struck favorably how it actually allows a reclamation in effect of a lot of fields that probably wouldn't even be far because irrigation needs, or just not favorable conditions and it seemed like dual actually expanded the opportunity for agricultural work in certain, you know, locations and then where farming is already, you know, productive. It just provided a kind of different lens in terms of what type of production would be, you know, occur there. But it seemed very friendly to agricultural, you know, activities. I have no reservations about dual use whatsoever. I mean from from that presentation that that was my takeaway. I mean provided you know the farmers income that they can invest into a pertinence is an ancillary, you know, like irrigation and you know, other features that they need in the farm, the solar would actually help pay for it. So it's a win-win for me for all those. Great. Thanks, Jack. Yeah, I just for myself I would tend to my takeaways that I think there is a great deal care that's being taken, or at least from from Jake's perspective from AFT perspective between the solar developers and the farmers to come up with a plan that is designed to work for the farm. I do know in the in the in our review of dual use applications. We always look for what is plan B. If the if the first crop or agricultural practice that they're planning to do if that actually doesn't work too well. I think there's an unexpectedly less than an anticipate of what is there is the is the array designed in a way and the farm field laid out in a way that allows for a plan B for another form of agriculture to to be tried out. And you know, I guess there's always the situation and we this uncertainty is not going to evaporate anytime soon as mentioned. So there is always this situation of developing policy in some under some degree of uncertainty. And so I wouldn't I wouldn't think that was is a reason not to to push forward. I would also say that I am, I do recognize from AFT particularly of the opportunity for Agrible takes to actually to be helpful in keeping some farm field in some situations in agriculture, as opposed to potentially being left unfarmed or or sold off for other purposes. Those are all issues. Let me. Let me hear from Chris and then Laura and then Janet and then we'll we'll think about moving forward I see Mike has joined us but yeah, I wondered if there was any resource where we could find out about the success of dual use in Europe. It seems like it's being more, there's more being done in Europe and how can we find out about that that was something that was brought up in one of the presentations and that made me really curious and interested. Sure. Yeah, I can look into that a bit see if there's any, any reports on that that I can find from some of the resources I have. Okay, Laura. Yeah, I know I was going to say I think across the board here, we're all supportive of Agrible takes I am, you know, it's been something that I've definitely been tracking for years. I think there also needs to be the recognition that it's, it's still challenging. It's still nascent and even when you have incentives like Massachusetts does in New York. If they don't already I know they're in the process of developing. It's still really challenging. So, I, you know, I suggest that in our, in our language if there's any way to come out in strong support of Agrible takes. But I think we need to, you know, I'm not sure. Because right now any developer they get, if it makes economic sense, and they feel like they can do it. They will. The only thing I'm thinking about that would be helpful to developers that this group might add value to is that because a lot of the developers are not based in our area they're based in Boston for example, like a next amp or a blue wave. Agrible has the ability to refer them like even maybe doing your group to a center that can help guide them on how to do Agrible Agrible takes in our region. That is something that has not been done to my knowledge. So for example, you know you're developing a project hammers it's really hard as it is like it's kind of the last thing they're thinking about, because of how difficult it is just to even find a site and get interconnection that works and it's not millions of dollars, permitting all the things that it takes to get a project developed. And if it was, if we made it easier for them in some way to advance our goals by giving them a list of references that would be, I think incredible. But I think we need to, you know, aside from supporting it my, my opinion is, it's not our place to get involved in the regulation or the monitoring of Agrible takes because one of the reasons why developers aren't doing it in Massachusetts is that there are such stringent regulations. And I think a lot of them don't feel comfortable committing to it, and then not being able to deliver so if there's a way we could help them deliver. That would be very valuable. But I also want to reiterate, Janet's point about, you know, I think it's highly unlikely, like we need to look at this the lens of once someone like right now solar and storage and technology but 2030 years now who knows what the technology is going to be. Everyone's racing to get solutions for climate change and the technology just keeps improving dramatically, even solar, you know, efficiency improve improved by 70% over the past 15 years. So it's unlikely that you're going to have a site that was developed for any sort of energy production that all of a sudden goes back to farmland. So, you know, I think we need to recognize that as well. And I think it's all the more reason to support a dual use situation. So, thanks Laura. All right, Janet one last comment and then we'll go to Chris. Yeah. So, um, thank you Laura. I, so, I, I, so I, someone sent me a thing about in Lenox. There's a company whose name I can't remember TLH vineyard sky or something. And they are they have a 45 acre project on hayfield. They bought the hayfields from a farmer who's hated and putting 21 proposing like a $21 million array and they're far and they're they're farming operation is 12 sheep. And then they're also putting in a shed for the sheep. And so, you know, it so I kept on thinking of the just sheep and you know, and obviously this is not a real farm operation, or a serious one when you think about the number of sheep down the road. And so I think that's like, that's another concern I had after someone sent me this article and I called the Lenox planning director and just had a long conversation because she also sits on her planning board in her town next door. And so this whole question about, you know, like, it just to like the agrovoltaics and you know how it's regulated and I was going to send her stuff from the state and things like that. So I think we have to kind of look at the question of just sheep and how many sheep and so. And also like, you know, with in terms of just relying on the state regulations. It's kind of a political decision they're always making and it's shifting and you know we could put in requirements and that you know we think we'll protect the land and prevent just 12 sheet being a farming operation. Or, you know, requiring that soil be analyzed and all the good things that was recommended by the engineer. And if the state shifts later to weaker regulations, we have our good Amherst ones, or if they get, you know, more advanced regulations, we could also shift with that too. So, I wouldn't step away from a town role. Just the way we have our own wetlands regulations and we have the state wetlands act. And I think we have to sort of address the, you know, issue of like someone's, you know, Brookfield farm has like 40 acres and is feeding like And so what if, you know, and obviously this is a PR land but difference but what if a person, you know, farmers, you know, basically said I grow vegetables. I've sold my solar field. You know 200 cheap come in. Do we want that to happen. Is there some way of controlling that. I also don't think the state's going to have great oversight of these farm operations and if they exist. So, you know, at least we're closer to the ground or the town can say, yeah, this is great. He had, you know, 200 cat cattle. And now he's down to seven that's not working anymore and you know, I think we should, you know, we should sort of keep a role in that. Okay. Thanks for that and Laura Metro if you have your hand up again or I do. Just, just a quick counterpoint to Jen. It's, I mean, I listen, I think the reason why people aren't doing every ball takes so for example, there are a lot of different adders in Massachusetts. So you get a big adder if you subscribe low income customers, for example, it's probably one of the larger adders, but in order to do that you can't just say the state doesn't say okay Mr project owner I trust that you are offering discounted power to low income subscribers, they're validating it. And I think the main reason why we're not seeing more at the ball takes is because developers are concerned about the ongoing requirements to verify because what happens is if you if you get that credit for agrible tax, and you don't adhere to it, it gets called back it's it's like a it's a really big deal because you're underwriting a project, and then it gets called back so it's not it's certainly not taken lightly so I'll put it that way. I'm not going to put three sheep on and say this counts because it has major economic implications. But I think, you know, I have never and I am not as I haven't read through any updated language to the state but the only time I see sheep on solar farms they are very gracious appetites. And I only see them used for like on M ongoing operations maintenance to keep the grass low and the weeds out. But they have to be rotated a lot so I just did a project in Hawaii, where the sky has literally 4000 sheep and he moves them around to giant utility scale farms and that's how he how they maintain an environmentally sustainable way of maintaining you know grass mowing across you know the business for him. I think sort of like the lower level here. I worked with a developer in Maryland who I'd love to put you guys in touch with philosophically they're not in Maryland they've been projects in Maryland they're based in Seattle area, and they're philosophically aligned with what we're trying to do. We always try to incorporate agrivoltaics and at the very sort of bare boned level I think it must have been seven years ago, when there wasn't even an incentive in Maryland, they had pollinator facilities they were raising these on all of their sites. Because, because they, because it was important to them, basically, and they, these were community solar projects in Maryland, the company's called one interview renewables, and they're a great group of people. But anyway, so I think like, you know pollinator habitat I don't think you get credit from the state there, but it's definitely a, you know, important thing to do, especially when you know our pollinators are at risk. Great. Thank you, Lauren. Okay, and just just to be clear for at least in Massachusetts I mean bringing in sheep to keep the grass low would not be defined as agriculture for agrivoltaics. So that wouldn't get the adder, but she may may serve a very good purpose for normal ground mounted solar arrays to keep the grass low. And also just pollinator pollinator habitat did get a very small adder but that's been that's still being being worked out the DP took it away and now do we are going to get it back. Okay. We have Mike Warner has joined us. But Chris, do you want to just give us a brief sort of status or update us sort of where we stand with the bylaw and sort of just to set us up for where we're going to be going with drafting after this meeting. Sure. I sent a list. It was an updated version of the outline to Stephanie I don't know if she's able to pull it up or not but while she's working on that I would say that since the last time I met with this group which I think was on May 12. I spent time listening to the two solar bylaw working group meetings that I missed May 26 and June 9. And in addition, I've reviewed all the sections that we've written to date, and they are pretty inclusive. One of the things that we need to think more about as we go forward. And one of them is how to deal with farmland and whether we're going to require the use of agrivoltaics on farmland if solar arrays are going to be installed, or not. And another thing is how to regulate solar on forest land. So those are two things that we haven't really addressed. We had started to address forest land a bit by saying that you would need to mitigate for cleared land in either Amherst or in an adjacent town so you know we started to talk about that but we haven't really dealt with that very, very clearly. The other thing we need to think about is how do we want to regulate these facilities and currently solar facilities are regulated under a certain section of the zoning bylaw about power generation and transformers and things like that so pretty across the board except in one or two zoning districts. A special permit from the zoning board of appeals is required so we need to think about, do we want to keep that requirement of having a special permit from the zoning board of appeals or there are certain zones where we think that these large scale ground mounted solar arrays could be regulated by the planning board by site plan review. So that's something to think about in the next, you know, iteration. The other thing I wanted to suggest that we tackle at some point is how specific do we want to get in regulations about solar arrays on farmland and I think Janet, you know, sounds like she said the opinion that Amherst needs to have a lot of detailed regulations in our zoning bylaw to regulate solar arrays on farmland. Another approach would be to refer to the state regulations and I did read those. ASTGU guidelines this morning that Stephanie sent out that were dated June 16. And those seem pretty detailed and they seem to sort of track the criteria that Janet had sent out a couple of weeks ago from someone named Kip. So, you know, the question is, do we really need to get that detailed with regard to what we want to do in Amherst or can we just refer to what the state is recommending. Yeah, another question I had is for solar on farmland, are we going to say that it has to be dual use? What if a farmer has a big farm and wants to have a portion of his farm in farming, purely farming and another portion of his farm in solar array? Is that going to be allowed? And if so, is there some sort of ratio that we're going to say if you have X number of acres in solar array, then you need to have X number of acres in active farmland. So again, you know, that's something we need to think about. So those are all things that occurred to me as I was going through, you know, the recent meetings that you've held without me. But here's a list of the things that we said we were going to be addressing in our solar bylaw, and I just wanted to quickly go over this. So what I've done is I took the outline that we've been circulating for a while, and I went through it and reviewed what have we done and what still needs to be done. And so, you know, we've actually done quite a bit. What I've done is gone through the list and made put a check mark and bolded the things that we at least have a pretty good draft of. So we have a pretty good draft of the purpose and intent and intent of the bylaw. We have a pretty good draft of applicability and definitions and those were kind of combined in one document. The submittal requirements, we have very detailed requirements. We also have detailed dimensional requirements and design and performance standards. And if Stephanie can scroll down a bit, we can see, I think on the second page. That we have monitoring maintenance and reporting requirements. And those also include modifications to the solar array, transfer of ownership, abandonment, and or decommissioning, financial security, or security, taxes or payment and lieu of taxes, severability and appeals. We've actually done quite a bit. We have, you know, I would say probably a second or third draft of all of these sections that have been checked off and bolded so what I need to do is go back over them and put them kind of like in one document and then probably bring it to you at your next meeting. In addition to that, I'd like to think about how do we want to address this issue of using form land for solar, you know, and how detailed do we want to get in our, in our zoning bylaw about, you know, the specific detailed criteria. And that's, that's my report for today and I can send if people are interested I can send them the latest drafts of all those sections that I've checked off there, but I'll probably be updating them for the next time we need. Okay. Great. Yeah, thank you Chris. Yeah, I think that gets us in good shape for sort of thinking about diving in. Next meeting. And I think this work with the mapping that we're about to have presented to us will be really helpful for that as well. But yeah, these issues of farm dealing with farms and forests are still high on our list of major issues that we need to come to some consensus on and address. Okay, thank you for that. Any comments before we turn this over to Mike, Jack. Yeah, um, so I just wanted to get, you know, clarification because I missed a couple of meetings, but with regard to, you know, using like the wetland model if you're using farmland or forest that you're setting aside some land for, I don't know if it's perpetuity or what, but that concept, you know, I'm kind of trying to get comfortable with. And I understand it for forests, but for farmland I don't mean because, you know, we just had that presentation last week I don't, you know, the set aside concept for ag lands I don't really not sure I'm on board with that I don't mean that, I mean, you know, I, you know, requiring a farmer to have it or not, you know, allowing a farm to have it seems like it's, it's, it's not our business. I mean, you know, we put in the dimensional sort of guidelines but it seems overreaching that with the way we're trying to control, you know, agricultural lands within the bylaw. And just, just my opinion. Okay, great, thanks, Jackie I wouldn't sure whether Chris was suggesting we would have a requirement that similar that we might have for forest that you have to set aside some for somewhere else I'm not sure if she was suggesting we would or that she's thinking, or we, or it's open for discussion, you know, a farmer taking some farm land out of farming would need to replace that somehow elsewhere in the state. But yeah, any, sorry, did I confuse you Jack. No, but I guess I'm maybe Chris can just clarify what her notes were on that, because what I heard is, you know, maybe just explain that again Chris what you're, what you were thinking about for options. So I'm trying to get a handle on what this group is thinking about, and I've heard from some members of the group that they think that if you use farmland for for solar, then you need to incorporate agriboltaics. And I'm asking myself the question. Well, what if a farmer wants to have solar on part of his farm and doesn't want to do agriboltaics because it's too expensive or complicated or whatever, but yet he will continue to farm other parts of his farm. And does he get any credit for that. I guess the first question is, are we going to require dual dual use agriboltaics for farmers who want to take advantage of putting solar on their farm so that's a question that I think this group needs to answer. And then, you know, are we going to have any kind of mitigation or, or trade off. And, and Jack you've stated that you don't think that's the right approach and I'm happy to take in your opinion about that. I'm kind of looking for opinions about that from members of this group and I and we did talk about having mitigation for, for removal of forests. So is that something that we want to apply to farms farmland as well. I'm not saying I'm promoting that idea. I'm just looking for guidance from you all about what do you think about that. I just want to remind you of the time. Exactly. I was just going to say let's let's raise these issues and continue this discussion when we get to the next meeting and we start discussing what we want are comfortable with in in in the bylaw. So sorry for those of you who still had your hand up but our time is limited with Mike. This is really something we've all been looking forward to as well. So let me, I think Mike's address this group before so I don't think I need to introduce him and, but Mike Warner is with the town obviously and the GIS coordinator or specialist specialist I'm not going to say guru but okay, he's not to all things GIS is Mike so Mike thank you for joining us I really, really appreciate it. Welcome and it's done with this mapping. Yeah, it's nice to see you all again. Just a quick refresher. I work in the IT department here for the town. I, you know we support every department here in town. My title is applications manager so I GIS is one of those systems that I maintain and manage. So, yeah, so what my task was here was to take the data that Gza produced, which was this 30 by 30 cell grid and score ranking feasibility ranking for the entire town. And to take that data and to load it into a web map that people could use to do explore different areas around town. I took up first crack at it and sent it to Stephanie for review. It's really complicated. It's kind of hard to digest because it's so granular. So, feedback is welcome, you know, reach out to what you see here today, it doesn't necessarily have to be the end product. If there's certain things that you think would be more valuable we can explore that to reach out to Stephanie and Dwayne and they'll get in touch with me about different things. Have, have any of you has the link been shared around Stephanie have people other people seen it yet. Not yet because you were still making some tweaks so just always make the best. Exactly just thought it was best if you just started and then we could move forward from today. So what I'm going to show you guys it's actually live to the, the entire world can see it right now. And Stephanie or Dwayne will will pass this link around to all of you. I'm constantly making tweaks to this. So I will share my screen now. Okay, can you folks see this looks good Mike. Yeah. Okay. All right so it when when the link when you first click on the link there's a disclaimer that pops up that just tells people. Hey, this isn't telling you where you're allowed to build solar in town. This is this is the purpose of this. The map and it describes it in very brief detail. And so when the map first loads. It's zoomed in to the center of town. Amherst is a elongated shaped town so when you zoom all the way out. It's really confusing. So I started in the middle of town, and I've grouped rankings of the cells together. So scores three and two which was low. So moderate to low feasibility scores five to four are yellow or moderate feasibility scores seven and six are moderate to high feasibility and are a color of blue, and then scores nine and eight are high feasibility and are a color of dark purple. And so when you get to this map. You can move around, you can zoom in. And once you start zooming in parcels will pop up the parcel polygons will pop up. So if you're looking for a particular property in the upper right hand corner there's a little magnifying glass symbol, you can click here and you can type an address and you can click on that address and it will zoom you to there. If you're weren't really wanting to focus on a specific site, otherwise you can just kind of manually move yourself around. And in the bottom right corner of the map. There's a dark square here and if you click on that aerial photography will load. So you can toggle back and forth between aerial photography and a base map that's more more traditional right beside of that square is going to be a key button and I imagine something that we're going to all want to talk about is additional layers, because one of the big questions that I'm anticipating is, hey, why are there, why is a whole lot of town not have a color associated with it. And the answer to that is because GZA excluded those areas. These off white or this whitish color excluded those areas from the study. So they were not assigned a score. And those areas were not assigned to score for a bunch of different reasons, their conservation land, their APR land, their institutional land, meaning Amherst College, UMass or Hampshire College. They're in flood area, they're in the water polygon, you know, a lot of different options. And so what I've started doing here is if you click this little in the bottom right corner. See if I have a laser pointer here. You don't have it installed. But in the bottom right corner, you can click on this and you will see some other layers that I have added in here and when you by default they're all turned off so that you can just focus on the feasibility ranking. But you can come here and you can click on these little eyeball symbols and it will turn these layers on. So I just turned on APR land. And what that shows us is right here near the Fort River conservation area, these areas were excluded, because they're an APR land. That's why these all of this land was not given a ranking. And then once we start adding conservation restrictions and conservation areas and things like that, you start seeing areas get subtracted from the overall picture. Does that make sense? And then Stephanie and Dwayne had mentioned that there was going to be some interest in maybe not layers that subtracted from GZA study, but layers that might just be interesting to kind of compare to this. So I've added prime farmland soils, which if you turn that on and you zoom out pretty much the whole town is some classification of prime farmland soils. And then I've also added a layer called vegetation cover. And this is broken out into four different categories, trees, fields, crop, and brush. And this layer was developed from the April 2020 flyover that we had. And so it's very, it's the most current coverage area that we have here in town. And so you can, you can turn on the aerial imagery and you can see if something is covered in trees, or you can, you can look at this layer and kind of compare this as well. And so I plan, I'm actively working on this. I'm continuing to add different layers here. Institutional land, meaning the UMass properties, the Amherst College properties that will be live later today. And then there are some layers from the state from mass GIS that I'm going to be loading in as well that were used to exclude some properties. So is there anything else that you want me to go over? I mean it's do we want to zoom around and look at things? I didn't realize people hadn't taken a look at it yet. So I thought maybe there would be maybe some more questions about about the product. Mike, the list of questions that Janet had posed, which sorry, had, I think, 20 or so questions was circulated to the group. Okay. Thank you. Mike for that introduction and overview. That was really helpful. Let's see yet, Janet. So this is just fantastic. And, you know, I do, I do remain confused between cropland and fields, but I think having this tool will help get rid of the confusion, because I could think, oh, this is where they're saying there's a field. You know, it's hey, or it's, you know, whatever. I would love to take a moment just to zoom around and look at the high scoring areas. Not too quickly because it's hard to see like the streets like I, like I'm in an eye test. Oh yeah, do you want me to make you sick? I would love to see like when I see all that purple, you know, I think this could be the, this could be where we list as a priority on our priority list or priority map and I just would love to just do a quick look. So that is detailed enough, slow enough that we don't get nauseous and detailed enough that I could at least read a street name or something. So I'm going to zoom out to the whole town to just show you really quickly, like if you just put your eyeballs on the whole town. Look how much of it is whiteed out, right, like there. The vast majority. A lot of land is excluded. And then down in the south near Bay Road. There's a lot of low scoring, low to moderate scoring areas. So there aren't a tremendous amount of high scoring area high feasibility scores eight nine. And there were actually no properties there were no 30 by 30 squares that received a score of 10 in town. So nine was the maximum. So, Janet, would you like to, like, maybe up here in North Amherst because a lot of this stuff here is downtown is developed so I imagine that that's more rooftop type stuff. So maybe up here in North Amherst where the other area of purple is, would that make sense. I would love to look at the purple and what I see is Aqua on my right. There's more Aqua for sure but I would love to let's start looking at that little corner because I could at least think to myself oh I know what that is, or. Right. So there, there were two errors in the data. And I believe up here is going to be one of them so this is 116 and this is Sunderland Road like where Sunderland Road comes out to 116. I believe this is conservation land right across the street. I think it might be Mitchell farm. Oh, in the in between the two conservation areas. I'm guessing just from the, but I think maybe not because the brook goes through his form. There's Podic conservation area and then there's Catherine Cole and there's a property in between the two. That might be Mitchell farm. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I've heard he has some solar on but me. Yeah, you turn on the imagery and zoom in there and see what's going on. Yep, it does look like a. Sorry. No, it's interesting because this is kind of the gist of like what we need to understand. So here's the intersection coming up here is the intersection of Sunderland Road in 116 so pretty directly across from that intersection. This farmland here got really got, you know, some of the highest scoring in town. Okay, that is not Mitchell farm. Okay. Okay. There was some also some dark areas right up here, which that is actually the electrical power station that's right up there and the field that's just to the south of that fire station. I think that's Colesland. Yeah. And then if we scroll to the south. So this is Meadow Street on the west side of 116 Russellville Road, all of these farms that are right in here. The farmland is right here and also the property that I forget what the name of the facility is that's here. Their property is ranked very highly. Okay. I think the rest of it is a PR land because I know that's been a target for acquisition. Well, I know a lot of this is flood zone as well. Which I have not added yet, but we'll be there shortly. Okay. Yep, you're right. I just turned on a PR land all of that. That's why all of that area is excluded from the study. Regarding the aqua color, is there a particular area that you would like to take a look at? Yeah, it's kind of interesting. There's so much aqua there and I'm wondering if it's in residential land or is it the apartment complexes? I mean, it's kind of good just to me. I don't know if I don't want to take all the time, but just to focus on one area that we kind of know. Yeah, we see if that makes sense. Yeah, so a lot of the aqua that's in this general vicinity is like the apartment complexes and stuff that are here but then there is some vacant properties over here off of Meadow Street. I believe these are, yeah, these are vacant. And by the way, when you zoom in and the parcels turn on, you can click with your mouse on the parcels and it will tell you the parcel number and who owns the parcel. So you can click on those lands, those parcels, and then you can get the information about them. What is the land use here? The assessor's land use code. So if you clicked on the, like, I don't know the, so you can see what the land looks like, I'm not making sense. The aerial photo. Yeah, like can we say, oh, that's farmland or just, I'm kind of loving this tool, by the way, I'm loving that you're doing it because every time I try to use one of these tools, I just. It's hard. That's in Janet, that's exactly like, I, this data is really complicated. It's, we're wanting to add a lot of different layers to be able to turn on and inspect a lot of different things. And then navigating around can be clunky. So when you add all of those things together, people can get frustrated. So I wanted to, I wanted to start simple first. And once people are comfortable with it, okay, let's, let's think about, okay, this adding this data set would be really helpful for us. Adding this would be really helpful for us now that we understand how to use it and inspect things. So these, these two properties here to look like they're vacant. This is the land use code. Sorry, go ahead. street names these are. So this is, what is this is this. It's Andrews Leverty or those two properties that we're looking at right now and they're kind of fallow. A much of it is in FPC flood prone conservancy district which has very limited uses. And it's not really farmed it's kind of just a field that gets mowed once in a while. That stream is good for trout by the way. I shouldn't say that loudly, it's not a lot of people know that. But there's like a farm right across the street here it's got a big barn, you know their their property is got a fairly a moderate to high feasibility score. And this is a Skevitz. Let me just turn on like a PR land. Yeah, so once you turn on the PR land you see why so much of this farmland on the in this general area even though this general area seems to have pretty high scoring values. A lot of it is not usable because it's protect its APR. Could you click on the font the prime farmland map because I think this is the great stuff. So when you click on again when you click on prime farmland, a lot of stuff. Actually it's kind of wild that in this area. It's, and to be clear, this prime farmland area is not something that we develop in in town it is a USDA layer that the state hosts and we grab from the farmland so this is not my data. What is it what are the different colors I see kind of an olive and then a. Yeah so in. So that's a great question so watch over here on the left hand side. This is kind of the legend. Okay so as you turn layers on and off over here on the left hand side of the page. The legend will dynamically build itself so when you turn prime land farmland soils, the dark green are is what the USDA classified is all areas are prime farmland. The slightly lighter shade is farmland of statewide importance and the lightest shade is farmland of unique importance. I do not know the difference between the three. I did look Mike and well I noticed that there wasn't any actually there wasn't any land that was farmland of unique importance. Okay, I click that on and off I didn't see any change. So I think I think all the light color is the farmland of statewide importance. Gotcha. I think unique might be like locally. We defined. Yeah, I think I think so but I'm not 100% sure. Okay. Yeah but if we just. I'm just going to make you sick here. But if you zoom out to all of town. A lot of town is covered. And there, there's a lot of land that's of prime prime soils that's not far. Right. A lot of our forwards a lot of our housing is in that area. Right Dan, give it. Hey Mike. The underlying data for the solar feasibility ranking I'm assuming it's a raster file is that available for the public. It is a raster file I converted it to the shape, I converted it to a polygon shape and then merged all of the merged this the cells together. And then it would draw faster in the web map. Because it was just so slow. Otherwise, so, and what, what that means is it's, I know you know what you're talking about. Yeah, my real question is, yeah, is the data is the actual data available to the public. Access it through this dashboard. Nope, I will put it on our open data site and I will let you know when it's live. Okay, great. Yeah. Yep. Yep. I mean, all of our data is publicly available data there. There are very few layers in town that require like special approval to receive retrieve. But everything is technically public data so I will, I will publish. Would you like the the original raster file. I mean, just either I just think it's good to have that available to the public to you. Okay, so this my shape layer is publicly available. It is available in ArcGIS online to grab and I can share that link with folks. For those of you who know how to grab it and pull it into your GIS program. And then is, is there like a references section somewhere where where you can just say where all these data sources are coming from. Yeah, I can do that. I can put that together somewhere in the link it here. Yeah, I would appreciate that too. Most of this data is ours. There are going to be a few layers that are basically sourced pulled from mass GIS and as you know mass GIS is an aggregator of data themselves. So people think that oh we're grabbing mass GIS data when mass GIS is hosting FEMA data or they're hosting USDA data or DNR, you know, data. So, yeah, I'll grab, I'll grab that that's a great point. And then just make a note of that. All right, thanks, Mike. I have two questions Mike or one of them is, is there, or can you superimpose like the zoning map over this. Yep. Oh good. Yes, yep, that is something that is, I'll just make a note to remember to do that. So that would be helpful because I know Jack was interested in the open space and recreation plan to. Yeah. And then in terms. I just asked a clarifying question on that. Janet sorry since I don't know exactly what that meant. But would that mean that the zoning and Mike would that mean that the zoning layer would show up as one of the one of an additional layer here. Is that a menu? Yes. Okay. Okay, yes, but I will warn you. Your eyes will want to fall out because zoning when the raster is are the solar feasibility layer is, you know, can be difficult to look at on its own and then when you add the zoning it gets because you don't only have zoning but then you have the zoning in place. So you're, you're kind of will be, you'll be looking at almost three things all at one time, and it can be hard on your eyes. So. And then a question in terms of updating so like since, you know, we bought Hickory Ridge, and I think it's, I'm not sure if it's under conservation restriction, or not. But if we have added APR land or I know there's been new wetlands delineations and stuff like that like is there a way to add that or do we just have to keep that in our heads as we look at parcels. I update layers all the time whenever I feel like we need a better workflow internally here in town for me being notified when land turns to APR land I think that's something Chris and I have talked about in the past I know Dave Zomek and I have talked about in the past. Sometimes it'll be years that hey this land is APR land and Dave will give me a list and I, you know, and I'll make it happen. But if I let's say, let's say a property is changed into APR land last week, and I get notified of it and I make that change in my database, it will be live on this site instantly. So this is not these layers are dynamic, they're always updating whenever I update data. So, for example, let's pretend this is Brandywine departments right here in the middle with a pond. Let's say this parcel gets subdivided, gets split in two. If I make that change today, you're going to see that change in this layer immediately, and you're going to see the new ownership immediately in the data. That's interesting because we have those A&Rs all the time. And then what, you know, that happens and then, you know, I keep I was thinking about wetlands delineations nothing's that big but I could think of like three or four projects. You know, that we've the planning board has looked at or I know this is done and I'm just, but I think, you know, I don't think there's any massive change in the wetlands stuff. So I would like to say something about that and maybe it's partly a question, but my understanding is that we don't map all of the wetlands on this GIS system. Wetlands are mapped as projects are proposed as landowners come to us and say, we want to do X on our property and then we say, oh, you have to go to the conservation commission you have to map your wetlands and get the mapping approved by the conservation commission, but I'm not sure that there's a mechanism by which the conservation commission or department sends that information to Mike and asks that to be mapped. I don't think that happens but Mike. That is correct. That is, that is correct Chris and Janet just I, I do not. I've, I've never and I don't even think my predecessor updated the delineation of wetlands in in town in a layer. And I've, I haven't done that in my six years here either. I can add some information to this to which is that delineations are good for three years. So they're legally only good for three years and then they have to be re examined again so it's always changing. And that's why there's no one definitive map. It just doesn't exist. Mike, would you want that information. I mean, I don't know just personally. I mean, I understand the value of it. It would be probably be a lot of work. So, so yes and no. So we could be looking at the map and not realize Oh, a wetland was delineated on this, you know, like maybe land, or, you know, I'm just seeking like fear. Project. We may not even know what we're looking at. Right. So, Janet, I can, I can tell you. So, I don't know how familiar many of you are, there's a little bit of background noise. Does anyone know who that is. Sorry, it's me. Okay. So, I don't know how familiar or many of you are with Amherst maps are GIS parcel viewer that we refer people to go to to access their property cards or look at the interactive zoning map or there is a layer, it's embedded in that map. And it's from the 2009 flyover when they flew the town they captured new aerial photography. They drew every building every sidewalk, every piece of road paint painted line. And as part of that, they captured what they saw in the imagery as wetlands. Okay. And my predecessor took those layers and he matched them all together and he made this nice beautiful. It's called a base, a base map, he made this nice beautiful base map. The amount of calls that we receive. And people just doing work because they see those wetland layers on that. That base map and they think, Oh, this is my home here it's not in the wetlands I'm just going to start work because I looked at this Amherst maps page, and I'm just going to start building my deck. When in, and then the town finds out about it and there actually is wetlands there and they needed to have that study done so it, it can cause more problems. Then you expect to have the wetland stuff up and live. I'm truly not an expert on this we have someone in our conservation department who's who really knows a lot more about it than I do. My name is Aaron jock. But I know that it has been a big pain point for us. Okay, and it will certainly have I mean we do have some draft rules around wetlands. And, and obviously there for any solar project of significance there would be a wetland determination. That's part of that citing effort. So I'm not sure if we need need that on a parcel by parcel basis for the purpose of the, the bylaw work. But Jack. Yeah, I was just going to say that you know what, what Janet is saying is, you know, wetlands are very, you know, it's site specific, and then you start linking different studies of adjacent parcels and it gets unwieldy and again people relying on it like Mike was saying because it's on the map and they get into trouble so it's something I understand why the town would not go down that road. I'm just thinking that certain parcels could be tagged. You know, a little pop up for refer to a file or plan submittal. That's true. That could come up separately and that probably be the best, you know, you know, without too much work on your end Mike. That's the way to kind of link actual on the ground field studies to a GIS. That that is actually that is a good point we would probably just need to find a way to because like what Stephanie said is those plan that that expires after three years. We would have to like maybe find a way to make them kind of disappear after their three year because it's no longer valid after three years is if what I'm understanding from Stephanie is correct. So it's something we can absolutely discuss internally because that is totally doable. And I like that idea better like tagging the parcel and flagging it in a way and then you click on the parcel and you can see the plan I like that in better than actually drawing the boundary on the map because that's going to drawing the boundary on the map. People are going to think it's definitive and it's going to cause so much headache. Right, Stephanie. Yeah. Yeah, I was just going to say that I think you need to be careful to because in linking files and applications, there might be an application for determination, but it may not yield anything relevant. So, I mean, I don't know how much you get. It would be probably more helpful, but I, again, I think the wetland boundaries are always changing and I don't think that there's a way to just map them all over town. And even if you link them to a file, even the file might only indicate that there was an application but it doesn't necessarily yield results of a wetland delineation. And the other thing I would want to say is that I think because it is unwieldy and because it's always changing, I don't think it's a definitive layer and there is already a process for identifying wetlands. So if a solar application comes in, it has to go before the conservation commission because they'll want to look to see if there are wetlands. So they'll, they'll definitely be, you know, like we do with any project in town, if there are potentially wetlands, they'll have to be examined. And other departments have noted when there are wetlands that we might not necessarily have them mapped, but it might come before the inspections department and they might notice on a field check that there will be wetlands that would then notify Aaron. So there is a process that happens for that and I don't know that I don't know how you want to include that in the solar bylaw like it feels a little overarching to some degree to me. Thanks. Janet. So, so in terms of like a pop up, you know, if there was a wetlands delineation, could the pop up just say wetlands found on this parcel in 2020 or something without saying exactly where because you know, I think what it would be useful that someone's buying land, but also it'd be useful to us if we're saying, oh, this is a prior, you know, if we decide to do a zoning overlay or we're picking the priority sites. And it, you know, we're just looking at this map and it turns out most of that site or a good portion has wetlands on it. It's not a great site, you know, and so I do think that information be useful and now I know wetlands. Their shape and size can change. I'm not sure that many really sort of disappear, but I think it would be useful to say in 2020 wetlands were found on the site, or in 20, you know, 1985 or something like that so chances are it's probably still there it might have changed form, you know, I've seen like in Hopbrook near my house how that happens. Like there's vegetation cover it has completely changed in 20 years but it's still really wet, you know, and stuff like that so I do think it would be useful. Because it's information we have in it, I hate to just rely on like, oh did this department know this was happening or did this but I just, I don't know it just seems like what Jack was suggesting made sense to me. But I understand you don't want to map it so people think oh this is definitive and I can do whatever I want. All right, great. Chris. How do we get to this map is Stephanie going to send us a link to this or is there a place on the website where we can find this and look at it ourselves. How do we access this map. I can send you a link but Mike, isn't there a way to have this come up as one of the layer options. When we go to when someone goes to maps. Not yet. Okay, not yet. No, I think we should link out to it. Until we were happy with everything we see. I think we should, you know, if we want to put a link on, I don't know if there's a web page for this group, or on the conservation page somewhere we link to it but Stephanie you can also email it around to everyone. Yeah, I will email the link to both the ECAC into this group. I think we could probably put it on the engage Amherst site as well and go to talk with Brianna about how to best get that on the website. Right. I guess I had a question as I was sort of playing with with the in trying to, or, you know, so discriminate between really trying to discriminate between the solar sites that have, you know, moderate to high or high feasibility that the aqua in the purple and try to sort of quickly get a sense of how much of that is in really is in residential areas where it's sort of acre less lots and there's a house there and, and so forth, and and areas that are more open. And I was looking at the vegetation cover. And maybe it's one and maybe the zoning layers will do this but I suspect even some of these these areas that are pretty open are still residentially zoned. I don't I don't know. But I'm wondering if you might should have walk us through that in terms of how we might look at that maybe. I was looking at the vegetation cover and it seemed like for most of the areas that are really are more more residential neighborhoods, they tend to have no vegetation cover. And maybe that's a way to recognize that it's mainly the forest and the fields that show up. But might just sort of just scroll out in the map and sort of maybe take, click the vegetation cover on and off and see. Yeah, but we can glean from that. So we're in North Amherst right now. This is East Pleasant Street coming up to Pine Street. Yeah, and in 116 is over here and 63. So, kushman is the general area that we're looking at. So a lot of residential neighborhoods up here and then you know puffers pond. A lot of it if I turn on a PR land. I'm sorry, what are we looking at I'm a little I'm just trying to get a sense of, you know, obviously there's a lot of feasible areas, solar feasible in the aqua color. But it's but but it's like small parcels that are basically have homes, you know, yeah residential homes on them so. So I think Dwayne's looking for bigger sites. Yeah, a way to sort of have a good handle using this map of where are our that's more of our concern I guess for the zoning is where are their potential projects that are 250 kilowatts and above, which would not be really any of our residential neighborhood type of properties, though they predominate to some extent on this solar feasibility map. There's a couple, let me think about that a little bit Dwayne there's a couple of different ways that we could, maybe instead of trying to superimpose things on top of each other and turning things on and off there's, there's other ways that we can maybe accomplish that. But if that comes, I would say that that comes, you know, that's more of like an analytical phase. And but it's definitely something that can be done with GIS in house, pretty, pretty programmatically, where we could, we could basically divide this stuff up into, you know, whether you're talking about zoning, zoning areas or the code of the parcel itself and kind of find areas. Yeah, I mean, like a map that would show the solar feasibility, but be able to turn it on and off for eight for parcels that are over say two acres. Yep, might might be helpful. Oh that would be super easy. I can actually do that quickly, create a create a layer basically of these parcels that are greater than two acres and just have it as something that you could turn on and turn off that's. Yeah, that's very simple. 250 kilowatts would be. That would be about an acre, an acre, two acres, a two acre would probably be good. Two acres. Okay, I'm open to other. Are you thinking an acre of panels or just you need one acre to get enough panels on with some setback. Well with setbacks I think you need two acres probably to get 250 kilowatts. I mean, I don't know if you can see Martha's hand but she's had it. Okay, oh I can, but I wasn't looking that way. I have my, the map I need on my big screen so go ahead Martha I'm sorry. Alright, thank you. Could you scroll over toward the northeast corner toward Atkins Reservoir and let us see what's what's near. Okay, yeah, there. So we're going to work at Hill Road. We have Flat Hills Road running north to south and this is High Point Drive Overlook Drive right in here. Is this the general area you're looking at? Yeah, yes. Thank you. And so, as far as I know it's sort of residential and forested is that right? If I turn on vegetation cover that dark green is forest. So, yeah. Yeah, that's residential. I mean it's. Long the roads, yeah. Residential, yeah. And the fight is still within Amherst but it's excluded for some reason. Probably because of the Atkins, drains to the Atkins Reservoir. It could be, you probably picked one of the ones that I don't have. I don't have loaded yet so that's one thing that now that we're getting more comfortable with it, what I'm doing is kind of behind the scenes is this list is going to become longer and longer and longer because I'm going to be adding all the different things that GZA used to hide things so that when you're zooming around and you're like, wait, why is this not have a color? Why is this not have a score? You'll see why. I see. So, so I don't know exactly why this one is, is whiteed out at the moment. So the pink and yellow sections could be slow. Or no. They can also be distant from transmission lines or distribution lines. Yeah, looking at those big piece, big chunk, big lots. Yeah, it's mostly it's probably a combination of all of those things. The zoning district that surrounds Atkins Reservoir, it's called the Watershed Protection District and it really limits the types of things that can go on within a certain distance of that body of water. And I don't know if Mike has the capability of bringing up the zoning map, but in any event you all can go on the zoning map on the website and look at that particular location, the Watershed Protection District, which is, this is the only area in town that has that. And it's right, right around that western portion of the Atkins Reservoir. I think that is a lot of that whiteed out area. Yeah, I will get that zoning layer and I will throw it in here. It'll be another layer that you can turn it off and you'll be able to see that. That's on my list of to-dos. Okay. All right. This is a big, great mic. Any, any other thoughts, Mike, or any other questions? Well, so I would say that if anybody has any questions or, you know, enhancement ideas or anything like that, you know, reach out to Duane, reach out to Stephanie and, you know, talk to them and they'll relay a message to me. And if you guys need me to jump back on another meeting and talk to you or explain something, just reach out. Okay. Yeah, I see that. Yeah, sorry. Good. Yeah, well, this isn't necessarily from Mike, but with regard to the APR land, which we're excluding here. But, you know, they can have, they can have their solar for onsite, but it has to be limited to their onsite use. There's a situation where there's a large enough, you know, farm that it comes up and meets our threshold. You know, and so that are we, are we addressing that type of, you know, agricultural or excuse me, dual use kind of for, you know, it doesn't have to be dual use, but are we addressing that kind of solar development within our bylaws or not. I mean, APR lands were excluded from the solar feasibility mapping. APR lands were excluded and they farmers whose land is in APR can have up to 200% of the solar or the electricity usage that they would use. So unless they have some kind of a big operation that uses a lot of electricity, they're really not going to be able to have a very big solar array on their property. It would involve, you know, probably multiple buildings and multiple things that are drawing on electricity. So they can have, you know, the, the, the solar array that would meet their own needs. And then they can have one time again as much as that so in other words to 200% of what they would be using themselves. And that's a state regulation. Yeah, so we will need to address that in there. It's not on our map so much but we would need to address that in our regulations with regard to if we wanted to put anything in our zoning bylaw that restricts that further or, or allows for that. I don't think we need to put anything in our zoning bylaw about APR land because it is strictly regulated by the state. Yeah. Can I, can I jump in? Yeah. I think what Jack is saying is, will there be, could there be solar arrays on APR land that are bigger than 250 kilowatts that would come inside the bylaw. So we'd be saying, oh, you have to place it here or there or whatever. That's correct. If they have a large enough load, I suspect so, but I think what Chris was saying it's maybe unlikely, depending on the type of farms, the electric demands within the farm. Okay. Great. So we're just getting on time with with with Mike and so any final thoughts for for Mike before we thank him and bid him. We just say, Mike, thank you for all this really excellent work. Really going to be helpful for us. Exciting to see, and, and your willingness to work with us has been great to appreciate that. And yes, we will gather information from the group and send that to you via via Stephanie. That sounds great and like I like I mentioned, I'm the way my brain kind of works. I'm a good. I can read maps. But I know not everyone can I've been working in this field long enough. So I always build maps simply first, try to make them simple. And sometimes even the because the underlying data is just complicated, even the most simple maps are complicated and hard to read. That's why I would encourage you folks to get in there now. You know, once you've received this link from Stephanie, get in there now and start experimenting with it and playing around before too many things get added to it, and it just becomes really difficult to understand so I did have one just logistical question with regard to the mapping when I was playing with it. And a user control which which symbol is in front of the other symbol. You know what I mean so sometimes I want to see the the solar parcels but then they go away because the land cover covers it over but I'd like to see the potentially see the the solar building on top of the. Yeah, I think I can do that I'll probably need to rebuild it a little bit but that's, I'll look into that Dwayne. Just rearranging the layers yep that should be possible, but Okay, see what I can do. Awesome. Okay, thank you so much Mike, and we'll be in touch. Okay, sounds good folks. Yeah, thanks Mike. Bye. All right. Thanks everybody for for that and yeah very useful to have that mapping available to us, and it'll continue to sort of grow for our purposes and the towns, even when we're done. So. Okay great so we have about 15 minutes left. We wanted to talk briefly about the next meeting. The meeting is scheduled for July. Getting into July, July 7. Similar time. Hopefully that works for at least a quorum and for everybody. And look forward to that so the agenda there will work work on but you know where we're officially into summer. And I think Chris's outline and sort of status of where we are with the with the bylaw was helpful. I think we do really need to focus attention and conversation. Next meeting on these issues with regard to farmland and force. So that Chris can have a good sense of where we all want to go with regard to that to develop that into the into the into the drafting. So in my mind. Those will be sort of the two areas to start discussion on. Maybe a revisit of where we sit where we what we put together so far for force. And then, and then talk about farmland. At the next meeting. Is that sound okay with folks. Good. Okay. All right, let me. Janet please, and then we'll move on. I have an idea. I have like, I don't know where this fits, but I, um, I've been having trouble finding things and I, you know, with this mapping coming online, I think we urgently have to set up some kind of, um, you know, I would put it on our solar bylaw working great page, but maybe put it on a solar bylaw page on the 10th thing with, um, you know, the different state in the town plan, this mapping thing, you know, good articles or something because I just don't think there's a central place to find information. And I struggle. We've had a lot of really good articles and pieces of information and I've been struggling and like I have to go back and search through the agenda to see, you know, what the, what the things were for, you know, what the attachments were and it's, and it's, you know, I feel like if I live through this process and I have trouble finding thing. I think that members of the public or the, you know, planning board or the town counselors who want to see stuff. You know, so maybe the, the, you know, GZA report, the Cadmus report, the niche report, like, there's some really big pieces of information that should be all in one spot. And I'm actually saying work for Stephanie when I saw that hand go up. But I really do think we need to have one, one stop shopping somewhere. And I'm not sure that the whatever something engage Amherst is a good spot I don't think that's going to people are intuitively not going to understand that. The thing is, like, Chris, can we stitch together our bylaw sections like using that outline. And I don't care if there's big gaps or, you know, questions in it because I'm just lost. And I have, I have it stitched together in pieces of paper with my notes and changes but I just have lost the whole sense of where what the bylaw looks like. So I would love this skeleton with some parts and meet and stuff so that would be super helpful to me. Thank you too, please. Okay, thank you, Stephanie. So there already is a resources folder that things were going into. I have to update it, but that's where sources of information like studies and bylaws and information like that was all in one folder it is a lot to go through, and it will be even more to go through. But that is the one stop and that's on your solar bylaw working group page there's a link to resources. So there is a folder there so that's where everything should go. And I'll add to it I'll just make sure the studies are there as well I don't know that. I think we should, I think that's not, I think it's not a helpful to the public and we need to call stuff out of there's all this tracer lane decisions and things like that like the tracer lane decision is important but like six land court so I don't, you know, like, I, we can't have like 40 documents and say oh good luck reading this I think we should really have a spot where the public or the town council or planning board can go and say oh, I want to go for a deeper look but I don't want to like swim through it. So, I know, I know, I mean I thought that actually Gza was going to do some kind of website for the public but no that was never part of what they were. Let's leave that to Stephanie in terms of her. All the other work she has to do and her sort of question of what what would be most helpful to the town in the town towns folks I don't want to overburden her with with organizational needs but point point taken and what I will ask is Janet if you want to just give me a list of the things that you're specifically referring to. Maybe what I could do is put a sub folder in but I don't think they're going to live in the resources folder but maybe what I could do is like a sub folder of broken down into like studies bylaws reports or something like that. So if you just send me the list of the things you're referring to I can try to at least organize that piece. Okay good. Thanks. That brings us to public comments. And I do want to hear from anybody who's in our attendees. We do have three people from attending at this point. I think there were about five or so earlier. But are there any attendees who would like to make a comment at this point. All right, I'm not seeing any I don't see anything I don't think you do. Okay. All right, super. Okay, but thank you all for joining us today. All right. And any last words or thoughts or questions before we seek to adjourn a little 10 minutes to spare. I just wanted to very quickly say that we had three members of the public attend today I know that often comes up. Yeah, okay. I think there are a couple more earlier Stephanie but that I saw that we'll say three at the official time of public comments. All right. Okay. Well very good. We have a great weekend and beginning of summer July 4 and we'll see on the other side on July 7 and and get to work on more bylaws. Okay. Great. Thank you everybody.