 Okay, and we are now recording. All right, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the July 7, 2023 meeting of the town of Amherst solar work bylaw working group. Happy Friday everybody. And let me just call up the agenda which I have open. The first order of business is a note taker for today. Our normally scheduled note taker for today is Laura, but she is unavailable to take notes as she's on our small sorts of transportation vehicles at this point. I think there's trains and planes involved or something. So she can't really take minutes. So, and that would take us to Dan but he's not. He's out today, or not available for this meeting, which brings us to Martha, who I spoke to yesterday. So Martha's an option, but she would not be able to really fully draft the minutes. You have some update on that Martha. Yeah, it's just that I'll be traveling for the next couple of meetings I can probably zoom in for the meeting but I won't have the time to really watch the video and complete the minute so I'm happy to take the notes, as long as you don't mind if it's going to be late July before the minutes are finalized or submitted. I appreciate it, Martha. Thank you so much. Yeah, okay, good travels Laura. The other, the next up would be Janet, actually, so she's she has her hand up if she's so willing to sub sub in. I hate to go any further because that would take us to Bob who took minutes last time. I was going to say I could do today. I can't do next next meeting because I'm going to be going away for two weeks so if Martha does it today and then I'm in July, that's all good for me, either way. Well actually that would work out well then. If you can take them today, and then and then Martha will take them next time when which is the special meeting. There is a special meeting as well. Stephanie will need notes for that too right minutes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I can do it then but again I would, I wouldn't have them ready for July 21 I'd have them ready, probably the week afterwards. Okay. And so that would be great if you could take minutes today. Okay. And then we'll go from there so. Okay, so Janet I noted I did wrote note down that we started at 1131. Thank you. And I do track who's taking minutes so. Okay. I got you down so so then then hopefully we'll go back. Well maybe Dan will be available next week I'm not sure what his travel plans are. Okay. Okay. All right, great. I'm going to call up the. Yeah. Okay, so the next agenda item is to review our minutes that are available. And we have two sets of minutes. If I review right we have we had we had a revision from six, June 9. And then we have minutes from six 23 last meeting. Which Stephanie you just recirculated right. Was that the minutes you recirculated. I think so yes. Okay, I did. Stephanie whether any other corrections besides what I think there were a few so you might, I could, I can post those I mean why don't you start with the ones on the. On the 9th and if you need me to open the ones of the third and 23rd I can share those on screen. Yeah, great. Okay. That'd be that'd be great. Okay, so. Have people been able to look at the revised minutes from the ninth. And any questions or comments. On those. Or motion to accept those. Okay, this, yeah, sorry. I was not able to look at them until now. So these were these were the minutes that and thank you, Stephanie. I'll make a motion to accept rain. Okay, great. Yeah, these were the minutes on the. Ag solar Agriple take meeting where Stephanie thank you for filling in a lot of detail on the actual content. I appreciate that. So we do have a motion to accept those minutes. Is there a second to that. This is my second. Thank you, Bob. All right. And a voice vote in no particular order. Breger. Yes. Hannah. Yes. McGowan. Yes. Gem sec. Yes. Peg Lear Rulo. Yes. Brooks. Yeah. Okay. Minutes are approved. Thank you. Okay. And then do you want me to put the minutes from the 23rd on the screen. Some people haven't seen them yet. I did repost them to the online packet as well. But if people didn't get a chance to see those. Would that be the 26th. No, this is the June 23rd. The last 23rd. Okay. Last meeting. Last meeting. Sorry. That's okay. Okay. So I'll just scroll through and people can take a look. Jack. Jack's name is still. No, I see it. I'll just go through and correct. I'll just double check all of Jack's. Jack. Yeah, you had a variety of spellings on your last night. I'll correct. Just have a question. On the wetlands. I remember there was some discussion and I think Stephanie, it's a little bit of a controversial. Previously wetlands coordinated that was describing how. You know, it's difficult to really define them accurately or something in terms of trying to actually make a map. Am I recalling that correctly? Or. Yes. That the, the delineations are good for three years. So if you had a subsequent project. Beyond those three years. and re-examine the boundary, they may not change drastically, but sometimes boundaries do change depending on activity and other locations. So I was wondering at the point where it says the wetlands delineations are digitized and included, do we want to have a comment that says that these wetlands delineations can change all the time? We could. If that statement was made and you want to include that. No, anyone else? Joanne, if I could jump in. Yeah, please, Janet. I thought the problem was that they are only digitized and put on the GIS if the administrator is told, and the problem was that he wasn't being told. That's not because they change and we wouldn't be able to capture, we wouldn't be able to digitize every single wetland in town. And so what we are using are the general state mapped boundaries because the state has a wetlands map that is the layer that we use. We don't specifically update for local wetland boundaries every time a wetland gets delineated. The town doesn't go in and do that every time. So typically the layer that we refer to is the one that's the state's mapping. So maybe that's the layer that we use. Maybe we should add state wetlands delineations or digitize and include them in GIS. And I think that was a long discussion about whether we should or how we could and things like that in terms of local ones and why to do it and why not to do it. Yeah, I think it would be really onerous to have to do that for local. So we just sort of rely. Any project has to get verified on the ground. You know, there's always, there has to be some kind of examination if there's a suspicion that there may be wetlands. And if there were wetlands and something was impacted then people potentially face a violation if they haven't done their due diligence. So that's typically how that goes. Yeah, so we can. So what do you want to say Janet, how would you think just say state wetlands delineations and I mean I don't think it's going to change the history of course of history but it's a little more clear. Yeah. Yeah, just so people don't think are wonderful and believe they can go in and see all the details. That's all that's all. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so we'll consume. We'll assume that update will be made. Yes, so so that was requested revision to the minutes to add state wetlands delineations. Okay, I'm going to start carrying in this. Yep. Any other comments or thoughts on the minutes or in motion to accept them as revised per the wetlands conversation. This is Bob. I saw more. And thank you Stephanie for formatting and adding the links. You're welcome. I'll second. Great. Okay, and voice vote. Breger. Yes, Hannah. Yes, McGowan. Yes. Jumpsack. Yes. Taglia Rulo. And Brooks. Okay, the minutes are approved as amended. Thank you, everybody. Next on the agenda are any staff updates. Sure. So I had sent an email just before the meeting regarding a special meeting that we're proposing to have with Jonathan Murray. Of KP law Chris can speak more to this, but I just wanted to procedurally check in with everybody to ensure that first that we would have a quorum. But Jonathan is available. And this was in response to the meeting on May 26 than which members had requested some guidance from him on specific sections of the bylaws. So just making sure that we would have a quorum that day. Well, I'll be on travel, but I can probably zoom in on that day. So I'd, I'd say 85 to 90% or something. Okay. Would a time be, would earlier time be okay for you? Any time after 1130. After 1130. Yeah. I mean, 1130 or later. Okay. Which is all right. So those are the times that they start. So that's okay. Great. Right. I'd have a hard stop at 1230. Okay. Jack. I am unable. Yeah, I can do it. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, I have, I have an appointment. From it looks like from 11 to noon. Okay. And I know. Okay. Yeah. Hmm. All right. And Bob Brooks is not available. Sounds like a bad date. It sounds like it sounds bad, but would be good to have, you know, close to everybody. Right. So we all hear the same things. Yeah. No, I, I think I agree. Having just just a quorum is probably not ideal. And I don't even know that you will at this point. So. All right. So Chris and I will follow up with. Jonathan Murray about another date. You're following meeting. I think we didn't want to take it out of a meeting time, but. Maybe it would be helpful. So maybe the following meeting, which is. What's that date? That would be the 21st. So we could propose maybe the 21st, but we have to make sure that Jonathan Murray. That date as well. If we do do it the 21st. Just amongst us here. I mean, would, would we be. Would people be available to say like at 10 o'clock to start early or 1030 to give an hour. I had a time. With Jonathan. I would. I would. I would be. Assuming you know, Same here. Okay. So I'll be, I'll be arriving home on, you know, after the, from the West coast on after the midnight. What I expected me there. Set my alarm for 10. Okay. So it looks like the, if we have the meeting on the 21st with Jonathan, that we could start at 1030. I mean, even starting, you know, if 1030 or 11, because even a half hour. So we'll see what works for him. Okay. And we'll shoot for that day. Cause it looks like we'll have a quorum for sure. Okay. And the only other updates, I just wanted to let everyone know that I did forward the. New solar mapping and the article from the Boston globe. Thank you, Jack sent it to everyone. So. There's great information there in terms of the state's mapping, which is really great timing for us because we sort of got everything all at once. So. And I think that was the only other update I have. I know that the. Only other thing I wanted to mention was that the stretch code. Was being. Considered by town council and they've referred it to the CRC. So although they haven't passed it, it seems to broadly have a majority of support, at least at this point. Thank you, Stephanie. Any. Questions for Stephanie. Great Chris. Great. And if any updates on, on non-by-law. Solar by-law issues as we'll get into that shortly. I don't have any updates, but I wanted to ask Stephanie a question. So we sent. Jonathan Murray, a list of questions that. We developed based on. Meetings of the solar by-law working group. And we were going to invite members of the working group to submit. Questions for Jonathan. Also, weren't we, Stephanie? We are going to, I just didn't want to overwhelm all at once. So I was trying to at least confirm a date. In time. And I'll send that out. After this meeting. So I just wanted to get it straight in my head that we're going to send. The questions that we sent to Jonathan. To the working group. Correct. And then we're going to invite the working group members to submit. Other questions if they have them, right? To me, right? So that I can add them. And get them all to Jonathan. Okay. As one complete panel. Thank you. And I have no updates. Thank you. Yes. Janet comment on that. Is there, have we seen that list of questions? I can't remember. No, not yet. I'm about, I'm going to send them after this meeting. I, we, I, we just wanted to sort of. Get the. The meeting on your radar first and determine when it would work to have the meeting. And then we'll get you the questions because you have plenty of time to see the questions and then add your additional questions. Get them to me. And then we'll put the packet together for Jonathan for that meeting. So that it'll have all the questions ahead of time. Okay. Go ahead. New topic. Is there any, like, so I've been hearing that the, there's been like a stop work stoppage at Hickory Ridge by amp. Do you have it? Is there any reason for that? I. Someone contacted me and I read somewhere that they haven't been working there for four weeks or something. So is there any news on that or any reason for that? You'd have to check with Aaron, the wetlands administrator about that. I don't know if that stop work was from the conservation commission. I'm not sure where that. Originated. So you'll have to check. Okay. I can find out or I can find out and just send you all in up. Yeah, I just didn't know if there were problems or what. So, okay. Well, if there was a stop work, that means there was an issue of something. So, you know, I don't know what I can find out, but I'll find out and send it to you. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, great. Any updates from. Committee members who liaise with other committees? No. All right. Sounds sounds good. Yep. The only update I gave to the. EECAC. Was an update on solar working bylaw. Groups. So I don't have to. Do the reverse. So. It led to a long discussion on their part. Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right. Great. So great. Got through the, these, this earlier stuff and we can get into the meat of the agenda, which is to. Work on the bylaw. Chris has provided us with. As requested earlier. Sort of a. Aggregate. Or complete. Document of all the. Drafting that we've done today. That we sort of get begin to get a sense of the structure and content and scope. So that's one thing we can just. I don't know. I don't think or, or discuss. I don't think we want to leave it to Chris, but we don't want to necessarily go through that in detail at this point. Unless there's questions about the structure and so forth. But then I think the key things perhaps for today. Are some, is some discussions, particularly on. How we will address issues with regard to zoning on farmland. And, and perhaps review what we, what we've done with, with forest as well. I think those were kind of the main things. For discussion. And some decisions if we can. But let me. Turn over to Chris to see how she might want to, if she wants to sort of lead us through this. Hi, everybody. Nice to see you all. Yes, I sent a document to Stephanie this morning. With some thoughts about how to deal with solar installations on agricultural lands. And maybe Stephanie could bring that document up. A lot of it is based on, you know, things that I've. Talked about, read about. Thought about over the last month or so. And Martha and I had a pretty in depth discussion yesterday about. How to deal with farmland, but let's just start. I'll read through this. And then I think there's a lot to talk about here. So I want to speak to you about whether. Whether and how to regulate large scale ground mounted solar installations on agricultural lands. Personally, I'm not in favor of strictly, strictly regulating these installations on agricultural lands, because I believe that the climate crisis is so great that we need to act quickly to activate alternative energy solutions. To stem the tide of climate change. Use of some farmland for such a purpose is part of the solution to climate change in my opinion. There's not yet a problem with solar taking over farmland in our area. Because we're already because we are in the early stages of seeing large scale ground mounted solar installations in Amherst. And to date, none have been on farmland. I wanted to make a couple of other points. Lots of our agricultural land is in APR. This, this is not part of the writing here. So I'm just going to make these off the cuff and then I'll go back to the writing, but lots of our agricultural land is in APR, agricultural preservation restrictions. Where solar is strictly limited to no more than 200% of what the farmer is using in terms of energy. And most farmers don't use a lot of energy on their farms, unless they have electrical equipment, or unless they're doing something to process the products that they are growing. So anyway, I just wanted to make that point that APR land. We really have a ton of it in town. And much of our really good farmland is in APR. The other point I wanted to make is that. I haven't come across other towns and I've reviewed a lot of bylaws. Other people may have come across bylaws, but I haven't that have restrictions on the use of farmland for. For solar. So I think Bob had a question, but I just wanted to get to this last paragraph here. I understand that there are members of the solar bylaw working group and members of the public who are very concerned about the possible loss of agricultural lands. And with that in mind, I've considered options that we can discuss for regulating solar installations on farmland. And I don't know if Bob has a question. Just to clarify in question you said you spoke to. You spoke to someone else, Martha. Is this your document or hers? This is my document. Yeah. And I'm an open meeting law allows me to speak to members of the working group. Without worry about the open meeting law because I'm not part of the working group. I'm a staff member who advises you. So I really. Yeah, I mean, I would say that the, the, all I was doing yesterday was, was, you know, kind of reiterating what the discussion, we kind of already had of G, you know, we had all these interesting presentations and, you know, what are the options. I was not in any way trying to, you know, influence and say, you know, we should do thus or not do this. So I'm just kind of having a open discussion of the various options and the points that had been raised by the three presenters. Yeah. So anyway, let me go through these options and then we can go back and discuss them one by one. So I've come up with five options or yeah, five options. I'm sure there are others and we can discuss those too if someone wants to present them. But the first option is a prohibition on ground mounted solar installations on land that is categorized as prime farmland or farmland of state importance as described by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The second option might be where large scale ground mounted solar installations would be limited to a maximum of a certain size and that could be five acres, 10 acres, 20 or some other number that people think is reasonable on continuous contiguous property held by a landowner on land that is characterized as prime farmland or farmland of state importance as described by the USDA. Another option would be that these installations would be permitted on land that's characterized as prime or of state importance only if the project is operated as a dual use or agriboltaics project. Another option, option number four might be to set aside some land like we already proposed doing with forest land so that if Stephanie can scroll down a bit to the bottom of this page in the top of the following page. So for land that is prime farmland or farmland of state importance that we would set aside or the proponent would set aside an area equal in size to that used for the solar installation and set aside by deed restrictions and make sure that it's actively farmed for the life of the large scale solar installation. And the dedicated farmland would be either on the same lot as the large scale installation or on another property in Amherst or on land in a town of Butting Amherst. It would be clearly depicted on a site plan prepared by a surveyor and the land would be deed restricted for the life of the of the project and that the deed restriction would be recorded at the registry. And then the fifth option would be no restrictions on farmland used for large scale ground mounted solar installations. So and then I have some links here to where these lands are depicted on a map. And of course we have the lands depicted on our interactive map now the map that Stephanie sent out a link to so we can all go online and look at the map of Amherst and figure out where these prime farmlands are. So do we want to go through these one by one and talk about them or do people want to just start talking about them a conversation? And I guess I would say that we really should have some agreement on which direction we want to go so that we can put some language into our bylaw. So that's what we're working towards. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I think we should probably have a little bit of a discussion first and then maybe with that discussion look at these options. I would suggest there's these are actually a good set of options they may not be exhaustive. And I would also at least my least one of my thoughts is that even the last option which is no restrictions. I think it's important to recognize the context that there are I'll be it not absolute restrictions there are policies and incentive designs at the state level that encourage or dissuade certain types of solar. So it's not it's not without any even even having no restrictions is not without some oversight or incentives from from at the state level. Oh, and may I say one more thing. I think one of the things I took away from I'm sorry for not raising my hand but one of the things I took away from the presentations about agrivoltaics was that it's very complicated. And it's in its early stages, a lot of experimentation is being done but it is a challenge for a farmer to take on such a project so that was part of my thought process so I'll stop now. All right. Any thoughts we have Janet and looking for anybody else as well. So, I think this is a great discussion. And we need to have it. There are other group towns that regulate solar and farms. Duansburg, New York has a limitation of only 10% of farmland can be covered with solar arrays and I'm not, you know, sure how they define that but, you know, to me, you know, it's this is, you know, a question of goals and and you know what are the goals of the group or the town or the state and so I, you know, to me, I think we have to frame this look at the framework of this discussion is what is the state's plan for, you know, climate action, and it's really clear that the state's plan is to protect farmland and expand it. The same true for farce and they're even saying take marginal farmland and protect it as part of the state's climate action plan. Certainly the state sees a path to solar without, you know, basically focusing on the built environment, which is, I guess the article that Jack sent out yesterday in the new plan. So I would the framework I would do is what is the state's plan. What is the town's, what is Amherst plan that the town council has already approved. And they are saying protect natural working lands and put solar on the built environment and so, you know, and then what is the community survey say the community survey, you know, almost uniformly said protect forest land. And then it was kind of mixed in terms of agricultural land I can't remember the percentage but I think they came out. The, the residents came out and in favor of dual use. And so, you know, those, to me that's the framework I don't you know to me it's just like, if we decide to allow, you know, farmland which is, you know, to be used for solar and taken out of production. We're taking land away from farmers who often don't own the land, the economic incentives are really towards filling up an open field with solar. And why are we doing that why would we go against the state plan why would we go against our town plan why would we go against the survey. And if we can, you know, require dual use and define that I think we've got a win, you know, the state and, you know, Dwayne's group thinks that we can keep land in production and we can do solar. We have some examples of that and I think there are some abuses of that we could talk about like, you know, putting eight cows or 12 sheep on large pieces of land is not quite keeping land and stuff but I do think we we don't need to make a decision I think this was decided by town council it was decided by the state. And we just need to implement it. And by implementing it we're going to achieve town goals of fresh local food going to all income groups, sequestration, keeping the land open for the future. You know, I mean I can go on and on but we don't have to revisit these questions when they've already been decided by the state plan and the town plan. And if we're going to report to the town council about community values, you know, the community value was dual use let's do both we don't have to choose one or the other. All right thanks to that. Jack and then Laura, and then Martha. Am I next or Martha. Jack please. Okay. Yeah so anyway just based on what Chris had said that she's not aware of other towns. You know zoning or restricting, you know, a solar on ag lands. We should make you know if we are doing something that has any sort of strength to it I guess we would be an outlier. And I don't know. For me I never really understood. You know agricultural lands being something that was, that we would want to protect other than what is already in place for they say the APR lands. We have a lot of protective land already. It seems to me that the land that may be considered for this. We would set additional protections that aren't in place currently. And I'm just not comfortable with us doing that as in our own land. I don't think we would be able to charge, you know, for the solar bylaw. I think I feel like that's, that's the town council's charge. But anyway, I'm just, I'm just skimming through that. The document here. What's it called. That. Stephanie just sent out. But anyway, I don't see agricultural as being something that is, it's like more vanilla. It's, it's completely reasonable. And again, this, this is not a permanent conversion of land. It can always go back to agriculture. We're not, we're not paving this property. So anyway, I, you know, I lean toward option five basically, I guess I'd have to look into it a little bit more, maybe. You know, certainly not option four with a deed restriction. But that, that, that, that seems ridiculous to me. And I guess that's, you know, those are just my initial comments. Thanks, Jack. Yeah, for that. Yeah, Laura, if you can, if you can. Comment and you're available. Yes, I can. Thank you. So I think I have a few thoughts here. I mean, I, I can't. I agree with Chris enough and that the climate crisis is so real. And that's, that's the reason why I've been working in renewable energy for literally 20 years is because we have to take drastic efforts. It's not even to stop to slow down where we are. I don't, I agree with Jack that it's an over stretch of the climate crisis. And I think it's important to have the committee to further limit what can be done on ag lands. I also very strongly believe that it is not our place. To tell a farmer what they can and cannot do with their own personal property. I think we certainly can support agrivoltaics and say we're not going to stop. But Chris's point that it is still experimental. Is certainly my understanding of where we are with agrivoltaics as well. You know, I think perhaps that small town in upstate New York discusses ag land, but I think we can all agree that across the board is not. The issue is that there's no way to get into the bylaws. So, you know, I think I agree with number five and number five. It sounds like, oh, we're supporting, you know, No regulations on ag land. The truth is we have tremendous restrictions already in place. And the fact that we have, I mean, just the land that the town owns, which already in conservation is, is more than most communities can say. Thank you, Laura. Martha. Okay, well, I'd like to start by referencing something that I read last night, the Massachusetts has put out a document called the resilient lands initiative that was published in January. And talking about the strong need to preserve open lands for climate resiliency. And among their, I don't know, five or six stated goals. Number one is no net loss of farms and forests. Number two is seek to expand the amount quality and accessibility of locally grown foods. And one of the others is increase the amount of natural carbon storage for climate resilience. So I think that the goals for our state are clear and I don't think that our town can, you know, be totally in a vacuum from what the state is doing. And, you know, the survey that Stephanie sent around seemed to indicate there was a lot of potentially available places to put solar panels to meet Massachusetts energy needs. I mean, I agree, we've got to take this very seriously. So I feel personally somewhere in the, in the middle among these options. I mean, I found those, the presentations about the Agrivoltaics extremely interesting. I would, in my view, I don't know how it feels. I would say that we are, you know, a few years away from being able to say, yes, Agrivoltaics is a, you know, is a proven thing and it's going to work and so on. I mean, if I were a large developer, I would kind of say, whoa, I really want to wait a few years and see the data on crop yields, on types of things that work, what arrangement of tilts of solar panels or whatever work best. And a few years from now, I think that's going to be really a great thing. But I would say that now then, I would like it if our bylaw could somehow encourage dual use and set some general requirements without, you know, requiring dual use. I think personally my big concern is about locally grown food crops that I really would not be in favor of allowing a farm that had, that was now producing, you know, crops, vegetables, fruits, or just whatever to convert that land to sheep grazing in order to get credits from the state for the Agrivoltaics. So that would be my one concern in terms of a regulation, but somehow to have, I think, some general regulations sort of in line with what the state has, you know, nothing more onerous than what we heard from Greg and so on, that would encourage Agrivoltaics but not require it and would encourage retention of growth of food crops and also conservation of the soil, maybe some general requirements if you have prime farm land of not allowing, you know, stripping off the soil entirely or bringing in gravel to fill in around the solar panels or something like that. That's a general statement. So I feel in the middle that we should be doing some things based on what we've learned and the experiments that are going on and the kinds of things that Jake is doing without really requiring it. So. All right, before we go, thank you, Martha. Before we go to Janet, I'll just put in a few thoughts of my own. A couple of things. One is I don't really feel like it's our place to sort of prohibit solar on farm land. There may be some middle ground with regard to encouraging it certain ways. I don't think we need to write regulations with regard to what Agrivoltaics means because that's the state has done that. And has done that, I think fairly well. And so we can let the market move as it will based on the incentive values and the rules and regulations and guidelines that the state has put forward with regard to solar on farm land and Agrivoltaics. The other thing I would just raise also is along with Chris and Jack, I believe, I think. The climate emergency. Every day. We read about it. Is so critical at this point that prohibiting. Solar development. In ways that the state is not doing is I think not a great precedent. I do take. Certainly. Absolutely state. Goals are to preserve, protect. Forest land farmland. That doesn't mean. To prohibit. In all cases. Development on those lands. From what I read, the state goal is. Protect 40% of the. In permanent protection. Of the state land. I think we're. Have achieved that are well on our way in Amherst. That doesn't mean that some farmland or some. Forest land. Should not be used for solar. In fact, in reading the technical potential study that came out. It seemed hard pressed to me. To envision a. Quick reaction. To the climate emergency. In accelerating our solar development. In ways that limit solar development to the built environment. And I don't. Read that. The state plan with regard to solar development is to. That the goals can be accomplished without any use of. Of forest land farmland or open land. In fact, I think it'd be hard. To imagine that. These goals being met. Strictly by the built environment. And so I'm certainly very concerned about. Being overly restrictive. I also. Appreciate. Lars. Comment. With regard to. Taking action that. Really. Restricts what individuals can do with their own property. And I think that's a good point. I think that seems a bit. Draconian to me or concerning at least. These are people that need to make. A living and make decisions. And have made past investments based on future opportunities. And while I think we can encourage. And maybe provide some. Guidance and some restrictions in certain situations. But I think that would be a good idea. I think that would be a good idea. I think that would be a good idea. Of any sort would be a bit of an over overreach. Let's hear from Janet and then anybody else. And then we can. So see where we go from here. Maybe discuss the different options. So. I just want to have like four things to say, but just very quickly. In terms of draconian requirements on property owners. We're looking at a stretch code that's going to force people to. Use certain equipment or get to net zero. Cambridge has passed a requirement that existing buildings over 100 square feet, 100,000 square feet have to get to net zero. They have to reduce their use. And so we ask property owners all the time or we tell them what to do all the time. So we should just like, you know, let's not wave the flag of, you know, like we can't restrict property rights because, you know, property rights are like a bag of sticks and we're always regulating them. And I think that's a really important thing. So I think that's a really important thing. I think that this regulation important, is it needed? Is it fair or whatever? So I just want to push that aside. I think that what's going to help us is if we look at the language. In the state plan. In the carp our town plan, which ecac, you know, approved and our town council had is approved. I didn't know the document that Martha's looking at. I would love to see that. Because I think if we sat down and read through those. It would help our understanding. It would help us understand what the situation is. And that's a really important thing. And so with the APR land. Are we looking at that are suitable for, for. Large scale solar. So, um, you know my impression from just. You know, like all of the large scale solar in Amherst. Is on farmland, like Amherst caught in the Amherst college. Hampshire college land, I think was a hay field. land being taken out of production. And, you know, as Laura has said, there's really no incentive for someone once they build it to put it back in. They put in millions of dollars and making tons of, you know, 10% return. When are they going to go back? And so I think we have to, you know, put our, you know, basically implement these plans. But I also think we need to read the plans and understand the thinking behind them. The other, the other question thing is we've never talked to local farmers. Most of the farmers rent land, they don't own it. And what do they think about this? You know, we could also talk to people who own farmland, haven't put in an APR and what their thoughts on this. And so I'm very hesitant to do anything without talking to the people most directly affected. I'm always hesitant that way. So those, I do think we need to look at these documents, understand the thinking behind them. And, you know, in terms of the climate emergency, you know, I'm old enough that I remember when Jimmy Carter put solar panels on, you know, the White House and told people to wear a sweater and turn down the thermometer, and he was voted out of office. I have been that person with my wool socks and everything for 50 years. And, you know, what shocks me is, you know, for 50 years, we haven't put solar on rooftops. We haven't put it on parking lots. We haven't put it, you know, on medians and roadways. Now we're asking the natural lands again to take the hit when all we've done is fill in farmland and forest for decades creating the crisis. And now we're going back. Now the answer is we can't meet, you know, we can meet the solar needs of our state by putting it on the built environment. And now we're going to basically offer up more farms and more forests because of the climate emergency that we've ignored for 50 years. And we're also losing the capacity of that land to absorb carbon. So I think we need to look at these documents and absorb them. You know, if you're a solar developer, it's cheaper and you make more money by filling a field or a forest with panels, you're going to make less money and pay more to do dual use. How do we get somebody to do dual use? How do we get that there? Well, you can just require it. And they'll get the state money and the state incentives. But we know it's going to happen because the state incentives can change with administration. It could blow in the wind. None of the the dual use, you know, things that Jerry Poblano was talking about were seen as a negative thing. It seemed to me like fantastic. And I thought, okay, Amherst could be the first in Massachusetts, but not the first in the country to say, you know, use the farmland for solar, but also make sure it stays in use. And we're implementing these plans we haven't read and we haven't looked at. So I do think we need to do a little homework and get people directly affected in, which I've been asking for since October. Great. I have no idea of the order of the hand raises, but we'll go with Lara first or next. Yes. Laura, we can't hear you. Your voice is really fading. We'll come back to you. Yeah, we'll come back to you. And maybe you'll move a couple of miles along the track. Not yet. Jack, go ahead. Had to find the cursor. So, you know, my comment is I do agree with Martha's idea in terms of encouraging dual use. Certainly, you know, that's, you're not going to get the capacity out of a dual use system. But it is, is, you know, certainly attractive. I would say, I think if you had, pardon me, why I thought you muted yourself, Jack, or there must be gnomes around here, they're attacking Laura and my computer simultaneously. So I don't know what, how long I've been on mute. Just a second. Yeah. Oh, okay. But I think the, actually the use of livestock on a farmland, I would think enriches the soil in the long run. I don't think that's, and it can be converted back. And I just think that, you know, there's this cycle in my mind, you know, of being a geologist, you know, looking at New England, entirely forested, you know, a few hundred years ago, totally deforested, as of, you know, 100 years ago, 200 years ago. And, you know, so we're in this situation where, where things come back, I thought our, where I live, I thought our subdivision was built within a forest, basically. And then we were doing some historical analysis of our subdivision. I live right by Crocker Farm. And Crocker Farm was a farm, but before that was a forest. But anyway, our subdivision has is, you got amazing trees, overgrowth. And I'm just kind of shocked it was a farm field in the 1960s. Not a tree, not a tree in sight. So I don't think this is a forever thing when we are using agricultural lands. There's a lot of flexibility in there. And you know, and what's the, what's the highest best use of property? Certainly we need to be, we need food. But I think when I see solar, that is not a permanent installation. It could, you know, it's certainly a 20-year commitment. It could be longer if they renew, but it can always easily go back if and when food becomes a higher priority. But right now, you know, the climate situation is huge. And I have to say, I mean, Hadley seems, I actually kind of look forward when I go into Hadley seeing some of the large solar rays out there because it just melds, I think, nice with the landscape. I don't, it's not nice. I know the one in orange as you go up on 202. That's sort of an eyesore. It's close to the road. It's kind of above you in it. So there's a scenic view aspect of things I know that we will have to touch, you know, touch upon. But right now I, you know, I feel like if farmland is being fallow, there's a reason for that. You know, there's not an economic use for it right now, even though we need food. So if there's an opportunity for a farmer to help with our, you know, clean energy demand or goals, then that's just something that we want to encourage. So that's it. Thank you. Thanks, Jack. Martha, and then maybe we can speak about, look at the five options, I think, and sort of base a discussion around around the direction, a direction we might want to go into. Go ahead, Martha. Yeah, I just wanted to bring up something. I've seen some articles and read a fair amount recently about carbon credits, which are becoming a bigger thing than they used to be. Whatever we might personally think about allowing power plants to buy credits for their emission by giving, you know, paying for, you know, somebody else who has a forest or farmland and so on. And one of the options indeed is paying farmers with a few restrictions about, you know, certain criteria for soil enrichment to improve the carbon retention and so on. But I just wanted to point out that for farmers who, you know, are looking for a little extra income, that is going to be a coming thing for a way that a farmer who is, you know, invested in his or her farming can gain a little more money as an option to solar panels. So that's just something to keep in back of one's mind. I also want to mention I'm on Joe Comerford's email newsletter distribution. And she has been making a big point and actually submitted a bill to the legislature about maybe even requiring or certainly encouraging parking lot canopies and apparently there's a reference to the country of France, which is now has passed a regulation that's going to require solar panels over parking lots and so on. So there are various initiatives going on at the state level to really try to enhance the amount of solar. But I say here, as I said before, I'm somewhere in the middle on this of wanting to somehow do what we can to encourage agrivoltaics and encourage farmers but set at least some ground rules and some general limitations. So thank you. Good. Laura, hopefully you're back. Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? Yeah, I see better. All right, great. I like that cell phone commercial. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? So just a couple of points that I wanted to raise. I think one thing not to lose sight of is that even if this bylaw working group came out in favor and said we want solar in all possible places in Amherst, the actual sites where solar could go is very limited, primarily because of utility interconnection. So there's already a massive limiting factor here. One thing I really don't like and I want to have everyone be mindful of. So Janet, you made a number of comments that I don't believe are factual, like citing the returns of solar projects, why people don't do it on rooftops versus other places because it's about basically 3D corporations or you didn't say that but like it's about returns. And then the statement that we could meet all of our solar needs on the built environment, which I think is incorrect. So I just want to be, we all have opinions, we're all passionate here, but I want to make sure that what we're saying opinions versus facts. And I think the final piece is when it comes to, we could research this topic for the next three years, but the truth is we have to get a bylaw done in what two months now. I find it very, I'm very uncomfortable with the fact that this group would consider, I don't agree with the metaphor of we put restrictions on like building residential condos. That to me is quite different than a farmer who has been farming their land, generational farmer wants to pass a land on to the children or grandchildren and might want to change the type of crop that they farm from vegetables to solar in order to keep the land in the family and not sell it, for example, to residential builders. As I said, I've worked with farmers in this capacity a lot and I just, I don't think we can tell people what to do with their land when it comes to individual land. I don't want to get into it for that, but Jan, if you just have a comment on that and then I think we can move forward. I just want to say what I said, which was the state has said there is enough of the built environment to take, I was at 15 or 18 times the solar that we need. So I didn't, that's not, I didn't know if that's a factual statement and if they're true or not, but I'm just saying that's what they said. And I thought that was very encouraging. I'm not saying people are greedy, I'm all for people making money, but they're the fight that it's more lucrative to fill a field or, you know, and, you know, to grub a forest cut down a forest and fill it with panels and it is to dual use. The state gives a little help on that, you know, in terms of the adders, but I do think that the pressure is always going to be towards open land. And, you know, like if you, you know, we are constantly limiting and telling people what to do with their property, you know, it's like, it's like, you know, I could, I could look at my piece of property and tell you all the things I can and can't do it because of town bylaws because of state laws, you know, and so I just think saying we don't want to limit property owners when we do it everywhere else, you know, for good reasons or bad is just kind of thing. So, but I do think that we need information and, you know, to say, oh, we have two months to do it, it's like, can we collect the information that we need? Let's talk to the farmers, let's talk to the landowners and say, do you know, like if somebody is a landowner and is leasing to a farmer, I'm probably not making a lot of money, right, from that, but also they may say it's fine to require dual use because they don't want to see other people lose it or they're fine with that. I don't want to speak for leasing farmers. I don't want to speak for farmers. I want them to come talk to us. I don't want to talk about state plans. I want us to read it and get that information. I also know that we have all this mapping. How many pieces of land are we talking about? Like how many pieces of land are non EPR farmland or farm soils that are close enough to a connection to be at risk for just being filled with or at the opportunity to be filled with a raise? Because if we're talking about two different fields, that's a different than if we're talking about 15. So can we just collect that information before we make these important decisions? Bob, did you have a comment? Oh yeah, I don't want to, I didn't raise my hand, but yeah, just so we all know, I am in favor of option five. I think it's been very interesting to listen to everybody, but I don't think we need any further restrictions. I do think we should encourage dual use. Thank you. Thanks, Bob. Jack, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to say on Laura's point, could we get a quick like GIS? I know we had the capability to manipulate nothing, but if we could get a quick GIS plot of eligible lands that are outside of the EPR that are agricultural that we're talking about so we can get a sense of the scope of properties in town that would be applying to this segment of the bylaw. Could we do that, Chris? I think we can do that, but again, the answer is complicated. I was talking to Martha yesterday and we talked about the fact that some of the land that was excluded from the GZA study, I believe they excluded lands that were owned by the university and the colleges. And some of the land, particularly for Hampshire College and Amherst College, that's owned by the university and the colleges is not in educational zoning district. So that means that the town actually has control over those lands and they're not in APR either. And so there's actually other lands besides what is depicted on the GZA map that could be developed for solar. And I think we have Steve Roof here as one of the attendees. He may be able to answer some questions, but I observe that there is a fair amount of land that's not APR that is farmland that could be developed for solar. And I still don't think we need to regulate it, but I'm just pointing out that it's not as limited as it appears on the GZA map. That's the only point I wanted to make. Thank you. And I guess I'm a little confused about us talking to farmers again and pushing that as more research. Yeah, because I mean, I'll be talking to foresters. I mean, I feel like we have so much information in hand, especially with this last policy document that just came out yesterday. I think we should be on track to get this draft for the bylaws together. Yeah, and I point out at least from the technical study that came out yesterday, one thing we might look at is, and maybe we use their designations or other designations, but they sort of classified, obviously, not all forest lands are the same. Not all farmlands are the same. They had, along with some other attributes they had to this ABC scoring, if you will, or ranking of each and every parcel based on some ecological services and other carbon sequestration, which is the proxy, it seems to me, of the quality of the forest to a large extent. So, maybe there is some areas where we can look at and encourage in some ways with the zoning to encourage development on lands that don't score as well. Again, looking at forest, which we're not talking about right now, but more farmland but on forest, maybe a greater ability to look at solar development in forests that are less carbon intense, I think is what had the study put in terms of the sequestration capacity of the forest. And then obviously in farmlands, there's some different soil qualities and whether it's currently in farming or fallow and so forth. Okay, I guess my suggestion would be to take Kristen and Janet and then move on and maybe talk about these options and take some sort of consensus of the group here in terms of which one of these options, how we react to each of these options and or some nuances within each of the options, if that sounds good. So, Chris. Yeah, I just wanted to say that whatever we produce in this document, this solar bylaw is a snapshot in time and things are going to change. The technology will change. Our understanding of dual use is going to change. Potentially, our need for more solar will change. We can't really predict that. So, I think that our goal should be to get a solar bylaw in place that is good for this moment in time, knowing that we always will have the opportunity to change it, adjust it, amend it as we move forward and gain greater knowledge. So, that's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Let me just add on to that maybe, Chris, is one thing that I think we might see changing over the near-term estate policy in terms of incentive. I think this based on the technical potential study that just came out in the new administration, I think we may very likely see some either tweaks or substantial changes to the solar policy that even further tries to not prohibit, but encourage on open land, but to encourage development in the built environment, which would ripple into Amherst in terms of where developers are looking and can make their rate of returns in Amherst. And if there's more encouragement to do the built environment, that should be reflected in Amherst as well. Okay, Janet, and then let's sort of look at these options a little bit more explicitly. You're muted. Yeah, okay. So, I know that Hampshire College and Amherst College and UMass have all had their own climate action plans. So, presumably, they've all done solar assessments and they would have all the information about their open lands and things like that. So, that'd be great to know because if there's hundreds of acres that could be converted to solar and they're really prime soils or better, don't we need to know that? And so, I think we could just ask that question and just say, do you have a solar assessment? And we spent all this money in the solar assessment. Let's look at it and see what we're talking about, like Jack said and I said. I also wonder, has every member read the natural working land sections of the state plan and the CARP, the towns plan? Because the towns plan is really strong. And we should be implementing these plans, not working against them. And I do see allowing more and more farmland to be converted to solar without retaining the use of these lands as basically going against the CARP plan. Another plan that we spend $50,000 on. And so, I just think we can all react to the options, but I do think we need to implement these plans and we need to know what fields we're talking about. I don't want to get in front of the town council saying, yeah, I've been working on this for a year and a half. And someone says, well, what farms are we talking about? I'm like, well, we don't know because we had all this information and we didn't look at it. And I don't know how you make decisions without information. I mean, if we're talking about five fields, if we're talking about 500 acres versus 10, I think we just need to know. And you might say, okay, it's really just 10 acres or 50 acres. We can lose that because of the climate crisis. But if you're talking about 500 acres, that's a different story. And the answer to the climate crisis is not to fill up farmland and cut forests. Nobody, I know, is saying that the UN is not saying that the state plan is not saying that we did that. That's part of the climate crisis. Duane, I'm sorry. I don't have a raise my hand feature. But I did want to jump in on a couple of points. First, I want to say, in terms of the discussion regarding the Climate Action Plan, because it keeps getting referenced as a document, which is specifically stating not to impact forests at all. I think the idea is that we want to preserve our forest land, which has viable carbon sequestration possibility. So for instance, maybe some of the more mature stands. And I would reference Jonathan Thompson's presentation, which specifically stated that young monocultures of saplings are not going to have the same impact for carbon sequestration and carbon reduction impacts as a solar development would. And there was kind of a threshold and a scale. And I think that's what he was trying to get to. And maybe, I know Chris and I have talked about this, about asking if Jonathan could potentially do an analysis of what our forest land is and where it would make sense for potentially preserving all of the forest land versus there might be some small parcels or areas where actually cutting would make sense for solar installation. So I just wanted to sort of make that point. And then the second point I want to make is, I think if you if you could, if you're going to get circular about these arguments and keep going around and around at some point, I think it might make sense to call a vote on each of the options that might make a strategic sense to move forward because you could potentially or you could just decide to stay mute on these particular topics. But I think you probably my guess is you want to have something that addresses them. And you could submit a draft either way. Yeah. Yeah, great. Yeah. And I thought that's what we could start doing at this point is going through these options. I wouldn't mind maybe a brief discussion of each of the options first before sort of voting on them, just so we can make sure we're know what we are voting on, but then get a consensus or as needed a vote of the group in terms of which of these options is the preferred direction. Okay, do people mind if we start doing that process now and hold your questions as we get into these options? Well, I'm not sure of it. Yeah, I would be concerned about voting. I mean, I agree that we should discuss all these, but these aren't the only options. These are kind of, you know, a set of extremes, you might say. And so I really would object to voting and saying, yes, we're going to choose one of these five options because I think there are some other possibilities that are kind of a mixture. That was my thought was that as we discussed them, we can talk about some nuances or caveats or additions to these options. That would be that we could possibly add some color, if you will, or some details to the options that might not be comfortable or look more favorably at these options with some added language. I want to clarify that I wasn't saying you should vote today or now. I'm just saying that if you continue to not be able to progress to a point of some kind of consensus that at some point you'll need to have a vote on options, whether it be these five or six or seven, however you come up with. But at some point, I'm just saying that might be a potential step to move forward. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is likely to not be completely settled today. And I agree a consensus would be the best approach. And maybe it's an idea of going through these options and trying to at least discard the ones that were comfortable discarding and a more focused discussion on the remaining ones for next time. Okay. Jen, I see your hand up and then we'll get going. I really don't support voting on this. I think we need to read the plans. We need to answer some questions. But I'm happy to discuss it. But I think that I think we're just in a sort of a vacuum. I mean, Stephanie are sort of arguing about what the carp says, but have the other members read it? Well, why don't we raise questions or issues that you would want to be answered along the way? And there's many questions that can't really be answered. And often you're sort of trying to come out with your best policies or ideas in the absence of full certainty, which is often the case. So we can talk about known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Laura, please. No, we can go ahead. I just want to say that I, you know, I support, you know, I think voting maybe today is premature. And I think we should talk through everything. But I think, you know, eventually the goal here is to we already have an extension for this bylaw is we have a deadline. And that deadlines September 1st, as far as I am aware. So if it comes to voting, I think that that is that is okay. And I think so, Janet, I have read the section that you're referring to. But I suspect that every one of us is going to synthesize information differently. So, you know, even anyways, we don't need to get into examples. But maybe we just go ahead and start talking through options. All right, good. Thanks, Jack. Yeah, I was just saying, if we could just, when we do each one, if there is a sub option called like option one a whatever and just just make sure because I was wondering, are these all the options? And maybe that can be our goal for today. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that sounds good. Okay, Chris, do you want to meet us through the options as you sort of put them together? Sorry, I'd be happy to do that. Yeah. Okay, so the first option is to prohibit large scale ground mounted solar installations shall be prohibited on land that is characterized as prime farmland or farmland of state importance as described by the USDA. And I wish I had access to it, like, in real time here, but this is where it would be helpful to see a map of those that the extent of that. Stephanie might be able to bring it up by going on that leak that was sent out the other day and clicking on the prime farmland that is shown on the map. That definitely be helpful. While she's doing that, Dwayne, can I just ask a question? Please. I'd say that we decide to do something like that, you know, ban solar on prime farmland. What I'd be very interested in knowing is through the conversations with the attorneys, is that even legally permissible? Or are we setting ourselves up for lawsuits from the owners of such prime farmland because it doesn't fall in line with the mandate of public welfare and how that's very clearly defined. So public health and welfare. So anyways, that's just a thought for that special meeting. Yeah, exactly. And I think that is amongst the questions that have been drafted already. Yeah. And I must say that the research I've attempted to do on what's the definition of prime farmland made it sound kind of vague too. All right. Thank you, Stephanie. Okay. So just tell us what we have this. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So the only thing that sure. Oh, I was going to say, do we know the difference between the dark green and the light green? And just that question. Sorry, I'm talking and I've been muted. Sorry about that. I was about to say that the prime farmland is the darkest green. And I believe the lighter green is agricultural land of significance. So I think what you're probably wanting to focus more on are the darker green. I actually think that the farmlands of statewide significance are better. And but I may be wrong. Yeah. Yeah. I think both are both considered very important. And when I looked at the state maps to and blown them up, it was clear that all of the Amherst except for say our downtown district pretty much was covered by being either prime or of statewide importance. And this is this is based on soil type. And despite the fact that it's farmland soil, much of this area is not in farming, right? All right. Yeah, it was let me turn. I'm going to turn it off first just so you can sort of see. Yeah. So again, it's a lot of this has been blocked out, but this is just I'm just showing you the map without it turned on so you can see. So yeah. And then yeah, okay. And pretty much the Connecticut river valleys soils are all prime or better. And then, you know, people of course have built on them mean. And then could you maybe put on the APR land as well to see what I guess that's also that doesn't have. Okay. Yeah, that would be great. Okay. And all that HR land is already. This is already taken off taken off from the solar ranking. Yeah, correct. But here's a lot of dark green down in the southern part. Is that Hampshire College land? Yep. Let me turn this off. I'm going to turn it off again just to show you. Can't see where the roads are. Yeah, but some of it, I mean, certainly Hampshire's here and some of it is. And I believe some of this is Hampshire as well. But so if I turn it back on. Oh, yes, it's some of the blue, the part that was blue. Yeah. What are the white sections? This right here? Is that like the wetlands? No, this is so this is all, hold on, I'm going to turn up the prime farms. All of these sections that are blanked out are the ones that were excluded. Okay. So they either have their either APR, they might be conservation land. And the whole point of having these layers is to actually turn them on to see why they may have been excluded. So let's see if I turn on APR. You had that just turned it off. Okay. So we can see where the APR lands are. I'm just going to turn that off for a second. So if we can look at. Turn on conservation areas. Yes. There. Yeah. So a lot of that white area is conservation area. This is APR and conservation area. So these, these are the reasons why those areas were excluded. Yeah. And why don't you put on conservation restrictions too? Okay. See how much of, okay, those are fairly limited. Yeah, there's not a whole lot. Okay. Yeah. That was like the, the wells and Lawrence swamp, I think. Yeah. So I have a question. So can I go ahead? Are we raising hands now or are we not? Go ahead, Laura. Yes. Okay. My question was around, is there any other developments in Amherst where we are doing this analysis right now? Yeah. For commercial buildings or are we, is this a common practice for, let's say someone wants to put in a new condo building or whatever, you know, I only am privy to the conservation commission that possess your evaluation. But that sort of information would be very helpful to me because obviously my, my concern is, and it's, it's, we don't need to talk about it now, but it certainly feels like we're coming up with a whole new set of restrictions and regulations for solar and not for anything else. And to the extent that it could persuade a farmer who does want to relinquish their land to sell it for housing as opposed to solar. Chris. Yeah, I wanted to make that point that other land, actually all the land in Amherst is zoned. It is in some zoning district and each zoning district has regulations about what can and can't go there. Most areas in town are allowed to be developed for single family homes. So anything that is not APR or conservation land or a conservation restriction, all these other lands could be developed for subdivisions if they are appropriate in terms of their topography and a developer would choose to develop them. And what about for other types of buildings, Chris, like if you wanted to, I'm like, I'm not even sure what it would be, but other types of buildings are restricted to certain zoning districts, like if you wanted to put a, the zoning includes soil analysis, I would imagine. No, no, it doesn't. So if you wanted to put in a store, it would have to go in the, you know, some kind of commercial district that restores are allowed. Yep. But today our zoning and any other sort of formal approval process has not considered soil analysis. So someone could put in a commercial building, like a mini, you know, strip mall with convenience stores, pizza shops, whatever, and soil analysis would not be included. That's correct. But when the initial zoning districts were set out when LRLD and farmland conservation and RO were established back in the 70s or probably even before that, people did look at, you know, what land was appropriate for farming. So most of those farming lands were considered to be either farming or you could develop them for a single family development. Jack? Yeah, I just wanted to, you know, review, I thought in the APR, you know, fairly interesting here. And if someone, are there any active farms out there that are not using the advantages of being designated as an APR right now? I mean, what percent of the active farms are under APR and what percent are not using that? Which it seems to be very, you know, from a tax advantage is very clear for the APR land. So why wouldn't a farmer be doing that? So if that's the case, active farm areas in town when we were looking at the APR zoning areas here. There are definitely some that aren't taking advantage. I don't know what that percentage is, but we could probably find that out. All right, good. Make sure you put your hand down if you already did your thing. But we'll go with Martha. Yeah, I just wanted to ask in relation to that, what about, is it Meadow Street? Remember where there was this terrible fire real recently on what was it? J&J farms where the lightning struck and so on. And there are several farms out there. Where is that? And is that an area that has the APR lands there? Oh, okay. No, it says not in Amherst. Yeah. Okay, so that is also a lot of it is APR land, but the blue will be potential places for solar then. Excuse me. I think the APR land to the west of 116 includes the J&J farm. So between Meadow Street and 116 is where that occurred, I believe. And that is APR land, and it is in Amherst. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That certainly is one big area of farming. Yeah. Janet? So this is great. And this is sort of starting to answer the question I was asking is like, how many farms? Like, I think in that little corner in the, I don't know, I'm going to say, I'm trying to get my directions, northwest corner with the white land. I think most of the land on the other side of 116 has been protected. And there's one farm that's, or I don't think it's being cultivated. I think it's fallow right now, the white piece. And then there's a bunch of coals land on the other side that isn't protected. And, you know, part of Mitchell Farm is and not, and then in Southeast Street, I think Andrew's greenhouse isn't protected. I don't think any of the Hampshire College lands or, you know, are protected. And, you know, part of some of these are like missing pieces of a puzzle that the town is trying to put together, like to protect North Northeast Street. And East Street has been a target for APRs for a long time. And so there's kind of a, you know, the open space and recreation plan has things that they're trying to keep open. And so, or acquire the development rights to. So I think this is maybe helpful, maybe we're days on that could come in and say, we're the unprotected farms. And then we could, you know, and to see if it's part of that open space plan or not. Just wanted to pass it along. The other piece of information on the zoning is that in a lot of the land that's zoned residential in farmland areas, the density is very limited. So you could build a house on it, but you would need three acres. And then there's all these different ways if you want to do a cluster development setting aside. So I think they were considering the soils or the use of the land and trying to protect it from having, you know, a really dense subdivision right next to a farm because of conflicts and things like that. So, and the other thing I want to say, which is, you know, if I was in the mediation, I'd be saying, you know, what are your goals? And so if your goals are to protect farmland and keep it in use for all the good reasons, you know, from sequestration to producing food to the future to, you know, scenic views, whatever, keeping a local economy going and strengthening it and stuff like that. How do you keep the land and protection? How do you keep farmland going? If your goal is to protect farmland and keep it usable? And also to develop solar, how do you do both of those things? How can you achieve that? And so, you know, we know we're in a climate crisis. We can just step outside and see that we know it's worse than we thought or most people thought. And how do we use that same land for solar? And how do you do these two different goals on the same piece as a land? You know, my first question is, do you need to, and if you do, how do you make it compatible or you get enough, you know, both uses together? And I think requiring dual use is one way of ensuring the land is protected for future use and also allowing solar that's needed. And, you know, I don't know if we're the first town to do that. I probably guess that we're not. I don't want to make a factual statement that, you know, nobody else is doing this. I know Duane's Berg, you know, came out with something else. But if we have mutual goals for the same land, how do we get there in a way that all the parties' interests are protected? You know, if you require dual use, it doesn't mean the farmer loses the value of the solar. It just means they'll get more of an incentive and then less solar or other. Okay, good. We're not making good progress through the options. But this has been helpful discussion. And I'm looking at time and I do want to leave time for public comment in about five minutes. So let's, Jack, do you have something that? Yeah, I just want to say I actually have a spreadsheet open here. It looks like Amherst GIS has 2100 acres of land that's APR designated, which is about 12% of the land in Amherst. And but they also have it categorizes agricultural, which is 700 additional acres, which is 16%. So I don't know the difference there that, you know, we can ask Dave Zomac that, but, you know, 12% of APR land in any community, I think that that's, that's amazing. You know, so. Jack, could you say those acre numbers? Again, I didn't get it. Yeah, the spreadsheet from Amherst, town of Amherst, totals 2185 acres for all properties that are APR. And that's just downloaded. But the zoning map, when it, you know, they have an agricultural category and that says 2864 acres, which is 16% of the total land area. And so your question is, is the APR land part of that 2800? Oh, it definitely, it's got to be. It's just the other 700, what is that? Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay, I understand. Yeah. Okay. Okay, great. Chris. Yeah, just two things. One is that there's about 17,000 acres of land in Amherst. And at the very beginning of when we started to meet, I believe someone asked Steve Roof roughly what would be Amherst's share, you know, and there's all kinds of arguments for and against talking about Amherst's share. But he mentioned a number of 300 acres and everybody was aghast. But when you look at, you know, 17,000 acres in Amherst, and then you look at 300 acres as potential for solar, it's really like, I think it's 1.7% of the whole town. So it's really not that much land. So I'm just pointing that out because I don't think that Amherst is going to end up being wall to wall solar arrays. I think it's going to be fairly limited. So that's the end of my statement. But the next thing I wanted to talk about is does Dwayne want me to proceed to option two, or are we going to go to public comment? I think we would I like to sort of tee up maybe for conversation next time to get through these different options and perhaps reach a consensus or at least navigate towards a consensus is that for the purpose of farmland, I don't think there's a strong consensus for an outright prohibition of any solar on farmland. I think there is some discussion about some degree of either requirement or encouragement of dual use, agrivoltaics on farmland. I think we want to sort of figure out if we do want to go in that direction. What subset of farmland would that requirement or encouragement be applied to? Is it all farmland? It can't be by soil type because there's so much soil that's not even close to being in agriculture. It doesn't need to be on active farms. It doesn't need to be if it's a farmland that's not prime agricultural land. Is it a requirement or an encouragement? Or do we want to just leave it alone and go with more of the option five, which is no restrictions, let the state incentives help drive the market where to encourage dual use as it is, but not do that ourselves in our town at the town level. That's sort of my thought of how we could sort of begin framing this as a discussion next time if people think that's reasonable sort of summary of where the issues are. Janet? I got confused because I was not taking but not hearing. In your middle ground you were saying what subset of farmland would be subject to sort of encouragement or requirement of dual use and then you said something else. Well because I said it couldn't, that it may depend on the soil types. Okay. It may depend on the, and I'm just throwing these out as ideas of the historical use of the land for farming over the last five years. It may be based on the type of farming. Those sort of things. Okay. Thank you. Great. Martha? Yeah. There was one document that would sometime in the past year got sent around and I don't remember the title. It was two or three pages and the author was somebody whose first name was Kip and it was suggestions for how to retain some of the soil characteristics and so on. Rather specific suggestions and so if I find it I'd like to just ask Stephanie if you could send it around again because if that had some of what I picture as examples of you know regulations that I would say aren't too onerous but about say preserving this top soil or you know how much you could remove or add or you know a few things like that that might pertain to farmland as regulations. So I'd just like to have that circulated for people to read. Let me also thank you Martha for that and let me turn it over for some public comments but so for anybody attending from the public who would like to make a comment get ready to raise your hand. I just wanted to also encourage us as committee members to between now and the next meeting play around as much as you can with these maps. So you answer the questions or come up with questions that you can bring forward to the group looking to sort of deal with some of the issues that we've been dealing with here just to get a better understanding and grounding of what we're talking about in terms of scale and opportunities and restrictions in Amherst already. So I encourage that as well as reading carefully the clean energy climate plan and also the technical solar study that the state just released yesterday. Okay good okay so let's go to public comments and we have four people attending and appreciate your participation and please raise your hand if you'd like to make a comment and Stephanie will move you over to the room where you can make comments here and I think Steve you were first Stephanie you're on mute if you want to. Here I am I think I'm good so Steve thanks. Thank you. Fascinating this is Steve Roof from South Amherst. Fascinating meeting and discussion you guys. A couple of things that were brought up my name mentioned a few times I think it's true that Hampshire College owned lands are not in APRs. I believe I'm not positive but I believe at least some of those lands have deed restrictions that prevent the land from being used for things other than farming so that they're not APR but they may have some deed restrictions on them. A different point Hampshire College solar fields they were put on agricultural lands but we did develop several criteria for ourselves to ensure that these lands could be returned back to agriculture if and when we did not need them for solar or perhaps we only needed one of the two fields for solar at some point in the future. Those criteria included things like not disturbing the topsoil no grading minimal compaction of the soil minimal construction of gravel roads and concrete pads so I can share that through Stephanie what those guidelines were that that might be of some interest to your committee. Third thing that came up was yeah that the ECAC discussed this idea of that Amherst share and that we provided a memo and I think Duane was the lead author on that so that is correct that it was a little bit under 2% was our I think our final sort of estimate on making various assumptions so you can refer to that for more details about what the what an Amherst share could look like with certain different assumptions and then finally just my own comment here question actually I think good discussion on preserving and protecting farmlands and I think this was brought up but I wanted to emphasize it I'd question how well those designations of the USDA prime farmland and farmland of statewide importance capture the farmland. I was inspired but for this question by reading the technical feasibility report released yesterday there's a section in there that says that only 6% of Massachusetts is designated as farmland but 25% of Massachusetts is classified as prime agricultural soil so just maybe those soil designations are not the best way to identify farms that you may consider protecting it may be that those if you use those soil designations you might be preventing solar development on lands that are not used for farming where that solar development might be perfectly appropriate so you might see if you can find a different way of identifying those active farms if your committee does choose to proceed with some sort of restrictions of solar development on active farms so that's my suggestion thanks again for all your in-depth conversations and good luck with the development of your bylaw. Bye-bye thanks Steve. Okay Mike Lupinski you can go ahead and unmute. Yes I just have a number of comments about things that were brought up during the being today the first is in this great timing is there really is no such thing as amorous share of solar this is a creation that was made up by Steve and Dwayne and got a little nod of okay from the other members of ECAC it's based on either population or land it makes little to no sense when you apply it to other cities and towns around Massachusetts there is no such thing as Boston share of solar there's no such thing as Florida Massachusetts share of solar development it's just it's an exercise done in a napkin you know by a couple of guys who just wanted to justify having a lot of solar and amorous you cannot find an edict from the state saying that every town has a certain share of ground knowledge of solar because it just does not work so please whenever you hear that realize that it's just something that's made up it is not real. Early in the conversation it was brought up there's been a lack of construction that Hickory Ridge I think Janet mentioned four weeks the actual number based on today is seven weeks and that's no visible construction at all going on this is interesting because oftentimes we see this idea of climate emergency and you get this sense of well we're just going to put all these solar panels out and it's going to solve the climate emergency well this project is a good example of it looks like the developer hasn't gotten the message that we're in an emergency situation because here we are in prime construction time and yet nothing's happening I don't know the reason why it's sitting there empty I would think that maybe Stephanie or Chris would have a better idea but I have a hard time finding someone in town to ask and get a straight answer on why is nothing happening I don't know if they haven't gotten the building permit yet I don't know if there's an environmental issues I don't think it's a stop work order but I can't get anyone to answer my questions it's interesting also in the sense that if you go to Hickory Ridge there was a big rush to cut down all the trees there in the winter time those same trees are still sitting there seven months later what does that tell you about emergencies a couple other things that I'm surprised you weren't told about today because they apply directly to your subject matter on June 14th amp which is now known as pure sky filed an application put in a solar development here in Amherst this solar development is the same one that was mentioned a couple years ago it's a 9.35 megawatt solar facility 4.4 megawatt ac ground mounted photovoltaic installation with battery energy storage the total area of the project is 41 acres to be located on a 102 acre site it's a totally wooded site it's a mature forest land off of shootsbury road it ties directly into the different subjects you were talking about today there is not one bit of meadow in this area it is entirely forest land the same company that's dragging their heels at Hickory Ridge is proposing to build the same a similar type development in forested land 40 acres which will be the area of disturbance when you talk about the forest that means cutting down every single tree ripping out every single sapling destroying every bit of that ecosystem it's interesting to see because obviously that our solar bylaw committee isn't going to have any impact on that I mean they've already submitted the application but you might use that as a lens to look at as you're putting together a solar bylaw how does that fit into your thinking because here's in my opinion is a worst case situation forest land sitting there contributing to the climate and now it's going to be ripped out to put up solar so that's in that's in the hopper it was filed with a town clerk on June 26 it looks like there may be a public hearing scheduled with the zba sometime in august I'm surprised you haven't heard anything about that and then I just have one one last question because I think it I think it's something that's been bothering me all longest I've listened to these meetings and that's with UMass you know they've been left out of your studies they've been left out of the maps I'm just and I would think don't even know the answer to this how much ground knowledge is solar is UMass planning to put in I can't speak for the university on that the I do know that the electricity needs in the decarbonization plan for the university the the electricity needs are going to be far far greater than the amount of solar that could technically even be placed on the campus and so there'll be so so any any solar that can be cited on campus would be consumed by or yeah basically consumed by the university loads themselves you know as you do know the university has has focused on on parking lot canopies and I'm not aware of any significant projects that are ground-mounted at this point okay so my in my opinion what you're seeing there is a classic double standard where UMass with huge amounts of land when we talk about doing their share it is proposing to do zero ground-mounted solar whereas Amherst is supposed to do their share and if you go by Steve and Dwayne's figures we're supposed to do a couple hundred acres worth of solar this is just another example how share doesn't really exist Amherst College says that they're they're fighting for the climate because they're buying their energy from a solar farm in Maine how much ground-mounted solar is Amherst College putting in I think the answer is probably the same as what you heard from Dwayne so let's not you know be talking about Amherst share when we have these huge universities and colleges that have no intention of doing ground-mounted solar on their property that's all I have for today and Eric go ahead and unmute thank you can you hear me yes great I just wanted to follow up on Mike's statement Mike Lipinski's statement the in calculating the town's acreage and Chris cited it 17,000 it's between 70 and 18,000 20 percent of Amherst is is either UMass Amherst College or Hampshire College land it's one out of every five acres and to just kind of not have a an open dialogue a least a to kind of a have a discussion about what the campuses are intending to do to alleviate mitigate this tremendous catastrophic climate crisis that we're all dealing with I think is is just simply just missing I mean missing the opportunity to have a robust conversation that we're all in this together so I'm I'm I'm amazed that here we are e-cac has existed since 2019 that that we have a solar bottle working group for the last year and a half that we have just kind of siloed our campuses and and really not engaged in a comprehensive look at how we as a community which includes over about 20 percent of our land tied to campuses as to how we're going to together embark on a solution so I I appreciate your work and would hope that it would get even broader and deeper and include the campuses thank you thank you yeah okay um Janet one last comment then we're over time so so I just want to reinforce those comments because it supports my previous question which is you know all you know Amherst College Hampshire College and UMass all have net zero plans they've all done assessments um I you know they are all looking to get solar power electricity from solar power off campus as well as partly on campus can we just get those plans in some specificity I did ask Amherst College um facilities person Tom Davies who appears in front of the planning board a few times and he gave me referred me to some general stuff but I just seems like this question is important because we're talking about fair share and percentages and you know all the rooftop big rooftops and all the big parking fields are all on the institutional lands we just don't have that much of it and so it seems like if if UMass isn't really planning to put a lot of rooftop in or do all their parking lots um if Hampshire College has acres and acres and acres of undeveloped fields let's just find out like what their plans are for them what their assessments say um because that could open a dialogue um but you know I know I'm an information heavy person but I feel like we've been here for more than a year and these are you know I wish I had seen the cadmus in each study a year ago not a year late and so I do think that all this information is here it's in our community there are people who have been paid to put these plans together who could just answer questions and we could just see it this is my plea I can reference a website um for UMass it has the carbon zero um uh information on it to the extent that it exists it's not a detailed plan there's a roadmap uh they have we have not got into the specificity if we want solar here here and here it's there's much bigger issues to some extent in terms of the geo exchange uh to be built and the building retrofits that need to be are required in the um district heating that needs to be revamped um when the solar is kind of a bit of an add-on because it's very small compared to our demands um and I don't want to harp on the fair share because uh uh there's different opinions on that but if we were to to recapitulate the fair share uh including the university and colleges lands and we would have to include their electricity loads um and um uh and to some extent our fair share would actually increase uh because um uh the um uh or the the amount of solar we would need would increase increase respectively um that being said um the fair share as was pointed out is just two geeky guys uh uh prevent providing some analysis to help frame the situation not to set policy okay um with that um let me uh call the meeting uh to an end uh as we're over time um and um appreciate everybody good good conversation um to be continued and I think we have to do something similar on forest lands um uh though we have a start with that already with some drafting that we put together but we want to revisit that again uh so we'll do that uh we'll continue this conversation on farmland next time perhaps um following some uh uh conversation with the uh attorney let me just say I I thank Steve for offering to send the criteria that they were using and I hope you will and Stephanie that you forward to us because that's the kind of thing I had in mind uh for you know criteria about preserving soil and uh you know yeah soil compaction and so on I'll follow up with Steve yeah thank you um I I have a notes question are we meeting possibly for three hours next time is that sounds like it okay I think um I'm we have to find out I would say potentially right now say the meeting would be from 10 30 we just have to confirm with Jonathan Mari okay thank you okay uh very good thank you everybody um and with that let's uh adjourn the meeting um thank you have a good weekend all right bye bye see y'all