 Okay, we are now recording. Okay, great. Thanks, Stephanie. And thanks everybody. Welcome to the August 4th 2023 meeting of the solar bylaw working group in Amherst. And thanks everybody for being here. We have an extended meeting today starting an hour early to accommodate Jonathan Murray from KP law to discuss some of the additional questions we put forward to him and his responses. Before we get started with that. Let me review my notes with regard to a minute taker. This is a meeting. Which was to be Laura. She's running late. And I'm wondering if we might be able to have somebody take minutes just for the duration until Laura gets here. She's missed a few times. If you want. Okay, I appreciate that Martha. So if you can start the minutes and then when Laura gets here and get settled, we can turn those turn that over to her and then you can combine things I guess. Okay. All right, thank you, Martha. With that looking at the agenda. We did have first up was to review the minutes from last meeting seven seven. That being said, those meeting those minutes are not available yet. And so we will postpone that until they become available hopefully for the next meeting. And furthermore, we were likely to postpone discussion on that anyhow until after we hear from and have a conversation with Jonathan Murray. So as not to delay his time with us. And so, if okay with with you Stephanie and Chris we can turn things over to to Jonathan and discussion of our questions and his responses. That'd be great as far as I'm concerned. Okay and welcome Chris yeah thanks for being here. Okay, so great. Welcome again, Jonathan you've been really helpful to us when we got early when we got this zoning bylaw working group, formed and got going with some tremendous insights and thoughts and council for for us in the town with regard to zoning in general. And as you recognize we've come a long way. And quite frankly we still have a ways to go to particularly address issues of particular importance and complexities maybe with regard to zoning particularly on farmland forest land forested land. And then some of the other questions we had around the next statement and and sort of how we how it's proper to sort of map this out. And so really appreciate your, your time with us today, and the time to respond to our questions and writing I presume everybody has those in front of us from the packet. And let me just ask, maybe first, Stephanie or Chris what you think and the committee, would it be best to sort of ask Jonathan to go over them sort of question by question. Okay, I see general nodding so that would be great and maybe is it would it be convenient for you Stephanie to bring his Jonathan's responses up on the screen to share and then we can start going through that. Just give me a minute. Yeah, great, absolutely. And, you know, I read through them Jonathan just again appreciate your, your, your insights and your, your legal professional ability to help us help us understand these issues so I thank you for having me and happy to answer them you all had some good questions and I took a brief look at the bylaw drafts. I think Chris had sent me a few weeks ago. So I'm happy. I didn't do a full review of that quite yet, but I'm happy to discuss that generally if there's questions. I can wait. There it is. Yeah, great. I'm happy to go through one by one if there's any questions. Just yell at me raise your hands interrupt me I no problems whatsoever so so you all had split this up into kind of three main categories farmlands forests. And then we had a mapping nexus section here but I'll start with farmlands. And your first question is a very good question. It had to do with crime agricultural soils and concern about protecting those as I said in my response that is a very valid and common reason we see in purpose statements for these types of bylaws. It's certainly something the town can keep in mind when they're drafting and adopting it. And so that I have zero concern with the group, keeping that in mind and including provisions for that. And then maybe we take a and be together. On the flip side, the second question, one be can we prohibit development on agricultural soils this is one. I'm not so comfortable with. I was asked months ago when I was here, and I won't say it as much as I did last time because I know I said it probably too many times but the solar protection in 40 a section three says no zoning bylaw shop prohibit or unreasonably regulate. I'm concerned that if we start adopting bylaws prohibiting solar in certain parts of town. We might get pushed back on that that's not to say that the town is without any ability to regulate or prohibit in certain circumstances. Please don't take my response. I'm not saying we're without authority, but we should be cautious about adopting a bylaw that straight out bands solar on on particular parcels. I would suggest maybe we look at and this is for you all to side in the in the town to decide is is if these types of sensitive parcels farmlands and, and then there's the forests in the second section are are of particular concern, especially as it relates to public health safety and welfare. We might be able to impose additional requirements on those types of developments on these types of land, whether that be special permits or site plan review or particular screening or the requirement that developers show that they've kind of exhausted all other abilities on this site that they've looked at rooftops are non productive agricultural land or, you know, I think there's a few different policy ways we could accomplish that but a straight out band I would just recommend we be cautious about that type of that type of adoption. So, maybe I take a pause here and if there's any questions. I guess I would have one question and then maybe Jack. And my question is, as we've looked at the maps in Amherst of Amherst of what's defined and shown as prime agriculture prime farmland and farmland of statewide importance. It covers a remarkable amount of the town, much of which is not in farming. In fact, I looked at my house and I'm on prime farmland, and there's nothing close to a farm around my house. And there's a lot of forest land also that's in has prime far prime soils or prime or farmland of statewide importance. And so I just wanted to, in terms of, of sort of imposing restrictions or requirements for, for example, maintaining soil health with the idea that if a solar, if the solar development is provided on a parcel that is in good soil but may not may not be a farm. And usually uses a farm anywhere in the in the near past, would it still be reasonable to require similar soil protection mechanisms or provisions for that land with the idea that after the solar array the land's been cleared, there's a solar array. It has good soil, we wanted to make we would want to make sure that the soil that it could be returned to it could be then transferred over to farming. If that's, if that's the landowners intent. Yeah, absolutely. I think that would be reasonable and I think it might depend on the scope of what kind of regulations we're thinking about but certainly, you know, say we had the these areas of town that are deemed quote prime agricultural land and someone wanted to come to the solar array. You know, we'd have to figure out what mechanism we impose these requirements but, but certainly things like, you know, you know, making sure that there's no, if there's batteries on site for example that you know batteries are used so that there's no soil contamination or that, you know, that there's, there is frequent and active monitoring of these solar arrays so that if there are broken ones and there's not broken glass in the soil and, you know, I think all of that sort of thing with with the stated sort of preserving the health of the soil should it, you know, be used in the future for agricultural purposes. I think that's reasonable. It's going to depend on the specifics but as a general matter, I think that's fine for the group to go into. Yeah, Jonathan, you had some, some measures listed off I just wanted to make sure that I made note of them, starting with the site plan review. You know, the various sort of levels of buckets that we could steer, you know, certain areas of town toward in terms of level of review versus something considered more benign. So, what were those? And then you had, you know, yeah, so, so I think site plan review, which, as you know, and if anyone doesn't know is more of an administrative function it's not specifically laid out in the zoning act but it's widely accepted and most all towns use it. The catch with site plan review is that it can't truly be used to deny a project, but it gives the town the ability to make sure that certain site features are implemented when there's a use so that might be helpful in this kind of circumstance where the zoning act provides zoning exemptions for solar installations and we generally have to allow them but we want to make sure that they're done in a productive, safe, orderly manner. Other requirements are you could impose perhaps a special permit requirement. Belcher town, I believe, has a special permit requirement in their zoning bylaw and I know you had all asked for examples and myself and someone else in our office are putting those together right now in an orderly fashion so we're not just throwing paper at you so I apologize I don't have it prepared for today but hopefully the end product is more helpful. So special permits could be used. Again, though, we want to just be careful that they're not used as a pretext to deny solar projects, but special permits could be appropriate in certain circumstances. I think those are the two main buckets Jack that you've used for regulatory review. But perhaps there's something else creative we could think of depending on a particular concern. Okay, thank you. Duane, excuse me, I just wanted to note that Laura, Laura has joined us. Oh, good. Oh, good. Welcome Laura. Yeah. Laura, we were interested in whether you'd be in a position to take minutes for today. Yes, hold on. I will. Okay, great. So, Martha has been taking them up to this point. But it was sort of your turn so we just got started basically so be great if you could take over the minutes and relieve Martha. Thank you. Okay, Chris. Yeah, I had a question about the site plan review versus special permit right now. Most of our solar installations are approved by special permit. There have been a couple that have been approved by site plan review, namely the one at Hampshire College because it was considered to be accessory to the educational use. But Amherst has a kind of history of putting the special permit requirement on a lot of different things, but then, you know, more than 95% of our special permit applications are granted. So there's not a sense that, you know, if you were, if we require a special permit that it's going to be denied it's more like it may receive more scrutiny than a site plan review because the use is not, you know, considered to be necessarily appropriate in the particular location. The zoning board of appeals looks at the use and whether it is appropriate in a particular location but as I said, almost always comes up with the response that yes it is but we here are a lot of conditions that we're going to put on it. So I just wanted to, you know, make that clear and kind of ask Jonathan, given that history. Would it be appropriate for us to keep using special permit for most solar installations but you know if there are some places in town that we really think, oh this would be a great place to put solar, then have those by site plan review. And I certainly didn't mean to imply that, you know, we would, anyone is suggesting to adopt special permits as a pretext they just offer that as a common criticism or a common reason for denial we are currently seeing from the AG's office in less artful bylaws that are adopted. So just offer that up as context but I certainly wasn't suggesting it. If, if that is the common regular zoning regulatory permitting scheme that the town has adopted keeping these uses by special permit. I think that's fine we've seen examples of solar zoning bylaws that were adopted earlier this year with special permit requirements that have been approved. So I don't have a huge problem with that to your point about can we designate different parts of towns that may have just site plan review maybe just special permit or maybe a combination of two. Yes, that's completely appropriate. We should just be mindful we'll get to this in the mapping section, mindful of how we map that, but that's another tool that the group can use as well. Great. Yes, I just wanted to sort of second Chris is point and point out to Jonathan they've spent some concerns in the community recently, because there have been quite a few examples of, you know, fires, both the battery sites and even in orange on the ground that were raised themselves and so on so that by requiring special permits. It seems to me that we're simply asking for a higher level of scrutiny, when not trying to prevent it, we're just trying to say well we really got to all the aspects very carefully so it would seem that given, you know, documented risks particularly that we're seeing that you know it is appropriate to have the special permit requirement if you agree. Absolutely. That's, I think it's appropriate, especially when it's connected to safety issues. Certainly we want to make sure that these are safe and there's a lower risk of fire or explosion or, you know, whatever kind of problems they become these installations come up with, especially as they age. So, yeah, I think that's smart. I think that's appropriate. All right, great. Maybe we can go on to the next. Question or two. Yeah, so see, and so see was can we require solar installations on farmland be allowed only if it's developed as a dual use project. I don't think we want we'd like to be careful with that. What I, what I would suggest is, you know, that section three limits is a limit on the municipalities power to regulate these. I think if a person were to come in and say I'd like solar on this land but I don't want to dual use, it would be hard pressed for the town to enforce that kind of requirement. But what I would suggest is, whatever path this group of the town decides to take whether that site plan review special permit or something, you might have some sort of provision. But well I just prefaced by saying I do include my answer, you certainly can encourage it. You know, as a as a general policy matter you can encourage applicants to investigate it but maybe more as a regulatory matter. If you do identify these prime agricultural lands, you might have a requirement whether be through site plan review special permit for an applicant to demonstrate even we've investigated dual use and it's not appropriate for this site because I don't know if it's XYZ or I'm not set up, you know, I don't, I've never farmed I don't farm I don't intend to farm but I'll keep the soil and healthy condition should should someone else want to in the future. I think those are reasonable regulations. And certainly you can craft a requirement that an application demonstrate that they've gone through their due diligence, dual use might not be appropriate for this site. And they've kind of checked all your boxes, but I wouldn't suggest that we can straight outright ban it if it's if it's not a particular type of solar installation. Any questions on that one. I think the next one probably ties into it as well. Can we require deed restrictions I also would recommend caution with this type of requirement, just with any zoning bylaw in general. Property owners are entitled to a significant degree to use the land how they see fit and the municipalities allowed to regulate those uses so it's, you know, in conformance with 10 plans and it's not causing a safety issue or whatnot. And my concern with a deed restriction would be, it might unnecessarily or unreasonably limit a person's ability to use their own property to, you know, construct the solar use, or it might be an additional expense say the site is particularly small and they can't deed restrict it, they'd have to go out and buy another parcel. I think we might be getting into territory here where a court would see that as unreasonable. I do talk about deed restrictions later on in a different answer but just as a general matter, I would hesitate to recommend them, just because we get into this reasonable unreasonable category and we might be imposing requirements on applicants that unnecessarily limit their ability to use the property. It doesn't say though, you can't impose requirements that, you know, so preserving farming for deed restriction. I know Dwayne had asked the question earlier about maintaining soil health and certainly we can, we can require safety inspections and screenings and, you know, perimeter controls and all that kind of stuff. So there might be ways to, to get at that goal of preserving this land for future use or preserving this, this resource without requiring this title restriction, you know, a deed restriction on that person's title. It's not necessarily the easiest thing to remove. So we might have something a little more regulatory than title related to accomplish the same goal. And then I suppose that the second part of that question is can we require through appropriate vegetative planting yes straight yes you can require that any questions on deed restrictions dual use vegetative planning. Can I just ask your maybe elaborate a little bit on the on the dual use and your suggestion that we really wouldn't be in a position to require that on in certain conditions of prime soils and so forth that we would require dual use but to encourage and I'm just wondering like what if you know the idea would be I think then to to provide that the applicant has to first demonstrate in some way to the town or the PGA that dual use is not feasible. And then, and if that, if that is satisfactory to the PGA then the more typical ground mounted array could be accommodated. Is that your sort of the way you would think about structuring it and if so what would be that, what would be the threshold of that demonstration that it's not technically or economically feasible. Yeah, that is a good question so I think the first instance is the, the mapping aspect or the category of land that the bylaw would quote unquote require this extra due diligence for dual use, you had mentioned that your your property is, you know, technically prime agricultural land. And so we don't want to circumstance where say you, not to single you out doing but maybe you wanted to put up a panel or two in your backyard. We don't want to circumstance where the bylaw says well you can't do that because you're required to use and you come back and say well I don't farm on this property or maybe you do but you know I don't farm on this property I live here as residential that's what I see. So I think to your question about you know what's the level of scrutiny that might be involved. I think it's first going to depend on what areas or what types, what's your bucket of lands that you'd like to impose this requirement on, you know, is it, is it land that's used in this prime agricultural category, you know, maybe we, we, we offer that as an extra level of scrutiny, is it land actively used for agricultural purposes now. That could be a requirement you say, you know, for everything else, you can go ahead but if you're actively using it for agricultural, we'd like you to demonstrate, you know why why you intend on, you know, tearing down this, this aspect of the farm and putting up solar systems, why don't you do dual use. So, so I think first decision need to be made about what are the eligible or what are the targeted properties for this type of extra scrutiny, and then you can develop, you know, what's the rationale or what's the the minimum threshold they have to show in regards to their due diligence or their reasons why dual use isn't appropriate for the site. That's completely fair. I'm not an agricultural person scholar you know I don't know how to farm and I'm sure that there's technical requirements are practical requirements even for growing certain crops that might not conform to dual use solar. And so someone might come in and say well I grow corn and dual use isn't really work on this site because of the slopes and the height of the corn and all that kind of stuff. And so I think it's a good progression or at least some leeway to those types of applicants to say, Well, it seems like you've done your due diligence here and have taken into the particular aspects of the site. Thank you. Yeah, Jack. Yeah, John I was wondering if you, you go by john or Jonathan. Jonathan but I'm not offended. Oh Jonathan, sorry. All right. I was wondering with regard to other bylaws solar bylaws that you are familiar with, and if they speak to the agra. I don't know what the actual takes at all. Because for me, I feel like there's already on a state level incentives with the. What is it the, the APR or the ASTG use yeah. So, I mean, they're kind of hardwired that Dwayne knows all about that obviously but so I. I think we would be kind of doubling efforts for no reason when there's a state program kind of already promoting it if people want these credits, and for us to kind of like try to, you know, improve upon what the state has done that is a big ask. And just, I'm just saying, you know, it seems like it's adequately sort of supported from a state policy perspective. And do we even need to really speak to, you know, agrivoltaic this is more amongst the working group not necessarily you john, Jonathan but anyway, are you familiar with other agrivoltaics being called out within the bylaws and for other towns. So, off the top of my head, I'm not familiar familiar with other types of examples, I will say and that's why I. We're very fortunate right now it's summertime we have summer law clerks in our office and so I have one of my summer law clerks kind of pouring over the latest version of solar bylaws from across the Commonwealth to see if we can find one to answer this back. I'm not familiar with one off the top my head I can't promise you that there isn't one out there. But if we do find one, we're going to send it to you. But to your point, your idea does have this policy promoting dual use. There's other state credits and grants and loans that these developers can get. And if you all determine as a policy matter that that's kind of sufficient for the town's purposes I think that's reasonable. If you look at those requirements or those programs and you say, Well Amherst really, you know, wants to promote it even more. Or, or we want to make sure that it's, you know, done in an appropriate way for local in light of local needs, we can figure out a way to do that. So it gets into more of a policy decision, rather than a legal one but to your first question, Jack, we are searching. We have a meeting today to see what we found, and we'll send you anything we can find. Chris, and then Martha. I have a question about what would be the level of proof that someone would need to present to show that they had done their due diligence with regard to figuring out whether their property was appropriate for agrivoltaics or not. I'm not mentioning that they would need to hire a consultant, but maybe not. Maybe they would just need to write a letter to the permit granting authority and say, I've considered this, you know, and for this this and this reasons. I don't feel that my property is suitable or my operation is suitable or whatever so what is your sense of what kind of proof someone would need to show the permit granting authority that they've done the due diligence and it's not appropriate for agrivoltaics. Yeah, absolutely Chris. So I think the first. So, the first question is, it's going to depend on the type of permitting scheme, the bylaw adopts whether it's site plan review or special permit. But as a general matter, I think I think you could start at a letter simply from the landowner saying this is the historic use of the site this is what I intend to do I've, I've considered dual use and it's, it's appropriate or it's not appropriate for these reasons. Certainly if, if this is accomplished via special permit, the special permit granting authority, if they had either additional questions or they were quite convinced by that letter. They might say well we'd like to hire an expert here because we think the reasons you've proffered are not quite in line with what we know of the site or we've we've looked at the site and we're not quite sure. We can add in level of scrutiny, but I think if a letter, or maybe some sort of report or something from their attorney or from them. That's a perfectly fine first level. We can add in some additional requirements or additional authority for the special permit permit granting authority, if there is a question about the scrutiny or the sufficiency of the explanation. Thank you. Good Martha thing. Yes, as I, as I listened to this discussion. Jonathan, I think I'd be surprised if you find any other bylaw that's really seriously address the agricultural lands for two reasons one, it's this area in the pioneer valley that has the most productive agricultural in Massachusetts. And then secondly, where I think we're at the forefront because we've got Dwayne and his UMass research organization that are actively doing the research we really are urgently in need of more data on what works with dual use. And I wonder if there's a way that we could sort of justify our requirements by saying that we really are wanting to take advantage of some experimental work and help our community and help Massachusetts acquire better data on the dual use and what works and that kind of thing. Yeah, I think that's a really good question and raises a few others. To your point, Martha, you know, I haven't quite seen it. It could be there could be other examples out there but but if the town, this group or the town wants to be the lead town on this issue. We can figure out how to do that. What I would suggest though is what the AG and what the courts and what the statute continue to say is, you know, the legislature adopted the zoning exemption for the purpose of promoting solar. So certainly you could go the opposite direction instead of prohibiting prohibiting uses or whatever it might be you might have you might put in your bylaw incentives for dual use. Say, say, you know, we have standard setbacks or standard dimensional requirements for normal ground mounted solar arrays. There's nothing to stop the bylaw from saying, but if you do dual use or you do, you know, something similar you can have, you know, either the special permit granting authority can waive certain dimensional requirements or you might have less dimensional requirements or we might give you some some benefits not entitled to other solar uses. That's one policy way that you can achieve that objective of promoting these dual uses if that's something really important. I have more question that my last question that's been submitted to you is sort of further along this so I'll wait for for that for more discussion. Great, thank you. All right, this has been really helpful and relates very much to the agenda that we have later in this meeting on on farm farm farmland particularly so this has been really helpful. All right, I think we're ready to move on to the second set of questions. Yeah, so for a similar topic. Can we restrict the amount of tree clearing yes you can. Belcher town did it and it was approved. I think that's what I would suggest though is, we got to be reasonable with the types of tree clearing requirements. If we say can't move more than 10 trees, someone's going to push back on that. You've got to the bylaw has to allow for a certain amount of site disruption, but yeah, can we restrict the amount of tree clearing yep, I think that's that's an appropriate one. To that end, again we talked about this kind of ties into my last answer to Martha's question but also the previous answer regarding deed restrictions. Again, I caution the use of deed restrictions there. They're more permanent than you might think. And I hesitate because they're pretty serious requirement and it might be easy for someone are you in court that it's unreasonable, but I could imagine some sort of incentive. Say for example, you had a requirement that you couldn't cut down more than five acres and this person needed to cut down six. Perhaps the special permit of special permit granting authority could allow that six acres if they, you know, preserved one acre somewhere else. I think you could use that deed restriction as a tool and maybe your incentives or your lessening of other requirements but a straight out deed restriction. I would suggest caution, it's just something that I don't know if a court would look on favorably, but could be used in other circumstances so which was fairly recent from the town of Douglas is in that last paragraph there, just a straight limit on the clearing of natural vegetation to only what is necessary. That seems to have been approved I saw in one other bylaw as well. So you could throw that in into your bylaw. That's appropriate language it seems. And then I think the next one probably ties in as well. Can we discriminate these regulations and prohibitions based on the attributes of the forest. I don't want to say blanket no, because I think that would be unreasonable of me to say blanket no, but I, it fills me with a little worry, because we're getting into this again unreasonable and reasonable and this, this might be my lack of knowledge in forest aspects of it. But we want to make it, there's a general principle you should know in any bylaw whether it be zoning bylaw or general bylaw and it's the vagueness doctrine and the vagueness doctrine says an applicant should be able to look at the bylaw, and know what it takes to get their permit. It can't be so vague or so cumbersome or so overly technical that me as a homeowner or any of you as a homeowner couldn't look at your bylaw and generally say, well I understand what the bylaw requires of me I understand what I would need to prove and this is what I could get. So my concern when when we start discriminating based off of the type of trees tree species quality of the ecosystem water filtering a court might look at that and say one, those are, those might be requirements it would require me to go out and get multiple types of special experts and reports and to, you know, we might not know how the special permit granting authority is going to treat, you know this type of species of trees versus the other type of species of trees. I think the third point is, again we got to go back to the general principle in section three is shall not prohibit or unreasonably regulate. We got to remember that you'd have to justify the reason for the discrimination. If there were a very special and rare breed of trees that only existed in the town of Amherst and we needed to protect those I'd be more comfortable with that but if it's just. Well we're going to treat oaks different than pines than we are birches than we are, you know maples. We, we would have to really justify the reason and I don't know if we're quite there yet. So, again, I think the general theme of these three questions are, you know you have some authority to limit and protect for us but those limits need to be, we need to justify them and then the more particular we get in those requirements the more justification we need. So that's my just general comment on those three but, again, we can protect for us there's ways to do it, we just got to be mindful of the method of means we choose to implement any questions on those. Let me just ask. I think your your main example is sort of like you can't discriminate by tree species. There's also this notion that not all forests are created equal with regard to how much carbon they sequester, which is of importance to the Commonwealth, or the ecosystem ecosystem services they provide. There is some there is science around this though, as you say it's it's would probably take an expert for any given property owner of a forest would take sort of an expert to sort of make that evaluation. But is there, would you suggest that sort of similar thing stands with regard to discriminating against, well this this type of forest ecosystem has demonstrates you know x tons of sequestration a year. And hence it's above some threshold so we want to preserve that versus the southern forest area is scrubbier, or whatever doesn't sequester as much carbon. And so it would be more appropriate to have solar there. So, without knowing, without knowing the technical kind of rationale behind it, I think what I would suggest is, if there's an appetite for say, limiting the amount of acres on a site you could remove. Perhaps there's a threshold, you know if they if you remove one it's a, you know it's okay if you remove more than one but less than five. We require this extra level of scrutiny like we talked about with the dual use. Yeah, you know, and maybe there's, there's a way that folks can still use their land for solar but appropriately protecting these forest resources and requiring additional levels of either application material materials or scrutiny or showing that we've done as much as we can to protect this type of forest resource. And, and, you know, we've balanced the equities of it all. So I think there's a way we probably can can get those requirements in a hesitate to say, you know, it's okay to cut scrub but it's not okay to cut x something I think about it from an enforcement perspective to be completely honest, or from an appeals perspective if someone were denied a permit, and I go to the judge and the judge says well, well what's the purpose of this requirement why is the town so interested and the judge is going to have to determine well is it reasonable or not. We have to be able to defend it in court and not saying it's not possible I just don't know we'd have to connect the policy reason and the science behind it, and then narrowly tailor it so that it's reasonable in the context of the zoning act. So, it might take more work to be honest, but I think there might be some way we can, we can protect at it I just recommend again caution. I appreciate that. Yeah, Bob. Yeah, I do have a lot of experience and forestry, and I would really not want to try prioritize land based on attributes of the forest I think that would be an impossible task. In fact, for your example, scrub on a landscape scale is more reliable ecologically than the turf forest, it provides unique habitats that we really don't find in the room. So I'd be really cautious to try to come up with this. There is no answer. The other thing I want to go back to is more specific. We meant you mentioned Belcher town and 10 acres. Are there any more examples of a town having lower limits. I think Belcher town was actually five, if I remember their latest decision, I thought it was five. I know the question says 10 but I think their latest spring amendment was five. I'm not quite sure I've seen less than five. But again, I can add that to the list of bylaws. And what I'll do is I will call them out maybe give you a table of contents and say, you know look at Belcher towns for these reasons and you know, Lennox for this reason and you know who whatever we can find that's relevant. Bob, I'll, I'll give you a list of bylaws you can look at that are say less than 10 or less than five. Thank you. Yeah, great. And that's my best. Any other questions on the forest questions, or any answers. Great. Okay, maybe we can then move on Jonathan to the mapping. Yeah, absolutely. So mapping three a. So it is the question of, of, do we do a map as a preference or does it have, you know, the force of law base response to all you can always express your preferences. You really don't have any problem with any preference as long as they're reasonable and they're consistent with the law towns can make preference statements that this is the reason why we're adopting them by law this is our main objective. These are the reasons behind it. I won't, I almost rarely will ever cut a preference. If you'd like to have the force of law you absolutely can do it. I might defer to Chris on, on whether this is an underlying or an overlay but you'd have to adopt some sort of zoning map in a zoning district. That would be adopted through the normal zoning amendment process, which is 485 so if it's just a preference you all like, go for it. I generally don't ever have a problem with that. If you'd like it to have the force of law. That's also fine. We just have to be a little more particular on how we adopt that. And then we get into spot zoning but I'd like to just is there any questions about that one first. Well maybe it does get into spot zoning but I did have a question. When we were looking, we're looking at the maps and the different layers of restricted land conservation land APR land and so forth there was this tendency, because we're talking about basically parcel level mapping. And there can be there certainly areas of town we were looking at where due to the fact that there was a PR in this on this parcel but not this parcel we were getting down to like individual property owners saying oh that'd be a good place for solar. And, and I, I'm not. I just, it just didn't seem comfortable to meet on a, in a public forum to be expressing opinions or just even discussion about individual properties attributes. Can you give us some guidance and maybe Chris knows as well but just in terms of when you're talking about showing parts of town that could be preferences for solar. I can see that sort of if you're drawing sort of general areas, but if it gets down to like okay you know it's this parcel this parcel, you know disparate parcels that happen to be available because they're but, but they're, you know, not not not developed. Is that something that one can do. Well, that way you described it, you know singling out parcels I will say just as a general matter and Chris probably knows this better than I do or can speak to it more than I, I can. We don't have to charge patchwork zoning districts. We should not be. I don't recommend we should not be, you know, having a patchwork of well parcel a is good parcel be as good are not good. We're going to zone them differently. Now that's not to say that you have to paint this with a broad brush. You don't have to say for example, everything south or root nine is solar and everything north isn't like it doesn't have to be that broad either. So we're going to be very careful in particular about, well, you know, maybe the, maybe North Amherst is good or bad for these particular reasons and we're going to make our overlay here. We're going to have a second overlay down in South Amherst, and you can draw your boundaries based off of maybe particular aspects of parcels. This is spot zoning and maybe just to answer that question. There's two types of spot zoning there's spot zoning and reverse spot zoning. So, spot zoning is generally singling out a single parcel for that parcels economic benefit. You generally see those the cases are, you know, one parcel in a residential district wants to be a commercial parcel and they single it out and there's sort of payment to the town and courts say no no no you can't do that there has to be some rationale some consistency with your current zoning map and some policy reason why we're changing it. Reverse spot zoning is the reverse of that it's singling it singling it out to prohibit the use so that we single out this parcel because you know the owner has indicated they're going to build a property and we don't want a private dump on the property so we're going to say no dumps on on that parcel. That's that's also illegal. There's got to be some more rational reasonable holistic way that we adopt these maps so I think it's appropriate. I hope this answer makes sense. I think it's appropriate to look at the characteristics of individual parcels, but I don't recommend that any map or any overlay be patchwork based off of those parcels. There should be some holistic general policy reason why this part of town, you know this part of town is particularly good for these reasons the parcels all have this attribute. That's not around there that's fine. But I get nervous when we say well parcel is good but right next door parcel bees not good. We can you can draw your district lines where you like them but we got to be able to back it up. Thank you. Baba mantra if your hands up again or was up from before. And it's down. Okay, thanks. I think that was my major thought about mapping would just generally be, you can have a preference map that doesn't have the force of law. I just I don't particularly see a problem with that. I would just maybe be cautious. If it's a preference map it should be very clear that it's a preference map, you know we can't have a preference map and then the special permit granting authority say well it's not consistent with the preference map we just say as a policy matter if someone, you know, identifies these properties and the owners might wish to consider, you know, building solar there because it's good for the town and it's good for the environment. But keeping it clear that it's preference it's not a requirement there's no bearing on the administrative permit process. We would like the tab the force of law whether we do it as most likely an overlay I would say Chris I don't know why we do this as a underlying district but if we do it as an overlay, then we just be mindful of, you know we've identified these groups of parcels in this part of town and we're going to make this part of the overlay and, and back it up. So just be cautious to your, your point about parcel level details you can use the attributes of the parcels, why they're a good fit for the overlay, but I wouldn't suggest saying well, we pick parcel lay out and don't pick parcel be especially when they're really close together. It's that's just going to get into a patchwork of messiness, both from a legal perspective and an administrative perspective. How do we, you know, it's hard to determine sometimes what, what qualifies and what doesn't. But that's, I think everything I had for mapping unless there were other, oh Chris has a question. I just wanted to let Jonathan know that we've done a study of land in town that we think is feasible for solar. And we hired GCA engineering to work with us to get that study done. And the study had criteria for mapping pieces of land in certain ways. We made a decision early on to eliminate some properties and those were based on whether a property had a conservation restriction on it whether it was conservation land that was owned by the town. Whether it was APR. I think properties that were clearly wetlands and rivers and streams we took out. We eliminated. We eliminated railroad tracks and roadways. And so we have this map that has about a third of the town shown as feasible for for solar and we further applied criteria and the criteria had to do with slope of the land aspect. In other words, what direction was facing its proximity to three phase transmission lines and the capability or the capacity of those transmission lines to accept more power. And then we ranked all of these lands. We based it on a 30 by 30 foot grid. So we have this map, which I think is useful, but I guess I'm a little cautious about using it to create a zoning map so I think we're going to have to, you know, talk about this more. I just wanted to let Jonathan know that this map exists, but one of the potential complications. I think we've, we've eliminated all UMass owned lands because we can't really tell UMass what to do. And we don't have any zoning control over them. As far as the two colleges go. Much of their land is zoned ed zoning district, which, you know, we are zoning by law has very little control over land in ed zoning district, but there are other parcels of land that the college has owned that are actually zoned, you know, with the town zoning. Now, this would be a question for Stephanie and Stephanie may not remember the, the exact, you know, choices that we made, but I don't remember if GCA eliminated properties that were not in the educational zoning district from consideration. So I guess the windup is that I'm saying that we have, we have about a third of the land that's shown on this map that is quote, you know, feasible for solar. But then there may be other parcels that are owned by Hampshire College or Amherst College that could also be feasible, but they weren't studied. So, I'm not sure exactly why I'm saying this but it has to do with mapping and our consideration of what is reasonable or what is possible for putting solar, and I think we're going to need a lot of help with this from you about how to make choices with regard to these maps and maybe I'm just putting that out there as a topic for another day but I think it's worth recognizing that that is a struggle that we're going to confront. So that's it. And Chris I think that brings up a good point and as you're kind of figuring out what types of requirements, the bylaws going to require people both permit wise whether it's special site plan approval or special permit, but also dimensional requirements, maybe this is just one I don't know what the map looks like but maybe where this one third of the town is particularly feasible maybe they have more favorable dimensional requirements to encourage it more or maybe they have less rigorous approval process or whatever it may be to particularly emphasize and maybe the underlying district for most of the town allows solar. But we particularly emphasize that these areas of town are the most feasible or the most favorable for the reasons stated in the report and to that end we give them some maybe more flexibility in their developments. And one one way we could do it but but maybe this is a conversation for Chris and I and whoever as you as you as we continue and we look at these maps and we see, well how do we best implement. You know, you all, I'm sure went out and had retained someone to make this map, you know let's get the most out of it. But yeah, I think that's a good point to bring up. Yeah, I just wanted to offer I wish I would send it out but I did kind of gather all the different townwide maps and put them in one document that that I'd like to share with the working group, and it kind of just, you know, it does look very confusing because I drew from the, the, the recent state map study what's that called the technical potential for solar. Yeah the technical potential one so I got that and then various zoning maps from the day and, you know, none of them really match I mean it's just it's it's a it's a patchwork. And what we did with Gza is a little more hands on and localized but you know, for me I just there just seems to be a lot going out there that's going to direct a solar developer on what lands are going to be what lands for them. And, you know, I just think is same as Chris is like how, how do we do an offer map you know on a lot by lot basis sort of thing it's just it just seems daunting and that, you know, the less you know I think hopefully we can just, you know rule out the areas that we that we need to rule out and then all the other areas just kind of put in the, the restrictions and if the lot fits then it fits sort of thing versus putting that particular a lot on a map saying you can't put solar there, you know, but yeah we haven't got there. Yeah but it's, you know, implementing a the actual district for this is, I guess is coming near. So, I think thanks Jack yeah. Yeah go ahead Chris. So, I have long doubted whether we should, in fact, put on a map where we are allowing solar and where we're not allowing it, because I think there are probably a lot of places in town that would lend themselves to solar that would lend themselves to solar that we're not really cognizant of, and again, it could be, you know, the universe, not the university, well yes the university and the colleges they own best tracks of land that, you know, would be potentially very suitable to solar but we don't have control over them as I said, and, and then the other. The other point is that the climate cliff in a way. So, I'm personally reluctant to put a lot of restrictions on where solar can go. I'm more inclined to put in controls over if someone wants to put solar on this property, here's what you have to do to control against, you know, bad outcomes. And so I just wanted to say that because my, my gut feeling is that it's going to be very difficult to put together a map to regulate where solar should go, we can offer our map as information about where solar could go. But I think we really should do our regulating in our zoning bylaw so just making that statement. Thanks Chris yeah. Let me before going back to Jack let me just confirm that we can have outright restrictions on no solar in certain areas that have already been previously restricted for other purposes for example conservation land wet wetlands. And maybe a few other categories is that is that the case and maybe we've already drafted that into some of the regulations but there's some some lands that we have on that we designated on our map and are already restricted for certain purposes. So conservation, conservation restrictions I presume those are lands that Chris are they already out of bounds for solar development because of the restrictions upon them or do we have to be explicit on that. So the conservation lands are out of bounds I think many of them are bound by deed restrictions or else the chapter 97 regulations which Jonathan probably knows a lot more about than I do. APRs are allowed to have some amount of solar but it has to be no more than 200% of the amount that the farmer would use for his operation whatever that is. So, some of these properties could be potentially used for solar but they're very restricted in the way they can be used and wetlands couldn't be used. Unless, you know, unless you could mitigate by adding 5000 square feet of wetland on another property or something so wetlands are very restricted. Perfect. Yeah, Jack. Yeah, I just wanted to say that what Chris had mentioned about controls versus trying to to get a, you know, a zoning map that is for the entire town it just doesn't, it doesn't make sense. I just wanted to agree with what Chris was saying and the approach with the bylaw that we should, you know, be taking. Yeah, perfect. Yeah, I just threw my hat in that ring as well, generally. And even even the, you know, I think we definitely provided that, you know, even in the mapping that Gza did, we are not, we are not solar developers, we don't this this wasn't looked at from the perspective of a solar developer. We, we would be, you know, reluctant to sort of suggest that that mapping of feasibility is something that would avoid the need for a solar developer or others to really do a site study for a particular site and everything that's on there is feasible is not necessarily going to be feasible for a solar developer and there's other other plots, other areas that for some reason because of our general metrics that we use could be feasible, but didn't turn out to be feasible so I don't think we should suggest that this is a perfect mapping, but just a general sense. I just had one comment at the end to Chris's point, you know, so if we do this, not as a map but just in the underlying district regulations and we say, you know, whatever it is just for example, solar is allowed as of right with no, I know this isn't going to be the case but allowed as of right no controls no nothing in the general residential district. So that's wetlands. Even if it's allowed as of right under zoning doesn't mean the solar is going to end up there, you know they would have to comply with 11 wetlands protection act they'd have to comply with, if there's a deed restriction on the property that says no no structures no solar, they couldn't do it anyway. So I think if there's concern about particularly sensitive sites that are protected under a separate statutory scheme. I think this one district regulation may not be as relevant for those particular parcels. So just something in general if you've in mind. Very perfect. All right, let's I know we're a bit over time with you Jonathan so really appreciate you hanging in there if you can. So maybe we can move on to the Nexus statement. A couple questions. Yeah, I think this one is is pretty straightforward. This statement I think is is a very fine idea I applaud you all I think it's a very good thing to include in a bylaw that isn't normally included or at least isn't comprehensively included these introductory purpose statements. I think the only question maybe worth discussion not worth but necessitated necessitating discussion is the sea, which is should it be directly rated to the uses that the bylaw seeks to regulate or can it have more broad policy statements at a minimum, it should be directly related to to particular uses or aspects of the use that you're looking to regulate. So that might be farmland or force for example we talked about earlier so if there's going to be particular requirements regulations additional prohibitions related to those uses. So this statement should have some sort of connection to that, you know, some statement about the sensitivity of the land or the value it provides to the town or to the Commonwealth or whatever maybe as to just general policy statements the one here is the seriousness of climate change. So if you have any references in regards to mapping, you're more than happy. I'm more than happy for you all to to state your policies to state your preferences. I almost never strike those. I think the thing maybe just to be cognizant of is, you know, this is going to have to go through a few different more boards before it gets adopted so whatever policy statements you do adopt. I think should just be generally consistent with how the town as a whole and all the other boards that need to put their hands on this. Maybe the general direction so yeah I have no, no comms no concerns about general policy statements about the seriousness of climate change but at a minimum, whatever your purpose your nexus statement whatever you want to call it. I think there should be some direct connection with the aspects of this use that you're seeking to regulate. Thank you, Martha. What about statements that reference are Massachusetts decarbonization roadmap and the goals for 2030 and 2050. Are they helpful to include. Oh yeah, absolutely. I think if it would they have the sort of the force of law would they be something that you could use to help justify a potential. To justify a particular thing. So, I don't want to say they would have the force of law in the sense that if someone came and sought an application and their application didn't conform to those state plans. I couldn't then rely on that non compliance as a as a rationale but if someone challenged the bylaw to say well why did the town adopt these regulations and I can point to your nexus statement and say well your honor. There's a climate change process look at these state reports look at the town took into consideration and specifically connected the report to this requirement or to the series or set of requirements. That's certainly helpful and more than 99% of the bylaws that you know I might have to defend. Absolutely. I would just say, don't expect them, you know if the state report for 2030 or 2050 says something in particular, if you want that to be a requirement it should be in the bylaw. But as a general purpose statement rationale for why these reasonable requirements are reasonable. Absolutely include them I think that's great. Great. Questions for Jonathan on this. Okay, good. Chris. Yeah, I guess I have a question about the natural and working lands report. It talks about no net loss of farmland or forest. And that's an aspirational goal, but in terms of how our bylaw should work. How do you think that connects with how our bylaw should work. And I'm thinking, you know, we're specifically talking about solar development here but there are also other types of development that happen in Amherst whether they're commercial developments or, you know, residential developments. And so we're not looking at right now the state is looking at no net loss of farms and forests as a goal, but how can Amherst grapple with that when we know that our residential developments and commercial developments in town often require taking of farmland and forest and should solar be treated differently. Should solar be more rigorously controlled because of that resilient lands report. What's your feeling about that and how we can grapple with the things that are brought up in that resilient lands report. I think, you know, you said the term you know aspirational goal I think that's important to keep in mind that the reality of any type of development is that, you know, when one new thing comes in generally there's a loss of the old thing so that's a balancing of, you know, uses and equity and all of that. One way you might tie in your report we had a discussion about dual use and the, you know, maybe, maybe putting in some sort of provision about extra scrutiny to make sure that dual use was considered. Maybe we can point to that report that provision the report that says, you know, it's the goal of the Commonwealth have no net loss of agricultural land and we say well the town is that's a policy decision the town wants to take and that's why we're putting in this requirement of extra due diligence. You could use that as support or in furtherance of reasonable regulations. I think at the end of the day. There's a reality that, you know, there might be net loss of something, but but then you know how do how does the town way that you know is the net loss of agricultural land and in exchange for solar something the town is comfortable with encouraging not not encouraging that maybe not just not to skirt the question but I leave policy up to you guys and I just try to stick to legal. But I think if we were, if you wanted to connect those reports or connect those policy reasons expressed in those reports. I think we best do that in a way that supports or directly connects to a regulation that you've, you've, you're trying to impose, and maybe that's the best way to go about it. Okay, thank you. Yeah, great. Okay. Any last parting words of wisdom for us, Jonathan, but maybe before we go there, Jackie, you got your hand up. Yeah, so I have a question with regard to me for me I always have viewed, you know, a ground mounted solar development as something that is, you know, it's a it's a 20 or 30 year project. And so like the decommissioning will be covered but then. And so, you know, and during that time that there is a solar for me it's the, the use of the land from from a resource standpoint is more close to a pasture or grassland in terms of the soil is relatively really undisturbed if it's a farmland to solar conversion if it's a forest to solar that's that's a different, but I'm wondering about at the end of the lease. How realistic is it to think that that this now becomes like an industrial property and it will be kind of tainted that this is our this is cannot go back to its original use and that sort of thing so for me it kind of lessens the blow, like when in 30 years 40 years 50 years when we have our food needs might be radically different, and Lanzar to now follow that will indeed be farmed. I haven't, you know, for the last 50 years haven't been farmed but but could I mean I guess that's a, that's a long, you know, a prime agricultural soil thing that's, that's the whole nature that, you know, long thinking. So how realistic is it that that when the solar lease ends that it returns. And it doesn't become, you know, something other than than what we intended to be. I don't know if I'm making sense, Jonathan, but I think the concern is, you know, we're starting to allow these uses that are going to exist for decades and what's the, what's the end result when the useful life of these structures ends. It's like looking into a, you know, magic ball looking glass we don't particularly know what the world's going to look like in 30 years and we also don't know what the makeup of the town's going to look like we don't know what the zoning bylaws are going to look like. So I think if there's a particular concern about what happens at the end. That might be best achieved in the initial permitting of it say I know Dwayne had brought up soil health and, and you know maybe part of the requirements are, you know, we do yearly inspections to make sure that there's no leaks of, I don't even know if dangerous fluids are used in these types of things but you know you know there's no leaks or contaminations of the soil maybe there's some requirement of a vegetative maintenance plan to make sure that, you know, the, the, the owner is cutting the grass and trimming the trees and all that stuff so that when this use does end. The property is in some sort of state that someone could make the decision or we're going to revert it back to agricultural land or, you know, it's hard to say to because one of the other things and Amherst doesn't have this requirement but many of the towns that we represent have this MBTA community zoning requirement which is the eastern part of the state and that's to address the housing shortage. And it's one of those things where maybe in 30 years Amherst or Central and Western Massachusetts have this need for housing and we might convert it not to agricultural land but housing. It's just one of those things we can we just don't quite know what it is. But I think if there's a particular concern about we want to make sure that land is the option to use this land is available when the lease ends are the useful life of it. Those could be implemented in regulatory requirements now or permitting requirements now that, you know, put in those safeguards so that the land isn't destroyed or contaminated or anything like that. Thank you. Yep. Martha. I had submitted a question is via Stephanie to use earlier that is a follow up really to what we talked about. But the Healy administration is placing a high priority on preserving farmland and the importance of locally grown food and example her recent visit after the flood damage out here and providing services and so on so forth. Can we use then that as a justification for saying no net loss of farmland in our land? Yeah, you can certainly use that as a justification for our policy reason for adopting the bylaw. When we say as a reason for no net loss, we then have to keep in mind that the, the overall guard rails that towns have is shall not prohibit or unreasonably we might get into a scenario where we say no net loss, and then someone comes and says well you're prohibiting it because I can't, you know, I can't provide an adequate counterbalance to the loss that's going to occur or they might say it's an unreasonable regulation. Like I said I think in my prior answer, if there's something in particular in these reports that we want to enforce it needs to be in the bylaw. You can always use reports as a rationale or policy reason for adopting it. If there's either a no net loss or a lessening of this loss that we want to implement, it should be in the bylaw in some either dimensional or use requirement. Thank you. This is a question that. So if, if, if, obviously, the, our zoning restriction, particularly some of the design issues and also some of the restrictions on land use is going to sort of be in consistent consistent with the state programs, like when we're talking about tax, we would be talking, we would generally be talking about, you know, if we're going to encourage agri-voltaics would be agri-voltaics as defined by the state's rules and regulations. How, and those, those obviously are zoning bylaw changes over time but also those state rules change over time, as will most likely there's going to be changes in the smart program, the solar program under the new administration that in my mind will probably, probably make it more encouraging of solar on non forested farmland. In my mind is my, is my complete guess. When we reference, like if we say in our bylaw, that these aggregate, encourage these agri-voltaic projects to be, you know, in conformance with the rules and regulations of the DOER rules. How do we, how do we make that sort of evergreen as they say in terms of, you know, if this, if the state law changes and it's not to our liking, do we just live with it or do we put some caveat in there that says, you know, if the state law changes it's as of the law, as of the state rolled in 2023, or how do we deal with that sort of situation. Yeah, that's a, that's an interesting question because I think what we most often see is, you know, projects shall be consistent with all state rules and regulations and so that would mean if the state amends its regulations to something the town doesn't like you'd have to, as you said, you know, live with it. So if there's a particular aspect of a regulation, the current regulations that you think the town, you know, the town's always going to want to want, those should be explicitly stated in the bylaw. But if we're comfortable with, and you don't need to say this because there's a, you have to follow the, you know, these people, applicants, landowners, they need to follow the law anyway. So you don't need to say it, but I think it's sometimes nice or helpful to say it. They're going to need to comply with whatever the current bylaw or the current regulations excuse me say. So if there's something in particular in the smart program or in the regulations or in something else that the town thinks we need to separately state it because we want this to be a consistent requirement in the town, it should be spelled out. Otherwise, it's going to, you know, be under the auspice of whatever state regulation, you know they're operating under. Yeah, thank you. Okay. Excellent. I see no hands, which is good. Jonathan, thank you for your time for your intelligence and your professional guidance. And obviously, you'll be reviewing what we come up with at the end of the day. But also, I presume through Chris and Stephanie we may have the need to. Follow up with some some questions as we sort of final finalize our recommendations. Obviously what we put forward are going to be just just recommendations to the town. But excellent really appreciate your insights and thoughts. Well, then no I appreciate you inviting me and your time and I appreciate the questions certainly if there's any more questions feel free to send them to me and I'll do my best to answer them if you'd like me to come back. I'm available at your, your pleasure just let me know. And then when the bylaw comes down the line or if Chris and Stephanie we want to chat offline before then just just let me know and I'll make it happen. All right, excellent. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right, excellent. Okay. I hope those hands weren't for Jonathan. All right, Stephanie. This is a quick procedural thing. Just wondering if you want to take a quick five minute break because this is a long meeting. I was going to suggest that as well. Before we do before we move on that. Martha, did you have. Yeah, I just wanted to request Stephanie can you send to our around to all of us. What was displayed here of Jonathan's answers to the questions. I already did. I just did. And it's also posted online in the meeting packet for the public. I was just doing that. Okay, because it hadn't hadn't been before. Yeah. I was out yesterday. So I apologize. That's okay. And what about the questions that Janet and I had submitted to you earlier. They will they be answered and eventually written answers just sent to us. What I had done, I think I sent you all the packet of questions. And everything was combined into one document. And that was sent to Jonathan. So his responses were to the entire packet that I sent. I don't think I think he was maybe sort of consolidated some of the questions into like a category. I don't think he went through one by one because I did forward it to him and what I sent you was the most recent. He'd sent me initial responses, then he saw the additional questions. And what I sent you was the second version of his responses. If you're following me. That's what you just said. Yes. And right. Thanks a lot. And I apologize. I was at Wednesday and Thursday. No apologies. That's just, that's fine. Thank you. Sure. Okay. Everybody good with a short break. And then we'll convene and we'll get through the updates and then and then get into the. The bylaw, particularly with regard to the farming farmland framework. So my thought is maybe 12, 10 to reconvene. Is that okay? Nine minutes or do you want 12, 15? I was even going to say five minutes. So it's up to you. Let's go with 12, 10, eight, eight minutes. Okay. 12, 10 will reconvene. Thanks to me. Don't, don't leave. Just turn your camera off. All right. It's 12, 10. So if you're back, if you could. Let me know. That would be great. I see people are eating lunch. Is it appropriate to eat? In other words, may I eat my lunch? It's more, more like nuts and chocolate for me, but. Oh, okay. I could put, I could, you know, blank my face out. When I'm not talking. I'm good with anybody eating lunch. I really like. Yeah, for sure. All right. I see your hand up. So. Not sure if that was leftover, but. Oh yeah, that's love. That's not my hand. Does it. I see your hand. Well, you're weird. Virtual hand. Okay. Put that down. All right. Perfect. Okay. Great. So let's move on. First, thank you, Stephanie and Chris for setting that up with, with Jonathan. That was really helpful. And I think actually quite pertinent to our. Conversation. That will embark on shortly. On farm lands and then subsequently on forest land. Before we do that. Following up on the agenda. Following through on the agenda. Let's first have any staff updates. Stephanie or Chris. I don't have anything relevant. So. I deferred to Chris and Chris. Yep. I presented a sort of an outline of what we've been working on. To the planning board the other night and Martha was able to attend. So that was helpful. And we just talked about. What GCA had accomplished for us in terms of. Mapping. And we also kind of ran quickly through. The zoning bylaw as it's been drafted to date. And we talked about some of these sticky wickets that we're dealing with now with regard to farmland and forest. So the planning board has. A good sense of where we are with the project. So I think, you know, when we're eventually able to. Bring them a final product, they'll be ready for it. I would suggest that we bring them. You know, keep them up to speed or keep them up to date as we go along. So we don't just end up with something that's, you know, brought to town council and then referred to the planning board. I think it's worthwhile to keep them. You know, knowledgeable about where it is we are with this project. So I plan to keep doing that as time goes on. I wanted to make a request and I haven't talked to Stephanie about this or. Dwayne or any of you, but. It appears to me that. September 1st may not be a realistic date for delivering a draft. And so we should talk about that. And. You know, what is it today? Today is the 5th of August. 4th. 4th. So our next meeting would be. The 18th of August. Around there. So either we have to start meeting more often or we have to. You know, tell the town manager that we think we need a little more time. So I don't know if other people are thinking that way too, but. You know, that's something that I'd like to talk about. Great. Yeah, that's been on my mind as well. So let's. Let's leave a little bit of time for that at the end of today. Seeing as. Next time may be our penultimate meeting and then we're. I think could squeeze in one more in August. I think on the calendar. Yeah. That's a check. But no, I guess the next one is actually falls into. Is our deadline on September 1st. So yeah, that's, that's important. Well, let's do you want to have a brief discussion about that at this point with the group? I mean. I guess it's also. The willingness of the working group members to stay engaged. For another month. Or so. And I guess that's one question that we don't have everybody, but would, would. And I guess also the willingness of the town manager to. Accept our request for another month. Is what I would suggest. Use September, the two or three meetings in September. To really tie things up. In a, in a coherent. Draft for delivery and try to get through farmlands today and for us next time. So. Any feet. That would be my proposal would be to ask the manager. The town manager for a, an extra month. And. And then, and then hope there's willingness of the members to continue together. For another month. So can I hear. Any thoughts on that idea. Martha and then Stephanie. Yes, I, I certainly would favor. Extending it for another month. I mean, I, I think it's much better to get it right than get it fast. And it would be just too stressful to try to. You know, somehow meet every week or cram everything in for the next month. I'd much rather prefer our. Continued every two weeks with time to think in between and try to just. Make sure we. Great. Stephanie. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. And I. Can certainly put that forth to the town manager. If you want to have an actual date though, maybe give him October 1st as the date or whatever you all decide. Yep. Yep. Laura. Yeah, I think my only thought is, I mean, I think at this point, it's not a question of, you know, should we extend it? It's like clearly we're going to need to extend. But I, but I also, I think. One of the, one of the things I've noted with this. You know, with this group is that we, we tend to go off into tangents and to dig deeply. And we haven't actually been focused on this bylaw. So. I just, you know, I'm, I'm content. Like I'm struggling to make these meetings in the summertime, just because there's, you know, children all over the place and plans. So I'm in favor of extending as long as we can all really commit to just writing the bylaw now. Like we've, it feels as though we've researched everything's high and low. There will always be more avenues to pursue. But at some point we just need to take the pen and get it done. Yep. Thank you, Laura. I wholeheartedly agree with that. And I think basically getting through the framework of farmlands and forest are probably the key things. And then that would enable Chris and her team to write us a draft. Okay, Bob. Yeah, I, Laura kind of preemptive I was going to say, I think unfortunately it's inevitable we need an extension. But I agree. We have been talking and talking and talking without any progress. We really need to focus on the bylaw. What's reasonable and to stop all this discussion about restrictions and other things that, you know, interest people and would be great in an ideal world. But as Chris once said, we're going to have to deserve some land to put in solar and we just have to accept that and go on. Great. Okay, so. Jack, did you have another comment? No, I just want to concur with, with what's being said. So I'm looking forward to getting that. Draft and presenting it to all the other parties. Great. So I would like to suggest we move forward with. Stephanie. Requesting or asking the town manager for an extension till October 1st. And that we continue to convene through, through September, we might even think about meeting weekly potentially. In September to get this done. But we'll, we can deal with that later, but is that. And, and I didn't hear anybody who would not be willing to serve for the rest of the, of September. So I'm not sure if that sounds okay. I'm not sure if we need a formal motion or just. Concurrents with what was just said, Stephanie. I was just going to suggest you just put it to an official vote. Okay. So the motion. Would be to. Ask Stephanie to ask this town manager for an extension of this. Solo working bylaw. To October 1st. 2023. And I think that's the extent of what we formally have to move. I think we can, a caveat would be that we work diligently for the, for the remaining time strictly on getting the bylaw language. Framework and language put into place. Do I hear a second? Oh, second, but the, um, the actual day would be September 29th. That would be three more meetings. October 1st is a Sunday. Yeah, let's look at that. You can make it the following Friday. Sorry, Martha. Yeah, it's going to say you can give us a little time after that last meeting. To get the report. That would be October. October 6th. Okay. Okay. So with that amendment. Yeah, we had a second. And, um, I think we need your cameras on for the voice vote. Yes. Okay. Laura, can you turn your camera on too? Yeah, hang on. Thanks. Not camera worthy. Okay. There we go. We won't judge. We don't. Okay. So in no particular order. Um, Breger. Yes. Jem sec. Sorry about that. Yes. Hannah. Yes. Brooks. Reluctantly. Peg Learulo. Yes. Okay. Motion passes. Okay. Um, let's. Move on. Well, are there any committee updates? Um, That are real pertinent. Otherwise I'd like to get to the. By-law. Great. Okay. So, um, I think. What would be helpful is to look at. The framework. For us. Zoning by law, not so much on language. Then Chris and her team would draft. But setting up this framework for how we would approach. Zoning on farmland. Um, that was distributed. By Stephanie. Um, as a silver by law working group framework. For farm. For farms. I'd like to look at version two, which I sent out later. Uh, which seemed to be a better starting point. So. With apologies, Stephanie. I'm in a situation where I can't really share my screen so much. Um, because I got. I'm zooming on one computer and everything else is on another computer. Um, so it might be. I've got, you know, worries. I'm just getting it on the screen now. Um, and it was interesting because, uh, some of the. Issues that we talked to Jonathan about where, um, Uh, Uh, Critical here. We're applicable certainly. And let me say that, um, Um, Well, this got my name attached to it. Um, and I'll take credit for trying to draft out some of the, uh, these beginning requirements. Um, uh, Martha provided. The drafting of the, um, soil preservation requirements. Um, and then the nexus statements that follow after that. Um, I like to focus on the, these requirements first. And this was brought up by Jonathan. Okay. It's like, okay, what is the set of, um, Land, uh, that would be. Um, Applicable applicable for these. Um, Zoning restrictions, if you will, with regard to, to, to, uh, the farmland. Um, And then we go into a bit with what those restrictions would be or requirements would be with regard, particularly with regard to, uh, farmland. Um, So, uh, soil preservation, um, Uh, as well as design features. Um, and so, uh, let me start with the, um, The first part and then, and then maybe, um, uh, happy to have Martha lead us through her portion with regard to the soil. Um, Uh, Soil requirements. Um, Chris, did you have a thought first? Why don't you go ahead and read it and then I'll give you my thought. Okay. Okay. Great. Um, okay. So the, um, And this is not, this language is not meant to be, um, necessarily by law language. Uh, but, uh, sort of the, the, uh, The more English version. That would have to be then translated into more formal, uh, By law version, uh, language. Uh, but the idea here is, okay. So for the provisions, Restrictions on active farmland, prime farmland and farmland of statewide importance. This first, um, really pretty simple. Uh, two statements here. Uh, really. Get at what Jonathan sort of brought forward in terms of, okay, what are the lands that are, are subject to this area of the, of the, Uh, by law. Uh, and so this would be, um, On land. Uh, that has been in active farming for the past five years. Perhaps that needs to be defined, but maybe not. Uh, but has been an active farming for the past five years. And is prime farmland or. Farmland of statewide importance. Um, the proposed solar project must be, an agrivoltaic array meeting the ASTG. You eligibility in the state solar program. So already, you know, based on what Jonathan, we discussed with Jonathan. I think we need to. Um, rethink. Uh, some of this, but the idea was that. Uh, it wouldn't be for all. Sites in Amherst that have. Uh, prime farmland or, uh, farmland of statewide. Importance because there's many areas in Amherst. That have those, have those good soils. Uh, but are not anywhere close to being in active farming. Like my house came up. Um, but, but many of our other houses probably. Um, and many other parts of town that are, uh, really not, not at all farmed. Including, uh, many of our forested areas. Uh, but for those areas that are. Um, These good soils. And is an act, and is an active farming for the past five years. Then, um, as written here. The idea would be to, um, require those solar projects that. Um, are being proposed for those situations. To be dual use projects. Um, let me, we'll get back to that in a moment. Uh, but then the second paragraph. Uh, is that for all land. Uh, that is prime farmland. Uh, prime farmland. Uh, regardless of whether it's currently used for far, for, uh, uh, regardless of its current use or coverage. Meaning if, even if it's not an active farming. Um, then the soil preservation requirements provided below. Would be required. Uh, again, so that the soils are. Kept intact. Well intact. Uh, so that after the 20, 30 years of the farmland. Uh, and it's decommissioned. And the land, the land, uh, could be, um, used, uh, that the, the good soil qualities are not degraded. Uh, so that it could go into farming or, or, or other purposes. But farming would remain an option. Um, So, um, That. Uh, Uh, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Uh, Um, Going back to the first paragraph. Um, you know, I think we heard from, from, uh, Jonathan that this restriction. Or requirement may be too restrictive. Um, and so. Uh, unless we want to be bold and. Uh, uh, Uh, go beyond. Uh, what Jonathan may be comfortable with defending. We're able to defend, um, for the town. But let me get some thoughts on that obviously with the, the, the thought that we may think about that more in terms of not a requirement but an encouragement through some demonstration that dual use was considered, but turned down for various reasons and we had a conversation that Chris brought up with Jonathan on that, that we could incorporate. But before we get into then the soil requirements design requirements. Let me just get some thoughts and feedback and comments on this applicability I guess statement of what this what this would refer to. All right, Chris. So I was just going to suggest that there be a second part to that sentence, such that I don't have it completely worked out in my head but unless the applicant receives a waiver from the Hermit granting authority as a result of demonstrating that they have considered agriboltaics on this property and have found for technical or financial reasons that it doesn't work something to that effect. Yeah, yeah. And to Jonathan's point, maybe leave the, leave it somewhat, I wouldn't say vague because Jonathan said there's concerns about vagueness too but leave a little bit open so that they can make that demonstration to the PGA but the PGA has plenty of discretion to ask for more information and more demonstration. Okay, yeah, I would agree, certainly with that based on what our conversation with Jonathan just now. So, Martha. Yes, I agree. I think all it needs is one more sentence along the lines of what Chris said. I think you and Chris could probably just draft a sentence that would work. Yeah. Okay, any other thoughts on this approach? Yeah, Bob. Yeah, I don't agree with the word must. Okay, Jonathan, what are you going to add afterwards? You think we can strongly recommend or prefer or whatever, prioritize? I cannot vote for the word must. Okay, I think given the additional sentence that we're going to be adding, I think must is probably not appropriate either because it isn't must. It is encouraged or it, you know, maybe it's it must consider. Agrible takes, but I agree, Bob, that word is not is not applicable anymore because of the additional caveat, I guess. All right, any other thoughts on that? Okay, and any other thoughts on the second part where, you know, regardless of whether the land has been actively farmed or not, if it is prime soils, or statewide important soils, that we'll have to get, we'll get to the soil preservation requirements in a moment, but that there is additional scrutiny or requirements with regard to taking care of the soils. Okay, so maybe we can, okay, so then we go down to the requirements for regarding soils and reporting. I think I added this one introductory sentence, Martha, and then we can go into the your language here, but that basically the following soil preservation requirements and design and reporting requirements shall apply to all solar projects. I parenthetically said over 250 kilowatts. I think that's what this whole bylaw refers to, so I don't know if we need that or it's or maybe it's to all, and Chris came up with a new acronym, which I'm blocking on for these types of the scale project commercial scale project. That is installed on prime farmland or farmland of statewide importance requirements shall be demonstrated by the applicant. And this, yeah, this is helpful for us to discuss should be demonstrated for the applicant either through submission prepared specifically for the PGA. Or by providing comparable demonstration through submissions of application and qualification material to the state solar program. I guess, and I'm not sure that language is quite precise enough but the idea here was that particularly on these good soil, soil areas, which also come up in the state solar, solar incentive program that there are requirements that the applicant needs to provide to the state demonstrating certain requirements with regard to soil protection and so forth. And I don't know but potentially maybe for example soil testing that we'll get into in a moment. I just want to suggest that for to not overly burden. The applicant be the landowner or the solar developer by submitting or, you know, even, you know, I don't want to get into the situation where where we're asking the town is asking for a specific soil test. And the state's asking for another soil test but they're a little bit different from each other and they have to do two different tests, even though they're kind of similar for similar purposes. I don't want to overburden folks on that so the idea was to craft some language that provided that that if the if the applicant is providing comparable information to the state that that could be copied to the town and not not created specifically and exclusively for the town. Okay, so any thoughts or questions about that sort of introductory paragraph and then we can go through the requirements. Great Martha. Yeah, I thought that was a it was a good and good specific introductory paragraph, I was just suggesting one single wording change in the last sentence to make it really clear that what's submitted to the state then really does have to be submitted to the PGA. So, by saying, either by submission prepared specifically for the PGA, or by providing comparable demonstration to the PGA based on the submissions of the application and qualification materials to this state solar program just some language that makes it clear that that you know once they've done that state application that's got to go to the PGA so the PGA has, you know, the full information. Of course the PGA is not going to make requirements like G, we think you should grow broccoli instead of squash or we think that you should raise the height of the panels by two feet. But the PGA would still have then the full information and full authority to say something about the fencing or the setbacks or whatever. Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah. I don't know if you like my wording I sent it to you joined but yeah and I bought that yeah. Yeah. And remind me Martha did that go to Chris as well. Yeah okay so Chris has that language as well. Okay good. Thank you for that Bob. Yeah, I apologize I don't recall but don't we have in the very part we've already worked on language about soil conservation site preparation. I think I would say well these are in addition to what we require just as for any site. I don't remember what we had but some of these seem very familiar. Yeah, good, good point. Yeah. Yeah and I think we can cross check that as we get into the full document and make sure it's appropriate. Yeah so these would be what we want he we want the general soil protections to be applicable to everything but then in this section we want to have the requirements that would be additional for soils that are prime. Of statewide importance. All right. Okay good. Shall we go down the list of soil require preservation requirements. All right good. So did you want me to just keep going down, fully acknowledging that these were. This was your language up to you, whichever you prefer. I just keep going. I should just make a comment that I took these all from our presentations we had the in June, particularly Jake Marley's specific discussions and then the requirements that come from the state from the smart program and so on. And, you know, that document that was from kip somebody or other check forwarded to us, I took them and I just tried to make them consolidated and very concise and then I read it, ran it by Jake Marley. And he approved of the what was written and said he thought it covered the basis so that's all. And some of these, I'm not an expert on what do we are all requires and mdar requires on on. So soils for prime farmland and so forth. Some of these may be covered. But again, if we state that they can demonstrate demonstrate these these requirements by submitting information that they submit to the state that's that's fine and there may be more stuff that the state requires, but anyhow okay so the first thing is to conduct baseline soil health analysis by qualified professional prior to construction. There may be a requirement to sort of maybe a need to be a little bit more specific there in terms of what the what baseline soil health analysis. What that is. We might be able to ask ask somebody with expertise in that area, what what that would be. Jake might know or Jerry Palano for example, but generally the idea here would be to have some record of what the baseline soils were prior to construction. Amongst other things, compaction of soils. And that would be part of this soil health testing I would imagine that compaction is is something that is particularly for prime soil we might want to be encouraging or requiring the due diligence is taken to try to minimize that during construction but any thoughts on this. Okay. Two is. And I think I, I tried to do some combining of an indentations, Martha, of what I got from your, your draft so correct me if I'm wrong but the next would be and submit plan for minimizing soil disturbance during construction, including grading compaction soil removal soil replacement. And part of that demonstration of minimizing soil disturbance would be a plan that would avoid grading cuts and fills top soil removal. Some of this I think maybe in our more general by law, but we'll have to go back and double check. There's an addition of offsite soil without prior approval from the PGA at PGA. Keep in mind that if this isn't if this. Well yeah okay okay if it's an active farming. It's probably fairly flat already but if it is if it is a forest land for example that we do allow to be cut, but it's prime soils. And, and there's a lot of stump removals and stuff like that. Some of this may be important in terms of trying to do that with minimal disturbance and removal of top soils and of the good soils and so forth. Okay. Existing level field areas left without disturbance. Probably I think solar developers would be want to keep level areas level. In any case, where soils need to be leveled or smooth, such as filling potholes or leveling, this shall be done with minimal overall impact with all displaced soils return to the areas affected. The last part, whether that's, is that doable, if it's displaced soils. If you're sort of smoothing things out, moving soils from one spot to another by the very nature displacing some soil to fill it in somewhere else so you're not really returning it later. So not too clear on that. I copied it from some of these documents but you know, instead of leaving all that good soil in a pile at the edge of the property somehow it was. Okay, maybe there's better words to say it. Yeah. Okay. So this is a fairly hot halt use of heavy construction equipment during and following heavy rains when soils are saturated. That seems reasonable. I'm not sure if there needs to be more definition around that, what qualifies for a heavy rain, or how long to wait, but some of this may be covered in our other construction requirements with regard to storm runoffs and so forth. Yeah, and I think it was something that Jake emphasized to the idea simply being that, you know, that's when the soil compaction happens and so on and it's just a flag it should be obvious when the soils are saturated and when they've dried out for a couple of days or, you know. Yeah. Okay. And then, yeah, okay, so that's that for the sort of the soil disturbances. Any thoughts or questions on that. Again, I think we'll sort of ask Chris to sort of take this and convert into language that is appropriate. And then we can take a look at that as a document again. Yep, go ahead anybody. Yep. Okay, good. Yeah, Jack. Yeah, I'm just wondering for Chris I mean does. Does this look familiar. I mean in terms of just say a subdivision goes in this is all kind of, you know, requirements that in terms of site preparation and good, you know, best management practices. For any site, are we reinventing the wheel here I guess is what I'm asking. My understanding is that there aren't specific requirements for subdivisions. It's usually, you know, strip the top soil do the grading. When you're finished, you bring the top soil back in and you plant. So there aren't requirements about, you know, not leveling areas there aren't requirements about displaced soils. So I don't think that this. This is regulated by subdivision regulations. It may be regulated by best practices with regard to wetlands areas around wetlands but not, not in general. All right. Okay, and I know Laura is taking notes but if any of this sounds familiar and best practices to solar developers anyhow, would be fine and great doesn't mean, and I think we should still have it but if any of it sounds like like really hard or confusing or infeasible for solar developers to let us know from your perspective. I think it's, I think it's totally fine to say to require the minimization of soil disturbance especially compacting soil. I think that we just want to see their plan, basically. I think that's what it's all going to come down to is that you want to see what their, what their plan will be. I'm not sure about salts. I don't actually, that's used in construction. I never heard of that either but I could I could say I ran this by a conservation biologist who contacted us because he's going to be moving to Amherst but he's in California, and he has had experience reviewing solar projects in California. But he said that in many cases and maybe that's just unique to California that developers tend to use these soil stabilizers to keep the dust down. And he said that those contain salts, you know, sodium chloride maybe potassium chloride and so on that really are kind of toxic for the soil or plant. Yeah, that's interesting. That's the one that suggested putting that in and so it's never used around here anyway. Yeah, I haven't seen it the only the only thing I'm not sure about is. I don't I'm trying to think of that last vote there on mounting some mounting ballast to push it. Yeah, I mean I think, listen, all of this is as long as we're saying. Like this is a if there's a reason why they cannot do something. We just kind of we're not saying no we just want to know why certain development techniques would not be utilized right. Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Well that's, I guess on first going back to the soil stabilizers assaults I guess to the extent that it's not really a practice here. One could argue it's not really needed, but at the same time it's probably doesn't hurt to have it. So it may cause some head scratching but but but I guess it doesn't hurt to have it. Okay yeah on so on the mounting. Again, keep in mind this is not required for all solar development in, but for that in prime soils. Yeah, yeah, no that makes, yeah, no that makes sense I'm just thinking about the times and you can't do that and honestly like the only that I'm getting some straight like we're getting some strange questions in the solar space now regarding like these changes in the climate and how construction is taking place, and how farms are going to mean it's really bizarre how farms are going to be constructed to ensure they can withstand strong winds, or in areas where we never had to construct farms with that consideration before all, all kinds of new things are emerging that I had never thought I would see like how to protect against massive hail. You know so you know as long as yes I think prime soils fine and I think all of us fine but it's a it's a new world folks it's a new world. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Okay, so good. Okay so we sort of covered the mounting. No concrete asphalt, all that stuff so that basically after the 2030 years. All this material can be readily removed so that the soils could be the land could be used readily for for farming or other purposes. Okay. I have to also suggest repeat soil analysis after construction is complete to enjoy soil quality is not been degraded, we're duly unpacked. Final permit granted only after soil certification by qualified professional. I guess I off and I don't really have an issue with that I guess that you know does that does that create too much uncertainty for a solar developer of going through the whole construction proc process and then not at the end of the day. I mean, this can't be subject. If you. I mean, listen, that'll never pass a financing test that can't be a requirement for. Keeping the farm I mean you can ask for it but that it can't have any teeth to it. Because otherwise you're just like that requirement there means you'll never develop a solar farm. Yeah, I guess I just kind of tossed it in for discussion or something I think just an overall question to me of our of our whole law is, is there any enforcement or what is the enforcement. And so, you know, that's just a bigger question somewhere in the bylaw of how do we put teeth and any of the requirements or so. Yeah, so is there any. I mean there's obviously a teeth and enforcement at the beginning that they show a plan that is passes muster for all this. I mean, there's other parts of the bylaw that has rules and regulations rules with regard to construction process and and onsite inspections, allowed and so forth. So I'm wondering if that's sufficient. I guess I would be a little bit concerned about, you know, requiring a test and the compaction comes out a little bit over. And maybe it's, you know, you don't get a right sample size. And, and all of a sudden, yeah, I guess to Laura's point not not not are the developers have a project that doesn't get permitted but they won't get permitted to begin with, because of this requirement and uncertainty. That they they're facing at somewhat discretion of a PGA that they don't know. Maybe we could. Yeah. Yeah, Chris did you have any. Are there any comparable things in zoning that deal with this sort of thing. There are times when you have to have certain tests done, or certain things need to be accomplished before you can get your final certificate of occupancy or your final certificate of completion. So, we could try to figure out how to word this so that it makes sense for this type of project, maybe Laura has some. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess my question is what's the what's the cure. So let's say that something comes back, not as, you know, not as what we, you know, in a way we wouldn't want, you know, it's to come back or soil doesn't, you know, what's the cure for for this. Yeah, if you had several acres, 20 acres 30 acres of solar arrays I don't really know what the cure would be. We can't put anything in here that doesn't have a cure because it's not as though it's not a wetland. If you if you put something without a cure then you're just not. It's the equivalent to a band, because if someone makes a mistake it means that you're the entire array is not going to be approved at the end of the day right I mean that's essentially. I'm sorry I can't find my raise hand function, but yeah, I was just thinking sorry I'll put myself on. You know similar wetlands I was just thinking could you have some kind of almost like a third party review that this was developed according to plans, which I think is probably going to happen some point during the process anyway, wouldn't that include the soils. And there'd be just sort of a verification that the project was built according to the plans by like a independent reviewer. Yeah, I guess like, but that doesn't necessarily address the question of, if we said, we wanted to make sure that you know compassion was at a certain point, you know, I'm not sure how you measure that. Yeah, and then it's not. Then what do we do, we're saying the project wasn't built in accordance to design and we're not going to accept it. Like what's the, what is the remedy there. Right. Yeah, I guess I'm thinking of kind of gross things if some of the contractor decided to just bring in and dump a whole lot of gravel to even things out or I think of the case on Cape Cod where there was a. Oh yeah, listen, and they extracted a whole lot of sand to sell and then it ended up in the town's water supply. Oh yeah, you got my egregious stuff. Yeah, no I get it. I get it Martha. Yeah, so I'm thinking maybe, maybe this that kind of point belongs more when we talk about the oversight during construction. You know I think with somewhere else. Yeah, weekly monitoring or this and this and that and, and maybe we just may need to make sure that in that section. You know if it's farmland that they monitor or certain things as we go along. Do you think that would be better. Yeah I think that's I think that's very reasonable. I think that's very reasonable because now I understand what you're trying to what you're trying to prevent. Yeah. So, so maybe we could, you know, flag this for Chris for, you know, making our master a trap here that you take it out of here and put it somewhere under the construction or, or something. I think a statement that these things should be monitored during construction or something like that, you know, rather than. Yeah, I think that's a good suggestion. Yep. Yeah. Great. Okay, great. Did I see somebody else is in. No. All right, super. Okay. So let's go on to the, or before we go on is there any other. Sort of soil requirements, soil protection requirements that we seem to be missing that anybody. Come up with. Jack. Yeah, you know, again, I'm just don't want to reinvent the wheel and I do notice that the. Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in their document. So their best practices has preserved and managed top soil and soil porosity section. Page 48, which I think Chris should lift. What's appropriate from that. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Can I raise my hand? Yeah, go ahead, Laura. Okay, sorry. It's hard for me to take notes and raise my hand. One possible cure because, you know, I mean, if, if someone, you know, if a developer made a mistake and top soil wasn't what we wanted at the end of the day. Can you bring in new top soil? I mean, can they pay to bring it in? I have no idea guys. This is not my specialty. So tell me if this is a thing. Yeah. Yep. I guess I'm saying like you could give them a certain time period and say, yeah, we're going to prove this as long as you are bringing in equivalent, whatever that is within six months or, or, you know, whatever that might be. And that, and that, that could be the cure we're looking for. Yeah. Let's think about that. I'm, does it mean if you're bringing in top soil, you're removing it from somebody, somebody else. Yeah. I don't know. Remember that that put in the first part was that, you know, bringing in top soil or bringing in any kind of soil with the approval of PGA. So the PGA could say, oh, okay, whose property did you dig that out of if they want to. It still could be done with that. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think we want to look at that a little bit or consider that. Okay, Jack. Yeah, I guess I'm a little confused with the guard to bringing in top soil. I mean, if you're going to bring in this farmland, you're not going to get any better soil. And you're not going to want to, you know, reclaim, I mean, you're going to sacrifice area, the access roads are the access roads. And you're going to sacrifice that as a disturbed area. And then other, you know, appurtenances like the battery storage area and things like that will be lost. Not understanding, you know, the, the, the need for import of soil. In our discussion here. Yeah, go ahead, Bob. Sorry. No, you're just inviting up 20 for invasive species introductions. I would avoid introduction of any extraneous soils. And at the very top there, you said some avoiding this avoid meeting now or is avoid mean it's allowed under up at the top there. I tried to comment before but I recognize me. Anyway, I would, I would not want soils brought in top soils or whatever. That's my point in terms of importing. Disease or invasive species. Yep, Laura. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just would like my comments struck from the record. Okay. Someone who does not know anything about that particular subject matter so this is where, again, not my subject expertise. Okay, good. All right. So struck. I'm taking minutes anyhow. Okay, so let's move on I do want to, we have about 10 more minutes before we want to open it up for some public comment or thoughts. So, this next section which is on design and reporting requirements. Some of this we may have to rethink to the extent that we're not necessarily requiring dual use, but in some cases where it's already active farmland in providing some encouragement for dual use. But we have here. The plan should submit should be submitted detailing the types of crops to be planted and how the site will be monitored for the first five years. In order to make adjustments to improve crop yields. Again, this would be relevant only for those projects that have been encouraged and decide to move forward with agrivoltaics. I will say this is a requirement by the state for dual use. But the idea here would be that that information also makes its way to the town. The second is substitution of other agricultural uses such as grazing on prime land currently being used for food crops shall not be allowed, unless an equal or larger acreage of prime farmland is brought into growth of food crops. To my, just my sense there is that there are protections of this crop switching, if you will, in the state. Rules around dual use projects. And I don't know if we want to depart from that. And then second. This idea of a set aside of other farmland. With something that Jonathan sort of encourage us not to pursue. Jack. Yeah, I guess, again, I'm confused. Definitely number two there the substitution of other agricultural uses. I don't see the downside of substituting grazing with agricultural uses, especially when we're talking about soil health because grazing is actually nourishing the soil, whereas agriculture is actually taking away from the soil decreasing carbon secret secret, sequestration. So where did this come from. I, again, I'm confused. Why we're speaking, I think it did come from Mark that can also speak to it but I think it comes from our earlier notion. As it was originally drafted that we would require dual use in in farm prime farm prime soils and that have been actively farmed so we don't you lose that farming. And this sense of substitution, and the state has addressed this to some extent there has been a concern about more high highly valued farming in terms of economic value as well as food value being substituted due to do dual use moving to farms farming and and and crops or farm uses that are less economically and valuable in terms of food production because because it just easier to do under a dual use array. And I think the, the, what people generally talk about is the proverbial moving to sort of sheep farming. Sheep grazing. So there was some concern about losing prime farmland. And it's inactive crops for for sheep grazing, for example, the state does address this to some extent in their guidelines for agrivoltaics. But, but to your point Jack it's not, it's still farming, it's still value added and it and it doesn't necessarily relate directly to the soils themselves. So I can, if I may Dwayne grazing can lead to some compaction. If you're not rotating and also animal defecation depending on the species that you're grazing can have an impact for instance cow patties are patties. They have more impact on the soil than if you have another species like you know goats or sheeps that have pellets. That is, I did a little research in this in graduate school so I know a little bit about that. And that might be why grazing is, you know, potentially one of those things that you have to look at. I think to some extent this this section may be mood I mean we're going to encourage if people are favorable to it of encouraging dual use on prime farmlands that are currently being farmed. So I don't know if it's bearing but encouraging it. I don't know if we need to go further and say oh we're encouraging this but you can't do this this or this. But leave that up to the state, the state already has rules with regard to what the land or solar project, a dual use project can look like with regard to fuel, not fuel switching but crop switching. So let's just leave it up to this to the state's guidance and rules around that to qualify for agribusiness. All right, Laura. No it's just going to support that I was going to say that I'm pretty sure the state has very clear, clear regulations and what qualifies and then also if there was, if there were livestock next to a solar farm the only type of animal you would use a sheep, you'd go it's next to a solar project they would just destroy it. So, to date the only animal I've ever seen that's been permitted by any sort of financing party at our sheeps. All right, well the. Yeah, well, there's a there's a project in Grafton that's grazing cows, or cattle I should say. They got qualified or got financed. We should we should we should track that one domain. Okay, now these are, these are, you know, a pie so the cows are cows are cattle are not leaning up against them. I certainly understand about goats. I think the point was that of the soil health. Oh, I see. So not just about the impact to the panels but the soil health. Okay, my, my suggestion will be to strike the second one and leave that up to the, to the state rules. Go ahead, Martha. Yeah, I mean, first of all, of course, all four of those statements refer only to to dual use and they came mainly from Jerry's presentation and the state use plus Jake. And finally, the couple of other things I'd say is farmers know their land if you have 100 acres, you know, what part of that is really good for crop growing and what isn't. And you're probably going to arrange to put the solar in the in the region where the, the corn wasn't growing so well anyway. And so on. But the other thing is that there are a fair number of cases in Amherst, where there's a land owner and then farmers rent a certain fraction of that land say five to 10 acres or something to do their farming and make their living. And so a little of this is was I saw as protection for the renters in the sense that if an owner who is not part of the farming decides oh wow I want to put up solar. I just have any protection to still have an ability for farmland so I saw this as something reasonable for the specific case of the agrivoltaics, and the fact that Agrivoltaics is still somewhat in an experimental stage you know we really don't have all that great data of what works well doesn't you know. And so I thought that really some caution was was needed here. And so, so I felt that the requirement like number two was important in at least some form. So we'd had a previous discussion with our nexus statements you know a month or two ago about the importance of locally grown food and so on and not wanting to reduce that since our pioneer valley is really the most productive farmland in the state. So, okay. All right good. All right, I guess I'm. I guess I'm struggling a little bit about. And I don't disagree with anything you just said Martha but whether this is a based on what the guidance from Jonathan of whether we're sort of requiring things or encouraging things with in this regard, and I guess I'm inclined to sort of think that if we encourage someone to do dual use, which is great. Then do we want to add additional restrictions to make it even harder for them to think about dual use and not go with the straight straight up ground mounted array. And or whether these are restrictions or guidance is that are reasonably well managed by the state program, at least as it stands today. So let's maybe Chris you can think about that in terms of how that might be drafted and then we can sort of think about it. In a subsequent document. And then I go ahead sorry Jack. Oh, I just want to say I'm referring to the Pioneer Valley planning commission that they have guidelines to for the preservation of farmland because they recognize, you know this area, you know it does have valuable soils. So Amherst is doing currently, most of these things we, you know, use of chapter 61 is very active within the town, and that has, you know, it's restrictions with regard to solar development we have an ag commission or we did used to have one I'm not sure if we have one right now. We have right to farm bylaw, we have the APR's agricultural preservation restrictions within town actively use. I mean we do have some community gardens. So, you know, I just don't want to have this overreaching with the guard. I think that comes to solar because Amherst is really doing, you know, a lot that one thing I have a question for Chris is zoning protections. Open space residential design provisions for protection of open space during transition from farmland to residential and that that doesn't concern us, but that's in the spirit of maintaining as much open land as as possible when it comes to when you're looking, you know, crime farmlands, etc. You want me to respond to go ahead. Yes, sorry Chris. So yes, we do have cluster zoning when it comes to creating subdivisions cluster zoning requires that. So not in all cases of subdivisions but if you're choosing the cluster zoning mechanism, then you have the opportunity to make your infrastructure smaller your roadway your sewer line your waterline whatever can be shorter and smaller, and the properties themselves are smaller. So they're clustered near each other and then larger areas of the property can be preserved for either conservation or farming. So we have that mechanism we also have a farmland conservation overlay zone. I think it's an overlay yeah that has other mechanisms for protecting farmland. Thank you. Okay great. Let me just go through these last two and then Laura maybe your comments have to do with all of these things. And I guess the last two number three and four that Martha has outlined. It's only for the situation where the applicant moves forward with a dual use array. I guess I would, I would, I wouldn't want to put too much specificity on this in terms of exactly what the detailed design should include only because the this and number four are definitely things that are required submissions to the state for their program. And I wouldn't want to specify things that are not quite exactly what they have for the state but I would more so suggest that that we have language it says the design and monitoring of the of the dual use array. As best as as as required by do we are be submitted to the town PGA for their review. I don't I don't know if we, we have any jurisdiction on that. I don't wouldn't suggest that we would not make eligible anything that the state wouldn't make eligible. Martha is that sort of the only the only thing I would would say is there certainly are cases where the state for various reasons of physical distance and short staffing and who knows what do not oversee a project as well as they say on paper that they will or we wish they will. And, you know, something slipped through and so it really is important that the local PGA or inspector whatever does have all the information. And, you know, the ability to, you know, call on consultants or oversee and so on so I wouldn't really like language that that completely deferred to the state. I would like to make it easy for developers in the sense of being consistent with whatever the state does so they're not having to do any double work, but I really think that ultimately it would be our municipality that would have to oversee and make sure things are followed. Okay, okay. Yeah, again this is not the, these are not designed, we're not specifying the design requirements we're just specifying that the design specifications are provided to the town. The town can then also, along with the state can make sure that the project is designed to those specifications. Okay. Yeah, let me, I think we, we went through a lot I think we have a good framework here for Chris to build on appreciate everybody's input. Martha appreciate you helping to put this together. My intent would be, and I'm happy to hear from folks during the course of the next week or so is to put something similar together for force. And at the same point that we can discuss on next time. If that seems okay with everybody. But otherwise I'd like to move to some any input from the public attendees that we have. If they if anybody would like to make make comments or offer some thoughts. Just stop sharing the screen now or I guess that would be as long as everybody's comfortable with where we're at the next statements I think. Please read through what has been put together. I think some of this language we've seen before. And we want to obviously combine with the, the breadth of next statements that we've discussed a number of a number of meetings back. So the public is interested in making a comment or asking a question, can you please electronically raise your hand. Yep, the offer remains open but meanwhile, let's just just raise your hand if you want to make a comment but otherwise, let me just confirm we're going to be meeting next on the 18th. Back at our regular time of starting 1130 to 130. I just want to tell you during that I'm, I'm actually going to be unable to make that day. I'm going to be on vacation with my family. Nice. Okay. Okay. I will be as well. Okay. Not with our. Which date are we talking about the. From 18. I'll be gone as well. All right, are we running into a quorum issue. Definitely anyone else not going to be available. I don't know about Martha or Dan. I'll be available but I'm wondering, should we explore whether people will prefer next week instead of the following week. Does that make any difference to Laura or Jack or anything. I'll be here next Friday. Okay. Who else was. Stephanie, are you around next Friday. I'm here. I have a conflicting meeting that starts at 10, but I could maybe see if I can move that to nine if there's any flexibility. I could try to move that one. Martha did you have. No, no. Laura. I am on vacation for two weeks starting on Saturday and I'm really trying to maintain that. I don't have a quorum. I can, I can dial in on the 11th, but not the 18th so much yet. What it may be, Bob. You're muted. Bob, you're muted. Hold on. See if I can unmute him. I can unmute him. Okay. Let me try. I think he's talking to us. Yes. But now he's. Oh, he's getting back on. All right. Yeah. I don't know if I got through. Yeah, you're through now, but we missed the. Is this in addition to a replacement for the 18th? I think this would be. In a substitute and then. Well, maybe then we'd go to the 25th, but I don't know. Thank you. So let's just think that if we stuck with the 18th, we're missing. Laura. And Jack, I think it was. And, and Stephanie. And we don't know about Martha. Or Dan, right? I'm, I'm here both times. Sorry. We don't know about. I think Janet will be back. We don't know about Janet or, or Dan. Yeah, she should be back by then. She's in Costa Rica. Exploring the forests, right? Natural world. All right. I guess I'd be. You, Dwayne, whatever you. Yeah, I guess I'd be inclined to stick with, with our plan of the 18th. Okay. Give us a little bit more stuff. I mean, Chris, a little bit more time to. Draft that we have so far. Myself a bit of time to put something together for the forest. Starting. Framework. And, and I'm trying to get that out maybe. Comments in from anybody who. To Stephanie and Chris. Not to everybody, but comments on anything that. You're able to comment if you're, if you're going to miss the meeting. And I guess cross our fingers that. Janet and or Dan are back for a quorum. Not sure if it would take both of them. But I'm going to ask, you know, we're going to be pretty soon starting just taking the whole bylaw from start to finish and going through it. And several members have already submitted comments to Chris and. They'll probably be others. So how is that going to work? Chris can. Will you be taking people's written comments and. To the best of your judgment sort of inserting them. With a flag that they were people's comments or how, how do you want to work it? Because it would seem that we need to. Get those into a draft. To be reviewed rather than just sort of starting from where you are now and then having to discuss every single one of them. So I can put. Comments in people's comments. And note who submitted the comments. So. Previously what I've done is I've taken the comments and then things that I. Thought were useful. I put into the document and things that I. Didn't think were useful. I left out of the document. So. But I can certainly put it in, you know, showing who. Who gave me the comments if people would find that helpful. Well, I don't know. Is that was even be necessary. I would say, you know, if you could put in all the comments, you know, you know, maybe just flag somehow that these were, you know, comments from, from members just in a general way. But maybe having you polish it as best you think possible. With the cop, all the comments that you think are useful and then flag what really needs to be discussed most. You know, we somehow got to do it in the most efficient way from here for the next few weeks. That was all. Okay. I'll think about that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, however you think is going to be the most efficient way for us to kind of get through it. I guess I would, I would suggest maybe a. Schedule for the next. For the duration here is on the next meeting, the 18th week. We. Try to reach a reasonable framework on how we're going to approach force. And then on the first. We review the drafting that Chris has put together. On both farming and force. And then we use October, sorry, September. To start looking at the whole thing comprehensively together. It's going to take up our whole meeting. Is there that much to say. For force. I kind of think that's going to be a little bit. More. Well, I don't know. The starting point may be relatively straightforward. But to some extent, I think there's nuances there that are. Yeah. Certainly is, is some, some controversy I think, but I'm not sure it's a, it's a, it's a big long document. It's more the principle. Well, let's, let's plan to go through force. And then if time permitting, we can look at what Chris put together for the farms. For the farm language. Yeah, maybe that would be good to have a specific session, a section then that we start with. Yeah, we could probably knock off the farmlands. Yeah, and then, and then. Yeah, on the starting on the first in September, we can look at what she's done. Chris has done for force, but then start looking at the entirety of the bylaw. My sense is that we really want to. I guess sort of in parallel, we can sort of pull together the nexus statements and introductory stuff to some extent. Well, I think we're in pretty good shape to pull that together. So. Maybe I can pull together in combination of what we've already created and Martha put together for farms. And create a draft for the nexus statements. As a, as a straw proposal. And while Chris is sort of focused on the, on the. More proper bylaw language. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I see that maybe what we're calling quote nexus statements, but sometimes just an introductory paragraph might go section by section rather than all piled at the beginning. I don't know. That's a matter of style more than anything. I think you're wincing. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'd leave that up to Chris, I guess, in terms of what is generally preferred. I think it's better to have it all in one place. Yep. That's my, I think legally it doesn't really matter. As long as it's all there. And then at some point, I think we need to then. Just take a look at, okay, what, if anything is missing. Or we also need to have a look at, okay, we know there are some known risks. We've seen this recent rash of fires, battery fires and an orange, the, some solar panels themselves caught fire and, and just kind of review the risks and make sure that we have the best possible language. In the bylaw that's overseas constructions or, you know, whatever to. Or stall with risks if possible, but at least review those. All right, I mean, I wouldn't mind trying to do that while we're going through the language so we don't have to circle back again. But go ahead. Jack. Yeah, Martha's mentioned this a couple of times. And I feel like I'm missing something with regard to a rash of, of incidents. Yeah, I keep getting reports from people about the ones there's there's one type of battery. And I can't think of the name of it starts with a P that apparently has been responsible for quite a few recent spontaneous fires, including one near Lyme, New York, whether enough toxic fumes that came from the plastic coverings of the batteries that people within a mile radius had the shelter in place for 24 hours or something. Yeah, because I've been keeping an, you know, here at the ground because we obviously focused on that intently with the water supply. Yes, the water protection group and there really wasn't much going on in that. So that's kind of news to me and I still keep forward to our members than those incidents. Okay, let Jack finish then. Okay. Oh, sorry. Sorry. But I'm just saying this is news to me that there, this is a heightened kind of, you know, I think we're getting safer. I saw the pictures of the solar panels burning in orange. I don't know. All right. Go ahead. Yeah, I'd like to come in. I think, I think we all should be agreed on the fact that given the thousands of solar installations that are in place, the, the tendency to have any fire on a solar facility is de minimis. Now battery storage, I understand the concern to a certain degree. But yeah, I mean, we can talk about, you know, we can talk about that as, as, you know, the, I've heard I did hear about the New York example, but the lithium ion batteries are, of course, what is prevalent right now. So I just, I want to, I want to just be cautious that we write our bylaws, not from a place of fear, because the number of instances is still small. And I think we can include all the protective language we want. But, you know, keeping things in perspective, that's all. I'm not saying you're not doing that, Mark, I just want to apply that. Yeah. All right, good. Okay, so I think we have a plan forward. I guess, Stephanie, do you want to reach out to a Janet, Janet and Dan to see if they are going to be able to make the 18th? I think Janet is at one point I had pulled everybody about their availability for the summer. So I just have to go back and take a quick look at that. Okay. Well, maybe you already know that then. So, okay. All right. Okay, so we'll plan on the 18th and we'll miss a few of you. Okay. Anything else? Except have a good weekend. And we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Thank you. Thank you for a good work today.