Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Michelle, you have a quorum of the board. You are a co-host of this meeting. Let's see, we are recording. I do think we are good to go.

All right. Thank you, Pam.

You're welcome.

Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of June 17th, 2026. My name is Doug Marshall and as chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 6.35 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst Media. Minutes are being taken. The Planning Board will be joined by the Community Resource Committee of the Town Council for Agenda Item 2 in order to continue the public hearing for zoning bylaw Article 18, Clean Energy Infrastructure. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021 and extended by Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023 and further extended by Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted via remote means using the Zoom platform. The Zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town website's calendar listing for this meeting. Or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda where the Zoom link is listed at the top of the page. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event public access is disrupted for reasons of economic hardship or despite our best efforts, we will put an audio or video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town's website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and return to mute. Bruce Colden.

I'm here.

Fred Hartwell. Do we have Fred? Yes. Fred? Fred, we can't hear you. I can see you and you are unmuted. I think you're having an audio problem, but for right now, I will confirm that you are present. Jesse Major. I am present. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Doug Marshall. I'm present. Angus McLeod. Present. Johanna Newman told us last meeting that she would not attend this evening's meeting. And Jarrah Smith. Present. Thank you all. During the meeting, if technical issues arise and the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment and I will call on you to speak. After speaking, remember to re-mute yourself. To the general public, When solicited, please indicate you wish to make a public comment by clicking the raise hand button. If you have joined the Zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and street address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can typically express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation may be disconnected from the meeting. Okay, the first item is old business. It's a legacy of SPR 2024-04. The applicant is the town of Amherst and the property is at 70 Southeast Street. In accordance with conditions number 16 and 17, we will review plans for signage, bike racks, and benches. Pam, do we have a representative from the school project present?

You do. Tim Cooper. There he is. He has arrived.

Great. Thank you. We're prepared to have you present the material that you're here to show. Sure. Before you start, Fred, you have your hand raised. Do you want to just check your audio? I'm sorry. It's not working. You are unmuted on our end, but we do not hear you. Now, okay, Tim, why don't you go ahead and... Sure.

I am going to share what I have for you. There is... The site plan of the school project. I was last before you over 2 years ago before construction documents were complete. It was then the Fort River school. It is now the amethyst Brooke school and just a few of the items that you requested updates on the time. I'm going to share with you. 1 was. Site signage there is 1 site sign at the North entrance that grants access to all of the parking on site. The South entrance is for bus and van and service drop off only. So there is not a sign that would direct traffic there. The sign will be located between. The service track that the main drive and the sidewalk on the parcel about 3040 feet back from the right away and behind the first stop line for cars behind the first car at the stop line so that visibility is not obstructed. So I'm gonna go This is the sign it's been discussed in several meetings with the school building committee meeting with the school building committee. It's within zoning regulations for Amherst in terms of area and height of size, which I believe is 30 square feet and 10 feet high. This is a simple sign, which is what. the building committee settled on. They didn't want any architectural statements, anything flashy, certainly not anything illuminated or changing in terms of information. So it's the school color with a white typeface a little over 8 feet wide and just under 6 feet tall to mark the entrance of the school. Granite posts and a composite aluminum panel between them that will be painted. This will be installed as part of Phase 2, which will be in the fall of 2026 when the existing school was demolished and the site work north of the building that will then be open.

Proceeds will there be a sign at the. Bus and drop whatever the bus entrance that says something about. Not you that the public shouldn't be using that.

So there is no specific prohibition of public driving there. And there is even talk with Michael O'Connell, the director of facilities about possibly adjusting. But during school pickup and drop off, it will be directed by staff. So there should not be any confusion.

Okay. All right, board members, any comments on the signage here, the site sign? I assume this is really the only sign.

This is really the only sign that we have for your review. The rest of the signs are traffic directional, stop signs, stuff like that, which I assume is less of your purview and not of the public way.

Okay.

And then there was also conditions in the original findings of... I'm just going to quickly show you the benches and bike racks because that was requested. Here's a photo from last week, actually, that shows the progress. So a lot has happened in the past two years. You can see the playground and the area north of the building. All of these isolated concrete slabs will eventually be paved around, but that is where the benches are going. You can see one of the square ones, the rest are obscured by trees and planting. That's where the backless benches will go and then the other areas next to the The playground will have the benches with backs. So this is just the manufacturer's data that shows you what this stuff looks like. It's folded metal benches with perforations for thermal comfort and so that they drain and then there are recycling and waste receptacles. This is shown in two colors. Everything is the brown color to go with the brick that is selected for the exterior of the building. So this is what the site furniture will look like. And this is what the bicycle rack will look like. There are 22 of them on site in groups of 10 and 12. Just going back to the photo to show you where they are. Each one will support easily two bikes or two bikes can easily be locked to it half of them will be underneath this PV canopy drop off so they'll be protected from the rain and the other half will be close to the main entrance so 44 total bicycles can you know, without any sort of clumping be locked up so those are the items that were requested when I was last before you.

And what's the finish on the bike racks.

The finish on the bike racks is the same as the benches. It is a powder-coated, the color is, I have chips that I could show you, rust, but it's very close to the brick that is the darker part of the building, and it's a powder coating, which is pretty durable.

So it's not a Corten steel, which comes to mind when I see the renderings.

No, it is not a Corten steel, and Corten steel, if you sit on it, it will leave a mark on you, which is not ideal for benches.

Right. Okay. Good. Okay. Board members, any comments? Well, I see two hands at the moment. Fred Hartwell? I am not hearing you, Fred. All right. Well, I'm going to lower your hand and you can bring it up. Okay. And Pam Rooney, your hand is up.

Pam Rooney, 42 Cottage Street. The sign looks lovely, but it has only one face. So are you going to repeat the wording with the name of the school so people coming from the north and south will know that that is the entrance?

I... So understood the plan was conceived as being facing the street so that could be visible from further away, but it can easily be turned 90 degrees so that to maximize visibility. And then in terms of printing, it's a both sided printing process. So the text could be repeated. And I think that makes sense. I mean, The fabrication has not been completed and shop drawing. So turning it 90 degrees to increase the visibility is certainly a possibility and easily enough to accomplish.

All right. Sounds like something to consider. Bruce, Bruce called him.

Tim, you said it wasn't an illuminated sign, and I think that may have meant that it wasn't a neon-type sign. I can't remember. I should know, but I can't remember whether the sign itself is illuminated independently from a ground light or so, so that it can be seen during the evening hours.

You are absolutely correct. I was less than perfectly clear. It is not a luminous sign in the sense of neon or a TV screen or anything like that, but there are ground lights that will illuminate the sign itself so it is visible at night.

And Doug, I could say that this building committee felt that the sign facing the street was sufficient, I think, but that was that particular group. And so it's been reviewed as you see it by the school building committee, of which I'm a member.

All right. Dave Kuntz, Well, I guess i'll invite other Members if they're they have an opinion about the orientation of the sign and whether it's perpendicular to the street or parallel and. Dave Kuntz, or whether we just leave it as a comment for the building committee to consider if they want to think about this anymore. Dave Kuntz, Fred see your hand again. No, still no audio, Fred. You might consider leaving the meeting and coming back in. All right, I don't see any other hands. Angus, go ahead.

Sorry, I was just gonna say I think it could make a lot of sense just to refer to the building committee and what they think is best for the sign orientation.

Alright, thank you. That's my inclination too. Anyone else have any comments? Looks like. Alright, so in that case, I think Tim will just thank you for coming to show us the signs and the site furniture. I think you've met the requirements of the permit that we asked you to come back. And good luck with the project.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be working on it.

Great. Thank you. Okay. Time is 6.50. We'll go to the second item on the agenda, which is the joint public hearing with the Community Resource Committee, the Zoning By-law Amendment for Article 18, Clean Energy Infrastructure. This hearing of the Planning Board is continued from May 20th, 2026 and June 3rd of 2026. To consider amending the zoning bylaw by adopting article 18 clean energy infrastructure and associated amendments to zoning table three dimensional regulations section 5.11 renewable energy accessory solar photovoltaic installations battery energy storage systems uses and section 12 definitions so this meeting this hearing of the planning board is now open and I'd like to invite Pam Rooney to call the meeting of the Community Resource Committee uh to order hi I see uh not everyone here I see Jennifer Taub Pam Rooney and we need at least one more person

I'm looking for Andy Churchill or Alicia Walker to join us. Mandy Johanicki will not be here tonight.

Okay. In that case, should we do a couple of other relatively short things on our agenda while we wait for someone else to show up? Okay. Um, in that case, we'll skip to item three on our agenda, the meeting approval of planning board meeting minutes. Um, we have minutes from March 18th available for approval. Um, board members, were there any comments on those minutes as drafted by our staff? Okay. I don't see any hands. In that case, does anybody want to make a motion to approve the minutes as drafted? Bruce?

I moved.

Thank you. And Jesse? I'll second that. All right. Any comments and discussion by the board? Fred, I see your hand. Fred, I'm still not getting any audio. I'm so sorry. Okay. In that case, we'll go ahead and do a vote. Fred, I'll ask you, why don't we start with you, and you can just indicate thumbs up or thumbs down for the approval of the minutes. Thumbs up, I see, as approval. Thank you, Fred. Bruce?

I'm an aye. Yes.

Thank you. Angus? Aye. Brett KenCairn, Jesse hi and Jera. Brett KenCairn, I mean I as well that's six in favor one member absent emotion carries minutes from March 18 are approved. Brett KenCairn, Great. Brett KenCairn, Pam I have not seen anyone else arrived yet so i'll go to another item. Brett KenCairn, um. Pam, I'm going to ask you some, Pam Field Sadler, I'm going to ask you some, and Walker, I'm going to ask you some questions. First of all, do we have, other than the old business that we just conducted, do we have any other old business topics that we did not reasonably anticipate 48 hours in advance?

I did want to just bring one topic up, which is the downtown design standards. Just a reminder that we're looking for feedback on those before the end of the month or by the end of the month.

Okay.

All right. Yeah.

Okay, great. Then I'll ask a similar question about new business, which is topic six on our agenda. Did we have any unanticipated new business?

Not that I'm aware of. No.

All right.

I'm sorry.

All right. Pam, do we have any A&Rs?

We do have an A&R.

All right. Well, I just saw Andy show up, actually. I just noticed Andy's arrival. Pam, why don't we come back to the A&R and we'll go ahead and start the or let CRC start the hearing.

Thank you. I'm going to call the meeting for the Community Resource Committee together. And I'm looking around. Jennifer Taub, are you here? Yes, I'm here. Andy Churchill.

Yes, finally got my computer to go.

And Pam Rooney is a yes. I don't see Alicia Walker, but we will add her in when she shows up. But we do have a quorum and we are able to open our meeting to join you again.

Thank you. Welcome.

And Fred looks like he has a comment.

Well, I was going to see, Fred, do you want to say anything that we and try your audio again? I do not hear anything. All right, Pam, why don't we pick up where we were?

Okay.

We can definitely see Fred's hand when he puts it up, so we can give him another.

So to recap for everyone who has pretty much been here for the whole time, we have made our way through the document. There are a number of just small comments, editorials, and changes that we pretty much agreed to as we made our way through the document. I have documented those on my copy, and I actually sat with Mandy Johanke this morning. We went through all of those. So she, unless there are, there are a few items that um that we sort of left as as hanging questions and we'll try to go back to those tonight um we left off uh with the tables for uh table three and table 5.11 before we get into that though I I want to just give a quick overview of schedule so we've had three this is the third of our joint meetings um the CRC is not going to close its hearing and vote until the planning board does, because it is our conclusion that triggers a 90 day count and responses to council, et cetera. So we are going to essentially wait for the planning board to make its final deliberations and vote on the document and refer that to us. That looks to be that July 1 is your next opportunity to either, you know, to continue the hearing and then close it and report to the CRC. The document that we end up with tonight with corrections and changes will get cleaned up tomorrow by Mandy Johanike and it will go to KP Law for its legal review. We are going to ask KP Law to kindly get it back to us by July 10, which is after your next meeting and but before your July 15 meeting, which is pretty much July 15 is pretty much the last date that we can hear back from the planning board and still make the October 1 deadline with two readings of the bylaw in the council and then a vote. So I can share the calendar at another time and send it to all of your members, but that's sort of the gist of it.

Pam, will the version that Mandy, Joe, and whoever finalizes or puts together tomorrow or in the next few days, will that be available for the planning board to review prior for its July 1 meeting?

Yes, yes, yes. And I also want to publicly thank Walker Powell for the work that she's done. The last couple of meetings, thank you so much. It's invaluable because we just, this is so important to get it captured and documented. And we're going to ask you again tonight. Karen Hollweg, Please to help us with that so tonight's document should be saved as as version. Karen Hollweg, version 13 with today's date, and that is what will you'll see. Karen Hollweg, Early next week or the end of this week as the document to work on or to think about.

Okay, I see Bruce's hand.

Yes, I just, Pam, you said that KP Law's review won't be back until July 10, thereabouts, plus or minus. And to you and Doug, is it appropriate for the Planning Board to deliberate on the document as version 13? Or should we wait until KP Law has given the deliberation before we make a decision?

Well, I think you will have tonight's version to work from. Tonight's version is what's going to KP Law. And then so as a group, we're all going to be looking for their feedback on tonight's version.

So we would wait until we get that feedback before we close the public, make our decision and close the public hearing.

That's up to you, but it makes sense to have the legal feedback.

Okay. And the schedule allows for that, but only just.

Barely. Yes.

Yeah. That's why I was wondering whether it would be prudent for one of us to move forward. I mean, basically, we could move forward. And I guess we can discuss that amongst us.

Whether we want to recommend the version. you know, lucky number 13. And, or and then we could come back later and, you know, recommend or not recommend number 14, if there has to be one. Right. Right. Okay.

And I'm not I'm expecting that, in fact, there might be some final tweaks once even once we get back KP laws.

Pam, is it advantageous to you for us to make our recommendation on the 1st of July, or is it just the same if we do it on the 15th? I know it's tighter, but it's...

I think it makes sense to do it on the 15th, because then you will, in fact, have KP Law's commentary.

Okay. Okay.

And we're in.

So Walker, you will need to quickly get the word from KP law into our packet. Yeah. Or the 15th.

OK. Yeah. All right. Great. And maybe sooner, but we don't we don't know. We're asking them to expedite because so this document could have gone to them at the very beginning, but in fact, I forgot, first of all, and it hasn't really seemed to make much sense to do it while it was still in formulation. So, Walker, we have tonight's version, and I think you have access to that, right?

I seem to only have version 12.

Well, that's tonight, yeah, if you want to just save it as tonight. The 13th. Okay. That would be wonderful. And we're going to go to the very end where there are two tables. Okay. I put in, while she's getting that up, I put in a request, last minute request, to see if Rob Mora would be available to help perhaps answer some of the questions specifically about applicability. What, as building commissioner, when we look at this table, which is table three, there are a number of items that are listed as yes, approval by building commissioner. And just want to double check that in fact, Rob Morrow, who would be administering that understands and is comfortable with that. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Walker. And if folks could keep an eye out and see if Alicia Walker does show up, I'll make sure she gets acknowledged. Thank you. So last time, we left off here. And this table was structured initially by Chris Prestrup. And we have, to date, really not made many changes to it. And I wondered if we could walk through, I'm thinking row by row, to sort of understand the categories and the conditions. So on the left is the land use classification and the very first row is the building mounted canopy solar photovoltaic installations up to a fairly significant number of kilowatts, up to 25,000 kilowatts. That 25,000 kilowatts is where the state steps in and says anything larger than that, we manage all of the permitting for large projects. We recognize that there would be very, very few, if any, projects of this size specifically that are building mounted or canopy, even if they include photo, excuse me, agri, agrivoltaics, the agricultural application of SPI. So with that in mind, we're looking at across the board in the outlying and low density residential, in neighborhood residential, in village center, in general residential, and even fraternity residential, It would be a yes. It would be by building commissioner approval administratively. In the other more commercial zones, it's listed here as by permit granting authority for the principal use. So it's unlikely that you would have projects of much size at all and we don't necessarily want to encourage large projects in the downtown in the limited business where it's much more lucrative for the town to have viable commercial or you know construction does anyone have any comment on

that row well pam the uh the fpc flood prone conservancy conservancy that's not a downtown urban right right um What are you thinking would be inappropriate? It's just sort of an oddball in terms of how you've done all of this. Okay. All right. I won't make any comments about that then. You could.

It does seem a bit odd, Doug, because when you go down to the ground mounted, you've got 250 kilowatts. And that, by the way, is maybe 30 houses size, 30 house roof sizes. And from then on down, there's no, no, no in the floodplain conservancy. But building mounted in canopy, is that because in the floodplain you might have houses? I can't remember whether houses would be allowed in a floodplain. It doesn't seem logical, but is that why it's by the permit-granting authority as opposed to just another no?

I'm trying to remember if houses are allowed, and I'm wondering maybe if Stephanie or Walker knows. I'm thinking sheds, small farm sheds might be, you could have a small system on a farm shed.

Yes, but you can't do it on the ground.

Well, you can have agrivoltaics.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Maybe we just have to let this one go and figure it out with a change in the bylaw, because it sounds like it might be kind of complicated. And letting the permit grounding authority make a determination is probably going to be a feedback mechanism that will inform us as to whether actually

Dave Kuntz, yeah it's more permissive than all of the other ground mounted so that particular one, I guess, is okay. Dave Kuntz, I guess, then we can talk about whether we should have a. Dave Kuntz, Some yeses or site plan review under the lower rows for. Dave Kuntz, FPC, but we can come back to that Bruce do you have anything else, or can we put down your hand okay.

Okay, next row. Next category, actually. So this is ground-mounted solar with or without co-located BESS. So it could be a very small SPI or SPI with BESS. Tier one, the very smallest of under up to or under 250 kilowatts, we have basically administrative approval across the board, except in those districts where we want to encourage, again, this is ground mounted, we want to encourage commercial uses or retail uses rather than solar uses. They would they would still be something that small would still be used. Appropriate as a building mountain or canopy.

So the only one that I, I mean, other than the FPC discussion, which I think we probably could also have, the BG, you know, the BG is not a very extensive area. But I could imagine in concept, somebody taking, I don't know, 10 acres and and developing it with say i don't know six or eight houses and having another couple of acres devoted to solar uh and then you know selling it that hey your power will never go out because uh you've got your own solar array to to keep your houses powered um Dave Kuntz, You know, is that is that one where we might go to site plan review or leaving at least special permit just to say well that's something we would consider but not automatically approved.

Karen Hollweg, I would suggest that in the BG in the downtown district, we probably wouldn't want to encourage three acres of land being turned into solar when we could have. somebody paying taxes on a five-story building.

Well, I mean, we don't have five-story buildings in the BG at all. In the BG? Yes, we do. Oh, you're right. Never mind. That was a... You were thinking RG?

I was thinking RG. Do you want to talk through that again with RG? Okay.

So in that case, never mind. Never mind. Yeah.

Okay. Did everybody follow that?

So, Bruce, you've been our source for how much acreage is needed for 25,000 kilowatts. Is 250 kilowatts, is that just two or three acres or is that?

Yes, I was just trying to redo that. I figured out that 25,000 is probably about 30 acres. So if you divide it by 100, you've got a third of 0.3 of an acre. That kind of makes sense. So what we're talking about is... Because generally speaking, it's about... seven kilowatts because the trouble is that the efficiency of these devices has been improving since I used to do all this in my head and that was like 10 or 15 years ago so seven kilowatts was a big was a substantial array so that's that's why I said there's 250 is 30 houses and 30 houses but about I don't know, some 800 square foot, let's say. So 30 by 800 is 24,000. So that's half an acre. So it feels like you say between a third and half an acre is, let's say half an acre, because usually remember is about what we're talking about here with a T1, the tier one, about half an acre.

Yeah, depending on the setbacks.

Now, this is just the size of the array. The actual array is half an acre by my semi-deck of the envelope calculations. So it's small in terms of what we're talking about here, but it's still huge in terms of an array that's in the RG, for example. If someone put a half acre array in the RG, it would certainly stand out.

So in that sense, the parcels where I live on Cottage Street, they're a quarter of an acre. So it would take two house lots to create something of a tier one, up to a tier one.

Limit, yes, to the max of tier one.

It would take more. It would take more just you'd have the setbacks and the fence line and all of that.

So again, while it could certainly fit or be considered for the RG or the RVC or any of the residential districts, in the more commercial zones, we probably wouldn't want to be designating acres of solar panel, ground-mounted solar panels over the ability to build commercial structures and tax them. But if that were the case, it's still an administrative approval or simply not allowed where we prefer other activity.

Yes. I mean, at the moment, Y means buy right or administrative approval. So my sense is that an array of anything like that size would basically not be viable. I mean, it wouldn't be the highest and best use of a high-priced lot in the middle of town. unless somebody was putting a huge building right underneath it. And that would be subject to all sorts of other regulatory constraints. So maybe the thing is right, as you put it. And my guess is that staff have thought about this and have just said, yes, that's not complicated by trying to fractionate this all the way down so that we get So we try and get a sharper instrument and so forth. I mean, it feels okay to me, even though it's when I did the math initially in my head a moment ago or the other day, it seemed like it was a bit odd to allow by right a substantial, such a huge, potentially up to such a huge array in, I'm just saying RG because it's the tightest residential neighborhood. But I think I think the market forces and other regulatory constraints are going to protect us from anything that's beyond stupid.

Thank goodness.

Do you think that, Doug, would you agree with that?

Yeah, I guess I'm okay with this, the way it's structured. I mean, we do have a yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes for the COM, the OP, the LI, and the PRP. And those are a little more outlying. And again, I think economics will limit the amount of instances we end up with in those areas.

So Tier 2, which is 250 kilowatts up to 1,000 kilowatts, is now looking at site plan approval in the outlying and low-density and neighborhood residential areas, not allowed in the more dense residential areas, and yes, allowed by site plan approval in... commercial light industry and PRP. we could we could talk about the office park office park again says no we don't want you know we don't want we just don't want it in office park and that's possibly a conversation that could be had we have I think and maybe Walker could confirm this we have only one office park location in town, and that is University Drive. And we've already, we've already given that an overlay saying we really want high density housing there. We're not too excited about ground mounted solar.

Sam, I see Angus's hand and I'm glad Angus has got his hand up because I think he's been thinking about this area, this zone along with PRP recently.

Yeah, I'll just briefly say, Pam, in total agreement that the OP already has the overlay on it. We've been talking about trying to make changes to the PRP to possibly allow some forms of housing. And in the conversations with town staff around that, they actually would recommend shifting what is currently the... three or four parcels in OP to BL. It's already got the overlay. And then it might make sense to actually just eliminate the office park designation as a separate designation from PRP. But that's a different conversation. But yeah, I don't think that there needs to be any kind of exception for OP with solar arrays. Great.

All right. So it sounds like people are generally okay with the tier two designations.

Tier 3 gets up from 1,000 kilowatts to our locally authorized 25,000 kilowatts, and that would be by special permit in any district where it's allowed, the rest being not allowed.

Yeah, I guess this is the one that jumped out at me, I think, in the spirit of trying to encourage installations that I was going to suggest that the special permits be made site plan review. And we can come back to that. Angus, I see your hand.

Yeah, I was also going to suggest Paul Matzner- Moving the commercial to special permit more or similar to the others. Paul Matzner- So I guess separate from them from what Doug just said, if it was special permit, we could there's not a ton of commercial zones, so I don't think that they would this would necessarily happen, but we could make. a designation, we can make a determination on the project brought before us. And we may end up zoning, suggesting more commercial zones in the future and more options for what can happen in commercial zones as we think about the East Amherst commercial corridor and the study that's being done there. So I would vote special permit for that. That might be a different thing if we're talking about moving to site plan review.

Well, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Could Angus state that he would support what

Dave Kuntz, Moving commercial the tier three commercial from no to special permit.

Karen Hollweg, Walker could you put your cursor on that, so we can sort of keep our eye on yes, thank you, thank you. Karen Hollweg, Changing that to SP. Bruce?

That was the proposal.

Bruce? I need to say that we are talking, when we're talking 1,000 kilowatts up to 25, we're talking a raise of two acres to 30 acres. And it seems that the commercial, and I put my hand down a moment ago when that was because Angus was saying we might want to biggerize the commercial zone. So maybe... but still uh we have to logically the n is not no you can't it's not allowed n is for no it's not possible because there isn't enough commercial space to uh to allow a thing a tier three to exist on it it's it's just the commercial zone is not big enough yeah

Something else that occurred to me is that this category, the tier one, two, and three is SPI with or without co-located bests. So when you get up to the 25,000 level, I would guess there's a pretty high chance of having some bests associated with that. And again, that may be part of the driver for the N and the SPs in this case. Angus?

Sorry. I mean, I definitely don't think we're going to take the entire commercial and turn it into 30 acres of a solar farm. But two acres, I think, in different parts of the commercial zone could actually make sense, especially if there's a commercial zone just south of Amherst College that's currently, I think, a lumber yard and other things. If in the future that changed hands, I think I'd make total sense for a larger solar array. So I guess my inclination would be give people the option to bring something to us, and then we can shoot it down if we feel like it's inconsistent with how these zones are trending. Because a special permit does not mean any kind of guarantee, and most developers see it as a hurdle that is not worth clearing. So that would be my inclination.

Anyone opposed to inserting an SP in that box? I don't see any hands. Let's give that a try and just highlight it so that we recognize that as a change. Great, thank you. Then we move to standalone, Bess.

Hold on, hold on. I'm going to put in one last pitch here. I think for us to say that we won't allow any large-scale solar arrays in town without a special permit and all the uncertainty that comes with that, is really throwing a lot of cold water on the whole thing. For us to, you know, shoulder our burden of powering the future, we need to be allowing some substantial energy to be produced in town in order to just feed our own energy use. So I think this is really going to discourage any large arrays in town. And maybe that's what the majority wants to do. But I think that this is a negative structure for us to promulgate. Bruce. All right.

So, Doug, to be clear, are you suggesting, therefore, that in the RLD, RO, or in the RLD, at least, that the SP should be SPR?

Well, I'm just saying, you know, to put together the full consolidated permit and do it under having to get a special permit as part of that. It feels like it's a huge amount of cost.

I'm supporting. I just want to make sure because you're saying you're arguing.

At least the RO, RLD, and RN, I guess.

You would make an SPR.

Yeah, I would go to SPR.

That's what I wanted to figure out.

Dave Kuntz, Okay, I mean you know to me more is more SP ours would be more supportive, but I think that just looking at the geography of town and how the zones a layout you know. Dave Kuntz, At least at least our our LD and our and that's kind of what I would. Dave Kuntz, At least argued for.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, In this. Yeah, I would agree. I think one of the hard things is tier three is just such a large category, which makes sense. But there seems to me a pretty big difference being a two acre development of solar arrays and a 30 acre development. So it does seem like... But I don't know where that line should be in developing this. Y'all clearly thought about that a lot. So I'd be inclined to move those first two categories, RO and LD and RN to SPR as well. But I also, I guess, want to express some, I have very little hesitation around that for a two to five acre or even 10 acre project and maybe more hesitation around a 20 to 30 acre project.

Well, you know, Angus, that's something that I, it also occurred to me, our tier two could get larger and, you know, not make tier three such, so wide in its size. But anyway, Pam, can I call on Bruce?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

That's what I was going to suggest. Well, my suggestion was that maybe we need a tier three becomes 1000 to 5000 and then tier four becomes 5000 to 25. But another way of doing it would be to have it 250 to 5, because once you get to a two-acre array size, which we figure is the 1,000 kilowatts in the RO and outlying RLD and so forth, You might want to do a three-acre one, but you couldn't without, well, you'd have to get a special permit, which is Doug's point. So I do think it's not as supportive. It's not as clearly supportive of a clean energy policy that we think the town has or should have. to put an SP in there, except when it gets truly large. And I would say that 5,000 kilowatts would be truly large because then you've got, what did we say, 10 acres. So that's a, now we're getting a big, that's a big array. And I think that I would, I would think that having a special permit requirement for a 10 acre array in town, It's not unreasonable, but I agree with you, Doug. I think that up to five, and I'm just picking the number in my head, just somewhere less than 10, but more than one, and then adjust the table so that arrays up to 5,000 kilowatts are by site plan review. And either by putting in another line or by adjusting tier two.

Jesse.

And then Andy. I guess I'd ask, what was the rationale for making tier two up to 1000? What was the line there that was considered? Not that we need to relitigate the whole conversation, but was there a clear logic to that size versus something bigger?

Stephanie, I'm going to go to Stephanie who has her hand up to answer that.

Another comment I'll just add is it's been a while since I thought deeply about this, but I thought there were studies saying we have enough built structures already to put solar on top of. rather than taking new and for bigger arrays. But is there a way we can incentivize that over some of these larger arrays? Thanks.

Stephanie. Thanks, Pam. So the size classifications were all recommended in the state's draft bylaw, model bylaw. So that's where the range of classifications came from. I just wanted to make that clear that that's where they were from.

And so the 1,000 kilowatts is a couple of acres, maybe up to four acres, and that seemed reasonable with local authorization. Andy.

Yeah, I guess I just wanted to check the map because I heard earlier that 25 kilowatts is 30 acres. So 5,000 kilowatts would be six acres and 1,000 would be about a little over an acre. I don't know if I'm doing the math right, but I think we ought to have a sense of that. I thought I heard that 250 kilowatts was somewhere between one half to a

Stephanie has her hand up again.

I think it's a half acre. I think we are, depending on the efficiency of the devices used, then because you, there's very, and it's going to get more efficient. I put it at half an acre, the 250, which would mean that the thousand would be two acres.

So that's twice as large as I had done my math with. So, yeah.

When you had 25,000 kilowatts equaling 30 acres, right?

That was my calculation, Andy, yes.

So then if you divide 30 by 25, you're down to almost an acre, a little over an acre per 1,000.

Yes, so I'm saying depending on assumptions made on efficiencies and things like that, I'm just... I think the range is dependent on assumptions based efficiencies. And I said, my knowledge of this is a little old, but nonetheless, not all panels are the same. And I suppose the more expensive ones, the more efficient ones are the ones that are going to put on buildings where the premium is higher. just covering farmland, just covering farmland, when you're covering land, probably you're going to use less efficient devices, maybe, I don't know. So maybe you're right, it gets bigger as you go into these ground-mounted things. But we're getting a little fussy here. I think that safely we could say that, broadly speaking, 25,000 is about 30 acres, and broadly speaking, about 1,000, which is probably about half an acre, because they're probably going to get more effective as they get smaller. The insulations, I mean.

It's more like two acres.

Sorry, did I say? Yes, sorry. Two acres.

So tier one, if we were to recap this, and what I've heard is a couple suggestions. One is to perhaps tweak that upper limit. So we might have something like tier two is greater than 250 kilowatts and up to maybe 2,500 kilowatts. And that gives us a range that's a little larger, a little more supportive, but it doesn't throw us into the range of tens of acres.

Yeah. Oops, I should have my muted.

Does anybody have any thoughts about the Angus?

I think that's it. That's a good. That's a good plan. I don't know where would make the most sense to draw the line. None of us are solar power experts, but I think a slightly larger amount makes sense for these outlying areas.

So let's make that change. And maybe KP Law is going to come back and say, you know, you're not following the state guidelines. And in order to be fair across the Commonwealth, you must change your table. And maybe we wait for that kind of feedback.

All right. So for Tier 2, the higher end, I've heard 5,000, 10,000, and 2,500. Yeah, where are we putting it?

Bruce? 2,500, I like Pam's suggestion. And then if KP Law does what she says, then, Doug, it's not the town of Amherst that is being disincentived. It's state policy, and we can say, oh, we did our best.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm just looking at the model zoning bylaw from the state, and ours would be more relaxed than their requirements. So I can't imagine that the law firm would find us at fault if we're giving more options for solar installations than what the state bylaw itself does.

Thank you. Yeah, thanks for checking that. um so this all makes sense it looks you know we've given this some good thought we should move down to standalone vests and these are literally the storage units um we have all kinds of of wording in here on how they must be contained they must etc etc um that said they are still battery storage units. And do people have I think the the tier one, I think we were looking up the size of something like that. It's it's not a large element, it might be like a three by four by five cabinet. Tier two at at 1000, anything larger than that might be up to seven or eight, like an eight by 10. size cabinet, Bruce.

What's the logic in saying that you can't have the smaller one, but you can have the larger one by special permit? Wouldn't it logically go the other way? Is there a reason why in the RVC, for example, or the office park, we don't have to spend too much time on. I agree with Angus on that. Let's take the RVC. The smaller... size best, it's not allowed. The larger tier two is allowed with a special permit.

Oh, interesting. Yep.

What's the logic of that? Look, it would seem as though it should be the other way around. And my sense is maybe that was intended to be the other way around and it just got confused.

Or it would be an SPR.

Yes, because that's the way it is on the others. It's SPR and then it goes to SP, except in Office Park.

Office Park is the same situation.

We don't really care about Office Park, I don't think. But it seems to me that in the RVC, those designations should be flipped to the SP for Tier 1 and NO for Tier 2. I mean, it's a question, I guess the question is, is that? Yeah.

Yeah, I would just add, if we're thinking of doing special permit for the RVC, then it would make sense in other R and B areas as well. But we're talking when we're talking about standalone vests, we're talking about a lot that is dedicated a parcel that is dedicated entirely to battery storage facility. Um, and is not attached to a building or connected to, um, a lot is being used, say, uh, has, has a building currently on it has a roof mounted solar and then has a battery storage attached to it. We're talking about a parcel that is exclusively a battery storage facility, right?

Yes. Okay. Karen Hollweg, And in this and in this scenario, it appears that that the smaller units, we do not want to allow at all in the rvc but, but we could allow allow a much larger one by by special permit yeah I think. Karen Hollweg, Somebody make a recommendation Bruce.

I'm thinking that, as Angus mentioned, these are small contained. And it reminds me, on Fearing Street, there's this brick building that's Verizon, which, for all intents and purposes, could be a Bess. But there it sits. It doesn't look terrible. Maybe people have driven by it many times and not noticed it. So the question is, why are we locating these near load centers, which is closer to the center of town, would seem to be something that would be logically appropriate and too bad Fred's not here because he could speak more technically to this but it would seem to me that these small storages would be most especially valuable in near the center of town. So that, I guess, is a question. Would these not be more... Should we not value the centre of town locations for these, given that they are near the load centres?

Angus?

Well, it just kind of makes me think, Bruce, that maybe part of that special permit being there for RBC is trying to say...

yes, we would like to incentivize battery storage, but only if it's storing an enormous amount of energy. But there's no point in storing small amounts of electricity on a bunch of different lots close into town, but it might make more sense in clusters of population to have larger battery storage systems, which is kind of different than how we think about zoning for a lot of other kinds of industrial uses. And so maybe the SP actually could make sense for RBC and actually could make sense for RG are for some of these other categories as well, because if we're gonna dedicate a parcel exclusively to battery storage near population centers, we should try and maximize what we're getting out of the use of that parcel for battery storage.

I know that Fred is still with us. Fred, have you... It looks like maybe he's frozen. All right, nevermind, I guess.

I'm going to respond to Angus's comment and I'm and I'm putting a different a different hat on. And that is that the larger the best unfortunately, the greater the risk of whatever it is, whether it's explosion or fire or something like that, that I don't think we have any power hookups in the center of town, except maybe the limited business down on Route 9 near what used to be Amherst Media. So you want your best. I would think you'd want your best in a location where you can feed into the grid with it. So in that sense, I still don't understand why one would be an N and one would be SP to allow a larger, potentially more dangerous unit. Jennifer.

Should we just change the two Ns to SPR or SP at least? in tier one and call it a day.

Jennifer.

Yeah, I would agree with what Doug just said to have it. And I would think like in the inner residential area, which the RG is, you would want a special permit. You certainly would want a butter notification and not, because the N I'm assuming is just that you don't allow it. Not that it would. I think if it's going to be allowed, it should be by special permit.

In the RVC or in the RG?

In the RG. Or we don't allow it at all. Okay. Okay.

So we still, so the RG, we haven't really talked about yet. The RVC, are we okay with an SPR on that?

We're talking the small units. Bruce, sorry, I'm looking at the numbers, not at the hands.

I'm just concerned that we don't know enough about what we're talking about to be making these. So it seems to me that we should just make sure that however this table was filled out, it was done by someone who knew a lot more about these things than we do. Because I feel kind of hopeless trying to figure this, particularly as you mentioned, Pam, there's the risks and so forth. I mean, I made my comment about Verizon. Well, I didn't think Verizon was going to blow up, but... but you're right these things are essentially high energy dense things they're storing energy and basically that's what a bomb is so uh someone's going to come along and say you're letting us put bombs in the center of town And there may be logic to it, but there may not be. I just, I don't think we know enough. So I think we have to just make sure that however this is filled out, it's done with a, maybe somebody can write a short statement about why it is that it should, why it is that, why it should be as shown or however it's decided to be shown by staff, what the rationale is, because I just don't know enough to really have a useful opinion anymore, I don't think.

Thank you, Stephanie. And then Jennifer.

So looking at the state's draft bylaw chart, they have more allowances for site plan review and special permit, whereas we just have no's identified. Staff, the building commissioner and Nate Malloy were the ones who initially looked at this more carefully and revised this table. So this I believe that you're looking at is the one that Rob Mora and Nate had recommended.

And do they know more than us?

I would say Rob certainly has a vast amount of experience in building construction and I think they work daily with the regulations. So I would say, I would just offer that. I'm not going to say knowing, saying that it's more or less. I just know that with their experience in working with these things regularly, these were their recommendations. So you can change them as you see fit. I'm just letting you know that's where they came from because there was a question about that. I'm just responding.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Jennifer, then Andy. And then I had a thought.

Yeah, I'm just echoing Bruce. I don't know that we have the knowledge to really weigh in. So I guess I maybe would defer to Rob and Nate. I just don't feel like I... really have the knowledge to change what's suggest changes. That's just why I haven't weighed in during the conversation. I, yeah, I don't know how to, you know, I just don't have the expertise. I don't, I don't know that we do. And I feel like this is really important because there's been a lot of issues with the battery storage units. So I'd hate to make changes that are not fully informed.

Thank you, Andy.

Yeah, I guess. I'd like to at least find out the answer the question about why we why this and and and tier one and SP and tier two from the folks who from I guess Rob now just have them look at that again. And then if the state is more lenient on these things, I don't know why did we decide to be just prohibitive on some of the things that they're saying should be special permit or whatever. I don't know what the rationale is, but certainly the initial question about why do we have a stricter prohibition on tier one than tier two in the RVC and the OP would be worth.

Yes.

Directing their attention to and then the general question of why we got gotten more specific or more stringent and the state.

So let's let's plan to do that. I will write that up as one of the questions. And if we could put if we could put a question mark there by the SP that was just added. Oops. Or or know that one was fine. I think Under office park. I guess it's the same question. Why would you have a no for a smaller unit and a yes for or a least pathway for a larger unit. All right. Yeah. Yes. Perfect. Thank you. And I'm trying to, I'm trying to read it from the perspective of what are, what are we trying with that designation? What are we trying to encourage? Are we trying to encourage use of RVC for You know larger larger units and it could be that the rvc in fact is near the power grid because it's sort of down in that area around new route nine and you know, maybe that was the thinking that when the planners were putting that that information together Andy.

Yeah, I'm sorry to ask this, but I'm new to this year. So how do you have a standalone BESS? Where does the energy come from as opposed to one that's co-located with photovoltaic installations?

It's constructed, I mean, it gets a feed from the grid, the power, the overhead power lines, and it is filled with power during cheap energy times, and then they sell it, they release that power and sell it when price goes up. Whereas it's not fed by a solar field. The ones that are co-located are filled and charged with the SPI that they're sitting next to. The other ones are, what's the trading?

It's a triage on energy rates.

It's a demand side management.

Yeah.

Okay, but it involves renewable energy somehow? Not necessarily.

Okay. No, it literally stores energy when it's cheap and they sell it off for a margin of a profit when it's more expensive.

I guess I'm just wondering why it's in the clean energy bylaw if it's not necessarily clean energy.

Angus has the answer.

I don't know if I have the answer. I mean, it doesn't have to be related to clean energy. But I think generally, if we're trying to use renewable sources that are intermittent, then we need to drastically increase battery storage. And so the times, if you increase solar capacity enough, then energies are going to come cheaper at times when the sun is shining and you'll fill the bus with primarily renewable energy. But you can do this with a coal power plant and it would work just fine.

So I feel like we have we have made our way through. We've raised questions and we have made some suggestions. How about we move to the next table. And it was suggested that in fact, this is an addition to Article 5 accessory uses. So with this frame of mind, this is any SPI or BESS that is secondary to a primary or principal use on a property. So with that in mind, we have Tier 1. which is the SPI that is again, building mounted canopy or ground mounted under 25 kilowatts and or best under a hundred kilowatts. So these are small, these are very small. We had a discussion, Johanna brought it up and she said, I think we need to clarify what's not included, what's, you know, less than 25. And I think we had the conversation that should we specify or can Rob Mora tell us better what he's willing to permit as right, as of right? Is it... We've talked about having a statement that this bylaw does not apply to plug in, you know, the small kinds of batteries. Bruce?

25 kilowatts is a pretty healthy, hefty system. I mean, unless you have a house that's, golly, I'm just guessing a bit now, but let's say somewhere in excess of 5,000 square feet, maybe even 10,000 square feet, then you would have a roof that would maybe want to, could support a larger system than that. And for some reason, But this is the size of a system that can render even the large home net zero, as well as basically providing the energy for a couple of vehicles. So that seems to be the intent here. And I think that 25 kilowatts seems to be reasonable for that purpose.

And it's all by yes, yes, yes, across the board for every district. Any comments about that?

Doug? Well, I thought the conversation we had before was not about the maximum, the 25 kilowatts. It was about the minimum. And Johanna had cited the plug-in solar voltaic panels that you can buy and just plug into a 120-volt outlet. which, you know, they only have a few hundred kilowatts, and would they be subject to this? And then there's the kinds of, there's the solar panels that feed the crosswalks that are around town. Are they subject to this? So I think that was more the conversation about, is there some minimum below which we don't want to have to get into a whole permit protocol?

But isn't, if I may, Doug, doesn't YES across the board basically avoid having to get into any permit protocols?

Well, you've still got to apply, you know, put in an application to the building commissioner.

For a building permit.

Right. So, I mean, I think that was the conversation. I'm not sure where it should go.

One of the suggestions was, and this would jump us all the way back to the very beginning, but I'll just read it out loud. But this is a statement that would be that I'm going to suggest that we add to the very first section of 1802 applicability that with the sentence that says, this does not apply to building integrated BES or consumer-grade plug-in systems, SPI. And that is trying to address that this whole bylaw does not apply to that level of equipment. And that's where we really want Rob to be able to weigh in and say, tell us what you don't want to have to administer, essentially. Bruce?

I think that's the way to do it and not trying to have a table for it. I agree.

Yeah, good. Okay, so this is an administrative yes. These are all, again, accessory uses for Tier 2 equipment. which is solar photovoltaic system, again, building-mounted canopy or ground-mounted, greater than 25 kilowatts, but up to 250 kilowatts and or best at 1,000 kilowatts. There is administrative approval needed in RORLD and neighborhood residents. Then in other zones, it is not approved, except when you get to business village center, business neighborhood, commercial, maybe office park, light industry, PRP, and again, FPC, which we could talk about. And that's by the permit granting authority for the principal use of what's coming before those boards. Karen Hollweg, Any comments.

Dave Kuntz, I guess i'm i've been puzzled why we have the nose across the in those zones and why why we're not at least allowing it. Dave Kuntz, Under the permit granting authority.

What are we trying to discourage here by doing this? Somebody's trying to discourage larger systems that are accessory to the principal use.

I'm not sure why we want to discourage that, I guess is where I'm coming from.

Maybe Bruce's conversation about the size of parcel required to meet some of those numbers is more than we want in a residential district because we would rather have housing. I don't know.

Bruce. I agree with Doug. Because this is accessory to something else, you've got a principal use and then a regulatory process associated with that. so i would think it would be quite logical to have no nose here because we're only talking accessory uses and of course this is a fairly large one so here you might it might be for example that the what's happening here is you've got a very large house and somebody i i don't know for some reason or other they might be wanting to use very inefficient No, the size would be there. I think that Doug's right. I would support the amendment that's extended by permitting grounding authority for principal use all the way across to the RN, which is a yes. It makes sense to me. I think we entrust the permit grounding authority and then they can figure out whether it's a no or not. We don't tell them what it has to be.

SPR would not be a no. There would be no no associated with SPR.

Well, where it says by permitting grant, it's by permit granting authority. So wouldn't we just extend that regulatory control to BL, BG, RF, and RG, and RVC? That seems to be logical.

Can I just ask, by permit granting, this is a clarification, by permit granting authority for principal use, what does the for principal use mean?

It means the primary use, if you go to the use table, which is table three in the bylaw, it lists hundreds of primary uses across town, things that are allowed or not allowed in every district. And so it could be residential, it could be mechanic shop, whatever that use is.

Oh, I'm sorry. So it's not saying that the principal use of whatever the parcel is would be solar. This would it's still accessory.

This whole table is accessory only. Great. And what struck me is that for tier three, which is even bigger, it's by permit granting authority for the principal use across the board, which seems to me, you know, more, certainly more flexible than, than the nose for tier two, which are smaller. So that confused me.

I would agree with Bruce and extend that in tier two. Great.

Done. That's fine, Bruce. You can take credit for it.

Great. Thank you, Walker. Good. So we will, again, we will send this all to KP Law. They are also not solar experts, I will say, but they will hopefully be looking at this from the legal perspective of, you know, how do we stack up and can we... Can we administer this fairly and equitably, you know, across town. Okay. You all did really well. That was good. We have section 6.2, which is fences. And it just simply tells us that this section doesn't apply to fencing that encloses SPI or BESS. In this document, in Article 18, we do cover fences, and that's where we describe what's required and what's allowed. But we'll add this wording to Section 6.2. JoAnne Hanrahan- definitions, we talked a little bit about we already have the comment in there that a minimum size should be specified for best and also for SPI for definitions, so when we go to. JoAnne Hanrahan- We may want to borrow some of that wording of this is, you know permanent permanently connected. JoAnne Hanrahan- Whatever.

Non-consumer?

Yeah.

Or commercial?

Commercial grade. Yeah. Any comments that people had on definitions?

Well, for the ground-mounted SPI, if we're going to change the upper limit of Tier 2, to 2,500, we should change the 1,000 that's listed here. Good catch. However, in the spirit of only saying things once and not have to chase them all over a document, you might consider changing this to just say something like, the sizes are as defined in Section 18. Or in the table or whatever table three or. Wherever else we had it.

Same for the standalone bus.

Of course, we didn't talk about changing those either.

And that way, if we change the table. And or the description, it will, well, this is the description, but we don't, you're right. We don't have to say it twice.

We only have to do it once.

I love it.

And Pam, I think you're trying to make the same comment that you've made for 12 for ground mounted for the standalone vests. In other words, yes, yes, yes.

Great, thank you, Walker. So we got through it, everybody.

Bruce. Where do we stand with the setback of arrays from private wells? I remember I contested that it needed to be 250 feet. I asserted that it needed to be closer to zero. And then we had the white paper that was circulated and I read that white paper and fundamentally it seemed to agree with what I was saying. Except that the concern seemed to be with stormwater management, which is right there at 1812. And so I thought, well, let's deal with it in 1812 where it already is and not try and deal with it differently by putting a 250 setback.

But so that you you got ahead of me, I was going to go back through the document and just say this is this. Oh, I'm sorry. That's OK. That's OK. Well, we'll just this jumps around a little bit. But we did, in fact, talk about setbacks.

Well, we had we had it in our packet. We had a separate document that was June 12 staff comments. Yep. Which had some of Mandy Joe's annotations of the document of Section 18, starting as 1808. And it went through a whole bunch of or several different things that we had left unresolved. Correct.

Pam, why don't you just go through it the way you intended? I'm sorry. That's okay.

That's okay. Stephanie, I'll get my thoughts together while she talks.

Thanks, Pam. I just wanted just to summarize for people that that staff comment sheet is in direct response to an email from Pam to staff about the outstanding issues. So all of it was basically a summary of all the comments that had been drafted and then organized so that staff could respond to them directly. So I just wanted to sort of reiterate that that's where that came from and why they're sort of organized the way there. And I apologize because nobody gave me a consistent format and how they responded. So I did my best to get them on one document.

Yes. So maybe, maybe it does make sense to, since this was literally in started out anyway, as is in the order from the document, you know, where, where the, the questions were being raised and we can, we can try to address it that way. So starting it back at the beginning on page one, we... So first of all, want to acknowledge that the area highlighted in pink are all of the... this and this and this section apply, this and this and this sections do not apply. And I think one of the things that once we are finished working through the documents, all of these, all of the numbers, all of the sections will get arranged in perhaps a more orderly manner. And therefore this pink section would change. We also would like to, organize it in a way that we could say all projects that come before, you know, that utilize this, uh, article apply are, are applied to, you know, items, sections one through 20 sections, 21 through 30, let's say only apply to the following so that it's really clear, um, who does or doesn't have to look at additional sections.

That was kind of not clear, I'm sure. Pam, do you think that's going to happen in the rejiggering that Mandy does tomorrow? No. For KP Law?

No. I don't think, well, I can talk with her. I'm not sure it's a lot of work.

Well, it has to happen at some point.

It does have to happen at some point. I can ask her if it's something, you know, what's hard is that you would see for your July 1 meeting, you would see a brand new document. It would look so different. You wouldn't be able to say, well, we had questions on Section 1803. Where did that go? So trying to keep it recognizable. Fred? Yes?

Fred, I think say something else. I think we heard you.

Maybe he was cursing.

I don't know. All right.

I don't know. So starting at the top.

So are we going through Stephanie's document or are we just going through the bylaw and referring to Stephanie's document?

I was going to go through the bylaw. Okay. If I can track it properly. Okay. Yeah. Section 18.02, applicability. This is where the exemption statement might work. And I'm going to read it off so Walker could understand. Janet Callahan- Added in as a comment for us and it could come right after the pink section. Janet Callahan- And that is a sentence that says does not apply this this article. Janet Callahan- Does not apply to building integrated best or consumer-grade plug-in systems comma modular SPI. And we can work on the wording later. But that's the intent of You know, if you're talking small battery pack, this does not apply. Yeah, it's hard to go from one document to the other. Sorry, folks. In in one of the comments. It's the hearing for the hearing to the minimization and mitigation need to be defined. And the answer is yes. minimization and mitigation do need to be defined and Aaron Jacques provided us That information. And definition. Great. Yeah, I think that's all we can do. I don't want to type it out here. Great. So once we have inserted something like this or resolved it, is it possible to go back and delete that question so that we can? Yes, thank you. Great. Okay. Sorry, it is difficult to jump back and forth. Section 180804. And I'm sure there are some that we're missing here.

It was just subparagraph M was the next one, right?

Yes. Well, actually, yes. Yes. Thank you. Proof of liability insurance and the building commissioner does say this makes much more sense to include in what the number is 18.21, 1821. And so all we would say is the owner or operator of the project shall provide the building commissioner with a certificate of insurance showing the property has sufficient liability and that short sentence, three-line sentence gets cut out of here.

And put into a You know, at the last page. Second to last page of Stephanie's document. You know, I thought he He thought it made more sense as a surety section.

Right, which is 18.21, 1821.

Yeah, so requiring the insurance at the time of application is unnecessary. Right.

Right. And it can just put in right there at the last. Yep. Right there.

Brett, I think we can hear you.

Great. Okay.

Are we deleting that prior to construction bit then?

Yes. In that paragraph that we just moved over? Yeah.

I would have been deleting There was a whole paragraph in surety or whatever it was that They talked about prior to construction that they would need to do that. Where were you just pasted it This Right. I mean,

I think this was- Assurity is different than proof of liability insurance.

Okay. So we're just leaving that and we're just adding this, okay.

Yeah, we're just adding that. It doesn't have to be, yeah. We'll get rid of the A. Right. So back to 1808, 04. 06. D, letter D. So these are all plans that are being required. Item number five says stormwater management plan. And what we heard from staff is that they actually need an EPA stormwater. It's SWPPP, stormwater management. prevention and protection plan. So we would, yep. So it's actually, stormwater.

I don't remember what the acronym is.

That's fine. There are three Ps. Perfect. Stormwater management plan and And soil, stormwater and soil management plan. Sorry. Yeah. And that comes, that soil management. Yeah.

And then erase the rest of that?

No, that can stay. Okay. But we want to bring over letter R. So it's just a little bit farther down. The soil management portion of this. I guess it's not. Yeah. So we want to include item number one, two, and three. And that goes over to the one we just did. And we'll, we'll do the wording. We'll take care of the wording afterwards. So, um, yeah, I think that, that, that the lettering just got messed up, but that's, that's okay. We'll figure it out. Um, scroll down a little bit farther to S and we all agreed that we did, we, we did not need the following in red. Um, So I think Erin had a comment that said, all of this would need specific criteria to make here. would need specific criteria, somebody would need to develop the criteria. And in fact, I think this whole section T ends up being covered as part of the site suitability scoring process that happens before an application is even submitted to the town. So this is this is this is good. We do not need to repeat it here. So that's resolved. Perfect.

I'm sorry, Pam. Can I just jump in real quick? Yep. Just in relation to tea, I think what Erin was saying, and I'm sorry if you were speaking, my dog was barking and I couldn't hear you. Her recommended language, and I don't know if you were going to include it, was... Just say at the discretion of the PGA, the following impact assessments may be required. So instead of deleting them entirely, you want to say that the PGA may require any of those like one through six under T. That's what she was recommending.

Okay.

I think because she had wanted, I mean, at first she was sort of advocating for saying that, you know, there'd be a reason to include these, but I was, in our discussion, I was saying that was really cumbersome. And so that's why her language was suggesting that they may be required.

Well, so how can you have something that may be required when you're trying to get a consolidated permit?

And you don't have any criteria for whatever it is.

I think she was saying at the discretion of the PGA, they may require any of these things.

But then they may require them based on what criteria? It's troublesome.

Okay. I'm just relaying what she did. I have advocated to remove them myself personally. I'm unconvinced. Okay. That's fine. I just wanted to make sure that I was clear about what she was recommending. Thank you. And I think...

It seems, and she may not be as familiar, she may not be familiar with the fact that all of that pre-filing, in fact, requires people to do these. This is where the list came from. It came from the state list and it will be covered in the pre-filing application. Does anybody feel strongly about keeping this? Yeah, I'm not seeing I'm not seeing any heads. So maybe we just make a note and just say, you know, this is this is covered in this is covered in the site suitability scoring process. Because two sections later, it says any section of this may be waived or modified by the PGA for compelling reasons. Okay. Under 1809.01, we did some work on this, but we also wanted to, I think the discussion was that in 1901, sorry, 1809.01.01, in the pink paragraph, we can get rid of pursuant to 310 CMR 22, and just simply start with solar photovoltaic installations are prohibited in zone one areas, unless permitted under provisions of blah, blah, blah. And then we add the word drinking water to 310 CMR 22. So people know probably the first reference to it. Great.

It's the second reference, actually.

Yeah. It should be the first one is up two lines farther up. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just within that paragraph, it shows up. Yeah, there. That's where it should be.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, And there's an extra word there. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, You don't need the but Um,

Okay, we just we just did comment three sorry i'm keeping track of what we covered here. comment five okay the section. Again I don't have the actual. section in our bylaw, but this is a section on. Location existence and location of private Wells on adjacent properties.

You're talking about 1809 a 103. And the disturbance area that yes.

Yes, the question was the question was how would we know that there is how do we know that there's a well there? And the answer is that the Board of Health, Department of Health keeps track of that. So we can at least answer that question.

And is this where we should start to talk about the distance?

This is exactly. Now we're at Bruce's section here.

So if I may, my argument is that the section on stormwater management and the disturbance, the concern is for how the ground might be eroded or something because of stormwater runoff. It's not a contamination concern. And aren't we doing a belt and braces thing here with those belt and suspenders? We've already got the requirement for stormwater management in spades. And now we're asking, I mean, if the stormwater is properly managed, this setback or this no disturbance area, shouldn't be necessary. And my concern is that when you start having these very large setbacks or whatever they're called, separation distances, you can sterilize. It seems that there are unintended consequences when you have these kind of blinkered notions about putting big numbers in for separation distances without really doing the math about how much land you're sterilizing by doing that. And I think because we've got a pretty solid commitment or obligation to manage the stormwater, I think we should just let the stormwater management happen in the section where it's addressed and not try and do a double duty here.

Okay, so we just did... some rearranging of stormwater management and soil management section. I'm gonna read Erin Jacques' comment. And this is where she said, yeah, we have Board of Health maps and records for private wells. The applicant would need to seek out this information. Yes, for new wells proposed near SPIs, Board of Health should be informed of this regulation and enforce it as they review and approve well sites. I'm not sure if they have been consulted on this document. I would agree that private wells are more vulnerable than public water supplies because once contaminated, they have no other viable drinking water source. And then she also says, I would argue, yes, solar panels can contaminate private wells. They contain heavy metals like lead, silver, cadmium, tellurium, copper, selenium, and PFAS, as well as chemical polymers that can be problematic if they enter surface or groundwater. This can happen anytime the panels are inadvertently damaged. And then finally, she says, from an equity standpoint, we should have the same setback for both public and private wells. This is a serious concern in environmental justice polygons in Amherst, where there is no public water service and landowners or renters may not have resources or ability to remediate private well contamination.

Go ahead. Um, if I can jump in, I noticed that the water supply committee white paper also talked about very, you know, some of these big setbacks and was recommending large setbacks. So that's another group that was advocating for some of this. Um, you know, everything else we've heard is that the solar panels really are not a contamination source. And so I'm puzzled why Erin is, or why she's saying that. So I don't know that I know any better, but I know differently. I'll leave it at there. And Pam, I do see a couple of hands.

Yep.

Angus. Yeah, I was just going to refer to that. really helpful white paper as well, which indicates no issues with bleaching of materials. The only thing they seem to think is worrisome is disturbance, hence the issue here. I guess what I struggle to understand is we don't, as far as I understand it, we don't have these kinds of no disturbance requirements for any other kind of building, do we? I think for public wells we might, but for private wells we don't. Is that accurate? Right.

Yes.

So I guess I would not want to put that in place. If someone could clear cut their land and build any number of other structures on it within distance from private wells, it doesn't seem to me like we should only ban solar panels. or best installations from doing that. So I would oppose these private well distances and potentially even reduce the public well distances, but I understand that they are a different thing than the private wells.

Bruce? I have a lot of respect for Erin Jacques, but in this particular instance, I think she's flat out wrong. She's referring to contamination from PVs and so forth. And as the white paper says, but it's not just the white paper, it's the whole industry. And as I said, the highest performing, most ecologically attuned buildings in the country are collecting their rainwater from PV arrays. So it's just nonsense. And I think, as Angus said, it's just nonsense. We shouldn't have this here. We should just get rid of it.

What are you suggesting that we?

I think I agree with Angus. If you can clear cut your area and build a bunch of houses and you don't have a 250 foot setback from a no disturbance from a private well, a PV array is going to be a lighter or most likely a lighter version of that. And the sense of contamination, which was the subject of Erin's concern with all of her things that come out of PV arrays and all this sort of stuff, is just rubbish. And so the basis for this requirement is inconsistent as Angus has pointed out and rubbish so far as contamination from PV arrays are concerned. So if the thing is here has been demonstrated to be A, inconsistent and B, nonsense, I can't see there's a case for keeping it.

So I'm seeing ground disturbance. We've talked about ground disturbance and contamination of public water supply can be surface runoff, sedimentation. Some really horrible examples happened in the hill towns where, you know, with all due respect to the project managers or whoever was doing it, they did not have safeguards in place for their stormwater management and their soil management.

That's right. And they were violating Section 18 or whatever, 12.

Right. So one of the white paper comments is that, in fact, it is typically the scale of ground clearing that really sets solar installations apart from your normal you know, build a house and put some fill in the back to put grass in with.

Well, Pam, we've already got the five acre maximum disturbance criteria elsewhere in this, which I know Aaron commented that was that consistent with state and federal regulations of some sort. You know, we had so You know, we have other provisions that are trying to prevent the kinds of events that had happened in those hill towns.

Yes. Well, to back off from my strident position, which I think is defensible, that it should be eliminated, why don't we just make it 50 feet instead of 250 feet? And then the principal concern of unintended consequences of sterilizing from private wells goes away because 50 feet is not going to make such a great difference that perhaps we need to go to the mat on. So keep it, but make it 50 feet and not 250 feet. And that probably applies to the next one as well.

So number 010105 is talking about a no disturbance area of 200 feet from zones A and B of a public water supply. I don't feel confident in overriding what the drinking water protection group recommends for protection of public water supplies. This affects a whole lot of people, not just me.

Well, just to 0103, take that 250 down too, because there are many more private wells, I imagine, than there are public wells, particularly in these outlying zones where these are likely to take place at scale. So I would argue for 50 feet rather than 250 feet on 090103, and then I'll shut up.

Well, Bruce, the water supply memo requested 100 for private wells.

Okay. It's rubbish, but let's do it.

I know. I mean, we're just trying to work with everybody here.

Yeah.

Maybe we could make the note. Let's add a note per drinking water protection recommendation. We can come back to that if we need to. And Doug, while you're in there reading, what do they recommend for the public water supply well or public surface water supply?

So for public water supply well, they would, I believe they would say 200 feet. Dave Kuntz, But while they say the mass dp would require a minimum of 200 feet, however, that committee is recommending 400 feet. Dave Kuntz, And then for a. Dave Kuntz, For zones A and B of a surface water drinking water source they're recommending 200 feet.

So if we if we if we include 200 feet for both of those.

Yeah, so so 05 is consistent with the drinking water committee. And the way we've edited 03 is consistent with the private well recommendation. Dave Kuntz, And then 204 would be either 200 or 400 you know they're recommending for but sounds like the state's okay with to. Dave Kuntz, I think we're the sense of at least. Dave Kuntz, A substantial portion, if not a majority of the planning board is that we want the lower numbers.

And maybe Walker, could you put like the 200 in complete so it's it's easy to see 400 versus 200. Thanks. Thank you. Great. Appreciate that.

And Pam Angus.

Yep, Angus. Go ahead.

Sorry, it's just the last thing I'll say about 03. Um, so I, I understand that the white paper notes that solar development is different from some other forms of development. Um, but we have no requirements for any private, any development happening with private wells currently. So this is exclusively going to limit development of solar panels along private wells. And unless the town has a plan to adopt other kinds of requirements on all other forms of development, including some development that is substantially worse for the land than solar photovoltaic installations, I would recommend not having any distance of any kind relating to private wells. And the white paper also noted that this is a very small amount of land in Amherst and the outlying areas where we are most likely to see this kind of development. So that's my final comment on it.

Thanks. Let's make under Powell-Walker per drinking water protection recommendation, we'll add that.

This is a requirement that applies only to solar development and seems extreme when all other development would not have this limitation or something like that.

Uniquely perverse.

So it doesn't mean that it doesn't, I mean, if you really think about this, it doesn't mean that 100 feet from the property line, there will be no disturbance because somebody's well could be 200 feet from the property line. So you would be clearing up to the edge of the solar property. We really don't know how badly this affects the developability of the land. Okay, let's move to Bess. Bess is, as people understand, a little bit different ball of wax. And we have the same, essentially the same statement. If we could go to the 0202 and make the same kind of change with pursuant to 310 CMR drinking and that just gets lifted that, yes, that gets lifted out and and Karen's drinking water. Thank you. Perfect. Okay, now we can talk about the numbers. This is this is setbacks from best installed for best installations front side and rear setbacks of 50 feet measured from the property line.

What are the comments on the sheet that you are reading from, Doug, from staff?

Well, this memo, I'm having trouble finding anything. There is a section on battery energy storage systems. However, I don't see. Let's see. Oh, yes, maybe there is here. Dave Kuntz, So me bear with me a moment here yeah i'm. Dave Kuntz, All right, well i'm not seeing. Dave Kuntz, They say no no best units located within zone one for a public water supply, which apparently is a 400 feet.

I think that this is much, much, much less concerning because, A, the BESS is a small micro fraction of the area that the arrays are taking. So you can simply design your site so that the BESS is outside of this. So I really don't see the damage. And that's number one. And number two is, as we've already confessed earlier in the evening, we really don't know as much about battery energy storage systems, or at least I don't. So I would just leave these alone and go with them because I don't think they're going to be discouraging or frustrating or cause any real problems.

Because of the ability to locate best somewhere within the property to meet these expectations.

Correct. You have far greater flexibility and you just say, okay, we'll move it away and we'll let it here. End of story.

Angus. Yeah, not to be a broken record, but I would also recommend removing the private well requirement. And I had trouble finding in the working in the white paper, their recommendation on private wells for bass. But I think for the public sources of water, it makes sense.

Yeah, I guess I'll add the no disturbance air for Oh, for the minimum no disturbance area of 600 feet. Dave Kuntz, So that's the one that this white paper said should be at least 400 feet. Dave Kuntz, And you know 600 feet that's two football fields right. Dave Kuntz, So that you know if you're talking about an installation that's not a huge industrial you know 20 acres if it's only five acres. Dave Kuntz, 600 feet could matter.

Dave Kuntz, But.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, That that's the one that I have a little trouble with HAB-Masyn Moyer, Andy.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, Yeah, I was gonna make the same point. In fact, the same two football fields. I mean, it's a it's a long. It's a long distance. So even if you're trying to orient your, your property, your, your, your, your personal so that it's as far away as possible that it might be difficult.

Brett KenCairn, Doesn't does oh for sort of duplicate oh five. I don't know enough about what constitutes a zone A and B of a public water supply.

But those are surface water. Brett KenCairn, Draws as opposed to public wells.

Brett KenCairn, Well, okay. Yeah. Okay.

Janet Callahan- So I'll point out that in 04 and 05, we're talking about no disturbance areas. So that doesn't mean you could put your best in the middle of your array because that array is obviously a cleared and graded site. It's not a no disturbance area. I would envision that if you needed 600 feet from a well, from public well, That's, you know, that might, in fact, encroach heavily in the SPI layout, Angus.

Well, I guess I just want to ask for clarification. With the photovoltaic installations, we're not worried about contaminants leaching from the installations themselves. We're worried about disturbance. And with BESS, it seems like it's the opposite. We're less worried with disturbance. It's a small installation. It won't take up that much land. But we are worried that in the event of an emergency, something could leach from the system, because that has happened in more instances. So I guess... I'm trying to understand why we're using the same no disturbance language for BESS when we should really be just banning BESS from within certain distances of the actual public water supplies.

Separation distance.

Yeah, I agree with that.

So do I.

So if we took out the word no disturbance area and said a minimum of 600 feet from a public well water supply shall be maintained.

Yeah, or a minimum separation distance of 600 feet.

Is that the same as a minimum distance?

Yeah, it just feels more legalese. Yeah.

And whether we go with 400 feet, which is the recommendation I thought from somebody.

Well, the white paper from the drinking water committee recommended 400 feet from a public water supply. And their wording did not get into no disturbance. It was just making sure the device was that distance away.

Doug, are you okay getting rid of the word separation? Sure. And then 05, we have...

Yeah, we do the same thing.

The same thing. Minimum distance of. Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

People, are people comfortable with this? Anybody, Angus, you got your hand up.

Yeah, just for 06, if Walker could make a similar comment to the one that I made above for the photovoltaic, that it doesn't seem reasonable to require this of BESS when we don't require it of any other kind of development.

Well, it is an industrial toxic item. Bomb, as somebody described it earlier. I am concerned about the health and welfare of people who live in this town who might end up with best next to them. And I would like to make sure that their water supply isn't damaged. Or the town would likely have to pay for water connection to those properties.

Yes, I don't support Angus's comment here, although I usually support Angus because he's a very thoughtful and rational human, but I don't support this one.

So Angus, Angus seems, says it seems unreasonable. Okay, I think, I think we hit that one. Did we did we do minimum disturbance or or or distance up in the 1809 a 103 is that. We didn't take that approach, did we. The people feel Okay, this is again, this is.

Yes, because of the array was a big area device. I think Angus hit the nail on the head when he said that the BESS is essentially a point source, whereas the arrays are broad area. So I think there's a consistency.

So does that mean keep the no disturbance area or change it to distance?

Well, no. This is the array, and we reduced

Just checking. Yep. Great. Okay. I think we can move on. We have, we had under 18-10-04. I just wanted to confirm that we had a response back from Erin Jacques that five acres is in fact the guideline and that number ought to hold. So we can accept that. Great. um. And I think we came to an understanding in 18-10-06, this is talking about materials, and we use the wording with some help from Johanna, I think that all solar photovoltaic panels installed in SPIs shall not release PFAS into the environment. And my reference to fencing is is under 1810 oh eight it's that last paragraph and I just wanted to point out that instead of changing 6.2 fencing section we're covering fencing here under. Clean energy.

So. Dave Kuntz, This is you're referring to 1810 away right. Yes, well, would it makes. Dave Kuntz, So we're considering fencing to be screening. We could have action. The section does not talk like if I'm just scanning through Section 18 to try to find where I've been sent from section from Article six. And I see the heading that says screening and planning. It doesn't say fencing, so I would pass right by this.

And let's make a new section heading than 18. We can either add it to the end. Well, after signage, is there text that you wanted to add? Here? Or is the text that's already here? It's the text that's already here. I just wanted to point out that we have the text relative to to fencing.

So, so all we need to do is change the title to screening fencing and planting or something.

Okay. Yep. That sounds good. Thank you. Okay. Great. The comment in in I'm just going through the list of what was talked about 1811. 0, 1, 0, 3, there was a request for. The word product versus components and and it was noted from the fire department that product is fine. So we can. Write that off. We can write that off. Exactly. Product is okay. Now, 1811-0107, we now get into, again, we had a staff, the Amherst Fire Department, and they were comfortable with item A, which says, remember the discussion, do we need... there's water and then there's other means of fire suppression. And the comment was that under A, NFPA 855 recommended use of water, et cetera, unless alternative fire protection strategies or agents are proven effective. And the comment from fire department was that sentence says it all, that phrase says it all, it's fine. So we're okay with that section. Under 18 1101 09. We now have some wording that Oh, Jesse.

Thanks. Apologies for sidestepping the conversation. I'm looking at the attendees and I suspect there's people waiting for the historic district discussion. Are we going to get to that tonight, Doug? Or should we maybe postpone that they've been waiting probably for a couple of hours?

Brett KenCairn, yeah I think it's going to be just how long how late does this committee want to go, I think we've probably got another 15 or 20 minutes and whether we if we wanted to start that tonight I we could but. Brett KenCairn, we're not that's what i'm asking if you think we're going to postpone it and then yeah. So members of the public, if you're here for the historic district conversation, we're probably not going to talk about that tonight. We'll postpone it to a later meeting.

Thanks. All right. My apologies. I didn't realize there was another agenda item.

Oh, yeah. We were ambitious, Pam.

But go ahead. Okay. 18-11-01, I'm sure they've had a thrilling evening. 18-11-01-09, fire department comes back and adds a sentence following that highlighted section. And it says, if PFAS fire suppression foams are indicated in the system design, comma, the foam shall be supplied by the applicant in accordance with Amherst Fire Department specifications.

Pam, you've passed over 08. And there was a comment, at least, from the fire department.

On 0108?

Yeah.

I didn't see that. In my handout. Okay. Okay. But let's, in this case, can we just get rid of this now? Our comment resolved. Thank you. Okay. You think you had something? I don't have any marks at all under 01-08.

I mean, in the, I guess it was Stephanie's document. Under 08, it's... There was red text after the text here that said NFPA 70 is the electric code, and we would defer this to Todd. I'm not sure who Todd is. At the same time, we appreciate the weatherproofing of electrical components and marking and labeling. So I think if there was a, I guess I don't see a comment, but I saw how somebody thought we needed to. Okay, so it looks like they were fine with it, so.

I think they're fine with it, yeah. Looks like they appreciate what we have in here. Okay. Okay, yeah, working backwards. So I did skip over some of the other ones. 18-11-01-07. Oh, we are. We already talked about that.

Yeah, I don't. That's the only one I think. Okay, good. Thank you.

I'm feeling like we have gotten through most of those comments and see if there's anything else. Karen Hollweg, Under 18 point 19.013 there was a question who decides if this is applicable, and the answer is wetland administrator. Karen Hollweg, In section 18.21.

We added the... Pam, if I could just interrupt. Where you have if applicable, and we asked the question, should you put in the text if deemed applicable by the wetlands administrator? Then it's clear who the applicant has to seek advice from. Could we put where it says if applicable or if deemed applicable,

by the wetlands administrator is that the phrase well if i actually if i read if i read the above though it's it lists fire department building commissioner board of health and concom um oh you think they'll figure it out so it it yeah i think okay i got you yeah good good Yeah, they're going to come to a point.

Well, Pam and Bruce, it's quite possible that I made this comment. I don't know if it's true or not. But the question is, who decides if they need to submit the reports to those three entities?

It's standard practice.

I think it would be a condition of their SWPPP or their order conditions.

Okay. All right. I'll drop it. I think my confusion about this kind of thing is who's making the call about whether you need to do something. And that's before you've submitted the reports. It's like, do you need to create the reports? I guess when we get one of these, we'll see whether all the lines of authority are clear.

Well, I think if you were to ask, Stephanie's on here still, but it doesn't go to Stephanie anymore, but if you think about Hickory Ridge, there are reports coming in, there are especially reports after heavy rain events, and They all are making sure that that the whole application and the conditions on the ground still meet the stormwater prevention pollution plan.

I mean I hate to belabor this but who decided that the reports needed to continue to be submitted.

Typically, it's part of the plan that's administered by the conservation agent. Yeah. So the conservation agent is the one who determines that reports should be sent in and for how long.

Okay. So I said wetland administrator should be conservation. Yeah, thank you. That ends the list of I think comments and feedback from town staff. Somebody tell me that I'm wrong. But I believe we hit all of those. So do you want to have a short conversation about next steps? Since it's nine o'clock? Sure. Bruce?

I'm just wondering whether this would be a time for any public comment. I don't have looked in the attendees, but...

Yeah, we still have one member. And I think he's here for this conversation. Member of the public. Pam, is it all right to bring over Steve?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. It is a public hearing after all.

Yeah. So, Pam, Field Sadler, can you bring over Steve?

Here I am, I believe.

Yes, welcome.

This is Steve Roof. I live in deep South Amherst. Again, wonderful job you guys are doing, really going over this in detail. I had on my list of concerns back in Section 18.10.04 under land clearing and soil erosion. There's a paragraph there about groundwater monitoring wells. that to my reading, it seems to establish a no disturbance zone of 100 feet around groundwater monitoring wells. I question whether that's needed at all. You had a discussion earlier about buffer or no disturbance zones for groundwater supply wells. I think groundwater monitoring wells are even less needing of protection. You might consider if that paragraph is necessary, And then the paragraph right afterwards about topsoil shall not be imported. I wonder if that's a requirement for other types of development and whether or not, second issue is whether or not the town of Amherst Department of Public Works has any criteria for approving imports of soil. So those two, I guess, yeah, both of them might fall under the, are these requirements, Steve Monowitz, Requirements of other sorts of developments or is it specific to solar and also whether either is necessary. Steve Monowitz, So.

John Potter, Thank you, Steve.

Steve Monowitz, All right, that's that's it for me, thank you.

John Potter, So that first paragraph. John Potter, We had noted as a comment. John Potter, And then look like stephanie you may be responded to that I see your hand up.

I just had a response regarding the distance from groundwater monitoring wells. Only that I know that there's been concern from DPW that when there's clearing, they sometimes get damaged. So maybe, I don't know that you want to eliminate a distance completely, but you might want to reduce it.

Would 50 feet, I mean 50 feet, and what you're talking about is if you get trucks and equipment in within 50 feet of a wellhead, it's really likely somebody will run over it.

Karen Hollweg, They could damage it correct yeah the idea was more to protect them from damage from equipment.

Dave Kuntz, What about language like that that just says you know groundwater groundwater monitoring well shall be protected from. Dave Kuntz, disturbance or damage. Dave Kuntz, period. Just damage period.

From construction activities.

It's not just construction activities. You want to keep them when the thing is operating as well.

Well, this is in the section on land clearing and soil erosion.

Okay. Got it.

Dave Kuntz, As as a part of design requirements, so I assume you'd have a civil drawing that locates shows the ground well ground monitoring well and then shows some sort of protection around it for the contractor to install. yeah. Dave Kuntz, And then, as far as topsoil is considered. Dave Kuntz, um. I can't think of whether there's any other sections of the bylaw that talk about that. Does anybody know?

I know that it's required in projects within wetland resource areas. I think the hope is to prevent someone from bringing in fill that contains contaminants or trash or something from somewhere. Usually in a construction project, you would submit a sample or a spec sheet about what kind of topsoil you are submitting and what the makeup of it is and where you're getting it from. I think that's pretty typical in construction projects. So I don't think this is particularly out of the ordinary.

Not onerous.

Yeah. I'm okay with leaving it.

Angus. Yeah, sorry, two quick questions. One, what does imported mean? Does it mean that it doesn't come from the site?

Yeah, correct.

So it could come from a parcel, from the next parcel over, and it would still be considered imported? Yeah. Okay. And I guess the other question I have is, do we currently, Walker, you're saying we currently require this of all projects?

If you're going to import topsoil, you're going to be supplying the town or the engineer with a spec sheet showing where this topsoil is coming from and what it's made of. So you're not importing trash or fill that's just, you know, refuse. Okay.

And so the town has to give approval, otherwise the project can't go forward.

Yeah, that's one of the... Because, you know, you want it to be topsoil that things are going to grow in. You want it to be topsoil that's free of contaminants. You don't want someone to be putting gravel or sand or something down.

Yeah, no, the justification makes sense. I just want to make sure that we're not putting additional regulations that aren't required. Thank you for clarifying.

So I think that actually addresses Mr. Roof's comment then. Okay. Good. So next steps. The CRC, like I said earlier, the CRC is not going to close its hearing until you folks do. It's nice to see everybody's with all the with all the now I can I can see. Um, so that I think maybe, um, planning board might want to have a short conversation about that. Uh, the CRC has a meeting on Thursday the 25th, and this is a topic for discussion. Um, I think if we, we probably need to vote tonight for the CRC to continue this hearing. to our next meeting, which is June 25. And at that point, we actually may continue it again until July, because we will all be waiting for feedback from KP Law, hopefully by the 10th of July.

Yeah, I expect we'll do the same thing. We're going to continue tonight to July 1st and then we'll continue to July 15th.

I had on my calendar, I jotted down joint with the planning board. Is that I don't know that we need to do that.

Which date, Pam?

I'm sorry, July 15th.

Well, we'll be meeting, and if you want to stop in.

We have nothing else to do that night.

Right. I mean, it'll be the first time we see KP Law's comments. And if you want to be together when we talk about that or apart, you know, I think we could probably go either way. I hope we have at least a short conversation about it on the 1st. Dave Kuntz, It. Dave Kuntz, sort of just among us planning board members, just to make just to see if everybody's comfortable with you know going forward with what we think we're doing. Dave Kuntz, And then. Dave Kuntz, Hopefully, we can recommend to I thought our recommendation was to counsel. It is. It's not to CRC. Okay. It's not to CRC. So I thought, you know, the 15th, we ought to be able to do that.

Okay. Okay. So actually given, I think I need Mandy Jo here tonight. I think if the CRC continues this hearing to the 23rd, that would be for us really the last date that we could close public hearing or, you know, absorb, absorb the information from KP law, discuss it, hopefully close the hearing and vote. But, but we don't really want to close our hearing until you folks do, because we're the ones that start the clock for everything else.

Okay. Well, are you asking for a promise that we're going to close on the 15th of July or are you just? No.

But maybe if you took a vote to continue it to the first or the 15th first, I guess. And then the CRC might also take a vote to continue it to the 23rd. so that we also get a chance to see the KP law comments.

So you're ready for us to close the hearing and go ahead. You're done talking about next steps?

You don't have to close the hearing, but just continue. I thought you were going to continue it. Right. Okay.

I came in and say goodbye to us.

Okay. All right. Yeah, I'm fine with doing that. So I move that we continue this hearing, the planning board hearing to July 1st. Pam Field Sadler, is there any reason not to do it at 6.35 p.m.?

Yes, there is. You actually have an application site plan review public hearing that's at 6.35 p.m.

All right. So, um, 6 45 p.m. And so that's a motion. Does anybody want to second that? Uh, Bruce just raised his hand to second it.

Yeah.

Planning board members. Any further discussion? No. All right. We'll vote. Uh, Bruce, starting with you to continue

Yes.

And let's see. Is Fred still with us? We have lost Fred. Okay. Angus. Aye. Jesse. Aye. Jarrah. Aye. And I'm an aye as well. Five in favor, one, two absent. So motion carries. We are continued to July 1st.

Great. And I think I'll make a motion that the CRC continue its hearing to, I think it's July 23. I think that's legit. Okay. Let's go to 23. And there are three of us here. So Jennifer. Yes. Andy.

Yes.

And Pam is a yes. I'm looking quickly just to make sure our other members not here. Okay, so we also will continue our hearing till the 23rd, July 23. And we thank you again and again for your time. And I really wanna say thanks to the CRC members who have been doing double duty.

Multiple meetings. Thank you very much for all of your service and joining us.

Thank you. And to Stephanie. Appreciate it. And Walker, where did Walker go? So if Walker could forward that document to me, to Stephanie, and we will get that documented as tonight's discussion, and it will go in the packet for It's going to get cleaned up with all those little additions taken out or edits, I mean, taken out. The remaining questions will be there and that document will be available for you all. And it will also go to KP Law. Thanks. Good night, everybody.

Good night, CRC. Planning board, we have at least one more thing we need to do tonight. So Pam field settler. Why don't we jump to the A&R A&R that we wanted to do tonight. Okay, so this is bring it up seven form a and our subdivision applications. Can you bring it up.

Mm hmm.

This was the properties on Pelham Road, right?

Yes, it is. All right. So here it is. Walker, do you want to talk about this? Sure. Give me two seconds.

Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. The lot, what they have labeled as lot three used to extend back behind lot one and lot two, and they are just extending the side lot lines straight back so that each of the lots is fairly close to the same size to give lot one and two larger lots, and lot three is getting smaller. They are all non-conforming as far as frontage, but this is not making them less non-conforming. So that's not an issue here. And as far as lot size, we're not making anybody less non-conforming as far as lot size. So it's pretty straightforward. There should be no reason not to approve it.

Okay, or Pam, can you go to either the previous page or the next page that would show the original, the current, yeah, the GIS map is probably it. Yeah, so that's the existing layout. Correct. With the one large lot and two smaller ones. And then go back to the previous one, which is now what's proposed.

Yep. This goes away.

All right. So are there any board members who feel that I should not sign this as a, you know, a subdivision is not required here, a subdivision application? All right. I'm not seeing any hands. All right. So we've got consensus on that. And Pam or Walker, I can make an appointment to stop by and sign the plan.

If you let me know, Doug, when you think you might be coming, I'll secure us a room.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right. I guess it's only 930. Does anybody, I mean, let me just run through the other sort of usual things. Are there any ZBA applications we need to know about, Pam or Walker?

Nope. I don't have a report. Nope.

All right. How about SPP, SPR, SUB applications? Sounds like we may have a project come in on the 1st.

We have 174 Amity, which I think I brought up at the last meeting as a site plan review for an affordable duplex.

Okay. So we'll have that at the next meeting.

All right. Doug, I should say that I'll be recusing myself from that, but I will be in the attendees. Well, if I was licensed, I would be the architect, but I'm not. But I'm functioning as the architect and the designer, and I'm deeply involved in this project. So I will be in the attendees and most interested in the outcome.

All right. Thanks, Bruce. Okay. I guess this is our last meeting of this cycle of appointments. So Johanna will come off the board. She told us at the last meeting that was her last meeting with us. And Jesse and Fred are renewing, I believe. So another couple of years with you guys. Thanks for renewing. Sure. More fun, Jesse.

As long as we can promise more meetings like tonight. Okay.

All right. Well, I don't have anything else to say other than I will see you in July. Walker or Pam, anything you want to say for staff?

No, the only thing I had was the design standards, and I mentioned that earlier.

Yeah. Okay. Time I see is 9.31 and we are adjourned. See you on July 1st. Good night. Good night, Pam.

Good night, Doug. We'll see you. Yes, send me an email when you want to come by.

Okay.

Recording stopped.

It'll probably be next week.

Okay. Sounds good.