Town Board - Regular Meeting

All right. Sh. Are we good? We are all set. Is there a motion to come out of executive session? I'll make the motion. I'll second. All those in favor? I I uh before we get into regular business, we do have a short statement that needs to be read by our attorney given the uh current events of the day.

Mr. Supervisor, as you are aware, your uh highway superintendent, John Riley, who is an elected official um this afternoon, was convicted by a jury in the Orange County Criminal Court of um assault two assault charges as well as nine weapon charges, all of which are felony counts. Pursuant to public officer section 31E, upon conviction of a felony, every office shall be deemed vacant upon the happening of that conviction. Pursuant to the criminal procedure law section 12 1.2, 20 subsection 13. A conviction means the entry of a uh plea of guilty to or a verdict of guilty um upon an accusatory in instrument. So what that means for the board's purposes is that the conviction is in effect as of the jury's reading of the verdict to the court. So, as of today, uh I have already been in um contact with the town's comproller, and as of today, uh John Riley's service to the town has been come to a conclusion. All pay and benefits will cease as effective tomorrow morning. I've also instructed your um controller to prepare the necessary Cobra paperwork with respect to health insurance benefits. I cannot speak to pension benefits as those are controlled by the New York State Retirement System. Um I have understand that um the town possessions have been returned to specifically the truck has been returned to the town barn um and is in currently in possession of the town. Um at this point uh the board is under New York state law uh specifically public officers law. The position is vacant. The board does not need to take an action to terminate the position. Uh that's already happened. Um, the board may authorize, if it so chooses, to have clerk Aala um issue a notice uh seeking letters of of interest uh to for those uh who wish to potentially serve in the for an appointment uh for the unexpired

uh portion of the term. I believe the term ends next year. Um but as you have done uh with prior vacancies, you've solicited letters of interest and that would be appropriate to do so at this point in time. Uh I will coordinate with the uh town controller clerk Apolla as to appropriate notices uh and under the law uh as well as obtain for you uh written notice of entry uh from the criminal court uh for Linda's Apolla's file. Y is there agreement on the board uh to direct the town clerk to uh submit those letter that that notice out for letters of interest? Yes. Yeah. Yes. All right. So town, can I motion on that, please?

We could do that. Is there a motion to uh direct town clerk Sapala to send out a notice for the open position for highway superintendent? I'll make the motion. Is there a second? I'll second. All those in favor? I I thank you. Anything else? Not on that issue. All right. Very good. Uh we can move forward then uh with our regular business of the day. We have uh first uh with our comprehensive plan uh we have a uh part of it battery storage uh and I believe we have representatives of IPA um and the fire risk alliance here to speak a little bit about it and we have a presentation of some sort as well. Yes.

Perfect. Yeah.

Uh supervisor Holdridge, members of the board, my name is Aean Riley. I'm from IPA power, senior manager of development. Also a resident of Cornwall, so nice easy drive for me. I'm very familiar with the town. Um I'm joined by Brian Frink from the Fire Risk Alliance and also Mr. and Pro Jane uh from the IPA government relations team. Um really appreciate you making time for us tonight. Um obviously we don't have anything uh proposed in the town yet. Um you guys are considering um updated best ordinance. Um and in light of recent events, we wanted to bring in some experts just to um present sort of the advances in battery technology and sort of the types of technology that we'll be employing. Um I want to just turn it over to Brian uh just to because I know he's got a great presentation set up for you all. So I'll turn over to him. Michelle, are we ready for the

good evening? Good evening.

Good evening. So, as Amon had mentioned, my name is Brian Fank. Uh, she gets the presentation up. I'll I'll start here. I'll kind of get into it right away. Uh, I'm a retired firefighter, New York City firefighter. Spent 38 years with the department the last 20 as a battalion commander in the Bronx. And when I retired roughly three years ago, I got into training firefighters on the hazards and response tactics for responding to these type of facilities. In addition to that, what I'll do is I'll come around and speak to AHJs who are struggling with the same issues you're struggling with. What's the right thing to do? What do we need to do as far as ordinances? What's the right distances? I'm sure you're going through all of this stuff. I I've seen some of your uh proposals. They look pretty good to me. I'm going to talk a little bit about the technology. The company I work for is a company called Fire and Risk Alliance. They do a lot of the testing. They're a nationally recognized testing laboratory as well as a fire engineering uh firm. I'm not an engineer. I just come with the fire background to give you the layman's terms on what's going on with these systems and hopefully be some sort of a resource for you if you have questions about batteries or these containers or events that have happened that hopefully I can fill some of those questions or answer those questions for you. So, I'll kick this off and uh I already introduced myself. I just want to talk a little bit about outdoor storage versus indoor storage. And if you've been involved in in researching battery events around the country, I'm sure you've heard of Moss Landing. Big event out in California. Gateway was an event in Long Island. Uh I live on Long Island. I was at that facility uh prior to the fire and after the fire. Those were indoor storage facilities. And there's a difference between indoor and outdoor storage. Just skip to the new one. Next one. When they put batteries inside of a structure, they need to sprinkle that structure. The problem with that is if

there's a thermal runaway event, the sprinkler head will activate. As we all know, water and electric do not mix well together. When those sprinkler heads go off, they short out additional racks of batteries that were not involved in the incident. And what happens is it spreads the fire throughout the entire facility. That's why those events in California and on Long Island got to be bigger events. What IPA is proposing here would not be an indoor facility. And in my own opinion, I'm I'm not convinced that indoor uh should be built right now until they get better engineering for indoor facilities. What they're proposing is an outdoor facility. Skip down just a little bit. This is what an indoor facility looks like inside. The sprinkler heads go off. They drench all these open racks of batteries and that's what spreads the fire. One more outdoor storage. Exactly what it says. There's individual containers of battery cells on a lot. There's a limited number of batteries inside of each one of these containers. So you don't have that big wide open space with all of those batteries and all of those cells vulnerable to an event. So, if you have an event in an outdoor facility, typically it's limited to the container or a couple of containers around it. Now, I know you had three fires at an event up here in Warwick, one very recently. That particular event had some problems with their design. It had to do with their cabinet design. When I first saw that design, I've worked on several projects that they've used those batteries. What happens is when there's heavy weather, sideways rain, it gets into those cabinets, much like the sprinklers do in an indoor facility, it shorted out additional batteries inside those containers and spread the fire. The other thing I saw with their design, and that's specific to this one company who is now in bankruptcy as a result of that, is that they had pierced holes through one cabinet into the other to run conduit through it. So, it spread

the flammable gases into additional containers and allowed the fire to spread. Obviously, they're not going to be using that cabinet design and it's a flawed design. Nobody should be using it anymore. They should have replaced those cabinets after the first fire in my opinion. That's just my opinion. So, we'll go inside the enclosures. They take individual cells, they put them into something called a module, and then they put the modules inside of racks, and the racks go into these containers. Next slide. This is what a cell looks like. It's about the size of a motorcycle battery. It's a little bit different than the the batteries that you'll see like in electric vehicles or in your cell phones and laptops. These are a little bit larger and they're something called a prismatic cell battery. Next slide. In this particular design of this piece piece of equipment, there's 96 cells in each one of these modules. And then those modules are slipped into a container. Next slide. That's what it looks like. Those are the batteries stacked inside of a container. Just to give you an idea of how these things are set up. Go to the next one. Now, what these containers require now, there was an event in Arizona back in 2019 where some firefighters were injured and it was a result of one, in my opinion, one of the biggest problems was lack of training for those firefighters. The other part was there was no explosion protection in that design. It's required now. So either they have to have some sort of defleation panels that will lift in case there's some sort of an event there or a ventilation system to keep it from getting into an explosive range.

If I could just I'm sorry to interrupt. Uh would that new sort of design prevents any sort of the strategy for fighting these from what I've talked to the fire department about is letting it burn out. What would change given this design?

It wouldn't change that part of it. Most most fire departments have come to realize and most of them I've learned through vehicle fires because there haven't been that many best fires around for anyone to be an expert on those. But what happens is that once a battery module goes into a thermal runaway event, cells get damaged in there, cells will start to propagate and spread. So even if the fire department could stop the propagation, they're not going to be able to put the fire out because when those things go into thermal runaway, the pressurees coming out of each individual cell is over 100 PSI. You can't get any cooling agent into the cell to stop that fire.

So what fire departments thought they could do is cool the adjoining cells to keep it from propagating spreading. But what they found is that if they do that, and that's why many tow companies won't tow electric vehicles anymore that have had an event like that, is that there's damaged cells inside that module that can reignite at a later time. So, the best option is to allow that entire module to burn up. If it burns up, there's no energy left in the cells. They cannot reignite.

So, that's why fire departments have taken the stance. And it's not the only type of fire that'll do that. If you get a CNG tanker that overturns on a highway, they're going to do the same thing because putting it out is more dangerous than just letting it burn and protecting exposures, it's the same kind of mentality that they're using and it's the best uh tactical decision they can make. Thank you. You're welcome. And please stop me if you've got any other questions that So that's nothing that can even be smothered basically.

Correct. Yeah. I I've got a video of and I didn't put it here because I knew I had a limited amount of time I could speak to you, but we took an individual cell, one of those prismatic cells, and we sent it in the thermal runaway and we threw it in a bucket of water, five gallon bucket of water. It did absolutely nothing. Nothing. So, soil or anything else, it's blowing out. It's going to continue to blow out no matter what you do to it. You know, some fire departments have taken the option, yeah, we'll dig a hole in the side of the road and we'll bury the car. Well, the problem with that is it's still offging. Those gases can still be ignited and there's a lot of products out on the market that state they can stop thermal runaway. We have not found a single one that actually can do that. What's the scary part of that is you have transit tunnels and stuff like that. A lot of things go go up in a tunnel.

You've got flammable gases in the tunnel, right? Yeah. I'm I'm scary.

I It is, you know, and I'm to tell you the truth from a fire chief's perspective, I'm not worried about these outdoor ones that they're building. I'm concerned with I'm more concerned with parking garages with cars being in them. Two firefighters were killed in Spain this past summer in that type of an event. Right. And where we've had the greatest incident of injuries and deaths is in people's houses. As you know, in New York City, we've had multiple deaths and many, many structural fires as a result of ebikes and scooters. Please, if you've got them in your houses, don't be charging them indoors. Don't let your kids keep them in their in their in bedrooms. That's what's going to hurt or kill people are what you have in your house. These things out in a field someplace, that's the least of your worries. And most fire chiefs who I train around the country on a regular basis, they've come to the uh conclusion as well that these aren't our biggest hazards in our response areas. We need to know how to deal with them and we need to be competent in have good training on it and that's what I hope.

How do you handle the gases that come off of this? So the gases and that's a great question. So the gases when it's an outdoor facility, the gases dissipate pretty rapidly. What you see coming off these, if there is an actual fire, for the most part, if it's on fire, the gases coming that are venting from that cell are being consumed by the fire. You're getting the plastics because many of the plastic housings of the batteries, you're getting the plastics and the insulation. So you're getting a smell, not a toxicity.

Correct. If you look at and I've got a slide towards the end that talks about events that have occurred where they have taken measurements on what's coming off of it and it's it's I'll I'll use the analogy if you're running your vehicle and it's not an electric vehicle inside your garage, right? You can be injured or killed by the the carbon monoxide coming off that. You can stand next to the outside and it's not going to hurt you. Same with the batteries. If they're in a confined space, those gases can be tox can be either harmful or deadly. But if it's outdoors, they dissipate rapidly and they drift off. I'll wait until I get to that slide to kind of give you some

information on that. So, the other thing you want to be asking them about too is what subchemistry. They're all lithium ion batteries, but they're subchemistries. There's the nickel manganese cobalt batteries. Those were used in the earlier versions of these systems. The newer systems are not using these, but this is where you got the heavy metals, the nickel, the manganese, and the cobalt. That's what gave you contaminants in the soil if you were going to get contaminants. The newer, and I shouldn't say newer, they've both been around the same amount of time. It's just they've moved towards using Next slide, lithium ion phosphate batteries. So, and people keep asking about, well, there's metal lithium inside lithium ion batteries, and there's actually not. It's a lithium salt. It's not a lithium metal. The only other metals inside of this are going to be the iron and the phosphate. Those are not heavy metals. So, you're not going to get the contamination that you would with an NMC. And to tell you the truth, even the events that have had the NMC batteries involved, they've done soil and water sampling after the fact, and he didn't find harmful levels. I I was actually surprised out in East Hampton when they had that fire because that burned for quite a long time because it was a big facility full of batteries and they did extensive um uh testing of the soil and the water around there and they didn't come up with that. There's an event in California the same thing. I was burn it's everything's burning off bas because it's such a hot fire. I I believe that now out in Heath Hampton and there's please don't repeat all of this but inside the structure you can have soot on the inside of the structure that could have some of those metals out in East Hampton they were using the NMC batteries not the LFPs so you could have soot put in the ground in the water they didn't have that issue and the one in California they did not either. So we'll go to the next. So these are the gases that come off these batteries.

Now these gases are captured when they do large scale testing and actually cell level testing on these batteries. The three main gases that come off a lithium ion battery are carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen. Those are by far making up most of the fumes or the gases coming off the batteries. There are other hydrocarbons that come off of that, but those are the main ones. And those are the ones I always key in with the fire departments because hydrogen's very flammable and they they need to know what they're doing dealing with. We'll go to the next slide. So people and firefighters themselves said, "Well, if these fires are so dangerous and there's such bad chemicals coming off of them, how are we going to deal with this?" And I bring up this slide. This is what's released from a house fire. It's basically the same chemicals. I mean, I think we've kind of fooled ourselves over the years that we as firefighters were not being exposed to all these chemicals for years and years and years. And we we absolutely were. If you look at this list, very much the same as comes off of batteries. And when the plastics and the insulation are burning, that gives you all of these things, right? So, you can get these, but they're also on a normal structure fire. What are the difference in levels when you're saying this is in residential?

Yeah, that's a great question and there's levels that might be higher. Agreed. Agreed. And I couldn't get the levels for a houseire. There haven't been enough studies. Now, I know the firm I'm working with is getting ready to release a white paper on that. I'd be happy to send it to you if you'd like that after it gets released. Hopefully that identifies more of that for you. But any of these in a in an enclosed space can either injure you or kill you. You know, it's when they're outdoors that it's not if you're away from it, if you're not immediately adjacent to it. Because think about it. I don't know if any of your neighbors have ever had a house fire. I mean, you see people out there with a cell phone standing in the plume of smoke videoing the thing. What are you doing?

So, I got a question, too. when these projects are taking place in towns, villages, or wherever they're taking place, and you're zoning within these particular areas.

What zones seem to be the most prevalent or what areas are you looking at for placement of something like this rather than, you know, you don't want it near residential regardless of chemicals or anything coming off. What zones are they looking at? Yeah, I I mean I I've been I've been involved in the process. It it's all over the map to tell you the truth. You know, in more urban areas in New York City, they're putting them 10 feet away from that's what the code is. The A55 NFPA 855 requires 10 foot separation from exposures. So in New York City, they're putting battery containers 10 feet away from structures. Well, they don't have any room. Exactly. So

Exactly. And they need the power. And that's that's part of the problem. You know, there's a major problem with energy in New York State. We're all going to be feeling it very very soon. So I mean I understand like the rooftops or anything else. They're putting them there too. Look at they put them in hospitals on upper floors of hospitals in New York City which I am completely opposed to. You know how once it gets on fire but I mean it just but it's almost the safest place. It's away from everybody and up on the rooftops. Yeah. Not gonna because in the city Yeah. It's it's it's definitely a bigger problem for the city than in areas that aren't as that that's kind of our our issue possibly is where do we place something like so do you have commercial or industrial zones? Yes.

Listed out or you know areas where you see these need to be collate located with like transmissions right and and substations to make them effective they need to be near those type of structures so they can tie into that. So that's typically where they'll go. But you've already got hazards in that area if you have a substation there, right? You've got the big transformers. One building, I think it's Pep Boys in the uh village of Chester that has solar on the roof. I'll tell you what, I'd be less worried about the solar in the roof than what's inside that structure if it goes on fire.

To tell you the truth, you know, if you think what's coming off batteries is bad when one of those gets going. I've got a photo and I don't think I have it in here. Maybe it's the last slide of a Home Depot fire. I'm very concerned about that. If you see what a a battery container fire looks like, okay, yeah, there's smoke coming off it, but it's nothing like what you're gonna get off a structural fire. I have a question, but I'd like to I'd like you to get through the rest of your presentation here. I think you're towards the end almost. Okay. Yeah.

So, these are the the air, water, and soil contamination studies that were done. This one is particular to California. This was an a fire in Escandido, California, San Diego County. This was an indoor facility and they flowed water over a million gallons of water at this thing because it had the sprinkler system going the entire time. And they did extensive testing all the way around the facility as well as uh soil and water testing after the fact. And I thought for sure they were going to come up with high levels of contaminants in the soil and in the water. They came back, they did not have that. They actually reused the water that was in there for for wetting down construction sites, which was amazing to me. Um, they also and and firefighters had heard about hydro hydrofluoric acid that gets produced or hydro hydrofluoric u gases coming off these things. What we as firefighters were never really trained on was that when freon burns, it produces hydrofuloric acid, too. So, it's it's in many of the things that we respond to, but they did testing for hydrofuloric acid as well, and they did not come up with it at that site. If you see some of the there's a there's a um a UL standards 954A that regulates testing for batteries that go into these systems. I sit on that committee. I try to make it more stringent. Every time I they they hear me on one of these calls, they're like, "He's going to be asking for more testing," which I think is what we should be asking for. But they require testing on all of these type systems and all of these batteries. And we are trying to make it more stringent that if you have an event in one of these type facilities, it's limited to that one container. And the new newest version of that uh standard is going to require them to do a really large scale burn test with an entire

container on fire to make sure that the distance between equipment is sufficient so it does not spread. This is the New York This is just a summary of the New York State data collection and this was three events. Warwick was one of them that were involved in this thing and they did the air, water and soil sampling as well. they did not come up with elevated levels. Now, in the Warwick event, part of that could be because they were using LFP batteries. They were not using the NMC's. So, there were no heavy metals in those batteries. But I think the one of the biggest takeaways from this is that there were no reported injuries at any of these things and there were no harmful levels of contaminants at any one of these events. And that's been consistent around the country. When I first started seeing these reports coming out, when it was one that came out, I was there like that could be just an outlier. I I don't I'm not going to hang my hat on one, but then I started seeing additional reports coming out from around the country that were confirming what I saw in the first report. So, I feel pretty confident in these reports that I've been seeing. And this is kind of my point about on the right that was a large battery fire in a in a Tesla container in Australia. That was several years ago. That was a full container of batteries on fire on the right. And that is concerning because there is smoke coming off, but most of that smoke is probably from the battery casings and the insulation. And that's a Home Depot fire in San Jose, California. So, I know communities are very concerned about batteries, but we should be concerned about everything we build in our our locations, you know, and that's why when you mentioned Pep Boys or is there like, okay, firing one of those is going to be significant. It's empty now, but it's out of business. But

Oh, okay. So, you don't have to worry about that one then. Yeah. So, it's just trying to put this into perspective, and I use this for the firefighters when I do my training with them for them to understand if we understand the hazard, we can deal with the risks involved. As long as the firefighters are trained, they can operate safely around one of these events. Is that the That that is the presentation. So, thank you. Um my question really you mentioned preferably having this in a industrial zone. Um you also talked about you know your thoughts about this happening in cities and such and where they put it. We're more of a suburban rural area

where uh I believe the preferable site for uh this company's site is is is in a uh agricultural area. Um well not agriculture area it's an a zone um a three uh so it's less populated obviously than a residential neighborhood or a uh city per se but nonetheless there are uh houses surrounding and there's woods and uh such and everything. Um what what is your thought on having this near uh residences and and uh you know the foil foilage and all that? Yeah, I I I mean most of these sites get surrounded by trees and things anyway because the communities want that. They don't want to see it from the street. So I I it's not going to impact your the trees or the you know you're not going to get contaminants if all the data that I have seen soil water it's not going to be an issue even if you have an event there.

Housing I believe you guys are working on an ordinance that says 400 ft. I think you're in a very good place with that. That seems to be what many communities are asking for and I think it's backed up. The EPA came out with some recommendations recently, probably a few weeks ago, that they're talking about the need to evacuate possibly up to 330 ft. So, if you're at the 400t level uh mark, you're well within, you know, outside of that range. I I think you're in a pretty good place with what you're recommending. And again, I if you want the benefits of these batteries and and I'm telling you, if you if you speak to the utilities, they're going to tell you we're we're headed down a real bad road right now as far as needing electricity and and having brownouts and blackouts because many of the projects I've worked on are in Texas and California and they were experiencing summers and summers and summers of blackouts and brownouts. That's where we're headed. So, if they don't do something to be able to cover those peak times during the day, that's what batteries do. They cover the peak hours during the day, we're going to have that happening. It happens in Queens on every summer, right?

They have feeder lines go down in Queens.

So, I don't I'm not here to tell you what you should vote on or how you should vote. I'm trying to give you some information. And you can ask me as many questions you want tonight. I can leave you my card. If you have questions later, I'd be happy to answer them for you because it's a very tough decision for communities because there's just so much information out there and you're not quite sure what to believe and there's a there's some good information out there and there's some bad information out there. I'm hoping I'm giving you at least through my experience good information to be able to work with. Would we also look like with placement and heavy heavily used roadways? Would you also consider the 400 foot from any

So we're talking like the throughway or something. Yeah. I mean because we have 17, right? We have industrial properties right there along, you know, what's the throughway right now, right? So if you have one of those on fire, you're probably going to have far more contaminants and smoke coming off one of those than you would off battery container. I'm saying if we wanted to if we were planning placement of these type of units, would you keep them away from roadways the same as you would keep them away from structures?

Probably not to that extent. Probably not to that extent. If there if it's an outdoor facility, if it was an indoor facility, well, I'm not in favor of indoor right now anyway, but if it was an outdoor facility, I don't know if it's necessary to keep them 400 feet away. That's that's a pretty big number. You know, maybe 40 or 50 feet might not be a bad thing. I'm I'm just assuming that because you're saying the recommendation is to be four 300 something feet away from being recommended now. Why wouldn't we consider that too if we got you know because if it's backed up in the summer and you got cars just sitting there and same thing as sitting in a house. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a consideration.

Sure it is. It look I'm not going to tell you what's the right thing or what's the wrong thing. Typically the high the I would well I don't know what your roads are up here. I know on Long Island the Long Island Expressway is backed up constantly. So that means our Sunday Sunday afternoon from 11 o'clock in the morning till 10 11 o'clock at night. You could have that. It's backed up. Yeah, you might want to keep it away from there then. But you know in a perfect world you could do all of those things. You know you people in California, why don't you put them out in the desert? Well then you got to run transmission lines all the way from the desert to many many neighborhoods to get it to where it's got to go. I think think of all the the the aspects, you know, involved in it. If the thought process is to allow it to happen. Sure. Yeah. I I it's a lot to think about,

a lot to digest. I would speak to the utilities as well because they deal with they need to know that they have transmission lines that are going to be able to Exactly. you know, if you receive and and give to those projects and you don't want those, they call them genties, going through neighborhoods because now you're affecting many more more people getting the power from the batteries to where it's got to go and it's less effective. Do they try to associate this also with solar, you know, solar projects? Some do. Some will tie it to solar. Most of the ones I've worked on haven't been tied to solar.

Okay. But for solar to be really effective, if you're going down that road, if you think you want solar without the batteries, there's many times solar is making generating energy that's being wasted. It's not being used. So, if you can store that in batteries for when it can be used, it's it's more efficient. That's what it's designed to do, store energy when it's not needed, so it can release it back to the grid when it is. Do you think you do you think they would associate that now as part of the project? Uh well the utilities need it whether it's tied to solar or not. Yeah. You know they need to have but to get the to get the maximum efficiency out of the solar because you're only getting

but how many places can you really set up enough solar panels to make it worth your while? I mean you got to be this is one big project that's coming into Chester. Now we have another one that's already in place. Really? So you got enough land to be able to do that. I would be surprised if they didn't tie batteries to that at some point because it makes them much more efficient. But I know the county and the state are also looking to limit how much farmland is taken up by solar at this point because once they're done, you have contaminated soil and everything from solar panels. Unlike the battery storage, you're getting contaminants from those panels. It's no longer It's no longer farmland. That's a little concerning, right?

Yeah. I don't work on many projects with solar, so I'm not an expert on solar. Are there any questions from the town board pertaining to the battery storage facilities? I don't think you can leave your card for us. That would absolutely. Yeah, I'll leave you several in anything down there. I'm good. Right now, thank you. All right. Was there anything else that you guys wanted to say before? No. Um, we just, you know, so uh Brian is not really representative of our project, so any project specific questions. Um, yeah. be in fire alliance is a third party independent organization from us. We are obviously hosting them here but they are independent from us. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Anything project specific and what we're thinking um you know we are waiting for the zoning ordinance before we finalize a design obviously because we don't have uh we don't know what we're designing for yet. Um so uh we don't really have anything concrete but we're happy to share details uh with you guys um you know as we move along here. Okay, very good. What is What is the name of your company again? Mine uh the company I work for is IPA power. That's a Y PA. Um

thank you. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Um, just because I know we have two more members of the board and we haven't touched the comp plan in a while while special counsel did their work. Um, I hope tomorrow um because there's lots of documents. I'll be pulling draft documents into a folder that I'll share with you so that all the board members can see where we are as of now. And you know when I ask for direction or your planner Kristen asks for direction, you know what we're talking, you know, um but um give me tomorrow pull that together.

Very good. Um Stephen, is there somebody down that hallway there waiting for us? New 12 is still here. Yeah, I think Okay. Did they No, I've seen I've seen her wandering around. Yeah, she's

got it. All right. Uh let's move on to data data storage centers. Um so this is actually a hot button issue to those who don't follow national news. Uh large swaths of the country are up in arms regarding uh these data data storage centers uh being plopped down in in uh in towns and villages and counties all across the nation. Uh the fire um representative here that was just speaking about uh incoming blackouts actually uh very well could be attributed to these um increased battery data storage centers and these are for those of you at home who don't know what I'm talking about. They're basically set up to power all the AI sloth that we're seeing um on the interwebs. Uh so you know I I I you know I had uh I had some residents actually you know approach me about this more than one um and I'm very well aware of these things and I I agree with them that this is a good thing. I'm not sure if we would be a good fit for it, but just in the very case that we are, I would very much like to go ahead and just make it a part of our zoning changes um or comprehensive plan or whatever needs to be done uh to prevent it from coming in. uh they again are are attributing to the lack of power distribution on our networks and they also are poisoning uh water and they're also sucking up a lot large amount of water um to the to the degree where it is causing literal droughts um and you know poisoning the soil and such in these towns there there's a huge huge backlash if you just do a lick of research you will see um the length of which some communities are going to uh pressure their planning boards to shoot

down any sort of uh project that comes their way. So that that is my uh statement on that. I'm not sure what the rest of the board feels be honest with you. It's the first time I'm ever hearing of it this to be be honest. I I come from an area of not knowing anything about it. Yeah. Just for the fact that they need a lot of water. There's not an abundance of water here in the town. the village has a supply but they're also supplying things outside the village now. So without that capacity I don't guess I'll talk to you about that might be a deterrent in itself.

The water I think is the key thing here. Uh water is like the most important resource a municipality can have control over and and manage. Um and I do not want any of it going to something like this educate me on it. So I I'll I'll take some time with him just to And that's again why you know

to I think you you sent it to the whole board I believe. Correct. Yeah. So it must be in your email. I have maybe it's in your spam or something. I'm not sure. That was the one last night. No, that was a different one. And if you could resend it, I can resend it. I don't remember seeing it. I have it somewhere. Um, yeah. Are there any other comments on this at this time? No. Nope. All right. So, uh, Steve will talk to Bob, Liz will talk to Kristen. Huh? Nothing. Um, and then, uh, we will move forward, I guess, at a later date with a sort of decision on where to send the direction into. Good.

Yep. All right. Very good. Uh, all right. um zoning amendment discussion for the conference plan. Um at this time, did you want to head into attorney client privilege or did you want to do that after this? Um I really the one issue the one issue is attorney client. So we'll go into that afterwards. Yeah. Okay.

So I what I can say is um I anticipate special counsel concluding their uh their work. We did have a conference call the other day um to incorporate their recommendations uh to to start uh incorporating their recommendations um with some minor modifications to the um comp draft comprehensive plan and to the zoning code. Um I do want to discuss some of that in attorney client. Um but with that said, as I said at last night's board meeting, uh our our goal is to finalize those recommendations. Uh Kristen has some loose ends she's tying up on her end. Uh I'm tying some loose ends. I'm also finishing um for you um a pretty detailed response to public comment. Uh it's a fairly lengthy document going through all of the public comment that was received in writing or in um written uh comments. We're going through those uh pretty comprehensively. Uh and then I will circulate drafts internally for final revisions for the board. I hope to do that at the end of April, but knowing it's a busy time of year, that may turn into early May. I will do everything in my power to make that happen. Um once the board um is comfortable with the response to comments, final revisions, um and I will of course provide deadlines of those revisions. Um once the board is comfortable with those, we will introduce it, reintroduce it as an amendment. Um hold the public hold the public hearing. Um and then I anticipate um action time uh June, July to pull that together. So um I know we have two new board members. I'm happy if you want to have a sit down or even a a Zoom call. I can kind of show you um some of the highlights of of where your planner and my office have made recommendations.

Um, we have there are red lines available of the existing code versus what was initially proposed and you'll ultimately get a second red line which is a red line of just this round's changes and we hope that this is the last round of changes. Sounds good. Okay. Are there any questions for the attorney? No. Okay. Seeing none. Um, all right. We're going to head into attorney climbing privilege for just a couple minutes. Um, is there the motion? Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? I We'll be back.

All right.

Is there a motion to come out of attorney client privilege? I'll make the motion. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? I I Does the attorney have anything? Nope.

Okay. Uh last piece of regular business is the Chester TV channel. This is something little did people know out out there. Uh we have a Chester TV channel that was part of our um franchise agreement with Optimum um back in the day. It has been defunct um ever since I got on the board myself, probably longer before then. Uh there's been every single time it comes up there's discussions on you know maybe we should update this and make it actually workable um make it worth it to have it. However the cost to do so according to uh some uh experts in the field uh ranged last time we spoke about it which was last year uh somewhere between uh 15 and $20,000 to buy the equipment to make it necessary. Uh, I wanted to bring it to the board because I've molded around in my head. Um, I go back and forth between the cost isn't worth it and uh, we've moved on to YouTube and Facebook and other online services already. And then the other part of my head is says, well, there are some people that may or may not know how to do that all that. And, you know, I from time to time we get comments about uh, the the channel from um, some residents. So, I just wanted to put it to the board and see if there is any This was not budgeted for. It never makes the budget because it's never a priority um compared to other things uh going on going on in town. I just wanted to put it to the board. Is this something that we might want to uh use some fund balance if it's available uh to to upgrade the service for the channel, make it uh workable. And if not, then we can put it to bed and just let the franchise agreement die out.

I was just gonna ask you the franchise agreement because I know that was kind of that was I believe that expires in uh two years or so from from my memory, but I I could I know it was I could be mistaken. I just I listen I think at this point we just let it go because again, you know, the the whole idea of having this was to have interaction which we do get on a on a TV channel playing in the loop. you're not going to get any interaction from residents on it. And you know, it's uh I don't know how many views do we get that sometimes Michelle on there. I know I'm putting Yeah, we've had just people live streaming it. We've had to 40 people depending on the topic and what it's about, right?

But if you go to YouTube and look at the number of views and on Facebook, yes, I think we let it go. Why spend the money? One other thing the board might consider um it's not now but when the franchise agreement renews there's often a part of that franchise agreement company has to provide funds towards public um so that's part of the franchise agreement is it going to be $15,000 probably not but you may you may take a look at I think it was like three or 5,000 if I remember if I remember a while

there are funds as part of the franchise agreement equipment and other things Yeah, I remember just back when we were when we embarked on this, but it's been a while. Are there any other thoughts from the from the other board members? We haven't used it in this this length of time now. So, there's no sense in moving forward with it. I agree. I think it should be tabled. And if something in a new franchise agreement comes up that makes sense to us, we can revisit it. Yeah. Let the franchise die out. We have a communication outlet anyway that's been working well for us. So, I think we should stick with that. All right. Thank you all. Uh, is there any new business? What's for dinner?

Yeah. Is there any public comment tonight?

Yes. Chris Bower from Sugarloaf. I'm not opposed to clean energy or technology, but we must prioritize public safety, families, farms, and our communities character over profits and industry promises. The Fire and Risk Alliance is a forprofit fire engineering firm that helps battery energy and storage system developers navigate codes, dispel myths, and I put that in quotes. Train responders and secure approvals for these exact projects. Their work directly benefits battery storage and the data centers that that rely on it. We deserve transparency about whose interests they truly represent. Just miles away in Warwick, residents have already paid the price. On December 19th, 2025, a convergent energy lithium ion battery facility on Church Street caught fire. The third at their site in two years. The village condemned it for operating without a required certificate of compliance. The fire burned for hours, releasing toxic smoke with hydrogen cyanide, and proved once again that these fires cannot be disting extinguished without water. They must burn out while endangering air and land. This is not isolated. Lithium ion systems nationwide suffer thermal runaway, which he discussed, reignition, and toxic plumes. In Chester, near homes, farms, schools, and waterways. One incident could force evacuations, contaminate our environment, or overwhelm our volunteer fire departments. Data centers compound these

risks. They are massive energy hogs that strain our grid, drive up electrical bills, and worsen air pollution linked to respiratory issues and premature deaths. They consume millions of gallons of water daily for cool for cooling. unacceptable for our farms and reservoirs and generate constant industrial noise that destroys the quality of life. These projects also harm wlife. Largecale battery storage and data centers cause direct habitat loss, displacing birds, bats, mammals, and pollinators. Data centers add sensory pollution. 247 noise disrupts animal communication. Breeding and migration. Constant lighting confuses nocturnal species and migratory birds, and vast paved footprints destroy farmland, forests, and wetlands critical for local biodiversity. Chester's rural ecosystem cannot afford to become an industrial sacrifice zone. The industry promises new codes and mitigation that will make them safe or proves otherwise. Even with safeguards, it burned. Statewide moratorum proposals on data centers highlight the unadressed burdens of grid strain, water use, noise and pollution. This is why we need two separate local laws. Number one, a clear prohibition on large-scale lithium ion battery storage to eliminate fire and toxic threats. Number two, a targeted prohibition on data centers to protect our electricity, water, land, and quality of life. Other New York communities are acting. Chester must do the same before these projects arrive. I urge the council to listen to the people who live here every day, not paid consultants. Our children, first responders, farms, water, wildlife, and future deserve better than gambling on technology that has already failed next

door. Let's choose real safety and sustainability. Chester's future depends on it. Thank you. Tracy,

that was well said. I don't have anything prepared tonight. I'm just going to talk to you off cuff here. Um, I didn't know what the TV channel topic was going to be about. Um, one thing I I I agree that the price tag right now um doesn't sound um like a good idea. I'm just wondering I don't want to see the idea thrown out and look at it very limitedly. Um you had recently a tourism grant. Um a TV channel is not just to play the town meetings. It was used to promote park and wreck. Um it could be used by you know you could this has a potential to be um bigger than what it had been used for before as far as you know promoting things that we have in this community. uh businesses, sponsors, you know, maybe there ads um things like that that could be used really people are just surfing the TV. So, people have to go out of their way um to get on these channels and you have a very aging population and I can tell you my parents sit in front of the TV. They're not on computers anymore. They can barely look at their phones. So, um you know, they got their big screen TV and and they're just going to sit there and scroll through and maybe they'll stop on, you know, something of interest. other people probably do the same thing where they'll just be surfing. So, it has other potential for um promoting our community, not just, you know, for the purposes that you were talking about, but for getting people here to shop in our restaurants and and so forth. There Sugarloaf, you got your pack. You got all these other things going on. Um and maybe there's potential for I don't know what the legalities of getting other people to help cover the cost, but I just didn't I just don't want to throw it out unless you've really explored more of of the possibilities. You know, you have this thinking off top of my head, I remember there's things that the they were doing with summer camps with kids doing um musicals. Well, maybe there's a AV group. I mean, I don't know

what Chester's AV group is, but I know Monroberry had a really big one. So, I mean, there's just opportunities that can get a lot of other u people involved that may see can see more of value to it. So, we can't solicit money, but we certainly can accept it. Is that how that works? Somebody can uh that wants to donate, please uh send them our way. Okay. Okay. So, you can't advert you can't ask for advertising for something like that. I see. No, but I've also had the same thoughts of you as you. Everything you just said there, I I agree with wholeheartedly. And I have been looking for grants um since I've gotten on this board, but there are very few uh and far between for this sort of thing. But that doesn't mean I won't stop looking. Okay. Just wanted to just throw it out there that there may be things we're not thinking of yet.

Yep. So, that was all. Thank you for your time. Are there other any other public comment tonight? I have one comri.

Okay. Thank you. All right. All right, with that um is there a motion to adjurnn? Can I can I just say something before we adjourn? Um regarding uh data centers um in my experience um data centers come with um industrial generators um usually diesel power generators. Is there is there any um zoning or or regulation in the town on industrial diesel power generators that are completely fixed? That would be a good question for you.

It would be in the uniform. it would be in the uniform code. But we certainly I I have to have a conversation with Kristen about potential whether there's appropriate regulations and that's certainly an issue that the board can discuss whether there's further regulations but generally speaking power generators it would be either it's probably in the fire code. I think most of the businesses in the Chester Industrial Park have such generators and they're all diesel. Yeah. You can't you can't power a facility like that with a generator diesel not efficiently anyway. All right. Anything else?

No. All right. Um is there a motion to adjurnn? I'll make a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. All those in favor? I I We are now adjourned. Thank you.