PORTSMOUTH — The Town Council has pledged to do whatever it can to help residents of Redwood Farms and Overlook Point resolve their dispute with the Navy over the proposed location of a fence around a solar farm being developed between the two neighborhoods.

Naval Station Newport wants to build a seven-foot, chain-link fence directly on its property line surrounding land that was formerly used for fuel storage, but now targeted for a 22-megawatt photovoltaic farm on the Tank Farm 4 property in Portsmouth and the Tank Farm 5 property and former landfill at McAllister Point in Middletown.

In April the Navy entered into a 37-lease agreement with Solar Breakers LLC, a subsidiary of BQ Energy, to build and operate the solar array, which would be generating power by October 2019 under the current work schedule. 

Neighbors are not opposed to the solar farm but rather the Navy’s proposed fence line, which would be 50 feet closer to surrounding homes than the original 1940s barrier that was later removed due to lead paint contamination. 

Redwood Farms residents said when their homes were built in the 1960s, the town issued plat maps that did not accurately reflect their property lines. As a result, some neighbors’ property lines bump up against or cross over federal land, they said. Residents of Overlook Point, a 63-unit condo development built 17 years ago, expressed similar concerns.

More than 80 residents of the two neighborhoods signed a petition asking the council to request that the Navy restore the fence surrounding Tank Farm 4 to its original location further back from residential properties, as well as an easement for the small slivers of land that would remain outside the fence. 

They say their property values would decreas if the fence were to be moved to the Navy’s property boundary. “Who wants to buy a house with a ‘prison fence’ in the backyard?” the petition stated. 

The new fence would also change the way the neighborhoods have been used in previous years, neighbors said. In one case, the new fence boundary goes through a retaining wall and possibly through a deck post, which may require the deck’s removal, according to the petition.

“There are still a lot of unknowns,” abutter Amy Mullen of Harbor View Road told the council Monday night. 

The council unanimously approved a resolution in support of the residents, although the specific wording of that document wasn’t finalized Monday night. Town Solicitor Kevin Gavin said he and Town Clerk Jennifer West would need to first “tweak” the proposed resolution’s wording.

Council President Keith Hamilton said he found it “disturbing” that so many people “have gone on with their lives for 50 years and then they learn the property they thought was X is now Y.”