Editorial: Heavy handed solar plan

Posted 6/12/19

There are good solar locations, like the the one at the closed Westport dump that was dedicated Tuesday, or a bigger one at the former Westport Stone and Sand.

Then there’s the sort off Main …

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Editorial: Heavy handed solar plan

Posted

There are good solar locations, like the the one at the closed Westport dump that was dedicated Tuesday, or a bigger one at the former Westport Stone and Sand.

Then there’s the sort off Main Road in Westport described by Borrego Solar last week, an 8-plus megawatt monstrosity woven around streams and wetlands at the cost of a good-sized forest and everything that lives there.

Planning board members were incredulous, with good reason.

The project unveiled by a team of spokesmen and engineers flies right in the face of just about everything town voters had in mind (all but unanimously) five weeks ago when they approved a new set of solar rules. The problem — Borrego submitted this plan before that vote so may enjoy some grandfathered rights enabling it to be heard under the old rules.

About all this project has going for it is that it is far from neighbors — the developers had good reason for hiding this one away in the woods. For instance:

• Voters, and they were emphatic on this, want the cutting of no more than 16 acres of trees to make way for solar. Some argued that that doesn’t go nearly far enough.

Borrego says it has to clear cut 32.5 acres of trees.

• The new rules require a 100-foot setback from wetlands. Borrego says it wants a 25-foot setback.

• Winding through this land are two cold water streams — hard to find habitat for rare cold water brook trout. The most serious threat to those streams, experts say, is warming. Asked how much all those sun-facing black panels and the loss of those trees’ shade will heat up runoff, a project engineer could offer no better than, that’s “a really tough question.”

• Much of the land is home to eastern box turtles, a species of concern due especially to habitat loss.

• Trees, it turns out, help sequester nitrogen, something the Westport River contains far too much of. This plan would cut trees by the thousand in the midst of a watershed.

Pressed on why so many trees must be destroyed and why the project can’t back off from wetlands, engineers said they need every last solar panel to balance the high cost of transporting the energy to the closest electric substation some 5.1 miles away.

But you knew that when you chose the site, a planning board member said. “This is a problem of your own making.”

The old bylaw, under which this applicant stakes its claim, may not have been restrictive enough when it came to tree cutting and setbacks.

But it did speak in general about what Westport wants — for instance, “The facility shall be designed to minimize impacts to agricultural and environmentally sensitive land.”

This land is about as “environmentally sensitive” as it gets but not much in the heavy handed Borrego plan qualifius as minimal impact.

Borrego, which says it wants a good relationship with Westport and has lots more projects in the works, is off to a bad start here.

Defense of this forest and these streams is a cause worth fighting for. Solar energy is a fine thing but there are places it simply does not belong.

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MIKE REGO

Mike Rego has worked at East Bay Newspapers since 2001, helping the company launch The Westport Shorelines. He soon after became a Sports Editor, spending the next 10-plus years in that role before taking over as editor of The East Providence Post in February of 2012. To contact Mike about The Post or to submit information, suggest story ideas or photo opportunities, etc. in East Providence, email mrego@eastbaymediagroup.com.