Neighbors vow fight to prevent 2-acre solar array
Neighbors are promising a battle to stop a proposed 433-kilowatt solar power array that would cover about 2 acres at 355 Wurtemburg Road, adjacent to a historic church.
At a town Planning Board public hearing Monday evening, Hudson Solar owner Jeff Irish said the 16.1-acre site was selected because the array would be out of sight and near a Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. main connection line.
“There’s plenty of large parcels where you could site community solar, but Central Hudson does not have a three-phase feeder running nearby,” he said.
“Because it’s a flag lot ... it allows us to place the system essentially in the middle of the 16-acre parcel,” Irish said. “So, by doing that, we’re already ... 668 feet from Wurtemburg Road and we can be anywhere between 167 feet and 250 feet from any of the neighbors’ properties. Another thing we liked about it was the topography and the existing vegetation helps provide for screening.”
Irish said compressors that would be used to cool some of the equipment would be “residential” grade and intended to operate below decibel limits used in many municipalities. He said the site also would use plants that are pollinator-friendly and that security fencing would allow wildlife to pass through the array field.
The hearing attracted six speakers opposed to the project, two who supported the array and three who had questions without presenting a specific opinion.
Neighbors wanted to know who would hold the developer responsible if promises for visibility and noise were not kept. Several of the speakers said they expect their property values to decrease if the array is allowed.
“I have owned [a neighboring property] for about 15 years,” Philip Coratti said. “I have painstakingly restored it. I have rebuilt the stone walls ... rebuilt the original carriage barn to the farm that dates back to the 1700s, rebuilt the ponds, rebuilt the fields, so it is a really special and beautiful piece of property.”
Coratti said the solar plan “kind of blindsided me.”
“We spent all this time and all this money and all this effort, restoring a piece of property that was adjacent to a RC5 residential piece of land, and somehow, over the winter ... there was new zoning that allows an industrial operation next to
my property,” he said.
Resident Amanda Miller has contended there was a conflict of interest in writing the town solar law because Irish was on the committee that wrote the regulations. She told Planning Board members that the solar array amounted to a commercial operation that would affect the historic church adjacent to the site and that there has not been a way to make a realistic assessment of the visual impacts.
“Wurtemburg Road enjoys the second-highest concentration of National [Historic] Register sites in the entire town of Rhinebeck,” she said.
“The installation of a solar power plant ... will dominate the neighborhood and change the essential nature because there is no similar use in the area,” Miller said. “Even Hudson Solar’s own application material acknowledges this by admitting the adjoining and surround land uses are not commercial and not industrial.”
Resident Matt Rosenberg suggested the developer and Planning Board find a way to address the neighbors’ concerns, saying the project was an opportunity to develop a renewable energy source.
“There’s many, many houses in the town of Rhinebeck that just can’t viably have
solar on their own house and this offers and opportunity ... that isn’t available any other way,” he said.
The public hearing was recessed until Sept. 18, when the Planning Board expects to assume the lead role for the environmental review of the application.