(Photo Source: Unsplash).
Three local laws that would govern solar energy projects in the town of Cortlandville were discussed at Wednesday’s Cortland County Planning Board meeting, which yielded a series of recommendations from the board on how to move forward.
The package of laws would still require a public hearing at a Cortlandville town board meeting and subsequent approval by the town’s governing body. After implementing the recommendations from the County Planning Board, the three local laws would be set for a public hearing in the near future.
The county planning board reviewed the laws due to the impact of property in the town, according to planner Alex Schultz.
The first law seeks to amend Cortlandville’s zoning code to permit solar energy systems. These systems would be separate into three tiers, the law states.
The first tier includes building-mounted or building-integrated systems and permits, which would be issued by the town’s code enforcement officer.
Tier two deals with ground-mounted systems on small scales, which according to the law are defined as “a solar photovoltaic system mounted on a structure, pole, or series of poles constructed specifically to support the system and are not attached to any other structure for the primary use of producing energy.” These systems can be up to 2,500-square-feet in total area, or about one-twentieth of an acre in size, the law states.
The third tier also deals with ground-mounted systems, but it is broken up into two categories. The smaller category is for ground-mounted systems up to 10 acres, and the larger category is for ground-mounted systems that are more than 10 acres.
Part of the recommendations from the county planning board include cleaner formatting that is more akin to that found in other local legislation. Schultz said it could be easily fixed as the town usually fixes up formatting before submitting the laws.
Another recommendation from the board, levied by Cortland County Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) officials, is to amend “section 9 (3) (F).” It refers to environmental impacts for tier three projects. This section states that said projects would be required to develop a vegetation management plan that “develops, implements, and maintains native vegetation.”
“This section should refer to ‘vegetation native to New York’ rather than simply ‘native vegetation,” Schultz said regarding the recommendations from SWCD. “If you leave it as is, applicants can claim that the vegetation within the project is native to the U.S.”
The board also had recommendations about the lighting measurements.
“(The law states) lighting design should be ‘specified to avoid offsite lighting effects to the greatest extent practicable,’” Schultz said. “I noted that since lighting can be effectively measured, it may be pertinent for the town to set the measurements to minimize ambiguity there.”
The second local law, dealing with battery energy storage systems (BEES), should “advance and protect the public health, safety, welfare, and quality of life in the town by creating regulations for the installation and use of battery energy storage systems,” the law states.
BEES are devices that enable energy from renewables, like solar and wind, to be stored and then released when customers need power most, according to National Grid’s website.
Under this ordinance, there are two tiers of BEES. The first one is designated for smaller systems that have an aggregate energy capacity that have a less than or equal to 600kWh, while second one is for those that have a capacity beyond 600kWh.
Applications for the first BEES set are permitted in all zoning districts and exempt from site plan review.
Applications for the second BEES set are subject to review by the planning board, require a special planning permit, and are permitted only in agriculture and industrial zoning districts.
Recommendations from the planning board hone in on the law’s section 8 (H) (11) to refer to project’s adhering to Cortlandville’s local laws and regulations along with DEC’s standards.
“(SWCD) officials noted this section should refer to both instead of just DEC standards,” Schultz said.
The third law, regulating PILOT agreements related to solar, should “ensure that the benefits of the community’s solar energy resources are available to the entire community by promoting the installation of solar energy generating equipment.”
PILOT agreement payments are made to compensate an entity for some or all of the property tax revenue lost due to tax exempt ownership or use of real property, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.
In the context of solar energy in Cortlandville, the proposed local law states: “(these pilots) grant reduced costs to system developers and energy consumers and provide a revenue stream to the entire community.”
These agreements, according to the law, do not apply to residential solar energy systems. They are defined as those installed on the roof of a residential property and meant to provide energy to the property. PILOT agreements mainly apply to projects seeking property tax exemptions.
The county planning board did not have any recommendations for this local law other than the standard compliance with the State Environmental Review Quality Act (SEQRA). The act applies to all three local laws and most other development projects in the state.
Michael Barylski, a former Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) employee and a member of the Cortlandville solar committee that helped draw up the local laws, labeled the Cortlandville ordinances as some of the most progressive solar legislation in the state.
“I am pretty happy and proud of the work we did as a whole,” he said. “We looked at probably 20 other town ordinances. We talked to DEC, the State Department of Agriculture and Markets, and the State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), in terms of trying to address the core concerns.”
