Transcript: Pros and Cons of the Tiverton Solar Project
CLARICE: Good morning, everybody. And welcome to this week’s episode of Environmentally Speaking.
MARISA: Hi, everyone. I’m Marisa Desautel, an environmental attorney in Rhode Island.
CLARICE: And I’m Clarice, coming in with questions, comments, and topics. And this week’s topic is going to be a very local one. It is my hometown. We’re talking about the solar project that is actively under construction in Tiverton, Rhode Island.
MARISA: You’re from Tiverton?
CLARICE: Well, I was born in Fall River.
MARISA: Okay.
CLARICE: So I spent like, I think, zero to five, zero to six and then I spent up until college in Tiverton, so I grew up in Tiverton.
MARISA: Oh, okay. All right. So how do you feel about a solar farm being constructed there?
CLARICE: I have mixed thoughts on it. Let’s get into it.
MARISA: Okay. Tell us what’s happening.
CLARICE: From my understanding — and this project has changed in size several times, so currently this project is now, I believe, a 55-acre project, was once going to be a 63-acre project —
MARISA: Okay.
CLARICE: — a solar farm which is going in the place of what was a farm on Brayton Road. It’s now a — I believe it’s a Golden Retriever breeding business. For locals to the Tiverton area, it’s towards the end of Brayton Road where you start to go towards Lake and King.
MARISA: Wait. I’m interested in the Golden Retriever angle. Are they proposing the put the solar farm next to the Golden Retriever operation, or are they taking over it?
CLARICE: From my understanding that farm area just has — that property has so much extra land. I think they’re both — both businesses are going to be happening on there —
MARISA: Okay.
CLARICE: — or both activities.
MARISA: Because, I mean, let’s be honest, the dog is the more interesting —
CLARICE: Oh, yeah.
MARISA: — portion of the story, yeah.
CLARICE: I’d much rather talk about puppies.
MARISA: I would, too. Oh, puppies.
CLARICE: But now we’re going to talk about the chopping down of trees.
MARISA: And I’m going to be contributing in a, as usual, boring fashion because the information that I’m offering as part of today’s podcast has to do with the recent changes in net metering and distributed generation law in Rhode Island.
CLARICE: Which connects because Tiverton at the time had a — well, prior to this project had a very strict no solar project policy.
MARISA: Uh-huh.
CLARICE: And this project is the first of its kind in Tiverton, so all of that legislation had to be, I’m going to say, dramatically adjusted, repealed, rewritten to allow for this to be the first solar project of its kind.
[0:03:12] MARISA: That’s interesting because the changes to state law had to do with allowing commercial industrial-sized projects to be eligible under the net metering statute. There is also contemplation of projects being cited in core forests, but the issue of weather towns and cities want to enact what’s called a moratorium on these type of projects was not contemplated by state law. The fact that Tiverton is dealing with its first solar farm proposal is a zoning issue and I did not take a look at any of that information.
CLARICE: Oh, okay.
MARISA: Yeah. Go ahead. Tell us what happened.
CLARICE: There were a couple articles talking about Tiverton reconciling between moving from the moratorium to welcoming its first project.
MARISA: Oh, okay.
CLARICE: The articles were very short and essentially said what I had just said. They’re going from moratorium —
MARISA: Got it.
CLARICE: — to now first project.
MARISA: Got it.
CLARICE: They didn’t talk a lot about the details and how they got there.
MARISA: Okay.
CLARICE: But this is a large-scale project even though they’ve shrunk by ten percent. It’s still 55 acres.
MARISA: That’s a lot. And they’re proposing to cut trees down.
CLARICE: Yes. Yes.
MARISA: Okay.
CLARICE: They’re going to be clear-cutting, I believe, 74-ish acres. It’s just like just over 74 acres. From what I understand a large majority of the area is dead trees, so they’re trying to limit the amount of healthy trees that are being cut, but obviously there is going to be a lot of clear-cutting of healthy trees, as well.
MARISA: Okay.
CLARICE: I can’t imagine all 74 acres being exclusively dead.
MARISA: Yeah. I mean, wouldn’t that be convenient.
CLARICE: It would be a little suspicious. But they’re also talking about some concerns. The area proposed and current — and we’re saying proposed, but this build is currently happening. There is current construction. If you live in Tiverton, you’re going down Bulgarmarsh Road. You’re going down Brayton Road. You’ve dealt with this issue. I’ve heard that it’s been a rough start. I’ve heard that some folks have had some issues getting some mail, getting their trash just by the nature of the construction happening around residents.
MARISA: Yeah.
CLARICE: There’s also some concerns about vernal pools. I guess they’re very close to or close enough to be of concern to this farm. And there was some research done into what type of, I guess, aquatic life or amphibian life are living in there.
[0:06:04] MARISA: Yeah.
CLARICE: So it’s marbled salamander, I believe. Let me see. There are some frogs that are in there. I want to say I read black and white salamanders, but I’m not seeing that again, so I could be just making that up now. I’m doubting my research. But this is going to be the first of its kind and it’s going to be interesting to see how that goes and I have some mixed thoughts about it.
MARISA: Please share.
CLARICE: Keep in mind that this project has got a 200-foot setback or — yeah. I believe it’s a 200-foot setback, so from the road you’ll never know it’s there. It’s completely covered. It’s completely hidden, but in an aerial view it looks like patch of forest, large hole, solar farm in the middle.
MARISA: Yeah.
CLARICE: I’m wondering what were other things that could have been done, or where were other areas that these solar — did the solar farm essentially need to be all condensed to this one area to make it the max — to receive the max benefit, or could these solar panels have been broken up into smaller clumps into other areas to reduce the tree cutting? Is this a situation where — could we have put some of these on top of the high school, on top of the middle school, on top of the elementary schools, on top of the library in town hall? Could that taken away some of the acreage?
Could we have put — over in Fall River there is a local community college. On top of their parking lot, they put up a structure. It’s not a parking garage. It’s basically just a roof over the parking lot and they put solar panels on top of that. Is that a thing that could have been done? How much more expensive is that? Is there other alternatives to reduce the amount of undeveloped land that we’re now cutting into and affecting because, I mean, yes, these trees apparently are largely dead. I don’t know. I’m not out there. But there is still wildlife that’s using that area. Where is that wildlife now dislocated and going to be going? Where are those birds going to be making their nests? They don’t necessarily just leave the tree because the tree is dead.
You know, does it all need to be right there? How much of an impact is this going to have on that area? From what I’ve seen the Office of Energy Resources has done some studies on the area and everything that I saw about their studies simply talked about the effectiveness of the area, the amount of power that they could get from the area and how beneficial this is going to be to the ultimate goal of receiving electrical energy. I didn’t see any other — and it might just be they’ve published the most promising study. It might be that this is the only study I could find, but I didn’t see any other discussion of does it all need to be clumped here. What else could be done? I didn’t see any discussion of that and, again, I could be coming late to the game, so if anybody knows something let me know.
[0:09:52] MARISA: The questions that you’re asking are the questions that come up with solar projects, the size, the location, the issue with core forests being impacted. Just because a tree is dead doesn’t mean that it loses its value. It still provides habitat and shelter for various creatures, so that is an issue. It’s my understanding in working with some solar developers that it’s very difficult to site a solar project on only rooftop mounted or the example that you were talking about with the cars. That’s called a carport. So you can construct a carport and then put solar panels on top of that.
The problem is connectivity. You need a lot of land area to make a solar farm a viable and productive source of energy to interconnect to the existing grid with Rhode Island Energy. From a developer’s perspective, the bigger the better. Not to say that rooftop solar doesn’t have its — residential rooftop solar doesn’t have its merit, but from what I understand a lot of undeveloped area in Rhode Island that is beneficial to the solar industry are old growth forests and undeveloped forests, forests that have not been clear-cut or otherwise used for anything. They’re privately owned, but they’re open space, essentially. Excuse me.
So the issue with the core forest was something that the Rhode Island legislature touched on during this past legislative session and in both the net metering portion of the statute and the distributed generation portion of the statute the legislature really sought to minimize projects that would be going into these undeveloped forests. There’s a new statutory cap on the size of projects that can go into core forests and there is a new class of property that the legislature sought to prioritize. What I’m talking about is contaminated property.
If you’ve got an environmentally impacted property that also happens to be core forest, there are certain exceptions for solar development in those areas because the idea is we want those environmentally contaminated properties to be remediated appropriately and there should be some beneficial reuse. You know you’re not necessarily going to put residential properties because it’s contaminated and it’s a human health risk, but you could put some kind of passive technology on it like solar panels and beneficially reuse the property at least for the next 20 or 30 years, whatever the useful life is for the solar panels.
[0:13:12] CLARICE: Uh-huh.
MARISA: Those were two of the main changes to state law and I’m wondering –without having looked at the footprint for the project in Tiverton I’m wondering where it fits into that new regime under law. One other issue that you mentioned — or I think it was a question — had to do with, well, what else could we do with these areas. Number one, you could leave them alone, put them in some kind of conservation restriction. Or the other customary use of old growth forests that we see in Rhode Island is to clear-cut them and build subdivisions. There’s a lot of discussion in my industry about, well, what’s better. Of course no one wants to see a forest clear-cut except maybe a developer.
There is value to open space, but if you don’t own the open space you have no authority to tell someone what to do with their property. If someone wants to sell acreage and have it turned into a subdivision, they certainly can. So what’s the difference between that and solar? From a legal perspective there’s zoning and permitting issues, but people are allowed to do with their private property what they want to do. That’s one of the tenants of this country. It’s a tough debate. Personally, I would rather see a solar development go in than a subdivision. Ideally you don’t want anything to be clear-cut, but, again —
CLARICE: Yeah.
MARISA: — of the two that’s the lesser of the two evils, I think.
CLARICE: Oh, yeah. If those are my picks, I’m happier with the solar farm.
MARISA: Yeah.
CLARICE: Well, that’s the news in Tiverton.
MARISA: Yeah. These solar and offshore wind and renewable energy are very hot topics. And I know that we pick topics based on what has happened the week prior or the week that we’re in in the office and this was something that came up this week, so it was very timely. Good pick.
CLARICE: Yes. Thank you. And, specifically, this came up because it blocked the traffic for me. I was driving through Tiverton and I started seeing —
MARISA: Oh, that will do it.
CLARICE: — a ton of construction. I was like, what is happening.
MARISA: That will do it.
CLARICE: For folks who are in the Tiverton area, you know your reputation for being a very sleepy town.
MARISA: Yeah.
CLARICE: I was like, what’s going on over here. So we’ll keep an eye out, see how this goes. Hopefully, I mean, at the end of the day I hope the electric bill does go down. Who knows. If it is dead forest —
[0:16:02] MARISA: It’s not. It’s not going to. It’s going to go up.
CLARICE: Go up?
MARISA: Yeah. Renewable energy comes with a carrier cost. Yeah. Our energy prices are about to go up quite a bit.
CLARICE: Well, there’s that bad news we like to end on, folks.
MARISA: Yeah. Great.
CLARICE: If you have any questions, thoughts — has this affected your commute? Did you attend a town hall meeting? Have you been following this? Let us know. Reach out to us at info@DesautelBrowning.com. You can find us on the socials. We are at Desautel Browning on Instagram, Facebook. You can watch our videos on YouTube. Have a good one.
MARISA: Thank you.
