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Community Corner

Letter: Bullard Solar Zoning Would Harm Residents

Sandra O'Neil, a Holliston resident opposed to a proposed solar project on Bullard Street, sounds off against the zoning laws that could make it possible to construct.

Living in a residential neighborhood used to mean that you might have to deal with a new home on an empty lot, a development, or new septic systems or your neighbor’s new shed or porch. This is all changing. Now, because of the status Massachusetts Law 40A Section 3, solar exemption, residents are arguably no longer protected by the zoning we have counted on to protect us since 1926.

There are several local communities currently struggling with solar developers who wish to push large scale ground-mounted solar facilities into residential neighborhoods. Holliston is not alone, it’s happening in Lunenburg, Carver, Amesbury and Belchertown to name a few.

The push for green energy has translated into developers trying to take massive green landscapes, instead of using up the brown, industrial, or brownfield spaces dying for these projects. Make no mistake, these are industrial projects. The project in Holliston is almost 8 full acres of 10 foot high panels as close as 30 feet from residents’ homes. The rows upon rows of panels would be hard to mask, but what makes this project even more clearly industrial, besides the fact that everyone involved including the developer calls them industrial, two massive inverter stations that take the power from the panels and convert it. They make noise and they are big. This is industrial. If the Holliston site went online today, it would be the second largest facility in the state, second only to the Indian Orchard site in Springfield, which is a contaminated brownfield site – seems much more appropriate, no?

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A Lunenburg resident writes, “As sited, the little blue homes around this 20+ acre project will look out their second floor windows onto a sea of about 12,000 10 foot high black solar panel clusters surrounded by an 8 foot chain link fence and infrared video surveillance cameras. Something about this doesn’t seem Residential.”

So why do residential neighborhoods across the commonwealth find themselves fighting to keep their neighborhoods free of industrial, large scale power facilities?

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Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40A, Section 3. MGL 40A Section 3 states, “No zoning ordinance or by-law shall prohibit or unreasonably regulate the installation of solar energy systems or the building of structures that facilitate the collection of solar energy, except where necessary to protect the public health, safety or welfare.

The Department of Energy Resources, responsible for the Green Communities Act (MGL 25A, Section 10), states on their website, “it is not clear whether MGL ch. 40A Section 3 applies to the construction of large scale ground-mounted systems.” In fact, the first criterion to become a Green Community is to designate locations where these facilities should be permitted. If indeed, MGL 40A Section 3 were meant to indicate that they were as-of-right everywhere, why would this even be necessary?

The solar exemption was adopted in the 1980s. It’s reasonable to conclude that the legislature was attempting to make it easier to install solar on the roofs of homes and businesses for their own use, since large-scale solar wasn’t in existence at the time. It was not the intent of the legislature to force towns to permit large scale industrial uses in all zoning districts. Towns are within their rights to reject these industrial facilities as it should not be considered a prohibition of solar as was intended by the legislature.

The fact that this exemption has not yet been challenged should not keep local boards from doing what is right, and protecting residential neighborhoods from industrial development. All other exemptions in MGL 40A Sec3 have been challenged, the time has come to challenge the solar exemption.

Since the time of the Euclid decision in 1926, it has been clear that local municipalities are within their rights to restrict industrial uses in residential zones. Surely the Mass State Legislature is not trying to re-write the 1926 Euclid decision by forcing those same industrial facilities into our residential neighborhoods. In the 6-3 decision for which Justice Sutherland wrote the majority opinion he stated, “A nuisance may be merely the right thing in the wrong place – like a pig in the parlor instead of in the barnyard.” That seems to be what Holliston has here, a pig in a parlor. The project is a wonderful one that belongs in a more appropriate area; Justice Sutherland himself would certainly agree.

We all wish to support alternative energy, but what is the sense of destroying acres upon acres of beautiful green spaces in the name of green when we’ve got plenty of rooftops and brownfields. What kind of green is that?

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