SHAFTSBURY – Disagreements within the town have impacted the formulation of Shaftsbury’s first energy improvement plan, which, once approved, will become part of the town’s planning process.
The Select Board held the first of two public hearings on the plan after its regular meeting on Monday. The second public hearing will be held on September 23.
The plan, prepared between September 2023 and February 2024 by the Bennington County Regional Commission and the Shaftsbury Planning Commission, “summarizes energy use in Shaftsbury and what kind of changes need to be made in that energy use and production to meet the state’s goal of 90 percent renewable energy by 2050,” said Select Board Chair Naomi Miller.
“Every city and every region must bear the burden of adapting its own energy production and consumption,” she said.
Miller gave a summary of the plan at Monday’s hearing. The planning commission made recommendations that are scattered throughout the document. “These include restrictions related to solar and wind turbines,” she said.
“No solar installations will be permitted with solar panels covering more than 20 acres of land, and no wind turbines taller than 40 feet will be permitted,” the plan states.
“Having been on the Planning Commission when most of these things were going on, all I can say is that throughout the process, the commission tried to draw a clear line down the middle between the two sides of this issue,” Miller said. “This city is enormously divided. So what the Planning Commission did was create an end result that no one was going to be happy with in the end.”
Select Board Vice Chair Martha Cornwell served on the planning commission for most of the process of drafting the document. “There were very different opinions on things and we tried to come up with a plan that reflected all of the different perspectives of the community,” she said.
“It wasn’t a bell curve, it’s what you call a bimodal distribution,” Miller added. “There was very, very little overlap in the conditions and descriptions that people wanted.”
Particularly controversial is the planned 83-acre, 20-megawatt “Shaftsbury Solar” solar power plant on Holy Smoke Road.
The CEO of the company contracted to build the plant told the Select Board on Sept. 5 that he expects a decision from the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) to approve the project before the end of the year. Reed Wills, CEO of SunEast Development, said those involved expect the plant to be generating power in 2026.
Miller said the Enhanced Energy Plan’s restrictions would not affect this project because the plan was not in effect at the time of its proposal.
According to the local plan, taking existing solar generation into account, the Bennington County Regional Energy Plan in 2015 determined that Shaftsbury should develop an additional 10.5 MW of solar capacity by 2050 to meet regional and state energy goals. Miller said the Shaftsbury solar project would more than meet that requirement, but that doesn’t necessarily preclude more projects from being proposed.
“We don’t have it under control,” she said.
Two active opponents of the solar project spoke at the beginning of the session during the public hearing. They particularly expressed concerns about flooding and aesthetic aspects.
“As I have said many times in the past, we are not against solar energy, but we are against an industrial-scale solar farm in a small rural community,” said Dr. Michael Algus.
He expressed concern about flooding and erosion of Holy Smoke Road during construction.
“I think the city has to think about that. If the road floods, which is certainly going to happen during construction. Who is responsible for that? Is that part of the agreement with the host city? I don’t think so,” he said. “Is it Shaftsbury Solar? Is it the city of Shaftsbury that has to fix the road?”
Stella Ehrich is a painter who often paints landscapes that also include the property on which the facility is planned.
“My property borders Studio Hill Farm and I often go there to paint the landscape because the view up there is just incredible,” she said. “I have also brought groups of painters there to do landscape painting workshops and that has involved people from out of state because our state is known for its natural beauty.”
She said when she heard that the landscape was going to become the site of an industrial-sized dollar exhibition, she was a little devastated. “Because I certainly wouldn’t include that in any of my paintings,” she added. “I wouldn’t want to paint there either, because the landscape is important to me in the sense that when you have a continuous view of the natural beauty of fields and forests and grasslands, you get a sense of peace and serenity that I think we all share and recognize. And that’s why I wanted to know more about it.”
After a recent news article about Shaftsbury Solar, she realized that many people, including the Select Board, were unaware of the extensive research opponents had conducted on the project, Ehrich said.
“I hope that some of the experts who testified for us will also testify for you and that you will go through the same learning curve that I did throughout this entire process,” she said.
