Debate over the construction of the Natick Ave Solar facility has been going on for years, and with yet another discussion coming up at the plan commission meeting on Wednesday, April 19, many may find themselves wondering where things stand and how they got there.

“This project started in, I want to say, 2018,” Planning Director Jason Pezzullo said. “At the time the comprehensive plan and the zoning had been amended to allow for large scale solar facilities, by right, in the A80 zone, basically western Cranston.”

At that point the planning department had done at least two other major solar projects and as far as he could remember this would have been the third. Pezzullo said that the planning department first brought the matter to the Plan Commission in November or December of that year. The original master plan for the solar farm was then approved by the commission in early 2019. Shortly after that is when the plan was first appealed.

“The decision was first appealed to the city’s platting board of appeals, which is basically the zoning board wearing a different hat,” Pezzullo explained. “Platting upheld the approval and then the neighbors appealed it to superior court where the decision then sat for quite a while.”

The neighbors have several reasons to oppose the construction of the solar facility, according to Attorney Patrick Dougherty, who represents them. First and foremost among these reasons being the choice of location.

“In this case this was an ill thought out ordinance that was passed,” Dougherty said. “Basically it lays waste to all the residents of Western Cranston in the A80 district, by purporting to allow solar fields, by right, without any real measures of substantive control on the method in which they do it. We believe that this site is completely inappropriate and that they can’t possibly comply with the development standards due to the nature of the topography and the large amount of clear cutting that will occur over there and will result in this facility just being exposed to all the things around it.”

These concerns were echoed by one of the representative voices of the neighbors, Drake Patten. Patten, who owns Hurricane Hill Farm, has raised several concerns over the solar farm’s construction plan.

“There have been a lot of comments that we’re just obstructionist difficult people,” said Patten. “I think that’s really short sighted. We just care about the place we live. Our concern is not about renewables, in fact I think everyone opposing this is pro-renewable, but it is about where. It is about impact and about siting. When they started this, late 2018, we didn’t have these things built across the city, or state or even region so dramatically. We started looking for research in other parts of the country, and other countries, to look at good solar versus bad solar.”

Patten said that the neighbors have done the best they could to represent that while also considering their own needs as a neighborhood. Now in year five of the discussion, the concerns they had, some of which have become conditions of approval since the first time around, have proven to be a problem for communities all over Rhode Island and even the region, she said.

‘Bad place to do this’

“You have state agencies that are putting forth guidelines that could literally be written about the location of this project, and that’s no exaggeration,” explained Patten. “It’s like we’re the poster child for what not to do. For us the main issue is that this is a bad place to do solar. It’s really quite simple, maybe not in terms of the legal stuff, but for citizens it really is a bad location for this project.”

As an established residential community with a large number of properties abutting the proposed site and many of those residents chose the location for the rural conditions there, Patten said that putting in a large commercial use facility is inappropriate.

“That’s what it is,” said Patten. “It’s industrial commercial. It’s power production, and I think if that language was used it would be easier for people who don’t follow this to understand. This is the equivalent of a power plant moving into our residential community.”

With the objections of the residents out there, and knowing that the decision to approve the master plan could be overturned, Pezzullo said that the applicant, Natick Ave Solar LLC, and developer, Revity Energy LLC, chose to continue working on the plan in hopes the appeal would be denied based on the merits of the proposal. The platting board then decided to uphold the decision of the Plan Commission, at which point the neighbors moved their case to Superior Court.

The developer then spent the remainder of 2019, and into 2020, further honing the plan by working with a landscape architect hired by the city and talking to the neighbors while further refining their master plan before moving to the preliminary plan phase.

“There was no stay in effect,” said Attorney Robert Murray, representing the developer. “The developer chose to proceed forward with getting a permit from the Department of Environmental Management. Because there are wetlands on the property, we had to get what is called an insignificant alteration permit.”

As part of this process an ad hoc committee was put together in order to further hone the plan, as was ordered by the original master plan put forth by the developer. Murray said that the goal of this committee would be to work with the developer and landscapers in order to create a buffering plan to lessen the impact the solar farm might have on the neighbors.

On February 5, 2019, a letter was sent out to residents of the neighborhood informing them of the creation of an advisory committee, to be made up of two representatives of the residents, one representative from the planning department, one from the developer and a commissioner appointed by the chair of the Plan Commission.

“So we were able to work through this ad hoc process during the pandemic,” Pezzullo said. “We came to the conclusion of that part of the process and then the applicant again filed for the next phase, which is the preliminary. The preliminary is like the fully engineered version for which you have to have all the DEM permits, all the engineering and the site disturbance… anything.”

The preliminary plan was then heard by the commission over the course of several months before being approved by the plan commission. The original approval of the master plan could still be overturned, which was a risk, but if it was not then the developer would have used the time waiting for a decision by moving forward rather than standing still.

“When we went for preliminary approval, those plans reflected the input from that ad hoc committee that had worked with the neighbors,” Murray explained. “Mainly it focused on accounting for the concerns of landscaping and buffering. There was still an appeal in the Superior Court, but no stay was in effect and so the developer proceeded forth to get final approval.”

However, in 2022 the decision from Superior Court came through and said that there was a procedural error in the review process during the public comment section of the approval for the master plan, Pezzullo explained. The Superior Court acknowledged that the public had not been given the chance to comment on a few pieces of information put forth in the original master plan that were discussed after the public hearing had been closed.

Rewinding the tape

“So they remanded the whole thing,” Pezzullo said. “Rewind the tape all the way back to the master plan. That’s where we sit right now. The difference is that the master plan, now, looks more like a final plan. It’s a much more fleshed out and complete proposal now. It’s probably one of the most highly vetted projects I’ve ever seen.”

After three meetings on the master plan since it was remanded back to the Plan Commission Pezzullo said the public has yet to have a chance to make their comments on the master plan for a second time. At the April 19 meeting, he hopes, will be their chance to take the floor. While the attorney for the neighbors, Dougherty, has been able to call specific experts and witnesses to testify before the Plan Commission, the neighbors have not had a chance to speak for themselves.

“The neighbors were successful in lobbying the City Council to ban solar like this in Western Cranston,” Pezzullo said. “It’s not an approved use for the land anymore. However, because this project started before that zone change happened it’s vested, or grandfathered. You can’t just change the zoning and pull the rug out from under them.”

Attorney for the developer, Robert Murray, said that it isn’t just the area where the Natick Solar farm would be going that has been rezoned to no longer allow for projects such as this. The Solar ordinance that was passed, which would disallow this project if it were to have started now, completely removes the A80 zones from the list of approved areas for solar production.

“It is important to note that the ordinance that allowed this in the first place has been repealed,” Dougherty said. “It was repealed and replaced with a different one that restricted solar to other areas and had very tight constraints on the development standards for these types of things. What we’ve been doing is putting forth substantive arguments that this project and the development does not comport with the elements of the comprehensive plan.”

Dougherty said that the neighbors have submitted evidence to the Rhode Island Division of Statewide Planning along with their objections and findings that the ordinance in issue was not in compliance. He said that the department refused to approve the supposed amendment to the comprehensive plan and the zoning ordinance due feeling it was not in compliance with statewide objectives.

Since the original plans for the Natick Solar Farm were put forth, Dougherty said, a number of other projects have been put forth, and some have successfully been approved and built. The neighbors that Dougherty represents are still hoping that they will be able to stop this project in its tracks as they have done for the last four years.

“Our position is that we are grandfathered under the old ordinance,” Murray said. “We were issued a certificate of completeness, and we are proceeding forward under the old ordinance, frankly, because if the new ordinance applied then we wouldn’t be able to move forward on the property. Personally, I don’t think it’s even a close call.”

At their April 19 meeting the Plan Commission will once again hear the voice of the people whose day to day lives will be most affected by this construction. Those who wish to speak can attend the public meeting at 5:30 p.m. on the third floor of City Hall. The Plan Commission’s next general meeting will be on May 2 at 6:30 p.m.