KNOX — Rebuffed by the village of Altamont in October, a solar-farm developer is pitching a new plan, on a new site, to a new jurisdiction: the town of Knox.

Engineers representing U.S. Solutions made an initial presentation to the Knox Planning Board on Nov. 10 for a 2.1-megawatt solar array on a 16-acre site just west of where the company first wanted to build.  Just inside Guilderland town limits on land owned by the Peter Young Center, that first plan —  for a nine-acre, two-megawatt solar array on a 60-acre parcel  — was shot down by Altamont after its village board’s referral committee found the application to be “deficient” in detail.  The village board recommended the application be disapproved; this would have required a supermajority vote by Guilderland’s zoning board for the project to proceed. U.S. Solutions then withdrew its application.

Although that  site was not within village boundaries, a  law empowers  Altamont to make recommendations on projects on its periphery. The area around and across from the Peter Young Center, which sits at the edge of the Helderberg escarpment, is not an officially designated historic district but it contains some notable architecture dating back to when a Victorian-era summer colony flourished above Altamont.  

Previously intended by U.S. Solutions to be the second in a two-solar-farm project, the proposed Knox farm will now stand alone if approved.

Justin Beiter, vice president of operations for U.S. Solutions, told the Knox Planning Board that the project would be the company’s first in New York State but that it has completed projects in New Jersey,  North Carolina, and Maryland, and is working on a new one in California. He said a bigger site in Ticonderoga and one in Glenmont are also on his company’s radar.

The 16-acre Knox site, from which 12 ½ acres of woodlands would be cleared —  the rest being meadowland —  sits  just across the town border that Knox shares with Guilderland.  Like the rejected site, it would  be located on land owned by the Peter Young Center on Route 156, the Berne-Altamont Road. The center’s  property is partly in Knox, partly in Guilderland.  If the project gets approved, U.S. Solutions would buy 29 acres in Knox  that are owned by the center, Beiter told The Enterprise. He says his company likes the idea of “helping to get the organization back on its feet.”

Young sat next to Beiter at the planning board meeting and told the board that his statewide organization — Peter Young Housing, Industries and Treatment —  has been losing a lot of money — about $800,000 a year — because of unfunded state mandates. It offers addiction-recovery programs and other programs across the state. The local center, Young told The Enterprise, is currently offering its facilities  to community activities like a recent basketball tournament held there. But he said an addiction recovery program targeted to veterans and paid for through grant money is being evaluated for the site. He estimates that 48  Peter Young programs around the state continue to operate but that an organization that once had 600 employees is now down to 90 statewide.

Young  said he welcomes not only the prospect of a solar farm nearby but also the solar school that would train solar installers and the indoor vertical farming facility that Beiter said his company would like to install in the center’s buildings. The complex was built as a seminary.

Beiter said his company, which “operates as Community 2.0,” is interested in sustainability in many forms.

He told the planning board that the new site is better than the first that his company wanted to build on. “The land slopes downward from Route 156 and the site is further from the road than the other site was.”  Three schematic  plans presented to the board show that the array would be about 300 feet from the road at its nearest point, and about 60 feet lower than the roadway at the array’s highest point, making it difficult if not impossible to see from people in passing cars, the applicants said.

Beiter said he told the engineers — LaBella Associates of Rochester — to “push the array as far back on the site as it would go” to further limit visibility from the road.

“The other thing we have going for us is the woodlands that make a natural buffer for the houses surrounding the site,” he said. The LaBella site plan shows about a half-dozen private residences that might have sight lines to the array.

An access road would be constructed from Route 156.  A fence — “the taller the better,” said planning board Chairman Robert Price — would surround a tear-shaped array that would contain 377 racks with 18 photovoltaic panels on each, for a total of 7,000 panels.

The rejected  site’s neighbors — especially Marc Roman, owner of a Revolutionary War-era stone house that was once the Old Stone Inn — had claimed that the Guilderland project would have caused aesthetic, ecological, and economic harm. Roman and his wife plan to someday operate a bed-and-breakfast inn in their home, which overlooks the rejected site.

Knox no novice

If approved, the Peter Young solar farm would be the second  power-from-the-sun facility to receive a greenlight from Knox, which is seeking Climate Smart Community status and eligibility for up to $100,000 in regional economic development grants. It describes itself as a solar-friendly town.  Helderberg Community Energy, based in Knox and run by a group of volunteers including Price, is promoting renewable energy throughout the Hilltowns.

Construction of Knox’s first solar farm, also 2-megawatts, is slated to begin in the spring, according to Rob Garrity, a project developer for Borrego Solar, another California-based company that claims to now have the largest market share among commercial EPC installers in New York State. EPC stands for engineering, procurement, and construction. Garrity told The Enterprise that the vetting that the Borrego project received by the planning board was perhaps the most thorough he has yet experienced.

Borrego is leasing farmland owned by David Whipple for its array. Less than one mile from the Peter Young site, the site’s  topography  — flat hayfields —  is not at all similar.  Though closer to road level than the proposed site, the Borrego array is set back hundreds of feet from both Route 156 and Old Stage Road. Existing vegetation, supplemented by new trees planted by Borrego, will also screen it from view.

“We are very paranoid about visibility,” Price told Beiter.

The Knox zoning ordinance was amended by the town board this summer in response to the Borrego application and in anticipation of more like it. Rather than establishing a required setback for nonresidential commercial solar projects, the town leaves setbacks and other requirements  to be decided by the planning board, on a case-by-case basis.

A three-phase power line — a requirement for solar farms that feed power to the grid after an inverter converts the direct current produced to usable alternating current — runs along Route 156.  Price said that “a mole we have inside National Grid” says that the substation just north of Altamont would have no problem handling the additional power from the two solar farms. A LaBella engineer said it could handle as much as an additional 6 megawatts.

Neighbors Still Concerned

No Knox residents spoke at the Nov. 10 meeting.  Nor did anyone with a home bordering the proposed site speak. But Roman, who was one of three audience members who spoke at the meeting,  said, “this site is still in close proximity” to his home and urged the board to insist on transparency. “We found about the [original] plan only because we happened to see someone scouting around,” he said.

He was invited to attend future planning board meetings and check for agendas on the town website. Board member Thomas Wolfe said, “This is a first step forward...Everyone will be kept in the loop.”

William Johnson, whose home on Route 156 is directly across from the rejected site, says he is still “very concerned about the visual impact” of the new proposal. “This is the western gateway to the village of Altamont...and part of its character,” he said.

Ruth Breitenbach, whose family’s property on the east side of Route 146 backs up to the Peter Young land, said she is concerned about the wildlife that abounds there, a stream that runs through the property, and about an old graveyard near the top of a waterfall.

Price told the engineers that at some point the board would need a site plan that shows Route 146, too. He advised the applicants, “You will have a lot of hoops to jump through.”

“Unfortunately for you,” said Price after describing all the requirements the board asked of Borrego, “we have had some practice with this, but maybe that’s a good thing.”

Board member Debra Nelson pressed Beiter on who was going to be the buyer of the power generated — the “uptaker” in solar-power parlance.  She said the preference would be for the uptakers to be “pre-identified.”

Beiter said several possible buyers had been approached but that recently a single  uptaker has made a commitment to buy all the power the array generates. He said he could not yet name who that buyer is.

Beiter told The Enterprise Friday that he had received an email from Price informing him that planning board members had visited the site. On the same day, a pickup truck belonging to North Country Ecological Services — the firm hired by U.S. Solar to a do a wetlands assessment — was parked on Route 156 near the site.

Beiter told The Enterprise that, once approved, the array should be up and running sometime next year.

Updated on Nov. 21, 2016: Peter Young supplied additional information on his Altamont center.