Burlington-based Encore Renewable Energy has won approval from the state to build a 1.5-megawatt solar farm in South Burlington despite efforts by the city of Burlington that proponents say could have jeopardized the project.
The city of Burlington recently intervened in the project’s application, citing plans drafted by Burlington Airport officials that described a new highway exit and airport-access road that would have required using the same land on which Encore Renewable Energy’s project is slated.
To locate both the projected road and the solar project on the same parcel would have diminished the solar array’s size by as much as 40 percent, which would make its development no longer viable, according to the Public Service Board’s order, which was handed down late last week.
The city of South Burlington owns the plot on which the array will be built, and the municipality intends to use the electricity it produces to offset existing energy costs and to supply electricity to the local school district, according to the order.
The state’s approval comes too late to build the solar farm this year, but it’s a welcome event nevertheless, said Encore Renewable Energy vice president of development Derek Moretz.
“We’re thrilled to finally unlock the potential of the project,” Moretz said. “The Public Service Board, they reviewed the issue in exhaustive detail, and made a clear decision based on facts.
“Unfortunately the delay in the [certificate of public good] put a 2016 commissioning at risk, but there’s always next year,” he said. “The landfill isn’t going anywhere.”
The plot is located on top of an old landfill, which is now capped. The Public Service Board in its order said neither Burlington nor the airport had yet determined whether this subsurface could support the projected airport-access road. Neither Burlington nor the airport had identified funding sources for the road, the order states. Neither of those parties had secured any property rights to the land, either, nor had they demonstrated a need for another road, the order states.
The city of Burlington, acting as an intervenor in the case, had asked the Public Service Board to “remain cognizant of the [airport’s aspirations for a new road] and … not take actions that would foreclose implementation of this potential future project.” The board, Burlington’s attorney’s requested, should “make considerations for this future regional growth” in considering South Burlington’s application for the solar project.
Ideally, the project ought to be reconfigured to fit both the road and a shrunken solar project onto the same piece of land, Burlington representatives argued to the Public Service Board.
Otherwise, Burlington argued, the project “could potentially affect transportation and planned transit services in connection with the region’s only airport. Thus, it could materially interfere with the public’s use or access to that facility.”
Burlington authorities had no intention of hindering or preventing the project, in spite of these statements, Mayor Miro Weinberger said last month.
“The city is not opposed to the solar project,” Weinberger said in September. “We’d love to see solar move forward. It would be consistent with the city’s policy to support solar, and the airport is one of the major solar developers in the area. We’re pro-solar, full stop.”
South Burlington sought to prevent Burlington’s involvement. The airport road is “aspirational,” the town contended, the city of Burlington has no property rights to the land, and “the city of South Burlington has no intention of granting the city of Burlington rights to construct a highway on the parcel,” according to the Public Service Board’s ruling that granted Burlington involvement in the solar project’s permit process.
