Editor’s note: This story by Fraces Mize was first published in the Valley News on Dec. 6.
HARTFORD — A proposal that appeared before the Hartford Planning Commission on Monday aims to add 15 acres of solar panels in a parcel off Route 14. But the plan would come at a cost to woods on the property, which has drawn outcry from nearby residents and calls for the town to get involved in the application process.
“I like to see solar panels everywhere,” Wilder resident Laura Simon said at the meeting. “But I am concerned about the clear-cut.”
The project would be built on land leased from Connecticut Valley Auto Actions behind its building, selling the 4.125 megawatts generated to Green Mountain Power, Vermont’s biggest utility provider. It would be one of the largest solar developments in the area, producing enough electricity to power around 1,000 homes.
“The reason we’re going to this size is to drive down the cost of power,” said Thomas Hand, co-founder of MHG, the Manchester-based company fronting the proposal. “We’re now at a point where we can be cost-effective against fossil fuels.”
The build-out itself would cost roughly $5 million, but the expansion comes at another kind of price. The project aims to cut down around 7 acres of trees on the site.
Simon, the Wilder resident, quoted multiple sections of the town plan that advised against cutting trees, such as Goal 3 in the “Natural Resources” section that calls on the town to “maintain and enhance the rural and urban forest cover.” Due to the damage the project would inflict on forested land, Simon urged that the town petition to become an intervening party in the permitting process.
The permitting process for the development is overseen by the Vermont Public Utility Commission. But the Hartford Planning Commission and Selectboard, as well as abutting landowners, can choose to become party to the application process.
Trees cleared wouldn’t go to waste; the wood would be burned or ground into chips for stormwater control, said Hand, MHG’s co-founder.
Planning Commission member Robin Adair Logan didn’t see that as an adequate tradeoff.
“Glad to hear that you’re cutting down carbon sinks, and then they’re going to be burned and put into the atmosphere,” Logan said. “That’s one step forward, two steps back as far as I can see.”
Logan also pushed back against Hand’s logic that said if his company didn’t cut down the trees, someone else would.
“We’re trying to move beyond that kind of thinking right now,” she said.
MHG has overseen roughly 20 developments of similar scale in southwestern Vermont, but this proposal marks the company’s first foray into the Upper Valley.
Siting the project off Route 14 is crucial to getting it through the strict permitting process, Hand said.
“If we proposed a system right along 14, we would be extremely unlikely to receive a permit from that,” he said. “Based on what we’ve experienced permitting 20-plus sites like that in Vermont, it wouldn’t make sense.”
Hand emphasized that a number of parties have interest in energy projects, and that some, such as the Public Utility Commission, have big sway. That turns finding a palatable location into a careful dance.
“If we go out and site projects that get denied, we lose money and go bankrupt. Our whole purpose is to find sites that we think are going to get approved,” he said in an interview. “Cost is very much not the first consideration for the (Public Utility Commission). In a place like Vermont where getting a permit is the key limiting factor, and that’s what we have to solve for.”
In September 2021, the PUC denied a smaller project proposed by MHG in Manchester due to aesthetic concerns.
“This is just the siting of energy projects,” Hand said with a vocal shrug.