PLAINFIELD — During a recent sit down with community members concerned about the future of solar development in town, Plainfield Planning Board Chair Peter Lapointe warned that more projects are coming to their tiny hamlet and to other communities throughout the region — and there’s not much municipalities can do to stop it.
“We’re all neighbors and we have to have the conversation to understand that we have a new neighbor coming to town,” Lapointe told community members. “And it may not be the one we want to see or the one we want to hang out with, but there’s going to be pressure for it to happen. And we ought to find a way for us as a community so when it happens we don’t have a lot of angst about a project.”
Lapointe’s meeting with these residents came in advance of the Planning Board’s public hearing last Wednesday, Oct. 22, that drew about a dozen residents to argue against a proposal that calls for construction of 23 acres of solar panels and a battery storage unit at at 67-acre site 66 North Union St. The project, proposed by New Leaf Energy of Lowell, calls for clearing of 30 acres of trees to make way for the panels.
But the conversation at that meeting soon shifted away from the project at hand to a suite of new state regulations set to kick in on March 1, 2026, that seek to streamline the siting and permitting process for solar developments. Among the changes are consolidation of state, regional and local permits into one master permit. The law also sets deadlines for how long a permit review can take and puts limits on the appeal process.
Towns like Plainfield, with immense land resources and an up-to-date substation, might face a wave of solar developments thanks to the rules, Lapointe said. He told residents that “the floodgate is open and they’re coming,” referring to solar developers. In just the past week he has heard from two other prospective applicants for solar developments in Plainfield.
Other towns, including Amherst, Shutesbury and Pelham, are also currently wrestling with the same debates around implementing large-scale solar arrays with lithium ion battery storage units.
“We’re all neighbors and we have to have the conversation to understand that we have a new neighbor coming to town.”
Peter Lapointe, Plainfield Planning Board Chair
To buy some time and develop zoning bylaws, the five-member Plainfield Planning Board last week unanimously voted to implement a six-month moratorium on applications for new solar projects. Next, the Select Board will need to announce a special Town Meeting for residents to ratify the moratorium.
It is unclear, at present, whether the moratorium would include the current applicant for a special permit, New Leaf Energy, said board members.
Going forward, the Planning Board will begin discussing zoning regulations not only for solar arrays, but other forms of renewable energy, including wind. Lapointe called on the community to maintain their trust in board members as they navigate the future.
Deliberations about the New Leaf Energy proposal will continue at the Planning Board’s next meeting in November.
Earlier this year, New Leaf representatives said the system they want to build on land owned by Robert Pytco would generate an estimated 12,900 megawatt hours of electricity, which is enough to power 1,800 homes. They said that over the next 20 years, the system would provide a net-grid emissions savings of approximately 116,000 metric tons of carbon emissions.
New Leaf has amended its plans in alignment with community concerns voiced thus far, said Brandon Smith, the project’s manager. These amendments include incorporating a 20-foot sound barrier wall surrounding the electrical equipment and battery energy storage units. The battery energy storage units have been reoriented so that the cooling fan that generates the most noise points east, away from residences.
Tree clearing from the 75-foot property line setback in the vicinity of the property of Paige Cerulli has been eliminated in the newest plans. New Leaf is also proposing native evergreen plantings for the landscape screening along the northwestern fence line, Smith said.
New Leaf’s development, if approved, would be the second solar development in Plainfield.
New regs, broad concern
The new state regulations, which have yet to be made official, are good news for array developers and are designed to help the sate in its goal toward statewide carbon neutrality by the year 2050.
But they are bad news for those who are opposed to the developments coming to their communities due to potential negative impacts, including deforestation and hazards surrounding contamination if batteries were to fail.
While new, safer technologies than lithium ion batteries are being developed, they are not yet on the market.
To give a metric of how much opposition New Leaf Energy has been met with, Lapointe said he has received “hundreds” of emails from people concerned about the project — and the town only has some 630 something residents.
Lapointe recently attended a webinar put on by the state’s Department of Energy Resources. This is where he learned about the incoming state regulations.
“What became clear to me is that the state is going to begin to tier the scale of the projects, to have a set of regulations for smaller scale arrays, a set of regulations for medium, and then one for larger scale,” said Lapointe. “And the larger scale arrays are going to be permitted on a statewide basis, and we will have no local control, and those are fairly large arrays. They would also include large storage capacity facilities.”
According to the state’s website, the reforms to regulation will consolidate and streamline the permitting process, among other changes.
Lapointe said towns were recommended to discuss the creation of zoning bylaws that would regulate where in their communities an array development would be allowed.
“However, we will not be allowed to prohibit them entirely …the recommendation to the towns is to begin to accommodate this growth,” he said.
Michael DeChiara, who chairs the Shutesbury Energy & Climate Action Committee and has been on the front lines of climate-related issues since the 1990s, said that while he advocates for solar panels and believes that climate change is an imminent threat, he also said that natural resources could stand to be impacted.
“Yes, we’re in a crisis, but where you put it and how you do it is important for the long term,” he said in a phone interview on Friday.
Forestland is the cheapest way for developers to find space for arrays, but this poses significant concerns, he said.
While solar panels produce electricity without carbon emissions, they do not, however, sequester carbon already in the atmosphere.
“There are no man-made ways to sequester carbon other than trees, soil, and wetlands,” he said. “We want to keep all the natural tools. You don’t want to take the things that are necessary. You need that as part of the solution. That is resiliency.”
Another huge issue involves water. DeChiara said the new proposed state regulations only address public drinking water and many of western Massachusetts communities are supported by private drinking wells that could be in danger if there were a battery fire.
In 2021, then Attorney General Maura Healey imposed a $1.1 million fine on Dynamic Energy after it violated federal stormwater requirements, damaging protected wetlands, and polluting the west branch of the Mill River in Williamsburg.
But water is also a key concern since so much of it is needed to counteract a failing lithium ion battery system. For example, for a Tesla car fire, it takes 6,000 gallons of water while industrial batteries require much more water applied over several days, DeChiara said.
“None of these towns have the available water,” he said.
One factor driving the need for more energy in the state is to have enough electricity for the expanded field of artificial intelligence. DeChiara believes the state shouldn’t be making the push for AI due to its potential negatives for the environment.
“AI requires tremendous amounts of electricity and siting data centers is quickly becoming the next area of tension for municipalities,” he said. “Data centers are the physical locations for the many computers that provide the processing power for AI. These require lots of energy and often times lots of water. If we want to address climate change seriously, we should not be promoting the large-scale development of AI.”
With all the potential hazards, DeChiara calls on the state and developers to prioritize “local knowledge.”
Stephanie Ciccarello, the Amherst sustainability coordinator, believes like DeChiara that solar energy is important to counteract climate change.
“In Amherst we support solar,” she said. “It’s not a matter of support or not to support.”
She does, however, worry about large-scale developments coming to town. In the current draft of new state regulations, 25 megawatt facilities, which are “enormous,” would not need local approval but only a permit from the state.
Currently, Amherst’s largest development is 3.4 megawatts by comparison, she said.
Ciccarello said the town is continuing to revise local rules to adhere with state bylaws regarding solar developments, adding that there is still time for proposed regulations to change before March 1.
Among other issues in a nearly silent town like Plainfield is the risk of ambient noise from the battery storage unit which has been a subject of conversations.
Noise is a particular concern for Plainfield resident Cerulli whose property abuts the proposed New Leaf development.
She also voiced Wednesday that such a project and more projects could devastate property values in town.