If everything works out right, in about a year, work could begin on a solar energy farm at the bottom of what is now a working gravel pit.
During a hearing of the Zoning Board of Appeals this week, several board members and one neighbor of the site praised the project, referring to it as potentially a “big improvement.”
“It’s going to be better than what’s going on in there now,” said Peter West, chairman on the Zoning Board of Appeals. “Way better.”
“I think it’s just great,” said site neighbor Maureen Curran. “We’re like, `Thumbs-up.’ ”
Neighbors abutting the Grove Street gravel pit, owned by John Duquette Jr., have raised concerns recently about noise and dust from the operation. The 5-megawatt solar farm would be spread over 22 acres.
When the solar installation is finished, there would be very little traffic or noise at the site other than a monthly monitoring visit by a technician or two in a pickup truck, according to a presentation to the board given by Daniel Lovett, civil engineer with Dalton-based Hill Engineers, Architects, Planners and Patrick Jackson, a principal in the New Hampshire-based solar firm Sun Raise Development.
“You’ll quickly notice a significant decrease in traffic and noise once the installation is done,” Jackson told the assembly. “It will be amazingly passive — just one or two pickup trucks about once a month. It will be a wonderful difference.”
The project had been approved to proceed in August, but in a smaller, 15-acre version. The new application is for 22 acres of solar panels in the bowl-shaped site below the grade visible from outside the pit.
Sun Raise would lease the pit from property owner Duquette, who would cease operations there, except for a smaller piece of land in the southeastern corner of his property where he could conduct occasional extractions, Lovett said.
The installation would be surrounded by fencing, and the on-site stormwater drainage system would simply direct stormwater to two retention ponds where the water would be contained to the site, Lovett noted.
The bottom surface of the pit would be graded and rows of photovoltaic panels installed, interspersed with a seeded, slow-growth, grass-type vegetation.
Jackson said they would get to work on construction earlier, but National Grid wouldn’t be ready to connect to the site until late in 2019 at the earliest.
The board unanimously approved a site variance and a special permit to allow the project to proceed.
The project will advance to the Planning Board in January for further clearances.
Jackson declined to disclose the financial elements of the project.
