How close is too close for a commercial solar installation?
For John and Cindy Falzon of Westtown, the answer is a little over 100 feet from their back deck on County Route 62.
A neighbor, Minisink town councilman Brian Ford, is leasing seven acres of his property to Solar Provider Group for an array to generate community solar energy, turning a field of tall grasses into a field of solar panels.
“We’re trying to oppose something that’s going to devalue our property,” John Falzon said Tuesday.
“We just want a setback,” Cindy Falzon said.
The Falzons say their requests to the planning board have brought backlash. John Falzon says people have yelled and cursed at him at board meetings.
From late October until this week, the Falzons say, Brian Ford, or someone, parked a manure spreader and a dump wagon directly behind their house, five feet from their property line.
“He has 85 acres. He’s never located it (farm equipment) in this position,” said Clifford Davis, a lawyer hired by the Falzons and two neighbors in the solar dispute. “It cannot be a coincidence.”
Within a couple days of the conversation, someone removed the farm equipment.
Although the Falzons have focused on Ford, it’s Solar Provider Group that’s negotiating the project design with the planning board.
Project manager Peter McMurtry said the company believes the proposal they’re putting forth is a reasonable compromise, and the studies done to date are sufficient, but they’re working with the planning board.
Their plan includes increasing the setback from 50 to 100 feet, with 107 mostly coniferous trees and possibly a small berm to screen the view. They’ve also made height adjustments to the panels.
Wetland and flood zones prevent putting the array elsewhere on the parcel.
“We really try to do the best job in keeping with industry standards,” McMurtry said.
Since 2016, 32 commercial solar installations have been built or proposed in Orange County, at least eight of them in Minisink, said county Planning Commissioner David Church.
Minisink Planning Board Chairman David Witkowski said the board is making sure the project abides by zoning, and is trying to mitigate the negatives for neighbors. The planning board hired a consultant to perform a visual analysis, he said.
“The planning board, in its broad powers, could require more setback if they determined there’s an adverse impact,” Davis said.
The Falzons said a promised visual impact study was supposed to be scheduled in early November, but wasn’t. Instead, in late October, the farm equipment showed up.
“This guy doesn’t want to compromise,” Cindy Falzon said on Tuesday, before the equipment was removed. “With all his land, we’ve got to see this.”
The Falzons have lived in their home for 15 years. The Ford family has been there for generations in Minisink, a town of about 4,500 that’s still mostly rural.
Brian Ford is on the town board, and Ralph Ford, a relative, is supervisor, as they were in 2016 when the town passed the solar zoning law.
Witkowski said planning board member Joseph Ford, a distant relative of Brian, abstains from any votes involving Fords.
The town is going through growing pains, Witkowski said, but planning board members still go out and walk the land for every proposal.
In the 1950s-1960s, the town boasted 74 dairy farms; now there are two.
“Minisink has to decide what it wants to be when it grows up,” he said. “And it’s not going to be dairy farming.”
