FENNER — On April 12, Keith Silliman, director of regulatory compliance at Cypress Creek Renewables, updated the Fenner Town Board and a group of community members on the status of Oxbow Hill Solar, a proposed utility-scale solar project to be collocated with the existing 30-megawatt (MW) Fenner Wind Farm.

During his presentation, Silliman discussed such topics as interconnection into the electric system, the developer’s participation in the 2022 New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) Renewable Energy Credit Auction, and the 94-c state permitting process. He also responded to questions from multiple community members who expressed their concerns with and/or disapproval of the proposed project.

Oxbow Hill Solar has a proposed capacity of 140 MW, which, according to the Cypress Creek website, would supply power to approximately 30,000 households. The solar facility would connect to the existing Fenner substation and take advantage of existing wind farm access roads.

According to Silliman, Cypress Creek has done projects of this scale elsewhere in the United States, but not in New York State.

The facility site encompasses 1,586 acres leased from 10 landowner families. The facility area or “project components,” once constructed, would occupy 684 acres.

Silliman said Cypress Creek is exploring uses for the acreage of the site that would not be occupied by the solar panels and other project components. One potential option is agrivoltaics, which the U.S. Department of Energy defines as agricultural production, such as crop or livestock production or pollinator habitats, underneath solar panels or adjacent to solar panels.

Interconnection

Over the last three years, the Oxbow Hill project team has been working with National Grid and the New York Independent System Operator (ISO) to determine what it would take to interconnect into the grid.

Silliman said the transmission line that the project would tie into crosses one of the properties the developer is currently leasing.

He also pointed out that Cypress Creek is fortunate that ENEL Green Power North America, the owner of the Fenner wind turbines, built a substation on that property.

“That’s where we are going to interconnect,” he said. “We’ve done all the studies. We’ve gotten all the costs. We’ve agreed on all those numbers with National Grid and the ISO, so what we are doing right now is negotiating the contract with National Grid and deciding who is going to do what in terms of the building.”

According to Silliman, the contract, which would handle all the interconnection aspects of the project, is expected to be executed by the middle of August 2023.

Renewable energy credits

For the proposed project to sell its power, Cypress Creek will need to obtain renewable energy credits from NYSERDA, which put out a solicitation for bids and a request for proposals last fall.

According to Silliman, Cypress Creek submitted Oxbow Hill Solar earlier that day.

Silliman said that although he does not know exactly when the developer will hear back from NYSERDA, he thinks it would be by fall 2023.

He added that Cypress Creek believes it will be successful in that auction.

One aspect of the paperwork included in the proposal deals with community outreach.

According to Silliman, the community outreach plan that is part of the submission will be posted publicly on the NYSERDA website within a week or two.

“We discuss the outreach we’ve had up to this point,” Silliman said. “We include all the correspondence that we’ve had with the town. We include the report from the meeting we had down at the county park in I think it was June 2021 — we are anticipating having another meeting like that this year. We talk about our webpage, which we update frequently, and we are also going to get a couple more all-residents mailings out on the project this year. So, all that information is online.”

Fieldwork for 94-c application

Cypress Creek is preparing to apply for a permit from New York State’s Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) for the Oxbow Hill Solar Project.

In support of developing its 94-c permit application, the project team has conducted numerous studies at the facility site, including wildlife site characterization, breeding bird surveys, and winter raptor surveys.

As a result of those studies, the project received an occupied habitat determination from the state regulatory agencies in December 2022.

“They have no concerns for bats from this project,” said Silliman. “. . . They had no breeding habitat concerns for threatened and endangered species. There is some occupied winter habitat for northern harriers, and we are going to have to prepare a conservation benefit plan. We need to mitigate [those] impacts, and that means we need to preserve roughly 76 acres of land for wintering habitat for harriers. We are in the process of figuring out how best to do that. It’s important to have that mitigation where the impacts are. So, that mitigation site is going to be here, it’s not going to be four counties away.”

According to Silliman, a full wetland and stream delineation demonstrated that there were no Class I wetlands within the facility site, that the developer is avoiding all Class II wetlands, and that there is one collection line that has a minor impact on an area adjacent to a wetland.

“It’s not in the wetland, but the DEC also regulates a hundred-foot area around the wetland, and we have a collection line crossing that,” Silliman said. “To be determined is [whether it is] better to cross that with an aerial line to avoid an impact to the wetland, or [if we] trench it the way we normally would with a collection line.”

Silliman remarked that he does not foresee any issue with the regulatory agencies in the state that would cause a delay in the project or significant conditions to be imposed on the project.

The developer has also conducted a noise analysis, cultural resource work, and a magnetometer survey that used drones to search for abandoned oil and gas wells, which it did not locate.

The bulk of the fieldwork in support of the 94-c permit application was completed by December 2022. As of April 12, the developer had yet to complete the required visual impact assessment and historic resources impact assessment.

According to Silliman, the visual impact assessment kicked off ahead of schedule earlier that day because of the favorable weather.

He explained that he was unaware the work had started prematurely until he drove past the site that afternoon and saw the workers. Therefore, he was unable to alert the town ahead of time.

“We have a crew out taking photos of the area in leaf-off condition,” said Silliman. “That’s the baseline, so then what we can do [is] create simulations of what the project would look like. Leaf-off is the worst possible condition for visual impact, so that’s where you start. If you see people out there working, that’s what they are doing.”

Silliman also remarked that Cypress Creek plans to work with adjacent landowners — not only the landowners who are leasing their properties to the developer — to figure out what type of screening would be best for them and make the most sense if the project goes in.

Silliman encouraged residents to call the town office or visit the Oxbow Hill Solar website for information on what work is happening at the site.

94-c permitting process

According to Silliman, Cypress Creek has completed the bulk of the analysis required to prepare its permit application, which the developer anticipates filing with ORES this summer with a target date of Aug. 1.

Located within the Department of State, ORES was established by the Accelerated Renewable Energy Growth & Community Benefits Act — which passed as part of the FY 2020-2021 state budget — to consolidate the environmental review and permitting of major renewable energy facilities into a single forum that provides “a coordinated and timely review” of siting permit applications.

All large-scale renewable energy projects 25 MW or larger are now required to obtain a siting permit from ORES for new construction or expansion.

In 2021, at the recommendation of its solar committee, Fenner adopted a local law that prohibits all large-scale commercial solar facilities within the town and regulates the design, placement, construction, and operation of small-scale solar systems that support principal residential, agricultural, and business uses.

Under the 94-c process, Cypress Creek can ask ORES to waive local requirements if the siting board determines them to be unduly burdensome in terms of meeting the goals set forth in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. The act was signed into law in 2019 to address climate change and put the state on a path to reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions. One of the plan’s targets is to generate 70 percent of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

“One of the things we need to do is sit down and talk to the town about the local laws that apply to our project,” said Silliman. “We have to go through them and advise the town, ‘These are the laws that you have that we can comply with, and these are the laws we have a problem complying with for various reasons.’ The town has a chance to respond, and they have a chance to correct us if we’ve missed something.”

Silliman continued by stating that Cypress Creek is aware of Fenner’s ban on large-scale solar and that the company will be seeking a waiver of that requirement from the state.

“I just know that we are going to be doing that, but we still need to go through this process and have this discussion to see what other aspects of the local laws that the town has would apply and how [we would] comply with them,” he said.

According to Silliman, once Cypress Creek files its application with ORES, the developer will provide a fund to the state that will then be made available to the municipality and/or an approved citizens group — that is either for or against the proposed project — to hire a lawyer or consultants to review the application.

Silliman explained that the state provides this mechanism to ensure that local municipalities have input on the process.

Sixty days after an application is deemed complete, the state must either say it is not going to issue a permit or issue a draft permit with all the conditions that would apply to that specific project.

“That’s really the operative document that everybody reviews and would be subject to public comment at a public statement hearing,” said Silliman. “If there is an issue that somebody, like a town, felt was substantive and significant, they could ask for a hearing on that issue. The judge assigned by the state office would have to determine [whether] the threshold was met for having a hearing or not. That’s the process, [and it] all starts once we file our application. It’s important to think about that and get ready for that so that you can effectively participate in that process.”

94-c requires that the final decision on a project’s permit be made within one year of the application being completed.

Agricultural land

Silliman next provided data compiled by Cypress Creek related to the agricultural land Oxbow Hill Solar would occupy.

He reported that the facility site encompasses 806 acres of Prime Farmland, which is 9.8 percent of the town’s Prime Farmland and 0.7 percent of the county’s Prime Farmland.

The facility area — where the panels and inverters will be positioned — encompasses 390 acres of Prime Farmland, which is 4.74 percent of the town’s Prime Farmland and 0.37 percent of the county’s prime farmland.

The entire site covers 383 acres of Farmland of Statewide Importance, which is 5.86 percent of the town’s Farmland of Statewide Importance and 0.22 percent of the county’s Farmland of Statewide Importance.

The facility area encompasses 186 acres of Farmland of Statewide Importance, which is 2.84 percent of the town’s Farmland of Statewide Importance and 0.11 percent of the county’s Farmland of Statewide Importance.

“I’ve seen lots of numbers being thrown around out there, and we just quadruple-checked these,” said Silliman. “This is what we just gave to NYSERDA in our submittal. These are the numbers we are basing our 94-c application on right now.”

Public comments and responses

Following Silliman’s update, multiple residents voiced their fervent opposition to the project and some expressed concerns related to such issues as home values, the visual impact of the solar facility, the removal of agricultural lands from production, and the state’s apparent ability to disregard local regulations and force the project on the community.

In response to a resident’s concern that Oxbow Hill is just the beginning of Cypress Creek’s plans to develop Fenner and Madison County, Silliman said the company has no current plans to build another project of this scale in Fenner.

According to Silliman, Cypress Creek has a project out near Buffalo, called Bear Ridge Solar, which is about a year ahead of Oxbow Hill in development, and it has another project that is in the Thousand Islands area and is trailing Oxbow Hill by about a year.

“We call it a pipeline of projects,” said Silliman. “We don’t have in our pipeline a plan or vision of another 100 MW project here.”

Silliman later said that he believes that if Cypress Creek was to walk away from the project tomorrow, someone else would be in Fenner the very next week seeking to develop almost the same project.

“It’s the way the state works,” he said. “For the state to meet their goals, they are going to build more and more larger-scale solar projects.”

Fenner is particularly attractive to solar developers, according to Silliman, because of the existing transmission line, the presence of willing landowners who already have an energy supplier on their properties, and the fact that the fields are cleared.

Regarding the end of the useful life of the solar panels that Cypress Creek intends to install, Silliman said the responsibility of decommissioning them falls on the developer.

“We have to put up a decommissioning bond, usually for the town, in case we are not there,” he said. “We put that up front, so the money is there for clean-up.”

During a discussion of potential community benefits, Silliman highlighted a possible payment in lieu of taxes agreement, a host community benefit fund, and an electric bill credit for Fenner residences.

At the mention of the bill credit, multiple community members spoke up to inform Silliman that it is their understanding that a large number of the town’s residents would not receive the benefit because they use power companies other than National Grid.

Town Supervisor Dave Jones also highlighted Fenner’s large Amish population, which is not on the grid and therefore would also be unable to benefit from an electric bill credit.

One community member suggested that Fenner residents receive a tax benefit as compensation for having to live with the transformation of their agricultural community into an “industrial, energy-producing town.”

“Great point,” said Silliman. “I think that that could be built into the discussions that we need to have with the town over how best to flow the benefits to the town.”

To address the question of how close the panels would be to neighbors’ houses, Silliman reported that the setback requirements are 100 ft from a non-participating residence, 50 ft from any non-participating property line, and at least 250 ft from a non-participating occupied residence.

“Those are the state requirements,” he said. “Now, do we have flexibility there if we are working with you as an adjacent landowner as we are figuring out the precise location of panels and [things]? We have some flexibility to work with you on that.”

Silliman stated that the most recent site maps showing panel locations and access roads would be posted on the project website within a week. Additionally, he said his team would gather some of the information requested by the attendees, including the manufacturer and life expectancy of the panels, the efficiency of the panels over time, the level of facility monitoring throughout the life of the project, the amount of land that would be cleared to accommodate things like an access road or a collection line, and the amount of money Cypress Creek has invested in the project so far.

That information will likely be available on the website in a week or so, Silliman said. The website layout is also expected to change within the next month to make it more user-friendly.

To wrap up the Oxbow Hill Solar discussion, Nadine Bell, one of the town’s attorneys, cautioned the group that, to date, all the projects submitted to ORES through the 94-c process have been approved.

“The town has essentially very little — and that’s actually being pretty generous — say in this process,” she said.

Bell emphasized that municipalities can do things like comment, share their concerns, and explain their local laws and values to the state, but at the end of the day, ORES has full control over the process.

Her goal, she explained, was not to be discouraging, but rather to make sure the community understands what, if any, influence their elected officials truly have.

“Once an applicant chooses to be part of that ORES 94-c process, there is no control other than working with an applicant,” said Bell.

According to Silliman, if the project is approved, Cypress Creek would start site prep probably nine months to a year after permit issuance.

On April 13, Silliman said he was very pleased with the previous night’s meeting.

“We had over an hour of interaction with the town, and the residents asked that we come back to the town board routinely to provide updates,” he said. “We were able to respond directly to the residents’ concerns; I really appreciate the opportunity to have a dialogue.”

Information and updates regarding the proposed Oxbow Hill Solar Project can be found at ccrenew.com/projects/oxbow/.

Fenner Town Board meetings are typically held on the second Wednesday of each month at 8 p.m. at 3151 Fenner East Rd.