A Fall-Down or Lay-Down Zone

Wind turbines blown away; CCI Energy project denied by Planning Board

By Nancy White / nwhite@cnc.com

Fri Jan 22, 2010, 11:35 AM EST
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Cohasset -

Wind turbines may not have a future in Cohasset under the current zoning bylaw.

The Planning Board on Wednesday night once again denied CCI Energy’s wind turbine application.

Down the road, the current wording of the bylaw on setbacks will likely prohibit a turbine’s construction anywhere in town.

This time around it was not the technical aspects – the shadow flicker, the noise impacts, the visual impact, the ice throw – that derailed the twin turbine proposal sited off Route 3A. Rather, it was an issue that did not even come to light during the first round, eight-month-long, public hearing process last year.

According to Cohasset’s wind energy conversion facility bylaw there must be “laydown area” equal to the height, including the turbines’ blades, and that laydown area must not encroach on a residential district.

Recently it came to the attention of the applicant and the planning board that the Trustees of Reservations’ Whitney and Thayer Woods, one of the adjacent properties to the proposed siting for the turbines, is zoned “Residential C District.”

The laydown area largely falls on property zoned technology/business district, but part of both turbines’ laydown area falls on the Whitney and Thayer Woods property, which is currently utilized for open space.

“We spent so much time looking over the complicated portion of the application, we failed to look at the simplest – the setback issue,” said Planning Board member Stuart Ivimey, who was the sole vote against the project the first time around. “Under the application of the bylaw (this project) simply can’t be done.”

Planning board members used the words “embarrassing,” “unfortunate,” “conflicted” and “stuck” to describe where they were on Wednesday night.

The ultimate vote was 1-3, with three members voting against approval of the special permit application and one, member Clark Brewer, voting in favor. Planning Board member Jean Healey Dippold did not vote because she did not serve on the board during the entire course of the application.

The vote denies the project application, put forth by a private developer, Plymouth-based CCI-Energy, which proposed the installation of two 1.65-megawatt sized wind turbines sited off Route 3A on the Scituate Hill behind Graham Waste Services and Hingham Lumber. The towers are 462-feet (or 100-meters) in height, including the height of the blades.

The project has had a long and arduous history with vocal opposition from a group of neighbors and residents around town and over a dozen lengthy (and at times contentious) public hearings. The Planning Board effectively denied it in May. The application, which is the first under town’s wind energy conversion facility bylaw, has been on the Planning Board’s docket since September 2008, but returned to the planning board in early December due to a court ordered remand. Sufficient and material changes were made to the application since its denial and the planning board was ordered to re-consider the application in light of those changes.

The Planning Board, as chair Al Moore explained on Wednesday, is a “quasi-judicial board.”

“We look at the bylaws and act upon them,” Moore said. “When a bylaw passes that is somewhat unpopular, it puts us in a difficult position as we try to follow those rules and bylaws fairly.”

Moore congratulated the applicant on addressing all the technical aspects of the application, but ultimately felt the portion of the bylaw that addressed the setback could not be overlooked.

The Planning Board spent more than an hour deliberating. The deliberation took several twists and turns as members tried to reach a consensus. Several motions and amendments to those motions were proposed and discussed.

Notably, Brewer proposed approving one turbine, the one sited farther away from Route 3A. However, his motion failed to receive any support and a vote was not taken. The board did take a 3-1 vote to deny the special permit (Ivimey, Moore, and member Charles Samuelson voted in favor of denial; Brewer voted against). The vote could not constitute a denial because according to state statutes a super-majority, with at least four members agreeing to a motion to approve or deny, is necessary.

Moore also proposed a motion that would have approved the project contingent on the applicant seeking a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals on the setback issue.

Eventually, Ivimey moved to approve the application for the sole purpose of bringing the proceedings to a close.

“There is no other motion that will bring this to a head, to a termination,” Ivimey said.

During the deliberation Samuelson noted the bigger picture evident in what came to be the ultimate denial of the project.

“The way the bylaw is written (not allowing a fall down zone in a residential district) prohibits wind turbines from being built in Cohasset,” Samuelson said. All the large swaths of land targeted as potential turbine sites are in, or abut, residential districts. “I would support the (Alternative Energy Committee) adding something in (the bylaw) to enable these types of facilities to be built.”

In an e-mail sent after Wednesday’s decision, CCI-Energy legal counsel Kenneth Ingber said the project became “an unintended casualty of that flawed language (in the bylaw).

“The Planning Board went out of its way to commend CCI Energy for fully and satisfactorily answering every concern raised in the initial denial of the application for a wind energy project on Scituate Hill,” Ingber said.

“CCI reaffirms that its proposed project exemplifies Cohasset's stated goal of encouraging wind energy and remains the single best project in the single best location in the town. It is in as remote a location as there is in Cohasset yet still will provide the Town of Cohasset the significant financial and green benefits of a good wind energy project.”

Ingber said the CCI Energy would re-evaluate the situation and determine the best way to proceed.

“CCI Energy remains committed to realizing a wind energy project that Cohasset overwhelmingly wants to see implemented,” Ingber said.