While solar energy is an environmental darling in many corporate circles and other communities, that is not the case near Mercer County Community College (MCCC). Residents of South Post Road off of Old Trenton Road say they have encountered the “perfect storm” set to devalue their homes, degrade their neighborhood, and kill the natural environment that they planned to raise their children around.
Since the start of April the group has hired an attorney, attended the Environmental Commission’s April 12 meeting, met with two members of Council as well as Mayor Hsueh, and circulated an online petition to Governor Christie that so far has recorded 200 signatures.
Their effort includes requesting a stay on the project with Mercer County, the Mercer County Improvement Authority, the college, and West Windsor Township “until we get detailed information for our concerns with respect to drainage into the wetlands, storm water run-off, flooding, use of herbicides, and overall health and safety issues,” residents wrote in an E-mail to the WW-P News on Wednesday, April 25.
Residents attest that there is no real educational incentive driving this solar field project forward. They see a big business deal for the county and MCCC in which a Florida-based developer will lease land and operate a solar farm to make money from the SREC (solar credit) market and by putting energy back on the local grid. (for MCCC’s position see box, page 14)
Rich Campbell, library director for Novo Nordisk in Plainsboro, bought his home on South Post Road five years ago. Since moving to West Windsor Campbell has experienced the birth of his two children: two and a half year-old Nathaniel and one year-old Harper. Campbell says he and his wife, Jennifer, fell in love with the quaint, quiet location on the township’s southern edge.
“One hundred percent of the reason we moved here was because of what we thought was the protected farmland and open space. We chose to come here because of the combination of rural and residential — looking out the back door we are surrounded by nature,” Campbell said.
With construction of the solar field to start in early May, pretty soon Campbell will look outside his home and see an eight-foot tall chain link fence around the solar panels. Campbell is particularly upset that at first MCCC told residents their view of the industrial-size panels would be obstructed by berms. Now he says the plans shifted to having no berms and no replacement plants put on the property.
More than the visual aspect of the solar farm, Campbell and his neighbors say the environmental factors involved at the site are alarming. Wetlands and forestry that are home to many different species are adjacent to the future location of the energy-generating equipment, and a serene place where their children can enjoy mother nature will be forever tarnished.
Campbell says that MCCC’s “courtesy presentations” aimed at residents — on June 21, 2011 and again on Tuesday, April 3, of this year — left much information and accountability to be desired. Questions also remain whether or not residents of Old Trenton Road who also border MCCC property were even invited to the meetings.
“Last year MCCC dropped a letter in each of our mailboxes — they said we were invited there as a courtesy. Most of the block, about 20 of us, attended the meeting. But they were very quick to answer that there are no health or environmental concerns, leaving out many details, and our other questions were not responded to. Our feeling is that there was never any engagement with us — the college is not really engaged or intertwined with the community,” Campbell says.
Campbell’s neighbor, Marilyn Mangone-Stoddard, backed up his assertion. Mangone-Stoddard has lived at 404 South Post Road for over 20 years, and she has been through battles over water contamination and flooding on her block.. At the environmental commission meeting, Mangone-Stoddard spoke about MCCC’s lack of cooperation with residents.
“They said that they’ll talk about it, but they want to talk about it separately with each person that has a concern. We’re a neighborhood and we want to talk about it together. We don’t want to divide and conquer. It’s all a fear of the unknown. They seem to want to tell one person a little bit and then not tell the next person. It just doesn’t sit right with us,” Mangone-Stoddard said.
Residents left each meeting feeling unsatisfied because of the brief, vague answers to their concerns. On April 4 they followed up with MCCC officials to arrange for a third meeting, but MCCC did not immediately oblige. In an E-mail reply sent to residents, Bryon K. Marshall, MCCC’s director of facilities and college safety, wrote the following:
“We have considered the request for a third open forum / “general” meeting and we believe it would not be productive at this time. Rather, we believe we can best address concerns by concentrating our efforts and resources by meeting with those residents who directly border the project.”
Facing only a select few may be the easy way out. Rich Michal of Robbinsville visits the neighborhood often to care for his mother, who is 87 years old and homebound. In 1962, when Michal was three years old, the family bought a home on South Post Road (directly behind the proposed solar field site) with nothing but farmland in the surrounding area.
Stopping his gray Toyota pickup on the way to feed her dinner, Michal said that once his mother dies his brother will inherit the property, and the family has planned to keep the home for generations to come. What his nieces and nephews inherit will not resemble anything like the natural West Windsor farm setting that brought the Michals clan to the area. Michal says if he found out that Mercer County Community College was going to expand its academic buildings to the border of his family’s property line, he would have no problem with it because the land is zoned for academic use. But to remove trees, topsoil, and green pastures to make way for a large-scale solar installation rankles him.
If MCCC’s plans were to incorporate hands-on solar energy education into its science curriculum, Michal says using units the size of rectangular panels that are hung on telephone poles (about the size of an average window) would suffice. Michal also pointed out that the solar fields, should the energy savings not materialize as projected, will cause over 25 years of damage to the soil it sits on — leading to more storm water drainage problems .
At the Environmental Commission meeting a resident asked commission members how much ground water each tree in that area absorbs in a given day. The answer was 400 gallons, and several residents who have long-standing concerns over flooding, water safety, and previous contamination issues started questioning where that water will go without the trees.
On April 12 Michael Hornsby, chairman of the environmental commission, presented residents with some facts about solar energy projects and general environmental issues involved. Hornsby previously worked as PSE&G’s solar power project manager, and he teaches in the department of civil and environmental engineering at NJIT. He listened to residents complaints and concerns, assessing the situation without knowing the project’s full details.
“My impression of this is that this project is huge, it’s right in your neighborhood, and the scale might be frightening. I understand that, but from an environmental perspective the panels themselves are benign — it’s the land use that’s a concern. If they’re taking down 150 trees, you might have an issue,” Hornsby said to a room full of residents.
Cindy Alvarez, a resident of South Post Road, referenced a solar project done by Rutgers where green-planting was coordinated and trees were actually added. She said that project was also situated 800 yards or more away from residences where as current plans call for the MCCC project to be just 100 to 200 yards from some homes.
Dan Dobromilsky, the township landscape architect, said that West Windsor was only given a cursory review of the site plans.”We’re allowed to look at them and we’re allowed to offer comments — that’s it. They do not have to comply with or follow any of our comments because they (MCCC) have to submit their plans to state departments for review.”
He then clarified the land use situation for residents.
“This [project] is on an educational facility’s grounds that is operated or licensed in some way by the state. The state is the ultimate power over this, the town does not have jurisdiction over it because we cannot have jurisdiction over a government entity above us. The inquiry on zoning does not apply,” Dobromilsky said.
Environmental Commission member Andrew Cully explained that there are minuscule environmental concerns related to solar power operations, and he outlined what concerns residents can focus on.
“From a health point of view there are no real concerns with the panels — they’re similar to glass windows on your home. The toxin avenue is going to get you nowhere — you’ll be wasting your time. The avenues are water and if this increases stormwater runoff, and the project is cutting down on the pervious amount of vegetation, plus the fact that this is in a well and septic tank area (non-sewer),” Cully said.
Another possible avenue is recognizing the area as a habitat for an endangered species — which can certainly get the DEP’s attention. Residents say they have spotted peregrine falcons in their backyards, but commission member Kevin Appleget said the species does not occur in West Windsor.
The plight of these residents prominently came to the attention of the mayor and council members on Monday, April 26, when Alvin Lerner of 67 Rainflower Lane mentioned the environmental commission meeting which he had attended. On Thursday, April 19, Council members Linda Geevers and Bryan Maher visited South Post Road to meet with residents, including Campbell and Mangone-Stoddard. One week later Geevers announced that she will make a recommendation to her fellow councilmembers at the Monday, April 30, Council meeting to have the West Windsor Planning Board conduct a courtesy review of the project before construction starts.
On Friday, April 20, Mayor Hsueh met with residents after getting more information from the Mercer County Improvement Authority (MCIA) and MCCC throughout the week. As of Thursday, April 26, Mayor Hsueh was waiting to hear from several parties to move forward with a request for information from Mercer County Community College which he will submit along with all of the points residents are raising.
After Hsueh met residents on Friday, April 20, he promised residents that for what the township can control aside from DEP, county and state regulation, he will have Dobromilsky serve as an on-site landscaping liaison once the project gets underway. Mayor Hsueh said Dobromilsky would help plan greening and berms to cover the view of the solar fields and chain-link fence that will surround it.
The project had already been criticized by Maher during the township’s budget presentations, but for its economic projections rather than health, safety, and residential concerns. When West Windsor Director of Community Development Pat Ward presented Council with the anticipated projects for 2012, the community college solar field project was included, much to the chagrin of a few council members. Questions and criticism came from Maher, who asked Ward to comment on the installation of the solar fields at the community college, which he says is a horrible business decision given that the project costs $38 million and is expected to save $1 million per year in energy.
“That’s a 2.5 percent return over a long period of time,” Maher said.
At the April 16 council meeting, three days before he met with residents, Maher gave a brief summary of his initial thoughts.
“I don’t have any problem with people putting solar panels on building roofs, schools or a house — somewhere not in the way of a green space — but I do have a problem with it taking up open space, whether it’s within the township and paid for by town open space money or in the county and paid for with county open space money, to grow a 9 megawatt solar panel farm, ” Maher said.
Ward responded. “It is allowed under local land use law and by local code, and we really can’t tell them not to do it because it’s not a good idea. What we want to protect are the residents who live around the solar field to make sure that there are no storm water or flooding issues and that what MCCC constructs is done with consideration for them,” she said.
Ward also said that the township is not allowed to charge permit fees for county construction projects.
Back at the budget presentation, Councilwoman Linda Geevers shined some light on the negative part of MCCC’s project for West Windsor residents.
“All those projects — renovations, new buildings, extensions, solar farms —- as citizens we have to pay for that, we have to pick up the tab, just because West Windsor is the host community for the college,” she said.
Residents of South Post Road feel they will be paying the steepest price — their environment.
