Staff recommends approval of SUP18-0003 with the attached conditions. Staff strongly believes that the conditions are necessary for the project to meet the 8 Special Use Standards of Review and be consistent Comprehensive Plan in an on-balance review. Staff does have reservations about the size/scale of the facility and cautions that some conditions intended to mitigate impacts may change the project scope. For example, the applicant has requested 800 acres of land disturbance, which is double the conditioned 400 acres. Limiting the disturbed area may have the consequence of prolonging the construction timeframe. The majority of health, safety, and welfare concerns with the project and the greatest potential for negative impacts on the community are during the construction phase. Once established, the solar energy facility should be a safe, clean, and quiet neighbor. 

The applicant requests special use permit approval on two parcels to develop a 70 MW solar energy facility on Agricultural 3 (A-3) zoned properties together constituting a site of approximately 905 acres. The parcels are located in western Spotsylvania County south of W. Catharpin Road, north and east of Post Oak Rd.  The properties are located outside of the Primary Development Boundary and are identified as Tax Parcels 29-A-7 and 43-A-3.  The properties are identified for Rural Residential Land Use development on the Future Land Use Map of the Comprehensive Plan. 

The Planning Commission held a public hearing on December 19, 2018 and closed the hearing. The Commission voted to continue the discussion to January 2, 2019. On January 2, 2019, the Planning Commission voted to have staff draft several amendments to the condition recommended by staff. Planning and County Attorney staff have drafted those amendments and reviewed the draft conditions in their entirety to offer additional amendments to ensure clarity and enforceability. The attached draft conditions document includes staff recommended changes in underline/strike-through format and the conditions that address the Planning Commission direction are highlighted in yellow. A summary of the amendments follows:

A.      General

• Condition has been added to the liability insurance provision. It requires annual submission of Certificates of Insurance and the bi-annual review of the insurance by the County’s insurance carrier and required increases if deemed necessary by the County’s insurance carrier when necessary to protect the County.

• The trigger for the proof of insurance is now prior to issuance of a land-disturbing permit.

• Condition has been added to prohibit panels manufactured using GenX. (staff recommended condition)

• Vehicle speed restrictions within the Property are deleted.

• The “Initial Project Decommissioning and Site Restoration Plan” is no longer conditioned. Instead the decommissioning conditions have been re-written to include all requirements for decommissioning and surety within the Special Use Permit Conditions. (staff recommended change)

B.      Construction

• References to to Wide Load Vehicles are changed to Oversize Load and the definition of Oversize Load Vehicle references the Department of Motor Vehicles Haul Permit.

• Timing of video documentation of roads is added. (staff addition)

• Conditions are amended to prohibit construction (including pile driving) on Sundays.

• Condition has been amended to allow internet advertising of the public liaison and coordination of information with the County’s Public Information Officer.

• Condition has been amended to add the Spotsylvania County Sheriff and Virginia State Police to the Joint Construction Traffic Reaction Team.

C.      Erosion and Sediment Control

• Condition has been amended to remove the sentence that identifies the crew requirements for the remediation team.

• Condition has been clarified that stabilized land does not count towards the 400 acres of disturbed land.

D.      Burning and Fire, Rescue, and Emergency Management

• Condition has been amended to prohibit the burning of timber waste or any other matter.

E.       Landscaping, Maintenance, Setbacks, and Buffers:

• The “Spotsylvania Solar Energy Center Landscape, Revegetation and Management Plan” is no longer conditioned as a whole. Instead only the Invasive Species Management Plan is conditioned and the landscaping conditions have been re-written to include all requirements for plantings, berms, and maintenance within the Special Use Permit Conditions. (staff recommended change)

• Condition provides for a consistent setback around the entire facility.

• Condition states that the berm must be an earthen berm.

• Condition requires the landscape bond to be in place for 3 years.

F.       Biological

• Condition includes soil tests to determine fertilizer composition.

G.      Cultural – no changes

H.      Water

• Condition requires the use of public water only.

Staff concurs with the Planning Commission’s recommended conditions with the exception of the prohibition on burning wood waste. Staff presents the following for the Planning Commission’s consideration:

·         Trench burning is a standard practice used to clear tracts of land of wood debris. When operated correctly, trench burning significantly reduces combustion time and smoke generation when compared to open burning. The staff conditions increase the minimum required distance between trench burning operations and the facility’s property boundary to minimize any negative impacts of smoke on the surround community.

·         Disallowing burning may prolong the construction phase of the project and result in a greater impact on the local road network due to the increase in truck traffic required to haul debris and mulch.

·         Mulch piles need to be properly managed to prohibit internal heat build-up and spontaneous combustion (see attached article “A Perfect Storm: Mulch Fire Dynamics and Prevention”).

·         County Utilities Director, Ben Loveday, with affirmation from Fire Chief, Jay Cullinan, notes that the County experiences multiple mulch fires a year resulting from combustion within existing mulch piles, mulch fires may smolder due to lack of oxygen and produce large volumes of smoke, mulch fires may burn for days with little indication of internal smoldering, and fighting mulch fires requires large volumes of water or smothering, a process that may take days to fully extinguish. They recommend rotation and aeration of piles and windrows at regular intervals, as well as maintaining proper fire breaks to decrease the likelihood of mulch fires. Chief Cullinan further recommends that mulch be removed from the site, rather than stored on the property (see attached email “Re:Burning prohibition at sPower”).

·         An increase in noise emissions from chippers and truck hauling debris is to be expected for a longer duration.

Setbacks

The Planning Commission questioned the impact of landscaping and berms on the 350’ setback as related to the dissipation of temporary temperature increases within the solar facility.

Background on the recommended setback:

The County’s consultant, Dewberry Engineers, Inc., studied whether solar energy facilities produce a heat island effect. The conclusion is no. A heat island is the build-up of heat during the day that is then slowly released into the atmosphere during the night. Solar energy facilities such as proposed by sPower do not create a heat island. Dewberry notes: “The panels have a low thermal mass compared to conventional building materials and soil. They lose heat very quickly and do not create a prolonged increase in temperature which suggests a micro-climate as an urban heat island would”. Instead, Dewberry found that temperature increases have been observed in solar energy facilities and that those temperatures dissipate to ambient temperature with horizontal distance from the facility. Dewberry’s recommendation is based on a study by Vasilis Fthenakis and Yuanhao Yu titled “Analysis of the Potential for a Heat Island Effect in Large Solar Farms,” that found temperature increases dissipate to ambient temperature (within 0.5 degrees) at 328’ from a solar facility. Dewberry rounded up to 350’ and also recommended landscape buffers and berms to maximize absorption of any radiative heat.

Considering the size of the facility, the topography of the area, and policies in the Comprehensive Plan, staff has taken a conservative approach in crafting the conditions related to buffers, setback, and berms. The primary goals are to address visual impacts, noise impacts during construction, and the potential for temporary temperature increases. As another frame of reference, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation provides guidance that “under most circumstances, a 300-foot strip of forested area provides an adequate buffer to give a passerby or a homeowner the sense that the area is preserved in its natural state”.

Impact of berms and vegetation:

Dewberry agrees that vegetation and berms will aid in mitigating any temporary differential in temperatures that may occur on limited days of the year, however, Dewberry did not find research or studies related to this topic that could be used as a basis to recommend a specific reduction in setback. The site would need to be modeled in order to quantify the impact of the berms and landscaping on the temperature. The panel groupings, topography, types of vegetation, prevailing wind directions, and height and composition of the berm are variables that would need to be taken into account. Modeling would likely produce very mixed results throughout the perimeter of the site due to these variables.

Wanda Parrish, AICP, Planning Director

Patrick White, Planner III

Packet items which are new to the application since the Planning Commission's last meeting on January 2, 2019 are at the bottom of the packet's file attachments beginning with the file "Email - ReBurning Prohibition at sPower" and continuing through the end of the file attachments.