TOWN OF FLORIDA — The Florida Planning Board has found a proposed wind turbine would have a significant adverse environmental impact on the town, extending the review process by requiring developers to more thoroughly study the effects to suggest mitigation measures.
The Planning Board on Monday voted unanimously to issue a positive declaration or a finding of significant adverse impact under State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) for the 4.3 megawatt community wind project proposed at 153 YMCA Road by New Leaf Energy.
Board members agreed the scale of the turbine that would stand 650-feet tall when the blades reach their highest point proposed for installation on top of Bean Hill would significantly alter the rural landscape.
“It’s pretty big, everybody’s going to see it,” Deputy Chairman Nicholas Armour said. “Why should we impact anybody with this?”
The decision will require New Leaf to complete an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) rigorously studying the areas of significant concern identified by the board to propose various alternatives to address them.
New Leaf has already proposed mitigation measures to address impacts identified through the environmental review process based on studies they had prepared analyzing impacts to land, water, air, noise, wildlife, aesthetics, historic features, community character and more.
Those assessments further guided project plans to limit disruptions to the community, along with input from various agencies to ensure it meets state standards, according to the developers.
However, the Planning Board found the turbine would still have significant impacts to aesthetic resources, the character of the community character, wildlife, noise, odor and light that already suggested remedies would be unable to overcome.
Addressing the visual impacts by establishing an escrow account to plant up to 80 evergreen trees near affected homes to screen the turbine from sight and thereby “cancel” residents’ existing views was an unacceptable solution to board member Charles Saul.
“Now [that] we’re putting up a wind turbine you can’t see more than the end of your property,” Saul said.
Planting a row of trees might block the turbine from sight on small properties, Chairman Michael Taylor conceded, but the measure couldn’t fully address the view from sprawling properties and would alter the town’s landscape.
“Eighty trees is going to be like throwing a penny in the wind,” Taylor said. “They could put 80,000 trees up and it’s still going to change it.”
The suggestion that developers put $100,000 in escrow to be held by the town to alleviate impacts from the turbine that emerge following its installation was similarly viewed as insufficient.
The board did not address the attempt by David Strong, senior project developer for New Leaf, to negotiate the amount to be placed in escrow to create a complaint resolution fund to sway members to approve the project.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation’s requirement that New Leaf only take steps to protect birds and obtain an Endangered/Threatened Species Incidental Take Permit in the event a protected species is killed by the turbine was another concern from board members.
“In my mind if one of them dies because of this it’s too much,” Armour said.
The developers countered the concern citing conducted field studies that did not find a significant risk from the single wind turbine to threatened or endangered species since there are no signs of nests or breeding activities around the project site.
Arguing against the board finding that there would be significant adverse impacts, Strong said New Leaf has already completed relevant studies to propose the available mitigation measures.
“The mitigation we have in front of you is about as good as we can do. I’m not sure there’s value in more studies,” Strong said.
In particular, Strong said there was little more that could be done than planting trees to address the board’s seemingly largest concerns related to the turbine’s visual impact.
“There are a lot of places you won’t see it, there are a lot of places you will see it,” Strong said. “You can’t make them less visible.”
On the other hand, board member Stephen Viele pointed to the board’s concerns as insurmountable and indicated the application should simply be denied outright.
“There is no other way around it,” Viele said. “There is no change that can happen to their answers for a lot of our concerns.”
Nevertheless, the board’s finding of significant adverse environmental impacts from the wind turbine under SEQR will require New Leaf to complete an EIS to continue the application review.
“You’ve got to give them a chance and it’s got to run its course. You’re just opening yourself up to litigation if you shoot something down,” Taylor said.
The same developers balked at the prospect of completing the often time consuming and costly EIS process at least once before. New Leaf Energy earlier this year withdrew its application for a similar single turbine proposed in nearby Glen after that town’s Planning Board notified the developers of its intent to require the completion of an EIS due to its significant impacts.
New Leaf will submit a draft scoping statement outlining the potential studies or areas of consideration for the EIS to the Florida Planning Board at next month’s meeting, starting a 60 day window just to set the parameters for the process that will require public input.
After months of intense public scrutiny, the reaction from residents critical of the proposal was muted after the Planning Board raised many of the objections townspeople had lodged meeting after meeting. Locals who had urged the board to require developers to complete an EIS to answer their concerns and potentially derail the project reminded members to proceed carefully.
“The details are really important with what you’re doing now and the questions that you’re asking are critical,” Carol Henderson said.
The next phase of the project review will advance during a period of turnover for the Planning Board as three members depart at the end of this month. Rudy Horlbeck and Taylor each recently submitted their resignations and Donald Perreta’s term is expiring.
Applications from residents interested in being appointed as new members to the board are being accepted by Town Clerk Emily Staley for consideration by the Town Board.
Reach Ashley Onyon at aonyon@dailygazette.net or @AshleyOnyon on Twitter.