Glens Falls Chronicle Serving the Glens Falls/Lake George region; Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties since 1980
By Ben Westcott, Chronicle Staff Writer
Quebec-based Boralex, whose U.S. headquarters are in South Glens Falls, held an open house Thursday, April 18, at the Durkeetown Church in Fort Edward to allow the public to gather information about its proposed 100 MW photovoltaic solar energy generation facility.
The open house was well attended,
The solar project would be built on 750 acres in rural Fort Edward bounded on the north by Durkeetown Road and on the south by Cary Road.
Boralex has seven hydropower sites in operation in New York.
The Fort Edward Solar Project is one of 12 solar facilities Boralex is developing in the state, ranging from 20-250 MW.
The parcels Boralex plans to build on in Fort Edward are leased from private landowners. “We also have a few small options to buy, but those have not been executed yet,” Boralex Senior Advisor for Public Affairs Zack Hutchins told The Chronicle.
“A lot of the landowners who we partner with are existing farmers. They say the financial surety that we give them through the lease agreements that we enter into is what will enable them to maintain their farming operations.”
The Solar Project’s webpage states that it will create approximately 120 jobs during construction, provide “significant” tax revenues to the town, county and Fort Edward and Hudson Falls school districts, provide “quiet, emission free and reliable power generation for the equivalent of approximately 28,000 NYS households per year” and “help NYS achieve its goal of 70% clean power generation by 2030 and 100% by 2040.”
The project was first proposed to be in both Fort Edward and Argyle.
“We’ve been able to shrink the project footprint and it’s now exclusively in Fort Edward,” Mr. Hutchins said.
“One of the biggest reasons for shrinking the footprint was to be able to minimize as much as possible our wetland and grassland bird impacts.” (See below.)
Boralex currently has U.S. solar sites in Indiana, Alabama and California.
“We as a renewable energy company are of course very concerned about the health of our planet and the ability to combat the detrimental impacts of climate change,” Mr. Hutchins said.
He noted “the benefits of generating clean electricity within the area and injecting it into the wholesale energy market, which will lower the price of wholesale electricity in the area.”
Bird concerns are raised in Boralex solar facility plan
The Chronicle’s Ben Westcott writes: The sizeable crowd at the Boralex open house about its 750-acre solar facility plan in Fort Edward included several members of the Schuylerville-based Grassland Bird Trust, a non-profit land trust dedicated to conserving critical habitat for endangered, threatened and at-risk grassland birds.
The Trust e-mailed members ahead of the open house citing the “grave harm to grassland birds posed by the Fort Edward Solar Project.”
“While we support renewable energy, we consider this decision to build a large commercial solar farm in this rare grassland bird habitat to be particularly unfortunate,” the email said.
Specifically, it said the Fort Edward Solar Project poses a significant threat to endangered Short-Eared Owls and threatened Northern Harriers “since they will no longer be able to hunt on fields crowded with solar panels.”
Boralex is required to protect a percentage of the land for the life of the project, but the Grassland Bird Trust wants the company to permanently conserve protected land in the Audubon-designated Important Bird Area beyond the project window.
It also wants Boralex to help the Trust conserve substantially more land in the Important Bird Area and “enhance access to the conserved grasslands in the Important Bird Area, giving birders a better experience and ensuring privacy for local residents.”
Boralex poster boards at the open house said that to address some of the birding community’s concerns, it has proposed installing pull-offs at popular viewing spots, interpretative signage, bird boxes, and a post-construction research project.
“Boralex recognizes the importance of this habitat for grassland birds,” the poster boards stated.
“We are committed to minimizing our footprint, mitigating impacts and creating an increase in protected habitat for birds and other wildlife in this area. A Net Conservation Benefit Plan will establish new protected grassland bird habitat and other benefits such as a bird friendly project design, research elements, and bird observation infrastructure improvements.”
The poster boards noted that all required bird surveys for the Fort Edward Solar Project have been conducted.
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