Minutes 05-26-2015 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Patrick Mallet: I believe the intent is to subdivide the property. Which could be done with an exempt subdivision, both parcels would be greater than 10 acres. This area, roughly in red — roughly depicts the area that would be subdivided. Beth Trahos: Good evening, Mr. Chairman and Commissioners, and Chair Person and Planning Board Members. My name is Beth Trahos. I'm an attorney with Smith Moore Leatherwood, and I'm here tonight on behalf of White Cross Solar, with our application to allow a solar farm on White Cross Road. Mr. Chairman, you mentioned that there are a number folks signed up to speak on this and I think I'm responsible for many of them. In our expert group, we have Engineer George Retschle, Appraiser Tom Hester, Appraiser Rich Kirkland, Cypress Creek Renewables Employee Rich Moretz, and Mechanical Engineer Tommy Cleveland. They are all on that list and are all a part of our presentation. And I handed out to you a notebook that you will find at your seat that includes sworn Affidavits, copies of the site plan, and of the prospective that were provided as a part of our submittal packet. And I would ask you to move into the record the staff report and associated documents and that you also include in the record the notebook that we have handed to you. We're going to attempt to be efficient with your time and rely largely on those Affidavits. All of those folks are here today and available for cross examination. We'll call a few of them up to talk with you and we'll bring others, as needed, to answer questions that you, or others, may ask of us. We recognize you've been here for a long time, and we'll try to get you out—get our part done as quickly as we can. As staff indicated, we have been working hard with neighbors in the area. We had first the staff sponsored community meeting in April. We had our own meeting in May and we have continued our dialogue with adjacent property owners. And our belief is that our neighbors are comfortable with what it is that we're proposing. Staff indicated the property is zoned AR and a solar farm is permitted as a Special Use in that district. The solar farm site plan meets all of the criteria that are set out in your ordinance for approval of a Special Use Permit. And I'm going to ask folks to come forward and confirm for you that all those requirements have been met. I'll start with Mr. Retschle, who is the Project Engineer. I ask him to talk with you briefly. And of course at any time please feel free to ask questions. George Retschle: Good evening. My name is George Retschle, I'm the President of Ballentine Associates in Chapel Hill. I have been duly sworn. I do appreciate your time this evening. I am a Licensed Professional Engineer in the State of North Carolina and in Virginia. I have been involved with a little over hundred solar farms in the past three years. I was responsible for the preparation of the site plan that you have before you tonight. Pat (Mallet) did mention a few modifications that have been made to the site plan since the original submittal. One of those modifications involves a buffer along the northern property line. As a result of some negotiations between our client and the adjacent neighbor, we have widened that buffer from the minimum 50 foot required to a 65 foot buffer. So there's a substantial amount of existing vegetation that's going to remain on that northern property line. And with solar farm we need to be careful of shading on the west, east and south portions of the array, so that we don't have inefficient panels. But along the northern property line, we were able to to provide a much wider buffer than what was required and what we had originally anticipated. That's one of the major changes. Another change was that we pulled the southern property line up to reduce the amount of overall property within the property that's going to be subdivided out. I think it went from 23 acres down to 19.8, so it's gotten a little bit smaller. The size of the array within the fence is