Last night the Zoning Board approved this proposal from PSE&G, for a Solar Farm in the North Ward. The site is bounded by Brunswick Ave, in the large now-vacant lot bounded by Brunswick Ave, Sylvester Street and New York Avenue. We voted 7-0 in favor after hearing the matter for almost three hours.
Overall the proposal, I think, is a very good one. It returns a site long vacant and subject to environmental remediation from its past life as a Coal Yard for PSE&G to productive use. Indeed, because of the remediation in place, there aren’t a whole lot of uses to which the property could be reasonably put. The last proposal, you may recall, was to put in some commercial X-Games related motor sports park. Yeah, that would have worked.
The plan is for an array of nearly 5500 solar panels – all, unfortunately built in China, not the US – to be installed on the site in a process to last 1 to 4 months. PS E&G promised at the meeting that the install phase would be minimally disruptive to the environmental measures in place for decades — all the panels and cabling would sit on top of the existing gravel cap, no digging required – as well as minimally disruptive to neighbors in nearby residential areas. The City Planning Department will work with PSE&G to finish up plans for the Brunswick Avenue side of the property, to ensure that proper and attractive landscaping and security measures are in place so that PSE&G will be a good neighbor. Once installed, the facility will be very low maintenance, with a life expectancy for the units of 20 years before any need to replace the panels.
The Board asked several questions last night – about the prospects for reflective glare bouncing onto drivers on nearby US 1 (there won’t be any glare – solar panels are designed to absorb light to create electricity, not reflect it); about the prospects for vandalism (unlike the copper that walks away from houses and construction sites citywide, the materials in solar panels have little intrinsic value apart from their end-product, manufactured state); and security (there will be cameras and lights on site; trespassing has not been a problem on the site up to now; fencing will be upgraded as necessary). Answers to these questions were pretty satisfactory.
One area of questioning – granted, an area pretty much outside the actual jurisdiction of the Zoning Board, but one several of us were very interested in anyway – was, Who Builds This? Are there jobs here for Trentonians, any way for people in this city to get hands-on experience with what promises to be an industry with significant growth potential? The answers, as they were in the earlier informational meeting, were somewhat unsatisfactory: the actual contractor hasn’t been selected yet; we will use union labor (most likely members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers – IBEW – Local 269), which is a Mercer Local, but we have no way of knowing what towns Local 269 members live in, and so on.
As I said, the proposal is a good one. On the same site that has a 19th-Century-energy past, PSE&G will bring Trenton into the 21st Century of diversified, clean energy production. I just wish that there could be some assurances that some residents of this City could have some experience in making that happen.
On the Zoning Board, even as the Chair, I couldn’t have any real voice on that matter. On City Council, perhaps………?