Solar use variance

Dan Goodman, West Amwell
    Next week the Zoning Board of Adjustment for West Amwell is prepared to make a decision on a use variance that would allow a solar generating station to be constructed in a rural residential zone. Even with a solar ordinance pending (and scheduled to be approved and adopted by the Township Committee on March 23), the Zoning Board has convened a “special meeting” for March 7 at the request of the applicant in an attempt to receive approval for their use variance, at which point they would not be required to abide by the ordinance about to be adopted.
   While I find the granting of this “special meeting” on behalf of the applicant’s request disturbing enough (considering the pending ordinance), I am more disturbed by the way the ZBA has conducted itself during this application process as a whole, especially with regard to the following:
   — Members of the board have specifically asked members of the public who are opposed to the application not to attend the Zoning Board meetings as “it would make them look bad once the application is approved.”
   — The applicant’s attorney requested the “special meeting” based on a letter written by someone opposed to the application. This letter, which wasn’t even entered into evidence, stated that those opposed to the application planned to drag the issue out as long as possible, and that this “dragging out” should be aborted by this “special meeting”. What the attorney failed to admit was that the entire process has been dragged out by the applicant’s own mistakes and expert testimony. When they failed to correctly notify neighbors of the first Zoning Board meeting they wasted one month. They then spent the next three months with their own experts providing testimony. The attorney representing those opposed to the application only presented their first witness at the last meeting – and even that was only during the last fifteen minutes. Why should the applicant be permitted several months of testimony while those opposed are forced to present their case in one evening?
   — At prior meetings the board agreed to allow those opposed to the application and represented by counsel to question the applicant’s experts provided they did not repeat any questions already asked. Yet at the Feb. 22 meeting the board attempted to deny these individuals the right to speak … at a public forum.
   — In an attempt to speed up the decision process at the same Feb. 22d meeting the board attempted to avoid any discussion of the solar use ordinance – even though this same ordinance had already been entered into evidence, by the applicant, at the prior meeting.
   — The ZBA spent almost 90 minutes at the January meeting discussing another applicants request to increase existing signage by 20 square feet on a commercial property in a commercial zone. The ZBA ended up denying this application as they felt it would take away from the “rural characteristics” of West Amwell. Yet they seem to have no issue attempting to speed through an approval of an 8,500-solar-panel array, a commercial use, in a rural residential zone. How does providing a zoning variance with no conditions for a commercial project on 10 acres in a rural zone, even if it is “inherently beneficial” by state statutes, keep the “rural character” of West Amwell the board is supposedly so concerned about?
   The people who have expressed their opposition to this application are not opposed to solar installations. That has been made clear numerous times. What they are opposed to is a solar facility in this particular location with no ordinance in place to regulate its construction and use. Now that an ordinance is pending the ZBA appears, to this writer, to be doing everything it can to approve the use variance before the ordinance goes into effect. While we appreciate the time and effort all the members of the ZBA put into their positions the ZBA itself said they are simply there to “listen to all the facts and render a decision based upon those facts.”
   Based on their actions as outlined above I’m afraid their words ring hollow — which is even more disturbing than any decision they may render, one way or the other.