Sourlands Planning Council opposes proposal
By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
More detailed information on water runoff will be submitted in coming weeks, before the Hillsborough Township Planning Board reopens its hearing on a quarry’s proposal to clear 20 acres of trees to install 14 acres of solar panels near the boundary with Montgomery Township.
Thursday night, May 2, the hearing opened with testimony from the engineer who drew the application.
Afterward, people who live near the Gibraltar Quarry off Long Hill and Dutchtown-Zion roads asked questions and gave their own idea of how water would flow off a partially deforested hillside. They asked how the project would affect existing streams and ditches, roads and water recharge for private homes’ wells.
The next meeting will be Thursday, June 14.
The applicant is KDC Solar, of Bedminster, which would lease the land and install the panels, then sell power back to Gibraltar. The goal is to meet all the quarry’s power needs, engineer Mark Lukasik said.
KDC plans to offer testimony from a forester, an executive in the company and an environmental consultant.
KDC would install about 10,000 3-foot by 6-foot solar panels in a roughly trapezoid-shaped area in the southern section of the quarry near the Hillsborough-Montgomery line. It would cut down trees on 14 acres for the panels themselves as well as another 6 acres of surrounding trees in order to avoid shading and having 100-foot-high trees potentially fall on the future panels.
The company said it would satisfy a fire marshal’s questions about emergency access to the panel area by buying a $31,495 Polaris Ranger all-terrain vehicle for the Fire Department.
About 2.3 megawatts of power would be generated to serve the quarry operation and is not intended to feed back into the overall energy grid. In that way, the array qualifies as a permitted accessory use and not as a separate commercial enterprise.
Wires on poles would connect the array to a switching station downhill and across the township line into Montgomery.
The Hillsborough Township Environmental Commission had asked if part of the array could be located on an open 5 acres near that station.
That would put part of the project in Montgomery, which has 200-foot buffer requirements (versus 50 in Hillsborough) and would require a zoning variance. KDC’s attorney, Richard Schatzman, said the company would be “hard pressed” to prove the plan was a substantial benefit to a master or zoning plan.
Also, that area is flatter and facing in the wrong direction, Mr. Lukasik said. It also would mean perimeter trees in two areas would have to be cleared, almost negating the trees saved by using the open space, Mr. Lukasik said.
Solar panels would be fixed in place and not track the sun’s seasonal path. When board Chairman Steven Sireci asked if less area could be used if moveable panels were used, Mr. Lukasik said fixed panels were “the business model the client had chosen.”
Mr. Lukasik explained how the engineers chose the site with the quarry’s 750 acres by eliminating areas with steep slopes and wetlands and by the need to have the panels face south or southwest to capture sun’s direct rays.
Tree stumps would be removed in the array area, but would stay in the 6-acre buffer area to help prevent erosion, he said. The entire area would be reseeded.
Mr. Lukasik said the slopes in the array area were “generally 10 percent” and would be graded to that degree in the array area. Questioned by former longtime Environmental Commission member Peg Van Patton, Planning Board Engineer William Buzby said some slopes could reach about 15 percent.
Mr. Lukasik said water runoff would be slowed through circuitous run of diversion swales that would empty into a down-slope detention basin. He said engineers have added a second access pipe, partially to meet county Planning Board questions.
Mr. Buzby said he was not convinced drainage plans were large enough to avoid creating downstream problems and wanted to see the new plans and even walk the site with Mr. Lukasik.
Richard Minor, a resident of Dutchtown-Zion Road in Montgomery, said his house was likely the closest to the array. He asked how drainage would run off the property and affect his land.
He said he thought Dutchtown-Zion road was the most repaired road in the county, due to water runoff damage.
Mr. Minor asked about moving the array slightly uphill, but Mr. Lukasik said that would eliminate trees that shield the panoramic view of a pile of quarry waste filings accumulated under the previous owner.
”So you are trading off trees for a view?” Mr. Minor asked.
Mr. Lukasik hesitated, then called the plan the most reasonable approach for a variety of reasons.
”The documentation we provided supports the application we put forward,” he said.

