Letter: Proposed Solar Project in North Amherst Is Bad for the Planet
Solar field on the Amherst landfill. Photo: amherstma.gov
The following letter was sent to the Zoning Board of Appeals on October 12, 2023.
As you consider the application by PureSky and Cowls to construct a large-scale ground mounted solar array with battery storage that will clear cut 40+ acres of forest in North Amherst, please include these factors:
- Amherst does not yet have a bylaw regarding solar. Our latest guidelines are built on conditions from the earliest days of putting solar panels on houses, and are inadequate to protect our town in 2023
- The state recently agreed with a study that shows that Massachusetts has ample capacity to meet our solar goals without clear cutting forests.
- Clear cutting forests is sawing off the branch we are sitting on. We need to protect that natural resource to absorb carbon and protect our planet.
- Cowls is the largest landowner in Massachusetts. Its owner claims to be a steward of the environment. Strip mining 40 acres of trees is un-stewardly, uncreative, and irresponsible.
- This is not the first time that Cowls has attempted to profit by selling off our town’s forests to the highest bidder for the lowest and worst use. Remember when, in 2014, they removed their land in Cushman off conservation status, attempting to create expensive private dorms for 700 students? They lost that battle when it was pointed out how devastating that would be for forests and our town.
- We have seen disasters in solar arrays in Western Mass already. This is a dangerous technology, being promoted for personal profit by a local company that should know better and a large industrial company that is aware of the threatening conditions they are creating. The company that is now PureSky was at fault in the catastrophe in Williamsburg, Mass.
- Proponents on both sides of the issue are claiming to be saving the planet and agree that solar is a component of the solution. But only one side is not simultaneously harming the planet. The need for planetary solutions is clear, but haste makes waste, and this is a case where the cure is worse than the disease.
The Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals is the last line of defense for Amherst’s contribution to planetary health. I urge you to first do no harm, by rejecting the Cowls/Puresky application to clear cut the equivalent of 30 football fields in our back yard.
Ira Bryck
Ira Bryck has lived in Amherst since 1993, ran the Family Business Center for 25 years, hosted the “Western Mass. Business Show” on WHMP for seven years, now coaches business leaders, and is a big fan of Amherst’s downtown.
People may be offended by cutting forests yet sustainable forestry is what we do generationally and every day. It’s critical to a healthy planet and local recreational opportunities. This parcel’s trees would be cut one way or another.
The climate is in crisis. The time to act is now. We’ve conserved 5500 adjacent acres 10×1 conservation to solar.
Please stop the emotional and personal attacks
My sincere question about Cinda Jones’s reply is: When you say “this parcel’s trees would be cut one way or another” do you mean you’d clear cut anyway? Because many sources about sustainable foresting say clear cutting isn’t an acceptable practice. And if you meant that – if you weren’t clear cutting for a 40 acre solar installation- you’d follow sustainability best practices, isn’t that better than clear cutting? Clear cutting methods wouldn’t allow the forest to renew itself for 25 years (the rated life of the solar array), especially considering the methods of clear cutting widely used. From Sierra Club: clear cutting is an extreme logging method in which resilient natural forests are harvested … and do not replicate the ecosystem services of a healthy forest.
In 25 years (if the solar array lasts that long, considering improving solar technologies, as well as the common practice of solar companies selling off the array repeatedly) will that land be fertile enough to grow another healthy forest?
Also, it’s great that your company has preserved a lot of the forests you own. But are you concerned about the proximity of an industrial solar array to the residents of Shutesbury and Amherst, given the number of calamities at solar arrays, including one in Western Mass by the same company you’re partnering with here?
I do believe you are committed to be a good neighbor, and recognize you and your family has done a lot of good for this region, but could you not be more concerned and responsive about the large numbers of people who are worried about the consequences of your decisions?
If not for the personal financial interests you have in this project, I wonder what your thinking is about why solar is better in a clear cut forest, instead of on roofs and over parking lots, considering the recent study, agreed to by the Massachusetts state government, that we have the capacity to meet our solar goals without clear cutting. See more here: https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/10/02/solar-power-farms-clear-cutting-forest
Thank you, Ira, for your thoughtful summary of the potential devastation of so much precious forest. Of course, what is threatened in Amherst is threatened times five in Shutesbury. Science is with you, as trees are our planet’s primary mechanism for sequestering carbon, and forests do SO much more than this: controlling and purifying water, giving home to wildlife, cooling, strengthening our resilience during climate change, etc.
Responsible forestry preserves the forest’s health and integrity. This is NOT that. These plans for clear-cutting for the profit of the wealthy are profoundly destructive and fracture the so-called “conserved” forestlands, destroying the continuity ecosystems rely on and threatening downhill water. Saying that this is the landowner’s and solar industry’s attempt to help the climate crisis when there is plenty of already disturbed land for large-scale solar is called green-washing.
I hope the town will heed the findings of the recent study by Mass Audubon and Harvard https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/10/02/solar-power-farms-clear-cutting-forest
Thanks, Ira. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) clearly states that to fight climate change we must stop clearcutting and instead, protect forests. Intact forests store carbon in trees and soil and clearcutting releases the stored carbon back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the single largest contributor to a climate change. Clearcutting destroys entire forest ecosystems, decreases biodiversity, erodes soil, and near a watershed, as this project is, threatens drinking water. Placing solar panels on a clearcut forest site would not make this project “green”. The only “green” would be the dollars that would go to the landowner from the sale of timber and from leasing the land to a large solar corporation. The landowner would win. Residents, the environment, drinking water, wildlife diversity and our climate goals would all lose. Read more at https://www.nrdc.org/stories/stop-clearcutting-carbon-sinks
Nothing personal Ms. Jones, but making 12 million dollars selling Conservation Restrictions on thousands of acres of forest in Leverett and Shutesbury is not a free pass that allows your partner PureSky to destroy land identified as Critical Natural Landscape and Core Habitat in Amherst.
Clear cutting, ripping up stumps, grubbing, chipping, digging, grading and displacing every living creature on 41 acres of forestland to install 10 acres of solar panels is not sustainable forestry. Attempting to install an industrial solar facility in your neighbors’ backyards for profit is not “critical to a healthy planet and local recreational opportunities.” It is all about cash flow, nothing to get emotional about.
Did anyone actually read the reply? The turn of phrase, is exactly the same as me saying: “we all die one way or another”. Am I espousing the “clear cutting” of the general populous in saying that? Or, if one took a moment to think, and not just react. Maybe there would be some realization, that in all managed forests, even those selectively harvested, all trees are felled, at some point in time, or to quote the author: “one way or another”.
I have no understanding (nor am I defending) of the forestry management practices of the company involved, but why did you all jump to a conclusion, when there was no mention in the reply? If I am reading the reply incorrectly please let me know, as I am sure you will.
There’s irony in that Cinda Jones was quoted in The Gazette as calling citizen journalist Larry Kelley a “Superhero” after he tragically died, and now she is here in the comments section of AI asking folks to “please stop the emotional and personal attacks”.