The state’s Office of Renewable Energy Siting has issued a draft permit for the Rock District solar project.
The 78-page, mostly-template decision was released on the ORES website Friday.
Now, applicant Cypress Creek has 60 days to hold a public hearing on the project it’s proposing on about 370 acres in both the Towns of Carlisle and Seward—though the date posted Monday on the ORES site is 60 days-plus:
Wednesday, October 9, 6pm at SUNY Cobleskill.
Neither Carlisle Supervisor John Leavitt or Seward Supervisor Earlin Rosa had gotten a heads-up that the ORES decision was coming—or that it had been posted—but they knew the clock was ticking:
ORES ruled the application was complete on June 10.
That gave the agency 60 days to issue the draft siting permit or a statement of intent to deny the permit.
The draft permit doesn’t mean ORES has approved the project—though that seems inevitable.
What it does do is move the proposed—and opposed—20MW Cypress Creek project forward.
The Carlisle and Seward Town Boards will also—again—have a chance to share their own concerns during that window, Mr. Leavitt said.
Leading that list: the project’s impact on karst and groundwater and on property values.
The deadline for all written comments is now 5pm Friday, October 11. (See below.)
Once that’s all done, Mr. Leavitt, said Cypress Creek will then have two weeks to respond.
In the case of issues that can’t be resolved, there is a process for bringing them in front of an Administrative Law Judge, but Mr. Leavitt said he thinks it will be difficult to raise any issue that’s “that big.”
In fact, in Monday’s filing, ORES concludes that in issuing the draft permit, “ORES staff takes the position that the proposed facility…would comply with applicable laws and regulations” and that “any local law or ordinance…that is unreasonably burdensome” to the state’s clean energy goals not be applied.
According to ORES, all developers of permitted projects must “enter into host community benefit agreement with the host community or communities as a condition of the final permit” and “provide annual payments to the community in the form of a PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes] agreement.”
Some 68 comments on the project have been posted on the ORES site.
To post a comment, go to ORES.NY.gov, click on “Permit Applications,” click on Project Permit Application Number 23-00033, and click on “Post Comments” in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
The application for Rock District Solar had originally been filed with ORES on April 18, 2023, then amended nine times to provide incomplete or missing information before being accepted as complete on June 10.
As proposed, 80 percent would be in Carlisle and 20 percent in Seward.
According to Cypress Creek’s application, total acreage is about 370 acres with the fenced-in portion of the project, including landscaped buffers and all panels, 125 acres.
It will be built on both sides of Brown Road on land owned by Thomas Barbarie of 190 Brown Road, off of Rock District Road.