At last night’s Planning Board meeting Rich Kleiman, Chairman of the Wind Energy Committee, continued the discussion of special permit for the construction of the wind turbine on town property that abuts the Granite Links golf course and presented a revised report. The turbine that has been selected is the Vestas V90 which Kleiman says is the quietest in its class. It can be configured to reduce the noise; but the members of the board questioned how this worked and if trade offs in efficiency were involved. Kleiman noted that the most recent flicker study indicated that there might be between 6 – 49 hours of flicker in winter and spring months and that the turbine could be programmed to shut off at those times.

The board also heard from Jeffrey Tocchio of Drohan Tocchio & Morgan, an attorney representing Quarry Hills, and Matt Long of Natural Resource Group (NRG), a consultant retained by Quarry Hills to review the project.

They first asked that the review be continued as their comments and concerns were based on a previous report, not the one issued yesterday afternoon which they had just seen for the first time last night. That said, they identified a number of issues they were concerned with. They do not believe the current access road which is built on landfill is capable of supporting the size and weight of traffic that will be needed to bring in the materials. They did offer to provide the original engineering plans that were done for the road.  Pete Jackson, Chairman of the Planning Board told them that the board’s purview was zoning and impacts. The board was not tasked with determining if the access road was suitable for the transport of this equipment. Alex Whiteside said, “I don’t agree with that. We have to look at the road.”

There was also disagreement regarding the Massachusetts Historic Society. Kleiman said that the Society had approved the project given the turbine’s current location. Tocchio said there may be issues and Long claimed the review was not yet finished.  Long also questioned the size of the construction footprint (ie area of disturbance) which he believes will be close to an acre not the 40′ x 40′ plot in report. Tocchio, who specializes in real property development and land use with specific emphasis on the areas of project permitting, real estate and eminent domain litigation, described the filing as “woefully inadequate.”

Here is a link to the town’s web page regarding the turbine: Wind Turbine Project