Washington County Board plans special meeting on BESS ordinance
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WASHINGTON COUNTY — The Washington County Board plans to hold a special meeting to consider adopting a text amendment to a Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) ordinance on Sept. 29 at 7 p.m.
Washington County Zoning Administrator Matt Bierman said that several months ago they started the process of coming up with zoning text verbiage on replacement and siting of BESS sites. He said they are big fields full of batteries that store the energy coming off the grid until needed. He said right now the county has no ordinance at all to do this.
“If they get a special use permit for a solar field and they incorporate the BESS into the field, they don’t have to comply. It’s already in there and that’s all spelled out. These are for standalone only from a solar or wind farm and we need to make sure the safety and welfare of citizens of our county are taken care of as they place these things,” Bierman said.
Bierman said there are a lot of different controversies about how safe they are and if they are safe or not. He said there is a lot of legislation coming down to make them safer, and the concern is the safety of citizens, especially with the distance to villages and cities.
“We don’t want them right next to them or in the middle of them. We need to make sure there’s a safe buffer if something happens, we have time to evacuate if it’s pushing off noxious fumes,” Bierman said.
Bierman said they started the process of working with counsel, Andy Keyt, who developed an ordinance and put the county’s name to the ordinance. Bierman reported that the Zoning Board of Appeals started hearing it last month and recessed and reconvened a couple weeks ago and have recommended for the county board to approve the ordinance. Bierman said Keyt was not able to be at the county board meeting, so it had been a recommendation to possibly have a special meeting to have Keyt there to answer questions.
Bierman said this is a basic ordinance and gets the process started. He said in the special use process, that’s where the board or Zoning Board of Appeals would crack down and say “I want this or we’re not going to approve.”
“That’s your ability to put conditions as we’ve done with the other solar stuff, so if there’s a particular training you’ve heard of you want, you would have the ability to say we want this or won’t approve,” Bierman said.
State’s Attorney Crystal May said right now they can still pass the ordinances with essentially no restrictions from the state. She said they suspect that is coming very soon like restrictions they’ve seen on wind and solar.
“At this point in time, we can still do it, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be forced to change it in the future. For anything that might come through in the near future, we want to have the restrictions we’re allowed to have in place,” May said.
May said they wanted to encourage the board to consider acting on this because right now everything is wide open and this would be the one way in which the county would be able to have some control until such time as there are legislative changes and they’re forced into a box. May suggested that they move on this in a timely manner because they’re still able to at this point in time. She said legislation is going to override what they have and they’ll probably have to make some adjustments, but if there’s the potential that something is coming through more quickly, the county might want to consider whether or not they want to have something in place because right now there is nothing.
“The process is very much like the wind and solar. This is based on the model ordinance that Heyl Royster put together that Andy Keyt was very active in. He is very in tune with what’s being presented at the legislative levels. This is a really strong starting point,” May said.
Bierman reported that Keyt said that it’s easier to make changes to what they already have than wait for the state and have to start the process and correct things that way.
“If we need to make a change, a meeting gets posted, we have a public hearing, people voice their concerns, we put our changes into it, the Zoning Board approves those changes and it comes to the county board,” Bierman said.
Board member Daniel Luna-Fuller said she had some questions about the permit application and testing and was worried about magnetic fields and harmonic distortion, especially pertaining to bats and wildlife in the area. She said for safety, they should maybe put something in the ordinance saying that they have shutoff diagrams that become available to emergency personnel as part of a safety plan and spelling it out in case something happens. She said she thought they needed to be more in depth with dark sky compliance as far as specifying what the zone is. She said since they are very rural, they can qualify as a P0 zone or an LZ0 zone.
Luna-Fuller reported that they could establish what the cutoff measurements are going to be for the lighting for them to go beyond dark sky compliance by putting in factors where they have to have lighting settings that show spill, showing what kind of obtrusive light will trespass on the property, in addition to specifying color temperature of the light. She said there’s a lot of land in Washington County and if land is not the right color temperature it will interfere with migrating birds.
Luna-Fuller said they’ve got a very big agricultural sector in the county for use of public roads. She asked if there’s anything specified that’s saying during peak harvest times and planting season that farmers get the right of way or if they are going to stand in line behind a plethora of trucks during the construction phase. Also as far as coordinating with EMA and local fire departments, she asked what kind of training is going to be given to departments. She said most of the departments in the county are 100% volunteer, so what kind of continuous training is there going to be for the life of the facility.
As far as training is concerned, Luna-Fuller said she has talked to other solar companies that are looking to expand into the county and they discussed how they have a fire team and they encourage the fire team to speak with local fire departments and do cross-level training. She said a lot of them have an emergency management team on staff and for safety purposes, to make sure there’s that level of training.
“I don’t want to go somewhere and stare at something and not know what to do. I know there is egress, as far as how far off the property line, but I’m sure a property owner that’s got a field full of corn, they don’t want all that to go up because the wind switched directions. From some of the people I’ve talked to, their safety plan is to let it burn. There are dry months of the year and letting it burn isn’t really an option,” Luna-Fuller said.
Bierman said on the environmental side of it, the majority of what Luna-Fuller mentioned is covered under the AIMA (Agricultural Impact Mitigation Agreement).
“A lot of that is already addressed under that piece. I am very adamant about safety and working with fire departments,” Bierman said.
Chairman Dave Meyer said Keyt could not be at the county board meeting and it’s important the board has a fair amount of time to absorb it. He said the committee was looking at having a special board meeting, so they have Keyt there to answer the questions directly.
Board member David Karg said the committee’s recommendation was to table it for a special meeting and there are a lot of questions. He said there are hazardous materials and anhydrous everywhere in the county. He said this is a lot newer than solar and these are standalone, so they’re not associated with solar panels.
Vice Chairman Eric Brammeier said if there are changes presented, from talking to State Rep. Charlie Meier, session doesn’t start in Springfield until after mid-October. He said that is after their October meeting, so if they have a special meeting and have changes, they can give Keyt, EMA and the Zoning Board a chance to make those changes and at the very least if they don’t approve something at the special meeting, they can do it at the October regular meeting and should still have something in place before the legislature makes changes.
