243 trees to come down
Project is part of program to connect Western Cranston solar farms to National Grid
In a project that citywide councilman and public works committee chair Ken Hopkins called “a go at this point,” National Grid will soon be erecting utility poles and cutting down 243 trees in western Cranston to connect to the solar farms being built there. Residents in the area have raised concerns about the environmental effects of the project.
The new pole locations will be near the Laten Knight Rd. and Hope Rd. intersection, near the Laten Knight Rd. and Beechwood Dr. intersection, near the Hope Rd. and Laten Knight Rd. intersection, on Chestnut Hill Ave., near the intersection of Pontiac Ave. and Hamilton Rd., and near the intersection of Park Ave. and Wellington.
The poles, which have already been approved, will connect to the existing electrical distribution system along Lippitt Ave., Hope Rd., and Laten Knight Rd., National Grid spokesperson Ted Kresse said. He said the new poles would connect power from the solar farms located on Lippitt Avenue and Hope Road.
The 100-acre Lippitt Ave. farm (60 acres used for solar panels) is already being developed by the private company Southern Sky while the Hope Rd. farm will soon by developed by Renewable Energy Systems Americas.
Kresse said the “tree work” will begin this summer and National Grid hopes to do most of the pole work in the fall and early winter of this year. The goal is to have electrical interconnection for the Lippitt Ave. farm by the end of 2018 and for the Hope Rd. farm sometime in 2019, he added.
He said the new poles are necessary to meet the electrical standards for the higher voltage that will be carried by the wires from the solar farm, and he said the improvements “should offer enhanced reliability in the area.”
Residents of Cranston, including Douglas Doe and Lisa Gibb, as well as Lynn Harrington of the West Bay Land Trust, an organization dedicated to saving historic farmland and woodland acreage in western Cranston from commercial development, are starkly opposed to the project.
They sent an appeal letter to the Cranston tree warden to oppose the project, according to Harrington. She says it will remove 243 trees along the Cranston historic farm route that runs adjacent to the Knight Farm conservation lands. They are also against the already in-construction solar farms in general, saying that they “scrape” thousands of trees and earth.
“The planning department never thought this through from the beginning,” Doe said. “How does this protect the values of western Cranston? Protecting streetscapes, the rural atmosphere, it has a devastating impact on those values.”
Doe said that the pole project can’t really be stopped at this point, since they “have to connect to the grid somehow,” but he hopes that the planning commission “takes a good, long look” at the project.
He also expressed frustration about the communication he’s had with National Grid, who he said has “refused to tell him anything” and Cranston’s planning director, Jason Pezzullo.
“It’s like pulling teeth with the planning director,” Doe said. “He wouldn’t deal with this or accept the issue. He refuses to admit they made mistakes and have to come back and look at this.”
Pezzullo has expressed support for the solar farm projects during his time as the planner, and said Tuesday that the city hasn’t changed its position on the overall policy of doing solar farms. He also said the interconnection poles have always been part of the approval of the projects, and they knew that there would be tree-cutting and new poles involved.
“We’ve done our calculus on our own and this is where we’re at,” he said. “I get it’s not popular in some quarters, though as far as it being wildly unpopular, I haven’t heard that yet.”
He said that there’s “always a trade-off” when it comes to renewable energy, since there’s land that needs to be cleared to host the facilities of this scale.
“For what we’re getting and what we’re losing, you have to balance all that,” Pezzullo said. There will be tree-trimming, poles where are no poles right now. It will look different once these poles go down these stretches. We all know what the feelings of the opposition are.”
He said the city council’s public works committee has been looking at the project, but from a city standpoint the planning department and planning commission no longer has much of a say on it since interconnection is something that is done “post-development,” and the project now falls into the hands of National Grid and the private companies who own the farms. The department of public works does, however, consult during the pole project because they sit on public property.
Councilman Hopkins said that after surveying the new pole locations, he believes that many of the trees are “ready to come down” anyway, though he “hates seeing that many trees go.”
Despite the issue with trees coming down, he believes the project to be positive for the city overall, as he called himself “a big supporter of the solar panels.”
“It’s a win-win for the city, because if we went up and developed that property you’re looking at more schools, police, and fire, which is a big expense for the city,” he said. “They’re making money for the city.”
He said that the pole project would make the road blend in with the rest of western Cranston.
“I think as a committee we’ve listened to all the concerns, but the project is a go at this point,” Hopkins said. “I love trees, but sometimes progress gets in the way of them.”
