Serving the Towns of Wawarsing, Crawford, Mamakating, Rochester and Shawangunk, and everything in between
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The effects of solar arrays on viewsheds is not only affecting homeowners, but entire towns and cherished landscapes including Wawarsing's scenic but underutilized Colony Farm lands linking the Catskills to the Shawangunks. Photos by Steve Aaron, Photoshop by Maria Reidelbach
Two Ways Of Seeing Our Future...
Solar Choices For Wawarsing's Colony Farm

WAWARSING – There is something timeless about gazing towards the Shawangunk Ridge while atop the Colony Farm property, says John Adams.

"You don't know what century it is," adds the spokesperson for Friends of Colony Farm, a grassroots organization Adams founded that's focused on preserving the once-active prison farm land on Route 209 in Wawarsing, and redeveloping it into an agricultural tourism park.

But it's an experience Adams and others are feeling could be spoiled if the NY State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) goes forward with proposed plans to develop a thirteen-acre solar array on the 250 acre dairy.

"Our Friends organization opposes the solar array and believes the best use for the land is agriculture/recreation/tourism," reads a statement Adams has released. "Building a solar array on Colony Farm in essence does not use that land to its maximum potential."

An available copy of a DOCCS request for proposal showed an anticipated contract start date for the installation of photovoltaic solar generating facilities of February 15, and an anticipated completion date of December 31, 2016. But the original RFP posted July 17 of last year also had a deadline of October 27, 2015.

"The project is under review and no RFPs have been awarded," said Patrick Baily, a public information officer for DOCCS.

"I worry if they put a solar array up, there'll be no public access [on Colony Farm] while it's in the hands of DOCCS for another twenty years," Adams said, noting that Friends recently wrote to acting DOCCS commissioner Anthony Annucci asking the department to postpone awarding a contract. Adams added that he's yet to receive a response.

He's added that he'd like DOCCS to slow down and consider other sites before making a move.

There are three sites the department is considering for development — two at Colony Farm and another in the field across from Walmart, also on Route 209. None of them, according to Adams, would add to the aesthetics of the area, and the proposal itself is just a means to reduce budgetary costs at DOCCS with little thought to local residents or the needs of the town.

The precise placement of the array on Colony Farm might make a difference, however, to town supervisor Leonard Distel.

"I don't have a problem as long as they're in the back and as long as they can't be seen from Route 209," he said.

There's nothing in the RFP regarding the precise location of the solar array proposed for Colony Farm, Adams says, adding that he was unsure if DOCCS would be flexible enough to relocate the proposed field to the back of the property, away from view along Route 209.

"It's the right thing at the wrong place," he adds.

Adams' work with Colony Farm, and his attempt to protect its agricultural future through property conservation easements, dates back to the 1990s with little result. Previous attempts at landing an Empire State Development grant to fund a feasibility study for turning the once inmate-run dairy farm into a model farm tourist destination with retail and passive recreation opportunities landed nothing — a letter of support from DOCCS coming too late for the 2013 application and the 2015 application rejected in favor of projects in more urban areas, or at Shadowland Theatre in the immediate area.

"They said it was well written, and received a good score, but there were too many other applicants and too little money," Adams says of the recent Regional Economic Development grant cycle, which had recipients announced in mid-December.

While the NYS Office of General Services oversees the land, Adams adds, the decision to surplus the property lies in the hands of DOCCS. He feels the property should have its ownership transferred to either the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation or the town.

He plans to work on that, along with aid from the Open Space Institute, which he said has a renewed interest in preserving the property. The Open Space Institute is the lead agency for the Mohonk Preserve Foothills project, a land protection project similar to the one Adams proposed for Colony Farm on the eastern flanks of the Shawangunk Ridge, as well as land purchases in the Kerhonkson area that have been added to Minnewaska properties in recent years.

There is little that can be done at the town level, Distel explained, as far as DOCCS goes.

"The state is exempt from our zoning laws," Distel said while noting that the town is establishing a local law requiring set-backs and other requirements for proposed solar projects because there is currently nothing on the books regulating such projects.

Not that the state would be beholden to those local laws, Distel added. Nor, he said, do they have to go through the town's planning board process.

The supervisor is asking DOCCS to hold an informational public hearing, as a courtesy to residents, to bring everyone, including himself, up to speed on what they're planning.



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