HomeMy WebLinkAbout12-9-2024 Lt Stacey Guenther PlngBd-PCW-ANRDecember 8, 2024
Mr. Stephen Robichaud
Chair, Barnstable Planning Board
Town of Barnstable
Re: 12/9 Planning Board Meeting – Park City Wind agenda item
Dear Chair Robichaud,
I’m a resident of Osterville and have voluntarily spent years advocating for the environment, health and safety concerns of Barnstable citizens createdby the onshore impacts of offshore
wind. I’ve read thousands of pages of plans and filings, submitted public comments at the federal and state level, and attended most of Avangrid’s “Open Houses” related to Park City
Wind and Commonwealth Wind.I’ve also collected thousands of petition signatures from Barnstable citizens opposing theironshore plans.I have serious concerns how this developer has chosen
to execute their very large scale projects (their first “go” at this in the US), to inappropriately install their “extra high voltage” infrastructure at small,environmentally sensitive,residential
beaches, through dense residential and business districts, and site three massive wind substations with hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic oil, over our sole source aquifer and
over, or near, well-head protection zones.
This letter kindly requests that the Planning Board postpone consideration of the “Approval Not Required Plan” for Park City Wind, also known as New England Wind 1.
Park City Wind does not have a Power Purchase Agreement at this time. Without a Power Purchase Agreement, the Park City Wind project will not move forward.
Park City Wind was scheduled to negotiate and submit a Power Purchase Agreement by December 2024. They didn’t do this. Instead, Avangrid and negotiating parties notified officials in
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that a proposed Power Purchase Agreement for the state's consideration will not be submitted until February 2025. I respectfully ask that the Planning
Board postpone and defer any action on the Park City Wind matter until after Avangrid submits to the Planning Board confirmation that its proposed Power Purchase Agreement has been fully
negotiated, submitted and approved. Again, without such Power Purchase Agreement, Park City Wind will never become operational.
This is not a hypothetical scenario. After Avangrid's Park City Wind project was selected in a prior competitive solicitation, and after it submitted a proposed Power Purchase Agreement
for the state's consideration, Avangrid paid a fine to walk away from the Park City Wind project Power Purchase Agreement. This project remains dependent upon a new Power Purchase Agreement.
Whether, and when, it will be approved is uncertain at this time.
In addition, Park City Wind has another outstanding agreement that it appears to require. Avangrid has asked the C.O.M.M. Water Department, which protects our water supply, for a Memorandum
of Agreement. The elected C.O.M.M. Commissioners are in the process of discussions with Avangrid about the possibility of that Agreement and its potential terms and conditions. If that
Agreement is required by Avangrid, that process should also come to closure before the Planning Board entertains thisANR Plan.
By all accounts, the ANR process seems more straightforward and can be settled faster than these other pending matters, at the state and local levels,that will determine whether the
Park City Wind project moves forward at all. The Planning Board can defer consideration until Avangrid can establish that Park City Wind has certainty that it will proceed in the form
of an approved Power Purchase Agreement and Memorandum of Understanding with C.O.M.M.
Please consider that it might be inefficient and improper to act on land use changes while threshold required agreement(s) remain outstanding.
Finally, given the extraordinarily high level of local resident interest in this project and its local impacts, it isthe wish of many that the Planning Board will not address this now
during the holiday season, so that the public has a better opportunity to be engaged later.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, and for your service to the Town of Barnstable.
Sincerely,
Stacey Guenther
Acguenther99@gmail.com