Solar company loses acreage in Cambria

Feb. 22—An administrative law judge has ruled that Cypress Creek Renewables, the company behind the proposed Bear Ridge Solar project, cannot install solar arrays on acreage previously reserved for "shovel ready" high-tech manufacturing operations in Cambria.

The roughly 120-acre area along the north side of Lockport Road between Comstock Road and Campbell Boulevard was zoned Planned Unit Development in 2011, by the Town of Cambria, and solar energy generation is excluded as a permitted use.

Previously, an agent of Cypress Creek Renewables said that acreage accounts for 12 megawatts of its 100-megawatt project. The proposal touches 900 acres overall.

Administrative Law Judge John Favreau's written ruling, which was made public on Tuesday, said Cypress Creek Renewables would not be granted an adjudication hearing on the matter.

"Proposed issues concerning applicant's failure to request a waiver of substantive use limitations governing the Cambria PUD do not meet the standards for adjudication," Favreau wrote. "Applicant's alternative request for a waiver of Cambria Solar Law ... for the Cambria PUD is denied."

Keith Silliman, Cypress Creek Renewables' director of regulatory compliance, told the Union-Sun & Journal on Wednesday that the company's next steps are undecided.

"We're still digesting (the ruling). We have to gather the team to discuss it," Silliman said.

Following the state Office of Renewable Energy Siting's October 2022 issuance of a draft siting permit to Cypress Creek Renewables, the Town of Cambria appealed for "party" status so that it could get a hearing regarding particulars of the project siting.

Representatives of the town, the company and ORES were involved in a Feb. 7 virtual hearing in which the town's special attorney, Dennis Vacco, argued the Bear Ridge site plan presented to ORES didn't account for PUD zone restrictions and the company couldn't rightfully seek a waiver after the fact. Cypress Creek argued the exclusion of solar energy generation in a PUD district essentially is a technicality that ORES was free to disregard.

Although the Town of Cambria did not get party status — and with it, an adjudication hearing on a variety of issues raised — Favreau's ruling on the PUD issue upholds the concept of Home Rule and is "a substantial victory for the town," Vacco said on Wednesday.

"It's not a technicality, it's a recognition of the authority of local governments," he said.

Vacco said he would confer with the Cambria Town Board regarding any parts of Favreau's ruling that it might wish to appeal. The ruling went against the town's position on issues including glare from solar panels, decommissioning, use of prime farmland and limiting solar facilities siting to certain land zones only.

On some of those points, Cypress Creek had argued: Limiting the project to Industrial-zoned land would cut back capacity to 30 megawatts and make the project infeasible "from a financial and engineering perspective,"; and excluding Agricultural-zoned land was unnecessary since the land can be returned to agricultural use at the end of the project's "useful life."