NORWICH — As towns across Vermont are objecting to the arrival of industrial-sized solar projects, Norwich is gearing up in an attempt to keep the large developments from plopping down in its backyard.

The Solar Siting Subcommittee, an outgrowth of the Planning Commission, was charged last year with helping the town to “guide and encourage” solar projects in appropriate locations, given Norwich’s “unique character, topography, and the desires of its residents.”

Those desires, however, are divided.

When people see a solar array, some “get a warm, wonderful feeling,” and others “get a nasty, jarring feeling,” said Jaan Laaspere at a meeting of the committee in late May. Laaspere is chair of the Planning Commission, and one of three members of the siting group, which in many ways has been tasked with helping the town navigate the rift he describes.

The group quickly encountered an identity crisis: Is its mission to incentivize the development of reasonably placed solar in town? Or put the brakes on out-sized, ill-placed construction? Defining the difference between the two is driving discussion at committee meetings.

Laaspere is joined in the pursuit by Planning Commission members Mary Gorman and Ernie Ciccotelli. Drafting recommended edits to the Town Plan has taken the trio many months, as they’ve had to navigate the dense, esoteric language of the state’s energy policy alongside fractured public opinion.

The edits are meant to equip Norwich with an “enhanced energy plan,” a tool that would give the town more say with the state’s Public Utility Commission, or the PUC, when it considers the fate of renewable energy projects within its bounds. Norwich, one of the wealthiest communities in Vermont, is home to 3,500 residents living across more than 28,000 acres of land.

The town currently has “default preferred siting,” which means most of its land, excepting ridgelines, shorelines and the historic village district, can be developed for solar between 15 kW and 500 kW in size. Any project still has to go through an extensive regulatory review process before breaking ground.

What the committee has produced in their proposed revisions, such as guidance to review “potential glare from solar projects,” is “just scratching the surface,” Laaspere said, emphasizing that the group hasn’t yet reached anything hard and fast.

Some residents, however, see the committee as having been outwardly opposed to larger-scale solar.

Attracting solar developers to Norwich through friendlier regulations could be an opportunity for the town to put some teeth into its goal of reducing emissions, said Rob Gere, a former Selectboard member who still serves on the town’s energy committee.

In 2019, Norwich voters approved, 792-182, an article directing town officials to reduce the town’s fossil fuel use by 5% each year. That annual goal “has never been reached,” Gere said.

Instead, “the focused attention (of the committee) seems to be on restriction options for solar siting,” he said. “They haven’t been too cagey about that.”

The net-metered solar in Norwich amounts to about 430 kW of capacity, wrote former energy committee member Linda Gray in an email, with more than 400 residences — or about a third of town — home to solar as of 2022.

But bigger, commercially-sized projects remain controversial.

An idea circulating among the solar siting subcommittee to restrict projects larger than 500 kW in size drew swift condemnation from attendees at a meeting in June.

“Precluding a 500 kW project is self-defeating,” Gray said at the meeting. “If you end up proposing that nothing like that ever be built in Norwich, I kind of feel like you’re shooting our plans and our ability to meet our renewable generation targets, you’re shooting them in the foot.”

Ultimately, in the memo sent to the Planning Commission, the limitation was revised to be more flexible, adding that a project would be considered if it “does not harm the town’s character.”

Other recommendations informally sent to the commission from the subcommittee include nixing the town’s “default preferred siting” status, and further restricting solar from priority forest blocs and scenic areas. “Public comment encouraged solar projects to be exempt from certain visual considerations and suggested a specific number of preferred acres to be identified,” the memo adds.

Gorman, a member of the siting subcommittee, has opted for tighter limitations on renewable energy development, positioning herself as a defender of town aesthetics and forested land that could be at risk of clear-cutting by a large installation.

“People move to Vermont for a whole lot of reasons, and one of the reasons is it’s a beautiful state,” Gorman said in an interview. “So how do we continue to move forward on the state’s renewable energy goal, and do it in a responsible way? We might have differences in opinion on what’s a responsible way.”

The issue “shouldn’t be confused about who believes climate change is real,” she said. “We’re just trying to clarify (the Town Plan) for solar siting.”

Gorman herself lives near a hotly disputed solar project. A development pitched by Norwich Solar Technologies in 2021 would build 500 kW of solar on eight acres on a ridgeline off of Upper Loveland Road, which runs parallel to I-91.

It kicked off a vexed back-and-forth between the intervenors — made up of a group of landowners in the proximity of the project, including Gorman’s husband — the developers and the PUC.

Along with concerns about deforestation and the risk that the installation, located on a slope, could lead to increased erosion, neighbors are objecting to the project due to what they allege was a bait-and-switch from the developer, with alterations made to the plan after it was pitched to town officials.

The dispute also prompted some intervenors and others, including Gorman, to file an ethics complaint against first-term state Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, a Democrat, who lives in Norwich and represents the town and several other communities in the Legislature. The complaint alleged that Holcombe inappropriately communicated with the PUC in asking it to hand down a decision on the project — which has been pending for two years — and that she was motivated by financial ties with Troy McBride, chief technology officer of Norwich Solar.

Holcombe and McBride both denied the allegations in an email to the Valley News, and Holcombe wrote that the complaint had been dismissed by the Ethics Committee.

The Upper Loveland Solar Project remains in limbo.

“There’s no doubt that having watched how some of these permissions have been granted over the last number of years certainly was one of the reasons I wanted to get on the Planning Commission,” Gorman said when asked if her involvement in the dispute influences her position.

“It certainly made me want to be involved and do what I could to be part of the conversation,” she said. Through the project, she got “very informed about the Town Plan” and its details on zoning.

Decisions about solar siting should be “based in science and fact,” Gorman said, “but I think there are lots of facts out there too about the importance of other uses of land,” she added, noting affordable housing and conservation.

Gorman recommended that the siting committee bring in Annette Smith, of Danby, Vt., for an informative session. Smith, executive director of nonprofit Vermonters for a Clean Environment, has made her name coaching towns about the process, usually so they can more effectively object to large-scale renewable projects that have been proposed in their area.

“Legislators are captured by the industry, and nobody is looking out for the people who actually live here,” Smith said in an interview with the Valley News.

Smith described a “great divide” between environmental advocates, legislators, renewable energy industry officials — who are “all aligned” — and “the people who live here.”

“You think you can just go plunk these things down in people’s neighborhood? The backlash has hurt renewable energy development in Vermont.”

Communities in Fair Haven, Vt. and Shaftsbury, Vt., for example, are staring down massive projects proposed by a company based in Pennsylvania that could span nearly 100 acres apiece.

However, those projects, at 20 megawatts each, are 40 times the size of the 500 kW proposed cap on solar developments put forth by the siting committee in Norwich.

“I started sitting in on the meetings about a year and a half ago just thinking that I should be more away of what the heck’s going on in town,” said Mary Albert, a Dartmouth professor of engineering who has since become a vocal proponent of solar through her presence at gatherings of the group.

Albert sees being open to development of renewable energy as the responsibility of a wealthier town like Norwich. “We’re not people who can’t afford to live a certain way,” she said. “If we shirk the responsibility, who will accept the responsibility?”

She had noticed that the evolving proposed town plan revisions from the committee were focused primarily on the protection of forests and biodiversity without putting heft into identifying positive locations for solar.

“Forests are important, that’s true,” Albert said. “But they can’t absorb all the emissions that we keep pouring into the atmosphere.”

While the proposed forest block restrictions would take a chunk of western Norwich out, “100 acres is only .34 percent” of land in town, Kevin Geiger, Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission’s chief planner, wrote in an email after reviewing the proposed edits from the committee.

“There is so much land and so little needed I am not worried about it crimping their ability to meet the goal,” Geiger wrote.

If the Planning Commission were to make any changes to the Town Plan based on the recommendations from the Solar Siting Subcommittee, they would be subject to a robust series of public comment and finalized by the Selectboard.

The commission will be meeting to discuss the proposed edits on Tuesday, July 9.

Frances Mize is a freelance correspondent for the Valley News. She can be reached at fmize@vnews.com

CORRECTION: Annette Smith, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, lives in Danby, Vt. A story in last weekend’s edition of the Valley News incorrectly identified her town of residence. Addditionally, there has been no documented organized opposition to a proposed solar development in Fair Haven, Vt. The same story mischaracterized the town’s relationship with the project.