Planning Commission Meeting   4/20/2021

There we go.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

Opportunities for the public to access and participate in the electronic meeting will be posted on the www.albemarle.org at forward slash community forward slash county calendar when available.

Yes, I will.

Ms.

Firehock.

Here.

Mr. Bivins.

Yes.

Ms.

No, Mr. Clayborne.

I believe we have a quorum.

In that case, we have an item for deferral.

That's SP 2019-000014 and SP 2019-2015, Blue Ridge Swim Club Amendment.

And they're asking for a deferral to May 4, 2021.

Is there a motion?

Move to defer.

I motion to defer.

Yes, there's a motion by Karen and seconded by Tim.

Is there any discussion?

No discussion.

Yes.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

Thank you.

That's carried.

May we have the staff report, please?

Thank you.

I just want to say real quick that we're having a little trouble getting the applicant in their representation.

Oh, here we go.

Logging in now.

Okay, so Mr. Maynard Sipe is the applicant's representative.

He's now joined the meeting, so he'll be available to answer questions.

Also, Pat Riley, who's one of the coaches at Mon U, will be available.

to make a presentation and answer questions.

So I'll let you all know that in advance.

This is a special use permit amendment request.

You can see here on the map in red is the location

of the Crockett Corporation property that is currently being used by the Monterey Soccer Club.

They originally applied for a special use permit to use the site back in 2010.

They are requesting to amend that permit for the facility that currently has four soccer fields and 96 parking spaces to increase the number of fields to seven.

They are not requesting to change the number of parking spaces on the site.

and as I believe several of you have got messages saying that that was the case, it is not, the 96 will not change.

They're extending the hours of operation and changing some of the timing conditions, which I'll get more details on in a moment.

Remove the existing condition prohibiting irrigation and removing the condition prohibiting games and practice sessions during certain major events at the soccer facility located to the east, also on Pueblo Ranch.

So I wanted to start with a topographic map and give you an idea of the site.

Again, this is located between two portions of the development areas and a narrow strip of rural area along the South Fork Rivanna, the floodplain of that river just east of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir Dam.

As you can see, there's over a hundred foot difference in elevation between the soccer area

and the high points of the surrounding properties to the north and south.

And yet again, the property is entirely in the 100 year flood plain.

And then there are some significant slopes surrounding the area, but not so many on the site itself.

It's just an oblique view.

So you can see a recent aerial photo of the site.

The site is again, designated rural areas in the Conferences Plan, as you can see on this map.

but it is actually included in some portions of the Places 29 plan that's been adopted and I just wanted to show you this.

Again, this is the site here along Polo Grounds Road and there are multi-use path and trail designations in the comprehensive plan going into Brookhill, going along 29 and then along the river itself.

This is the original,

This is the more recent proposal for fitting seven fields on the site.

Again, the parking area is not changing or increasing, and there are seven fields laid out.

These are meant to be entirely in the existing open area, so they're not intruding into the stands of woods, into

the wooded stream went up here or onto the riparian buffer, the wooded riparian buffer along the South Fork.

And as Firehock had asked earlier today about the distance from these fields to the river, the closest I could find was this corner here about 125 feet.

Again, these fields are not locked down to the foot.

They're just marked out on the grass with chalk.

They can shift as needed, but that's roughly where that would be is 125 feet.

This one down here looks like it's closer because the river pulls away.

It's about 250 feet down there.

So details of the proposal.

It would allow the applicants to increase from four fields to seven.

However, they would still be limited to four for the purpose of games.

This means that they can rotate the fields to avoid

where and to manage seating and watering without increasing the onsite capacity at any given time.

There might be a little bit more use because four fields are still being used for games and maybe they would have warm ups or practice on the other ones but they're still very much limited by the cap on parking.

Change in hours of operation, the existing

Monday to Friday 11 to four and Saturday and Sunday 11 to six would change to 8 a.m.

to sunset daily.

This was a difficult situation for the applicants in that they had a very short period each day to fit all their activities in.

Removing the seasonal limits on operation, removing the condition which I'll detail at the end, prohibiting uses on the same days as specific socket uses.

Replacing the condition prohibiting irrigation

on the facility with a condition permitting irrigation with temporary pumps using water from South Work, Rivanna, so that's over the bank irrigation with a hose, not a permanent facility.

And there is no change to the existing prohibitions on lighting or outdoor amplified sound.

So to address the standard terms or guidelines for special use permit approvals on substantial detriment,

As outdoor lighting and sound would still be prohibited and there would be no structures on the site, we didn't feel that there was detriment to the adjacent parcels.

The open space character of the area would be unchanged.

Again, this is a former farm field being currently used for soccer fields that wouldn't really change and the level of overall use in the site at any time would not change significantly.

Harmony with the purposes of the ordinance.

Given the low impact nature of this use, it could return to agricultural use at any time.

So there's no real impact on our concerns with protecting rural area of agriculture and resources there.

It's not located in the watershed of a public water supply.

Doesn't really create demand for public services other than we hope not, but occasionally EMS calls.

and there are no built facilities here, obviously, because it's in the floodplain.

There were three issues to address on public health and safety.

The original permit raised a lot of concern in the community.

The House has this amendment about the traffic impacts of this use on Polo Grounds Road and its intersection with US 29.

That road has significantly changed since 2010.

We have added signals, turn lanes.

We've closed the westbound crossing to Barrio Mills Road and the eastbound crossing from Barrio Mills Road.

So given the increased capacity and these design changes at the intersection, our transportation planning staff felt that the significant upgrades to capacity from those

Road changes that were put in place to accommodate the Brookhill development across Polo Grounds Road would permit this use to continue and upgrade slightly without having significant road traffic impacts.

And again, I should point out that while the hours of operation and the season of operation are getting longer, the total amount for any given moment in a day can't really increase much because the parking is not being added to.

The condition, the removal of the prohibition on field irrigation, the applicants did a really good job on this and contacted DEQ before they even applied with us and got their guidelines on how to withdraw river water for irrigation while staying below the standards that would require a more stringent permit or any permit from DEQ.

So we are recommending a condition that follows those DEQ guidelines.

And third, the site is located about half a mile downstream of the South Fork Rivanna Dam.

RWSA has recommended the posting of dam breach hazard signage on the site, and we have recommended a new condition imposing that requirement.

Finally, consistency with the comprehensive plan.

Again, rural area goals support agriculture, forestry, water protection, natural and cultural resource protection.

This is a recreational use that doesn't directly support those goals, but be given its low impact nature in the lack of facilities that change the land or cause any grading or excavation of this site can easily return to other more appropriate rail uses in the future.

So we didn't feel that there was any significant or permanent impact there.

So in summary, factors favorable of the upgrades to the Pole Ground Road and the US 29 intersection,

The fact that the maximum of four games would still apply, meaning the level of use would not change significantly.

And use, as I said, is a low impact design.

The unfavorable factor was, if any, was the increase in operational hours and the additional months that it would be used.

However, while there would be more days when the use had impacts, the total impact at any one time would still be capped by the limits on the

parking area and the number of fields that can be used for games, which are the main generator of traffic.

So we are recommending approval with these modifications to the previous conditions.

I will just run through them very quickly and outline form rather than reading to you.

The main changes are that for new condition two, that seven field layout I showed you would now apply.

New number three would be the requirement to add the flood safety signage recommended by RWSA.

Number four is just changing the hours.

Number seven is changing from no irrigation to irrigation that must be withdrawn from the Rivanna River using a temporary over-the-bank hose.

No permanent changes to the riverbank and no removal of trees for this purpose.

And then Condition 12 is the one that was originally designed to avoid four very specific events at Manu Park.

Again, given the traffic volume that's being accommodated for Brookhill, for the residential development along Polo Grounds Road,

It's no longer seen necessary and permits the modern use to continue without being under the control of a different use which they have no say in.

So those are the recommended conditions.

There are a couple of motions for you here and I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you.

Can I see, let me see the, can you, can you unshare your screen for just a second, please?

Thank you.

I can see, I can see.

Are there any questions for Scott before we move to hear from the applicant?

So these questions are for staff, but Mr. Clark, if you can't answer them, that's fine to leave them for the applicant.

I have about four or five questions.

My first question is, thanks.

My first question is, why was it ever limited to not being able to start at 11?

We were just, it's hard to remember.

Okay.

Okay.

I was curious, can you state again how much water per day they wanted to withdraw from the river in the months of, I guess it's July and August, and I'm just sort of trying to get a sense of how much water per day and how much water per month.

I understand it's below the DEQ permit requirement,

Right.

The DEQ line is at 10,000 gallons a day, and above that you would need a river water withdrawal permit.

From what I understand from the applicants, they expect to stay significantly below that.

They can address this more accurately than I can, but I believe I remember they said that

10,000 gallons would be enough for at least a few days worth of the irrigation that they do.

And again, as we discussed earlier, the base flow in the river here is on the order of 20 million gallons a day.

OK.

And my last question for you is,

In the staff report, you mentioned that they only use 96 parking spaces, I think, or that's how many they have.

Do we have any sense of how many they currently tend to use?

Yeah, and I've seen that concern as well.

I don't know what their current use level is, and I'm assuming Mr. Seib can address that.

But the way, even though it's a gravel parking area, we had them design it according to, it was sized so it would fit 96 spaces.

There isn't really any room to increase it in that existing gravel area.

So they would have had to come in with a revised conceptual plan showing a larger area to fit any more spaces in there.

I know there's some people in the community have gotten the impression that there's an additional 96 coming in.

That's not the case.

Karen, are you okay?

I heard you.

Okay.

This might be a silly question, but I'm curious, is there anything that says that this site must be used for soccer?

Yeah, the permit is for the single recreational

use category and zoning ordinance that we use in athletic facilities.

So that's a catchall for everything.

I guess I was wondering, like, could you have a concert out there, right?

Could a concert as a fundraiser, could you do that out there?

I think normally we would make room for that in the conditions of a permit if we expected that to happen.

The question I would have for Francis is at what point

A fundraiser activity of some sort, accessory to the use, at which point isn't a new use, it's an event use.

I'm not sure where that line is either.

We would have to evaluate a request if they were to want to come in and actually do that to make that decision whether it would be considered accessory.

As Scott said, the conditions now are fairly constraining as far as the use of the fields for what it is as the

swim, golf, tennis, or similar athletic facility as the zoning ordinance identifies it.

So there certainly could potentially be some accessory, something accessory, whether that is usual and customary, something like that.

Rick.

Scott, this is really not your field, but I was just struck in terms of the application that there was no documentation here of the traffic study that was done for Brookhill on Polar Grounds Road's intersection with 29.

So we are kind of taking it on faith here that

that set of traffic projections that were done that undergirded the Brookhill development application approved by the board.

That number, which we will call N,

now is going to have n plus x, which is the potential additional traffic that could occur.

I'm not saying it will occur, but it could occur with more games potentially being played at this location.

So we really don't know at this point what the cumulative impact is going to be because we don't know what the n is.

and we don't really know what the why is as a result of this project.

The way it was explained to me, and I've got that traffic study here that I can pull up if there's a particular piece of it you want to see.

I discussed this quite a bit with Captain McDermott, who's been our transportation planner, the way he explained the

Traffic analysis and the setup for that intersection was that accounts for that intersection were expected to accommodate Brookhill, the other residential and recreational uses already on this road, plus some future growth.

So given that all of the other uses on this road, Brookhill is very large, obviously, there's quite a few residential uses on this road.

Yeah, and I understand it's a timing issue as well, because when these games are played, it's going to be very different than when the bulk of the commuter traffic will be accruing to that intersection, either going west or coming then east at the end of the day.

I did want to say to Karen,

having been on the commission at the time that this was approved by the planning commission and then the board went ahead and approved it as well.

Besides the transportation issue, the other issue that the planning commission addressed, as I recall, was to ensure that there would be a minimal amount of noise disruption

to the residents up in Carsbrook area because that community had been very concerned about noise being projected from the soccer games and we were trying

as a planning commission, and I think the board did that as well, to try to ensure that that would not be disruptive to the customary enjoyment of Saturday mornings and Sundays, et cetera.

So I do think noise may well have also factored into it, but your recollection is correct.

Was there someone after Rick?

Scott, could you just go back to a second to the slide where you have the, I'm trying to understand something, where you have the pathway that goes along the Rivanna.

Go back to that.

And maybe when the applicant comes in, they'll tell us where this water is going to come from that may get drawn.

You had one that has some dotted lines on it.

There it is.

Okay.

So, whoa, hello.

That didn't help.

Here we are.

Okay, so what's the circle there all the way to, let's see, to the west?

I've got that plan open.

I'm sorry, give me just a moment here.

I had the property.

Just a moment, sorry about that.

That is labeled Bike Ped Vehicle Bridge.

So that's the bridge that is now in place.

That's the 29 bridge.

No, it's the one upstream, what is the name of that street?

I've forgotten already.

I don't do the development areas.

It's the road that goes behind

Doubletree and crosses the river upstream of the 29 bridge.

Bergmar.

Bergmar.

Okay, so then can we go back to that to 29 then?

So okay, I'm trying to get a sense of, you know, one of the things that we've talked about over, I think it's been Tim and some other people talk about a library we've been using our river, particularly the river in these places.

So I'm trying to see what's going on there.

Because we've got all these, we've got sort of all these activities that we're trying to sort of encourage there.

But then if we go up

So you're then telling me that the things that look like coronavirus spots

That's unfortunate.

You might want to say that.

What I call that is an asterisk.

Oh, is that an asterisk?

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, that's what I'm going to go with.

I believe that is the recently constructed access to the river right there.

So that boat launch over there.

Oh, the red one.

I was right, the big green one.

The red one, yeah, the red one is the boat launch, which is going to be going in there.

The green one is the civic area.

And then, yeah, we've got bike.

Colors don't match.

We've got proposed trails and multi-use paths around basically all of the edges of this property.

Of this property.

And so they're there now or are they going to be there?

They are not there now.

I believe the trails within Brookhill are going to be done as part of that development, but the connector from Polo Grounds down to the river and the trail along the river do not exist yet.

Okay.

So now can you tell me where this water is going to come from?

The water is going to come directly from the South River Bandit itself.

Okay.

All right.

And again, that's, you know, we're talking flow even in a drought when

RWSA has to maintain in-stream flow by pulling off the bottom of the dam.

That's 20 million gallons a day going through there.

Okay.

So right now we're planning to have a multimodal pass or a path there.

There isn't one there now.

And so there's some Congress.

Okay.

And Brooke Hill, which is the darker blue path of the black or the purple one, I guess it is, that's going to go in.

And then, and is there still, is there going to be a path on the other side of the river, of the river there?

Looks like the plan is calling for it, yes.

Okay.

I have no idea where that stands in terms of acquisition.

Okay, thank you.

I was going to hold this for the applicant, but since we've been discussing the water issues, I canoe from Charlottesville to Fluvanna several times each year.

I don't really do the upper part of the Rivanna as much, but the lower part, there are actually channels that even in the low water time that Karen was alluding to that

July, August, and I would take that into even September, there are times when you actually have to get out of your canoe and walk your canoe and let the canoe float in the channel without you.

Maybe people who are a little lighter than I am can get away with it, but I have to get out of my canoe to do that.

So I'm wondering if any of us, any of the folks here have

have been on the upper reaches in those months and to know how low the flow is, whether the water is going to be extracted from that channel, which is an important recreation channel.

So that even with the volumes that you've discussed, Scott, I'm curious as to whether in the channel

the water could be reduced enough that it impedes canoes and kayaks during that time.

So that's one question.

And then the sort of follow up to that is I've heard nothing about what the herbicides and pesticides that are going to be used as part of the irrigation process and the turf rebuilding process are going to be.

And if there's nothing, if there's no condition to that effect, I don't believe there is,

That's why I was getting it out at this point, so we would have all of us covered at this point.

Yes, I know that Commissioner Randolph says I was on the Commission in 2012.

but I do not recall reviewing this application.

So I'm going to ask staff can you elaborate or even Commissioner Randolph on why it was that they didn't allow irrigation using the Rivanna River?

Did they simply not ask for it or was it

I had to go back and look that up because I couldn't remember.

Actually, it was not a water issue.

It was a noise issue.

We had several concerns raised by nearby landowners about noise.

And in working through that and talking with the applicants,

We had said we recommend against outdoor amplified sound.

They said we didn't plan any.

We had heard from some neighbors that said they're going to be putting in fields to irrigate.

That means we'll have to listen to the pumps.

And the applicants said, well, we don't plan to irrigate, so we will volunteer a condition that prevents that so they don't have to worry about that.

Obviously, since that time, they've had some problems with not being able to keep the fields in good shape without some watering.

So they found that they do actually need that.

If you all need to see it, I can pull up some information about noise levels for a typical portable pump and the attenuation of noise over distance to give you some sense of what that impact might be.

Thank you.

Rick.

I just wanted to note, I looked it up on what the average swimming pool, the number of gallons in the average swimming pool, 13,500 in your backyard.

So we're not looking at a huge volume of water here.

And Scott, that's my recollection as well.

I don't recall that there was any discussion about potential irrigation here.

It was really, again, sound and traffic were the two issues.

Thank you for the history.

All right.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Good.

I'm still a little new to this.

I don't have

haven't participated in that many meetings since we've been online.

I'm Maynard Sipe.

I'm a land use attorney here in Charlottesville, and I'm representing Monticello United Soccer Club.

And they go by MON-U as a acronym.

Pat Riley is here also, who is the administrator for the organization.

And I would like to leave a moment for him to very briefly

explain the organization and answer a couple of the questions that were raised by commissioners.

Right off, I'm going to just say up front, this application is not about any expansion of the use.

It's really just about allowing for more flexibility, which we think actually is very positive overall on its impacts, reducing them.

The organization had about approximately 150 members when this application was originally filed 10 years ago.

And that's what they have today.

So they've had a very stable enrollment and number of participants.

The citizens comments, there was some misunderstanding, which I think Scott Clark addressed pretty well.

There is no increase in the parking.

I would like to explain a little further, there's perhaps a little bit of misunderstanding about the use of the fields.

The restriction is on four fields, what I would say in use.

And so that's for practices and games.

The reason we're going to the seven, they originally had anticipated laying out up to seven fields to maintain turf and they want to be able to rotate through them.

And so by rotating, it's really going to be a positive environmental impact to maintain a good stand of grass.

I think Mr. Riley had submitted a letter to you all, the commissioners, I hope you all saw that.

I felt like his letter really just gave you a really good brief summary of it, what they're requesting and why.

On the irrigation, there's been some questions.

I would just say that really, I think going ahead and using the ability to irrigate to ensure we get new grass seeds started or perhaps maintain it in a drought.

They do not anticipate irrigating regularly.

It's just occasionally when these certain events happen.

And so I think that actually is a positive because it will help maintain the grass turf in a good condition.

I'm going to let Mr. Riley speak to the question Mr. Keller had about any use for herbicides or pesticides.

I think he would probably be best positioned to say what their practice is.

They probably do use some fertilizer, but he'll talk to that.

Traffic is obviously the big concern that some neighbors have raised.

And I think a lot of their concern is about the other developments in the area that have come in since we originally were there.

But I think the traffic concerns are also being addressed by the increased flexibility we're looking for by having slightly broader hours.

who really are in a position to maybe stagger the games and reduce some of the traffic's peak flows in and out of the site.

So it really should mitigate traffic.

We're not expanding the use or increasing the number of people who will be participating.

So there's really no new traffic generation.

I think I would like to just sum up.

I'm gonna keep it brief.

We're okay.

Manu is okay with the conditions as presented and set out in the staff report.

And of course, we ask you for your approval.

We appreciate it.

And I will say a couple of things to the questions raised to sum up, I guess.

It's been made clear about the parking, no additional parking.

I tried to clarify that four fields in use, that means no more than four fields being used at one time, games or practice.

Mr. Randolph spoke to some of the questions about the original conditions and staff's answered most of them well.

So I'll leave it to Pat to just describe the organization briefly, what they're doing and answer particularly the question from Mr. Keller.

Good evening.

I am Pat Riley.

I'm the co-founder of Monticello United Soccer Club.

I'm also the public administrator.

Just some of you might not be familiar with us.

I'll give you a little background.

We're a small 501 C3 nonprofit soccer organization.

We started in 2003.

We used to play games and practices at Darden Town and other county parks and schools.

2012, our special use permit from Monty Park was approved and that became our new home.

We have most of our activities there, which has really been a big help for us just with

scheduling, flexibility, being able to having makeup games and knowing that you have an available field to reschedule things.

And when we first moved to Manure, I believe Mr. Saip already mentioned this, 10 years ago, we had a yearly membership of approximately 150 players.

And now 10 years later,

We're still small.

Our membership numbers are just below 150 for this season.

So we really haven't changed a whole lot in that respect.

And one of the main reasons, I guess it's the one thing with the number of fields is what prompted some concern.

10 years ago with our meetings, we had stated and it was understood we would be limited to four fields in use at one time, which is the

24 parking spaces per field and the 96 spaces.

But that we would have more than four fields there because we would be rotating around to preserve the field.

But that wording never made it into the original special use permit.

So we have been moving goals, rotating around, and we have one big area that has a field.

That field got worn out and we're going next to it.

So this was really to change the wording so that, because I know when the county did an over aerial view, you could see there were seven fields.

And that's what we were saying that we had explained originally that this is to rotate fields, preserve fields, especially since we weren't irrigating, the only way to keep a field in good shape is to put it into rest.

So that's what we do.

And that's what we're looking to do.

And we want to make the wording official that we do have seven fields, but we are not going to be using more than four at one time.

And over the past 10 years, it's probably once a year maybe we use four at one time.

We're more in the line of two or three at a time just because of our small numbers.

and let's see, I know a lot of this stuff is covered, but just, I guess a summation that our four fields in use is not changing.

It will still be four.

The 96 parking spaces will still be 96.

And the traffic generated in and out of the park is not any different than it has been for the 10 years.

Let's see, as far as the flexibility,

We're looking for flexible hours basically just to be consistent with the operation of other public and private facilities starting at 8am and ending at dark.

That helps us in a number of areas.

One is the summer heat.

It would be helpful if we can't start until 11.

and it was four o'clock on weekdays.

We're playing in the heat of the day when we could schedule something in the morning or we could schedule it later in the evening.

We can schedule around a rain forecast coming in the afternoon or something for the morning.

Okay.

We use fertilizer and we get all our fertilizer and seed from Landscape Supply who are, they have right up on top of everything that's eco-friendly.

I don't have exact

things in front of me, but they are, from what I understand, one of the leaders in the industry of supplying an eco-friendly product.

And that's what I've been using.

And I guess, oh, there's also the watering.

I can answer that.

The watering is, we need that for germinating seed

It's not a year-round watering in the field.

It's typically late May, early June, and a couple weeks in September.

Those are the normal times when you'd want to water to germinate the Bermuda seed right before summer, and then the rye seed right as this temperature starts to get a little cooler.

and we are limited to 10,000 gallons a day.

Okay, are there questions for the applicant before we go to the floor?

Thanks for the

description.

I appreciate that.

I mentioned before I'm in the satellite industry space, so I have access to a lot of imagery.

And that was one of the questions I was going to ask you is that how has the use practically changed since roundabout 2016 when it looked like more than the four fields from 2012 had been used?

And I really appreciate you bringing up that there was a misunderstanding of wording and that some of the uses have been there.

And so I think one thing that would be helpful for me as we describe

wasn't mean to be in use because if you look at current imagery from the site, you see what would be defined as soccer field.

And I'm a former, I love soccer.

I was a soccer player, college soccer player, big fan of the sport and the impact on youth and team and all that.

But when you say no more than four fields will be in use at a time, but there's obviously, you know, if you look at imagery today, you would see

goals you know two goals set up across from each other that would be more than four fields you'd see six and so well it'd be great if i'm sorry guys yeah so i just wanted to understand if you could clarify the definition of in use how's that that's really what you'd say four because you can split the field into two it's still one field if you're just using using it for for regulation size between seven and 130

or 100 or 130, somewhere in that approximation.

But you may have other practice areas set up that have goals that could be used by participants or non-scheduled practices or scheduled practices that would extend that for and use.

So I'm when I look at the site and I see the imagery, you know, you see, you can see like four full fields and you can see a lot of smaller goals set up that are smaller fields that could be used for practice or other things that you cannot hold a legal game on that could be used for scheduled practices or whatever.

How is that?

Is that, you know, I'm just trying to understand the impact when we talk about traffic and use and the amount of people and density on the site at a given time.

That's basically a full-size field is split into two, two teams using that.

There may be two practice areas that are 40 by 30 being used.

I know what you're saying.

Consistently over the 10 years, like I said, we've never, more than once or twice a year, never even get up to the full fields for full-size fields being used.

For instance, right now we have

And operationally, does scheduling of these use of these four fields per team basis or whatever run through you as the administrator?

Everything goes through me.

I might add briefly that I think if you do look at like an area of the site at some point in time, you know, there may be some goals that are set to the side and there's also, you know, the area is mowed to some extent and basically we are talking about one large field and the only designation of these particular fields

in use is through chalking.

So, you know, they are maintaining the turf and grass across the whole site in good condition.

Right.

And there may be goals on it because they're just so hard to move.

Kind of set aside.

That's what I'm trying to figure out is like operationally as we think about it from how you've practically been using it over the last 10 years to forecast of more fields.

You know, what is the operational impact of density use on traffic and other things?

And that's what I'm trying to understand versus, you know, we talk about increased hours and, you know, water is a separate issue.

Those are separate issues related to the specialties from it.

But like one of the core issues, like,

What is the density of use from how we've practically been using it?

How can we project?

You know, is this going to increase the use of the site and its impact on traffic, given the things and just trying to understand how that works?

What's the definition of for and use?

How is that consistent or inconsistent?

If I may, I would say, and I think I mentioned it perhaps briefly in my initial presentation, the in-use restriction is that no more than four full-size fields are in use at one time.

And so that's the limit, and we're not asking for any change in the limit, so there won't be any additional activity or intensification of the use.

In fact, I would

We try to have dedicated game fields and practice fields as much as possible just because the game field is in a little better shape.

Thanks.

That's all the questions I have at this time.

So before we go to Corey, Scott, did you want to talk about how we enforce this?

Yeah, just to get to that question of what a number of fields in use means.

If we were to hear from somebody, the concern about more than four fields being in use, we're going to look at that as people on the fields at a time, not the fact that there are seven rectangles in the grass.

that are part of the facility.

It's going to be about people using the site at any given moment.

So as you could now, you can look and see more than four rectangles, but there certainly are four fields in operation at any one time.

Thank you both for sharing more about the project.

Regarding the league, can you talk to me a little bit about league play?

Is it local participants versus local participants?

Or are you hosting tournaments where folks come in from out of town?

We have just a local group with little kids, maybe 18 to 20, kids 8, 9, 10 years old.

And then when they get older, we have

each season the team will play four away games and then four home games so for instance in the spring it's lighter so our spring home games for this March, April, May we have I believe 20 home games for that entire period and then 20 away games

Okay, I'm trying to get a feel for the 96 parking spaces, are they already maxed out?

So for example, can you talk to me a little bit about how the studies use the parents, they drop off their kids, whether they're there, they stay for a while.

Is 96 spaces a big deal, I guess, or is it more people to come?

some people drop and go and we do not have any internet there so some people go and other people other people stay and just walk around walk around the park all the kids practicing it's a mix the only time that the parking will

get tight is when games are stacked.

Multiple fields are stacked on top of each other.

You know games stacked on multiple fields and you know typically for us we have two or three games stacked on one game field.

It's not like I said in the last 10 years we've probably used four fields a hand just

not even a couple times a year on average.

Game-wise, we maxed out at three fields most of the time.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, I'm sorry.

The reason why I was asking, Mr. Volley, is because there's a lot of concerns about traffic.

And so if a lot of folks are dropping off, it doesn't even matter if you have 96 spaces.

Right.

I know what you're saying.

Just that they drop and leave.

I'm trying to get a feel for, you know.

It depends on really the age of their kid.

feel they need to stick around or if they want to leave.

Most people like the trail that goes around the park.

And they like walking that 1.7 mile trail all the way around the park.

And they just walk that.

The older kids drive themselves.

So it's just kind of hard to pin down as far as the spots.

Very good.

And my last question is regarding just being inclusive in folks with disabilities.

I was looking through the documents.

I didn't see any mention of how any thought has been put into that.

So for example, you know, ADA accessible port-a-potties and imagine with these mini games, we have parents or folks with disabilities.

That we do not, we do not have

the porta potties that would be accessible like that.

We do have a golf cart that we drive people with disabilities over to the sideline.

We help them out that way.

We let them park in a closer area.

I mean, we have handicapped parking spaces, but when the field is on the other side, you know,

basically, you know, pull up the cone and let them get closer if they need to and have them up on the golf cart or on mobile.

We haven't seen the need for that, you know, yet and maybe it's just our size.

But I mean, it's not something, you know, I assume that's something that allied portable toilets could accommodate.

Karen?

Yes, since you won't be using more than four fields at a time, is it correct to assume then that you will be able to

Yep, we do that.

We do that now and we're going to keep doing that.

We're a pretty low budget club, so that's one of our only means of keeping the fields in good shape.

and it's pretty sandy soil down there.

So the older boys really teared up pretty good.

So yeah, we will be, and we have a dozen field close signs that go up over every field that's closed.

Are there other questions before we close and go to public, Karen?

Iowa, just a couple before we do.

Yeah, our field maintenance guy cuts around.

I don't know.

They're on both sides of the river.

So from the slide that Mr. Clark showed us, there's an attempt to get a trail that goes from the boat launch, which is on the other side of 29, all the way down the river there.

I guess it would depend on where it is because we're

It's most of the area of where the woods to the river is 100 feet or more.

And it's pretty thick and hilly inside there.

Between there to the, it's not like the other side where it has that nice flat right next to the river area.

So here's my piece on this, and there's a couple things that I, and maybe Mr. Carroll is going to speak to this.

So if we're using herbicides and we're using, and whether or not we're using it twice a year, even when we have some of our heavy rains around here, one of my concerns is how are we mitigating the runoff from those fields, from this big field basically back into the river.

the river and your fields in the woods there which would be which would tie into this nice green buffer that we have running down there that would be helpful to both the quality of the water and it would also be it would be helpful to give your give your parents a place to sort of walk up and down the river if they needed to and in addition it would give it would help to create a a um a community or help to facilitate an accessory on the river and you've got riverfront and so I'm hoping that

in a way to mitigate watergate runoff and to be perhaps thinking a way to sort of add an accessory for your parents as they're looking to do something while their kids are there, that this would be something that the organization would consider being in conversation with staff about how you might sort of join that piece, your waterfront there with what we're trying to do here.

And I see Scott's got his hand up.

If I may just a moment before Scott, I would add that what Pat was describing really is a mode path around the open area, which is for private use of the parents and people who are there.

It's not an improved trail like the county would ultimately maybe be looking for in the long run.

But the buffer is very large already.

their use does not impede into that area that Scott said was 125 to 250 feet wide.

So you have a natural buffer there now.

I get that, and I'm not trying to say that this is one farmland versus another farmland.

My real point is that this is a community good

And as a community organization, would you consider entering into conversation with staff about how we might be able to extend that path there?

This is not about, you know, whether or not we're growing corn there or we're running cattle.

We're running young people, which is a different kind of commodity.

And so, you know, that's really what my conversation is there.

Trying to increase that path

across a piece of property that has Waterfront, and would you be willing to engage in that conversation?

Okay.

So that's what I'm raising to you on that.

Excuse me, sir?

Can I make one more comment, just on the path there?

I should have said, like Mr. Seif did, it's the edge of the woods, right at the edge of the field's mode so that people can walk, not the woods.

Go through the owner.

OK, fine.

That's good to know.

And I assume if the owner said yes, he wouldn't have an object.

So the other thing I need to ask you, are there any lights there?

No.

No.

All right.

I understand that.

I understand that.

Are there any other questions before we open it up?

Open up for public hearing, please.

And, uh,

Okay, our first speaker, Joan, please state your name and address if you're with a group or organization, the group or organization you represent.

My name is James Loo.

Let me see if I can fix that.

Okay.

How's that?

I can, how about this one?

That's much better.

Super, thanks.

I'm glad you can hear me.

Sorry, my name is Joseph Salou.

I own the property just immediately south of the Rivanna.

We really appreciate the use of Vanya Park.

It's a very cool amenity for the club to use, and we do enjoy seeing the public there using the fields.

We have very few concerns about the application.

If any, it's a bit about the extending morning hours.

that are proposed.

I think it's made pretty evident in the discussion that the game times are pretty limited with use of only four fields.

Just a couple of questions.

Would there be limited hours applicable to field maintenance?

We do sort of enjoy the early morning solitude from time to time here.

And the crowds, arguably and understandably, can get loud as they're cheering for their favorite players and so forth.

So we'd like to understand a little bit about that and if that 8 a.m.

hour has to do with maintenance as well.

And then I think the lighting question has been answered.

The trail is a very interesting question that's brought up.

That's a separate issue, I think, but it does seem that the semi-public use of the field might lend itself to that as that plan gets thought through and considered.

OK, thank you.

Next I have Don Long.

Thank you.

This is Don Long.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I live in Crozet, but I am also the president of the Board of SACA.

I wanted to speak up and share our support for the requested changes to the special use permit.

We don't have enough soccer fields in our community.

We're constantly, we have a lot of soccer players and we need more fields.

The county is working to address some of those issues, but I wanted to be clear that we support the efforts to increase the, you know, the access to these fields.

Okay, I can tell you from personal experience that the changes on the road have on Polo Grounds Road have dramatically improved the traffic flow there.

So I just wanted to once again support this proposed change and on behalf of soccer and on behalf of soccer players in general.

Thank you.

Next I have Don Rucker.

Okay, hopefully I'm being heard right now.

My name is Don Rucker.

My wife and I live in Bendavar, 1936 Bendavar Farm Road.

I've been here for 10 years, lived right off of

Hello, ground road, travel it many, many times every day.

One of our concerns every day is going underneath the infamous trestle bridge where traffic drops to 15 miles an hour in near miss situations occur almost hourly.

Despite the beeping back and forth and despite the mirrors, there's always somebody that didn't comply with the rules and has to back up.

But traffic is an issue and as I say, we've been here for 10 years.

My biggest single concern, and I'm just talking as an individual here, is traffic and safety.

On April 9th, I sent a letter, and hopefully all you folks got a copy of it, dealing with the particular matter in front of us.

Yes, we did.

Thank you.

Perfect.

I don't want to go over the information there.

But being on Polo Grounds,

and being near neighbors with Brookhill were particularly sensitive in a rural community to changes.

And just a quick refresher, Brookhill originally proposed 600 to 800 household units was bumped up, doubled to 1,850.

And for us in the immediate area, there were a number of issues concerning the traffic projections densities

assumptions which we argue with and we see violated every single day.

So we're sensitive to added traffic to Polo Grounds and particularly when Brookhill is yet to be built out and I drove up there about two days ago and it's not even close to being, it's probably about a third right now.

And so those traffic assumptions made by that consultant have yet to be validated, verified with actual experience.

So a new traffic generator coming

is particularly concerning to us on a road which is basically a two-lane road which is hazardous itself with the turns and the rest of the stuff.

So this has been enlightening in terms of hearing the information about Manu and the plans and the history and the rest.

And only because my three minutes may be up quickly, I wanna express my biggest single concern right now today is it's specified

In the planning board meeting, which I just received today, and I don't know that anybody else has really gotten it, is it specifies that there will be no community meeting?

That's concerning, Renny.

Why would information flow be restricted?

Why would we not be simply talking down about the issues themselves and having a frank exchange, which I think we're having here today?

but I would ask that that be... Mr. Rucker, I'm sorry, your time is up.

Okay.

Well, I made my point about lifting that particular restriction in the application.

Thank you.

I would briefly just say that I think the opening hours at 8 a.m.

were largely for us to be able to open the gate and get prepared for the day.

And I'll let Pat speak to how he envisions games, but I don't think you'll have cheering crowds that early in the morning.

And I'll let the staff speak to the community meeting question that might have been raised.

Correct.

We typically like to open the gates an hour before our first game.

So if we have 8 a.m.

in there, that would mean we'd be opening gates 8 o'clock, 8 15, for people to come in and start the game at 9 o'clock.

We're not looking for 8 a.m.

games.

We're certainly, I know our maintenance guy,

He's coming from Scottsville and he's certainly not out there cutting fields, doing anything at 8 a.m.

for several reasons.

He's coming from Scottsville and so he waits till all traffic subsides coming into town and he typically gets in about

10 o'clock, make sure the dew is dry from the grass because it's not going to cut wet and then starts in around 11.

Thereabouts, finishes up before people come in.

Okay, thank you.

So we're going to bring it back to us.

And let's say thank you very much.

And where is Scott?

Up they are.

Do you want to speak to the to the one issue about the communities?

Yes, just to clarify, the community meeting is not to do with discussions between the applicant and the community after this point.

There's certainly no restriction on any of that.

The community meeting is a step very early in the special use permit process where we typically set up a meeting, of course it's been online lately,

for applicants to describe their proposal to nearby landowners.

So if we had held one for this permit, it would have been early last year.

Given the scale of the changes that are proposed, which are minimal, we didn't hold that meeting, especially given it was during the worst kind of peak of changes due to COVID.

But again, that's a step from very early in the process.

And of course,

Information is available for these hearings for people to read up on the proposal and have influence on the decision making.

But there's no restriction on any kind of meeting in the future between applicants, the applicants in the community.

Thank you.

Chair Bivins, if I could also add to that Charles Repplin, Director.

Mr. Fluker said that correctly.

So within the code, well, this was brought to us back in April of last year, just as we get to the COVID transition meetings.

And there's some criteria in the code that allows the ability to waive a community meeting requirement based on the nature of the proposal, including its scope and scale, if it is not likely to generate any significant concerns.

And as we've stated here, the traffic improvements were made.

There's no increase in usage on the field.

It didn't see it.

This is an approved use and existing use already out there.

We didn't feel that it was going to be any significantly new information to hash out aside from some of the information discussed tonight.

And as Mr. Clark mentioned, when we do waive a meeting like that, we do notify property owners, we allow information sharing.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I wonder if given the various policies that we are

either have recently or in the process of enacting for the county whether we should have a condition about whether the herbicides and pesticides that are used are eco-friendly.

And I also, as a canoeist for many, many decades, I know that when there is something unusual coming across a riverbank, there is often

interest and playfulness about dealing with that object that is not necessarily there.

And so I don't think that we need to necessarily say anything, but I think that the applicant should be forewarned.

There will most likely be interesting things that are done to that hose and that pump, unless there's an individual monitoring from the stream bank.

Maybe a fisherman

Actually, let Commissioner Firehock go, since it's my district, I prefer to go last.

Okay, thank you.

So I understood from the applicant that they stated they would be actually spreading out the impact of the uses by expanding the hours.

But I also appreciate the sensibilities that were entailed in restricting the hours to avoid rush hour in the first place or rush hours.

So personally, I would be amenable to letting them open a little earlier, say 10 a.m., with the understanding that people would trickle in for a game that might start at 11.

But I'm not in favor of moving it to 8 a.m.

Second comment is that

They want to withdraw, as was pointed out by Commissioner Randolph, less than a swimming pool's worth of water.

on certain days when they're seeding.

I'm still concerned about that because they want to withdraw that water at precisely the time of year when that portion of the river is very low and it is impaired for benthic life.

I happen to be an expert in stream quality

and one of the reasons those impairments occur is due to low volumes and low flows which reduce the amount of available oxygen in the river.

So I am actually opposed to permitting water withdrawal during the time of low water flows

in that reach and I have personally both monitored that reach as well as paddled it multiple times and I can attest to the challenges with the flow there as it is.

So those are my two comments in terms of what I find objectionable.

As far as the rest of the application to have more fields available so that fields can have rest from intensive use, I think that is a good idea.

And the last comment is that I would like them to consult with the Soil and Water Conservation District about the management of the field because even if they use eco-friendly fertilizer,

It is really common for people to over apply the fertilizer and put down more than is needed.

Understanding that, Pat, as you said, you're a nonprofit and you're not looking to spend any extra money on anything, including fertilizer.

I think I would have greater comfort if I knew that

We have done that through Landscape Supply because they are a leader in the field.

Oh, sorry.

Thank you.

No.

Anything else?

Okay.

Daniel?

I'll just follow up on mine.

I'm generally, you know, having

played on poorly maintained fields and been seriously injured as a soccer player.

But due to the poorly maintained field, I'm very in favor of safety of the individual applicant, individual players on the field.

So rotating and putting fields in rest, I think is a good ideal.

And that part I'm very supportive of.

I share some of the concerns about the watering and the water runoff, although I'm not an expert in the field, 125.

I would like to understand how that helps maintain or minimize that and if there's other assurances.

I would say that from what I can discern and from the assurances given by the administrator that the

the four fields in use doesn't practically to me seem to be affecting the current use of it.

And so I don't know how some of the concerns about traffic other than the increased hours is kind of is the question at hand in me is how does the increased hours, which by nature open up more opportunities for uses, impact the traffic?

And specifically, from my understanding, and we didn't really it wasn't really discussed, but I understand Commissioner Firehocks is like

Most soccer games are usually maintained on the weekends or after school hours.

And so I guess one of the questions becomes, is it Monday through Friday in a weekend schedule, or is it a Monday through Sunday schedule of the increase that is necessary to facilitate the practical use of the site?

And so, you know,

I can understand the use of that but I think being sensitive to the neighbors 8 a.m.

does seem a bit early even on the weekends.

I know I don't necessarily like to hear a bunch of things at 8 a.m.

but 9 a.m.

is being a slave to waking up in a normal workday as most of us from 9 to 9 to 5 could be that cool.

So I would just kind of leave it to the

fellow conditioners to think about what the right timing is and how that is addressed in a special use permit.

Someone else?

Does anyone else before we go to Corey?

If I do this, Adam, before we go to Corey, I would say that

whatever the timing is, I would want the timing to be the same as Soka.

And so I would not want to penalize this group or have them have a different opening and closing time than a field that's less than 300, not meters, but 300 yards down the road, or the next partial over down the road.

And so if they open at eight, then I say that it's fine to open at this way.

I don't think we should penalize.

There's lots of permeable asphalt out there.

There's lots of parking out there.

There are lots of fields out there.

This one is a bit more, this organization's fields aren't as

we find as that organization feels like.

So like you said about the play, it's just the installation of all the stuff there.

So I for one would not want to penalize them in any way compared to people who are just two, I don't know, a half a mile down the road or a quarter of a mile down the road.

That would be my piece on this.

And I would also, coming to you next, but I would also say that I think that if there's a way for us

But I would support having a condition that's around, so talking about soil and about the use of herbicides, herbicides and pesticides in the soil, so that everyone can speak to that.

So the organization can use that as a speaking point to say we've done this and this is what we're doing, this is our practice.

So I would actually support a condition that had, that added that in, that added that in

Rick?

I just wanted to echo your remarks.

And I do recall nine years ago that we got a communication from one resident

nearby, who expressed her concern about the sound of laughing children in the afternoon during a soccer game.

And she cited that as a reason to oppose the original application.

Well, I think we have to be aware here that this is a critical resource in terms of a playing surface for soccer, which is in huge demand in this community.

Biscuit Run is not open yet.

We see four potential soccer fields down there opening up, but that will be probably another three to five years before that project is completed.

And in the meantime,

You know, we're continuing to grow as a community and demand for soccer isn't slackening in any stretch of the imagination.

So I also echo about trying to minimize restrictions on when play can begin here.

It is a Saturday morning and 8 a.m.

in the morning is not an untoward hour to have people, the children out there playing.

and enjoying soccer.

So I don't have a problem with that.

I do think the condition.

that was suggested by Commissioner Firehock about herbicides and pesticides and getting professional advice.

I think that's a sound recommendation.

I'm not too worried about the runoff given the distance involved before hitting the river.

And also be mindful that while water may be absorbed into the land here, if it was drawn from the river, in all likelihood, it will end up being redirected back into the river

and subterranean wise and end up going downstream.

Anyway, so I thought Daniel's remarks about putting the safety of these young athletes first is absolutely critical.

We owe it to them to have a really good playing surface for them to enjoy the sport.

So I just wanted to echo that.

Thank you for your patience, Corey.

I apologize for interrupting.

I didn't want you to get there.

No apologies.

I got a cup of coffee that was brought to me.

I would say I'm certainly, this has been a great conversation and I'm certainly in support of the proposal.

The way obesity is running rampant in our country, I have a hard time trying to throw a roadblock and trying to have a healthy community, right, as long as we can be reasonable.

and respectful to our neighbors and so I've been just jotting down all the great things that I've heard regarding the conditions and I certainly agree with the Commissioner Firehock and I thought that was a really strong one and Chairman Bivins I actually had the same exact thing with soccer right down the street it would be unfair to do anything different.

I think

says, where necessary and where reasonable, we can accommodate those with disabilities.

So if you're going to put a port-a-potty out there, it should definitely be able to accommodate someone with a disability.

So can we be reasonable in that way?

And that concludes my comments.

If there's nothing else, I'd be prepared to try to cobble together a motion with the amendments that my colleagues have sent.

Anything from anyone?

It's up to you, Corey.

Okay, sorry, let's just try to cobble then.

So, Mr. Clark, would you go to pull up the motion?

All right, thank you.

So you guys work with me here.

I move to recommend approval of S.P.

2020-0002 Monu Park with the conditions outlined in the staff report and the following additional conditions that the administrator will use eco-friendly

professionals in this field, that the field of view start time would mimic that of soccer and that where necessary and where reasonably accommodated that infrastructure can accommodate those with disabilities as well.

Is there a second?

We have a second by Tim.

Is there discussion?

I need to be able to see people, so can we take that away for a second?

Thank you.

It's been moved by Corey with those additions.

Seconded by Tim.

Scott, did you want to say?

We have discussion.

Scott, would you like to say something to us before you go?

It's just a few clarifications.

First on the mimicking the SACA operating hours, while you all were talking, I ran over to our tracking system and found the two old SP approvals for SACA.

There is no reference to operating hours or seasons in those special use permits.

The only reference to operating hours is that the site will be gated off and closed outside of operating hours.

There are no times set.

On the handicapped infrastructure, I'm concerned about how we could apply a condition like that in the floodplain where anything that needed to be a fixed structure or permanent structure would not be permitted.

So that could be a real burden for the applicants or something they actually physically couldn't meet.

I think if the intention is to have a handicapped accessible portable toilet on the site, then we just say that.

And finally, the condition regarding use of eco-friendly herbicides and insecticides is probably unenforceable, unless it's way more specific than that.

And I don't really know what to suggest on it.

Hopefully they're using something that's EPA approved, but eco-friendly is such a vague term that I don't think something can enforce it.

Let's take this one piece at a time.

That's right.

It's my understanding that there was going to be no like bolted down infrastructure fuel.

I didn't see anything about that.

And I thought I saw something about portable restrooms.

And so not to do anything to make the applicant have an undue hardship, it's just where if you're going to do that, I think that's the only thing I saw was portable restrooms.

That's right.

Okay.

I don't disagree with Mr. Clark's observations and concern about the eco-friendly pesticide application.

If Mr. Clayborne's motion is taken as sort of rough language that can be worked on and refined between here and when the board considers this application.

That might be best to leave some flexibility for that kind of fine-tuning of the language.

I agree with Mr. Clark that ultimately that language should be probably a little more specific, measurable, and enforceable.

We have some really smart people here.

Tim, are you fine with your second?

OK, continuing discussion.

Thank you, Ben.

So Mr. Chair, the other point that Mr. Clark brought up was the hours of operations and making sure that the hours of operations were uniform among the various SOC organizations.

So we've got, we're at this point here that if we're going to go forward, then we're either going to pull the hour.

along for a second.

If that is the case I certainly would love to get the input from our colleagues

from some of the neighbors and so forth.

If we had to set a time, perhaps it's not a clock.

I thought it was a really good point made about the summertime that starting earlier is prudent, right?

Especially in the Virginia sun.

I have no problems with that, but I'd like to find that balance between being fair and respecting our neighbors.

It seems that the applicant is asking for an eight o'clock start time.

Great.

I agree.

I agree with Luis on that.

As I said earlier, I think putting the least amount of restrictions on this organization is well called for because we require flexibility in operation during the summer months, especially.

Yes, I'm still troubled by the water withdrawal, and I'm trying to get an understanding, is this, is the irrigation only to be done, you know, say right when you let new seed is put down, grass seed, and then a couple of times, or is this something where they would water the field multiple days, multiple weeks in a row until the grass is established?

I don't know if anyone knows the answer to that.

I was just saying I don't have any information on that.

Pat would be the one to know best the applicant's intent.

So we're breaking something that we don't typically do.

I remember the applicant saying that it would only be twice a year in the early part of the spring and then in the late part of the, in the early part of the fall.

So it'd be two times during the year.

But is that two times?

Yeah, but that's a season.

I'm trying to understand if you're talking about a week of water withdrawals or a day.

It's not enough information for me to say in the fall and in the spring.

You can.

Can the applicant just answer that quick question?

Yes, I can.

Most of the

Bermuda seed, which is the seed in May, late May, early June, is already established.

So that would be extremely minimal.

And the overseeding, if we do overseeding with the rye in the

September usually comes up within three days.

What we have done in the past, which we'll continue to do, even if we're allowed to irrigate, is wait for the forecast to be favorable and throw the seed down before the next rains come.

And that's how we've done it up till now.

It doesn't always cooperate, but that's

That has been the way we've gotten stuff established so far.

Thank you.

So part of it is using the weather and if the weather is not cooperating then it tends to be these two things that we heard from the administrator.

What we've got, we've now got a

We've got a motion before us that has to be crafted in some way.

Mr. Chair, if Mr. Clayborne would like to amend his motion, he can withdraw that portion of the motion that dealt with operating hours.

The conditions as proposed by staff allowed for hours of operations to begin no earlier than 8 a.m.

and it sounds as though

the staff that the commission's consensus was to also allow 8 a.m.

start time.

That sounds good to me.

Let me just say the only reason I had backtrack for a second because I thought about it more

to neighbors.

So then if we restate this, let's see.

Mr. Rapp, could you by any chance restate the motion, please?

Or am I going to ask?

I've got it written down here.

You do?

I believe the motion was to recommend approval with the changes to the conditions shown in the staff report and with two additions now.

One for staff to work with the applicants to develop language requiring eco-friendly herbicides and insecticides for use on the site.

And second,

to require that the applicants provide a handicapped accessible portable toilet on the site during operations.

Okay, that's good.

I wonder if Corey would be

willing to add the water component or whether we have to vote and Karen make a friendly amendment to it.

And I guess we have two options.

One is that we add that as a third condition and the other is that it go as a recommendation to staff to work through this so that the supervisors would have that information when it comes to them if we're not willing to make it a motion.

I mean, a condition.

Yeah, I just wanted to share.

The soccer website states that their games are typically on Saturdays between 9 a.m.

and 6 p.m.

So the timing is not initiated.

It's close enough that it's on.

Okay.

We would need that to be fairly specific.

We understand what it is we're trying to achieve.

Sure.

I can add to a condition D to number seven.

Scott, did you get that?

I did.

Could you read it back, please?

Adding the condition 7D stating that water withdrawals for irrigation would only occur on the site during the week, and we might need to craft that a little bit, during the week that seeding on the site has occurred.

Karen, is that what you wanted to say?

Yes, that is my motion.

Is there a second to that?

Any further discussion?

Is there an amendment to Mr. Clayborne's motion?

We have not moved the motion.

Okay, yes.

Mr. Bailey?

Hi.

Mr. Keller.

Hi.

Ms.

Firehock.

Yes.

Hi.

So we now have before us the amended motion, which is about starting at 8 o'clock.

That's not in the motion.

That's accepting that.

But the two things are the ADA bathroom and the herbicide and pesticide, working with staff.

And that language will be refined, as we've told.

And now with the piece about water.

Mr. Chairman, given the fact that we've actually changed the wording of the motion,

Do we not need to first ask Mr. Keller if he still wants to second this motion?

I thought I saw him raise his hand.

Would you still like the motion?

Yes, I saw him raise his hand.

He did.

So are we all understanding what the amended motion, Mr. Clayborne, the amended motion is?

Yes.

Ms.

Firehock?

Yes.

Mr. Keller?

Aye.

The amendment motion has passed.

Thank you very much.

And gentlemen from from Manu, you'll be working with staff to sort of refine that language so that before you're for the public hearing with the Board of Supervisors, thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

And please don't do what the people in Europe have done.

Don't turn into a Super League.

Thank you.

Because your club isn't part of it.

I am.

That's right.

And I don't think Paris Saint-Germain would ever be part of anything like that.

Moving on to SP 2021-01 Midway Solar Project.

Do I see Mr. Fritz?

I'm gonna share with you, share my screen with you.

Do you see the SP-21-0001 Midway Solar?

We do.

Great.

So,

This application is located southwest of Batesville.

I've highlighted the parcel here for you so you can see.

You can see the county line just peering in the lower left-hand corner of the screen there.

So it gives you an idea of where this property is on Great Shore Road.

This particular map, zooming in a little bit, actually it's the same one.

It shows you the location of the agricultural forestal districts that are in the immediate area.

They're highlighted in sort of that bay color, I guess it is.

This property is adjacent to an agricultural forest or district.

The project was reviewed by the AFG March 16th and by a vote of six to one the committee found that the proposal does not conflict with the purposes of the district.

This map also shows the location of the Batesville Historic District and that's about a half the closest point of that half mile to the northeast and you can just see it there.

I think you can see my mouse.

It's just there.

So what is this application?

This is an application for an eight megawatt photovoltaic system with a four megawatt battery energy storage system.

It occupies about 80 acres of a 136 acre parcel.

This proposal does not require the upgrading of the distribution system and doesn't expand the CDEC service area.

And the power produced by this facility will be distributed throughout the CDE system in the same manner as power generated by any other generation source.

Solar systems by their very nature must be located on relatively large, open, gently sloping areas with access to power transmission lines.

This photo you can see some of the site is already open and a power line crosses the property.

You can see the opening for that.

The wooded area on this property is not a natural forest, it is planted pine.

So what I've done here is I've taken the conceptual plan submitted by the applicant and I've modified it a little bit so that hopefully it'll be a little easier for you to understand.

What I've done is these are the portions of the site that are currently wooded.

This marks the area of the solar panels.

Not the entirety of the area will be solar panels, but it marks the area that will be cleared to accommodate the solar panels.

So you can see how much of the site will be cleared to do that and how much of the site will stay wooded.

This outlines the area for the battery.

The batteries are housed in a structure that best description I can give you, it's not unlike a shipping container in terms of its size and dimensions.

The batteries provide power when the panels are shaded.

For example, it allows the flow of energy from the site to be maintained as clouds pass by.

This prevents surges and drops in power and peaks of power from the facility.

And it also allows for some power to be supplied during peak demand.

I just want to point this out because it was an issue in some of the previous discussions with the public.

This is the access.

The plan, which you see here, as originally submitted, showed the access on an adjacent property.

The applicant has done additional survey work, and we have that available if you'd like to see it, has done some additional survey work.

And the access is, in fact, not on adjacent property.

It is entirely on the CBEC property.

It's important to point out that if this special use permit is approved, the access for the site cannot be located on adjacent property.

It must be located on the CDEC property.

This is not a major issue.

It's simply a point of clarification.

I mentioned comments before, there was a virtual community meeting that was held back in February and we had 37 attendees and the comments received included concerns about lighting, statements in support of grazing opportunities on the site, providing public trail access along the Meacham's River, visual impacts, property value impacts, decommissioning and recycling of decommissioned materials, and construction access.

So the staff report you have before you goes over a lot of things and I'm not going to go into all of those for you.

I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

I just want to point out this special use permit and all special use permits are evaluated for compliance provisions of the zoning ordinance.

The zoning ordinance contains regulations for review criteria for special use permits.

The ordinance does not contain any specific regulations for utility scale solar.

So this is reviewed solely against the special use permit criteria that all special use permits are reviewed against.

This request is also reviewed for compliance with the Comprehensive Plan.

You'll need to take two actions today and I have motions for you prepared for either approval or denial.

You'll need to take an action on the Special Use Permit and you'll need to take an action to either find it in compliance or substantially in compliance or not substantially in compliance with the Comprehensive Plan.

Only the Planning Commission takes that action.

The board does not take the action on the compliance with the comprehensive plan issue.

Obviously, the board does take action on the special use permit.

So there were some issues that I think are important for the Planning Commission to talk about.

So I'm going to talk about those for you.

The results of the review did allow staff to recommend approval.

And like I said, I'm not going to discuss all the findings that are made supportive of this project.

Those are contained in the staff report, but we have identified some concerns that we believe should be considered by the Planning Commission and ultimately by the Board of Supervisors.

And I'm going to go over those with you in these next few slides.

The first thing we have is staff evaluated the soils on this property.

And based on the USDA soil survey, about 33% of the site is prime soil.

And those are highlighted here for you.

These soils are somewhat scattered throughout the site.

There are no unique soils located on the property.

We do point out that the decommissioning plan will allow the property to be used for agricultural and forestal use in the future.

This project will remove prime soils from use and after decommissioning the quality of the soils will likely not be as good as they are now.

The soils that you see down by the Meacham's River, they're not going to be disturbed and some of the soils sort of up in the upper portion of the property, they're also not going to be disturbed.

The biggest area is really that central area.

I'm not going to go into this in great detail.

The staff report does do this, and the packet has the links have much more detailed information.

It doesn't really lend itself to a PowerPoint presentation that well, so I'm just going to give it a basic information here.

The applicant has submitted some visual simulations, and this is an example of the type of information that's contained in those visual simulations.

The photo in the upper left shows a representation of the facility at the time of installation.

And the example in the lower right shows a representative of the site and screening.

We've analyzed the information, and we agree that screening trees will provide substantial screening at maturity.

However, the screening will not be in place at day one, and there will be visibility for a number of years as the screening takes hold and matures.

Until the screening becomes fully effective, this facility will change the character of the area.

This will be mitigated as the trees grow and eliminated once the facility is removed, but removal will not occur for several decades.

This facility is located in the watershed of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, which is, as we all know, a drinking water impoundment.

The staff report goes into detail with the concerns staff has with this type of facility in the respectful watershed.

And I'm only going to provide a brief outline of the comments.

The introduction of impervious area not associated with agriculture or forest activity may be considered inconsistent with the comprehensive plan.

This particular photo shows how solar panels are installed.

The solar panels themselves are impervious.

However, the area under the panels remains pervious.

This arrangement will likely result in less runoff than would be expected from a fully impervious development, such as a barn, house, or greenhouse.

However, runoff will be greater than the existing condition of the site due to the concentration of runoff caused by the panels.

I do want to point out that unlike other projects with impervious areas, this project may ultimately be decommissioned and returned to the previous condition.

Unlike impervious areas involving streets and parking, the impervious area from the solar panels does not collect oil, grease, rubber, or other pollutants that ultimately run off.

Cleaning of the panels is done by rainfall or if rainfall is insufficient, is accomplished by water brought in by truck and brush.

Chemicals are not used in the cleaning of dust, pollen, or bird droppings from the panels.

It is our opinion that the impervious nature of the proposed facility is mitigated, and this allows us to recommend approval, but we do have concerns.

We believe that the impervious nature of the facility is mitigated because of grass under the panels maintaining a previous area, the use of tracking systems for the panels.

This alters the angle of the drip line of the panels and helps to prevent concentrated flow.

The rows of panels are separated to prevent shading and allow access.

This separation allows for pervious areas scattered throughout the site.

This aids in runoff absorption.

The impervious nature of these panels is less than that from greenhouses or other agricultural buildings and decommissioning will return the property to its previous state.

We are recommending approval of this project subject to conditions.

And that's all I have for you as a formal presentation.

Thank you very much.

If you could give us back the ability to see everyone, that would be great.

Will do.

Thank you.

There you are.

Thank you so very much.

Are there questions, please, for Mr. Fritz?

Yes, Mr. Chairman, my name is Bobby Jost.

It'll be part of the presentation.

That's okay.

Let's go then.

You're there.

We see you.

I think the presentation is up and running now.

You're there.

Great.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen of the Planning Commission.

Thank you very much for your time this evening.

Pleased to present to you all for your consideration our Midway Solar Center project.

And thank you to Bill for the introduction.

With us here today, in addition to myself, the project developer for the Midway project,

We have Danny Van Cleef, our CEO, Mike Stanton, our Vice President of Development, Becca Stoner, the Development Engineer for the project,

and also Andrew Cotter, who is a power portfolio specialist for CBEC, who will ultimately be the power purchaser and user of the energy from this facility.

In addition, we have two subject matter experts with us, Rich Kirkland and Ricky Hewitt, who will provide input as needed.

For those of you who aren't familiar with SunTribe, SunTribe is a commercial and utility-scale solar provider established and based right here in, or right up the road, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

We work with schools, local governments, landowners, and local partners throughout the Commonwealth to provide sustainable solar solutions and advance our partners' renewable energy goals.

Being located in Charlottesville, many of our employees are rooted here in Albemarle County and surrounding communities.

It's really a unique opportunity and a privilege for us to be able to have the opportunity to develop a project like this in our own backyard.

And we don't take this responsibility lightly.

We really strive and developed this project to do it the right way, and our reputation as a community-focused developer is important to us, and delivering a community-focused project is a priority.

In that, we are also excited to be partnering this project with similarly-minded community-focused companies such as the Central Virginia Electric Cooperative,

and here to talk a little bit about CVX goals and how this project fits within their portfolio.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bobby.

Thank you for giving me a little bit of time, everybody.

So over the last few months of this process, I managed to speak with a number of the Batesville residents and kind of figured that it might be useful for me to provide a bit of a context of

and why we're doing this project, whereas SunTrav's gonna describe the what and the how.

So once again, my name is Andrew Cotter.

I'm the Power Portfolio Manager at CBEC.

I'm also the CBEC Project Manager for the Midway Solar Center.

So who is CBEC?

We're a member-owned, not-for-profit utility.

We serve 38,000 members in Central Virginia, kind of from Louisa, down past Appomattox.

We're a cooperative, just from like your local wine day or your produce co-op,

or owned by our members who share in the cost, profits and benefits.

But instead of milk or vegetables, we do it for electricity.

And we do this by procuring energy from a portfolio of sources, wind, solar, hydro, as well as gas and coal through a mix of contracts and market purchases.

And then we deliver it via the power lines you see in your neighborhoods.

We see the Midway Solar Center

This is a keystone project for the long-term portfolio and our ability to navigate the challenges we see coming down the pike.

Next slide, please.

So why is this project so important?

I think Bill touched on this a little bit, but I'm going to give a little bit of a

and three types of electric systems.

First, you have the transmission system and the transmission lines are like major interstates, I-81, I-64, I-95.

And this is really valuable because it allows us to import power from generators all over the mid-Atlantic from Ohio to New Jersey, down in North Carolina.

But then there's the distribution system.

And these are the local roads, you know, like Batesville Road or Critter Shop Road.

And this is how we actually get the power to your home.

And there's a catch here, though.

On every single exit on the transmission system, there's toll booths.

So while we can get a great contract from a merchant out in Ohio, we can't really control what the cost is going through those tolls.

And those tolls, they change moment to moment.

And those harshest penalties always hit when we need the power most.

So that's late afternoons during a heat wave when we need our air conditioners or

early mornings during a cold snap in the winter when we need our heating system where our pipe will burst.

But if we can build our own solar generator and combine it with a battery, not only are we replacing the most expensive power we can get with lower cost clean and renewable power, we can do it in a way that also controls these transmission costs.

And the transmission costs moving forward is, you know,

and so if we can prove this here with this project it kind of changes the whole kind of electricity investment strategy for us but we can see and have proof right here how we can use our own local generation sources in order to balance out our portfolio even better.

So the next slide please.

So, you know, I know all that sounds great, but I think for a lot of the folks who are listening in, it's, well, that's great, but why here and why now?

So the key to getting these benefits is you have to site these solar and battery projects on our distribution grids, going back the local roads.

And that's a challenge.

Bill mentioned a couple of them.

You need a lot of land.

You need access to power lines.

But something people seem to overlook, unless you're sort of in the industry like myself, is you need the ability for a local grid to absorb all the power that's being generated.

So the kind of the current deal is right now, you can avoid all the transmission tools, but only if the solar generator doesn't impact the transmission grid.

And at CBEC, we're not just one big network of distribution lines, we're actually about 20 separate small networks of distribution lines.

And of those networks, there's only one that can take an eight megawatt project.

And that's the project we're talking about today.

After this, you know, we have a five megawatt happening in Fluvanna as well.

It's going to be much, much harder, much more difficult, and the margins are going to be much more narrow to do these kinds of projects in the future.

And it's going to be even more difficult if we don't have sort of the proof and the numbers that we're looking to get by doing this proof of concept through this project.

So in addition to the sort of the difficulties of siting, there's also a gold rush going on right now for good solar lots.

We're competing against well-capitalized firms from all over the world.

California, New York, Europe, Asia, for these pieces of land.

And, you know, on top of all this, right now, the current rules, which are very beneficial to local communities, there's limits on those rules.

And we don't know when those caps are going to be hit.

But considering the amount of information that we're getting in the gold rush, I don't think they're going to be around that long.

And I can't speak for sure what the new rules are going to entail, but

Right now, the getting's good.

We get all the benefits.

We get the whole pie.

So it's kind of hard to see any change.

That's going to be better.

So finally, I just want to kind of speak as a local who lives just right down the road in Afton.

I want to say that we understand that there's sort of an element of sacrifice here for the Batesville community.

There's a big, big piece of land we're looking to take right smack in the middle of the neighborhood.

But I want folks to keep in mind when you hear people talking about environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, rural sustainability, green energy, the modern grid, you know, all these terms.

Well, that's actually what's going on here.

This is where the rubber meets the roads.

And I think you'll find with the subsequent presentation from Sun Tribe that we're really taking all your feedback very seriously because we just really want this to work for everybody.

Thank you, Andrew.

So to speak a little bit more about what we're proposing, as Bill mentioned, an eight megawatt AC solar energy facility paired with a four megawatt battery storage system.

In our original design, we anticipated a maximum site area of approximately 80 acres.

As we've continued to iterate our design, we're seeing that come down with a disturbance area closer to 65 acres, which is about less than 50% of the site.

Of that, as Bill mentioned, 32 acres will be involved in site clearing, and those will be largely limited to the current timber farm areas on the site.

And then access would be from Craigstore Road.

And the facility will produce enough energy to power approximately 2,600 homes per year.

And then again, it connects specifically to the distribution lines that already exist on the project site.

The parcel is Albemarle County parcel 8517B owned by Central Virginia Electric Cooperative.

It's approximately 1.8 miles west of the town of Batesville and encompasses 136 acres of the RA zoned land.

The current land use of the site is grazing and pasture land and the timber farm, so the silviculture areas.

There are a number of items we focused on as we designed the site and continue to design the site.

Midway was designed to utilize the cleared areas to the highest extent possible.

We also look to avoid sensitive environmental areas such as wetlands and seep slopes and also utilize high efficiency solar panels to help reduce

The design is set up to either meet or exceed county requirements for site buffering.

And as we continue with the development of the project, we'll look to continue to ensure and evaluate impacts to adjacent landowner viewsheds and work with adjacent landowners to try to find solutions to those viewshed impacts.

So here is the kind of current layout of the site as presented.

And what you see here is the panel areas, which as demonstrated in this image are more like building envelopes.

The exact location and layout of panels within this area will vary slightly as we finalize the size of panel and the type of racking we use on the site.

What you also see in blue here is the locations of proposed additional supplementary vegetative screening.

And also the gray is the internal roadways of the site.

And then the last thing to notice here is the dashed line outlining the panel areas.

This is the fence limitations of the site and any

existing vegetation outside of these areas will remain in place during operation of the facility and will not be impacted.

And again, just want to point out, this is a continuing design that we're continuing to improve and take input on as we move forward in the project's development.

We've conducted a number of environmental and cultural historic studies on the site.

These include stream and wetland delineations, which we've received a preliminary jurisdictional determination for the project, cultural desktop and field cultural and historical studies, and field and desktop wildlife resource studies.

The aim here is not only to construct this project because we need to achieve local land use approval,

We also need to go through a process called the permit by rule process, which is a comprehensive review from state agencies such as DEQ, the Department of Environmental Quality, the Department of Historic Resources, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, and the Department of Wildlife Resources.

We'll continue to coordinate with these agencies

moving forward to identify any unidentified cultural, historical, or wildlife resources on the site.

I need to interrupt you here because we've- Yes, sir.

We've hit that point of time.

Understood.

I was about halfway through the presentation, so I believe the line.

That's a little bit too much.

Understood.

Thank you very much.

So we have Tim and then we have Tim Rick.

Rick, I think you're going to

talked maybe about some of the bigger policy things.

So I'm going to hit some specifics that I think are going to need to be in policies as we have more and more of these to address.

First of all, I'm very much supportive of the idea, the concept.

I've listened to the community presentation and also had the benefit of the presentation to the Ag and Forest Advisory Committee.

If the question ever comes up about the vote there, we'll have to have Bill or Scott Clark explain the very tight parameters that that committee was addressing.

It wasn't this overall aspect that we get to do with the Planning Commission.

So I have four areas of concern and one is paramount and this is

on regular sites.

And that is the potential loss of high value ag soils due to contour manipulation.

I would like to see a project and I would like to see all of the solar farm projects work with not having to do the significant contour manipulations that we see the roads put in.

I've had an opportunity to see these installations across the United States and Asia and in Europe.

And I have seen some very interesting ones in which the legs, if you will, of the panels are at different heights so that the underlying land does not have to be compromised.

I think as in the very thoughtful letter that was sent to us by PEC and Bill Fritz's point as well, that even with

scraping off the topsoil and saving it with the idea that it's going to be put back at a future date.

There's still significant degradation.

And it seems to me that this is one of the core definitions at the state level of what constitutes prime agricultural lands and in the county as well.

And that is

High quality sweats and that was mapped and shown to us and there's several different pieces of that.

Secondary to that primary underlying concern that I need to have remedy to vote positively on this is the visibility at multiple distances along county roads.

Every day as I go across Monticello Mountain, I see a small array of solar panels on Carter Mountain, but not a whole

Fieldful of them.

So even at a middle ground or background viewing, they are a substantial change.

And maybe that's something just like high tension lines that we all as a society need to get used to.

And I'm willing to entertain that.

That's why I say this is secondary on my list.

Third is dark sky and the question of lighting in the evenings, when that will be turned off.

Obviously, if there's

work that needs to be done, then lights are going to need to be turned on.

But I know you all have been talking about that.

So I'd like you to address that.

And then from our first project on Route 53 that we saw, there were discussions of the sounds of the motors that changed the panel inclinations.

And there seemed to be disagreements over the amount of sound that was generated at the edge of property

from those units.

Yes, sir.

So I'll start with the concern about the lighting and dark skies.

We've taken the community input and gone back and talked with our partners and it's

We've identified that actually we can run the facility with no permanent lighting whatsoever.

If maintenance needs to occur after daylight hours, we can use temporary worksite lighting, but it's our intention to not include any permanent lighting with the facility at all.

As far as the visual impact from distance, we'll be happy to work with you to identify areas of concern, both yourself and stakeholders within the community, and develop additional visual simulations for those locations.

And then from that, workout strategies for additional visual impact mitigation, if possible.

And then finally, regarding your last comment on the soils, again, I think I have to, you know, we understand the unique challenges with the site and

This really is, and I'll lean back on Andrew's comments, a unique opportunity for them as well to develop a project like this in their service territory.

There are a number of

Mitigation opportunities we can provide on the site in order to help reduce the impact on those prime soils, including topsoil stockpiling, as you mentioned, and other soil amendments on the site, as well as our intention to

If I could just do one follow-up, Chair.

Yes, please.

I'm going to stand strong on this one.

I don't think that the standard civil engineering solutions that we're seeing in development across the country, around the world, is the type of solution that you all should be exploring.

I think that there are ways from an architectural form standpoint that you can use different sized legs, if you will, to support these structures so that they can step down and still work as a collective array

without having to do the significant manipulation that we see so often and that we're seeing in the development areas.

This is different.

This is rural areas.

This is about soil and underlying agriculture.

And if you're going to take advantage of the rural areas for this, and I support that, then it seems to me that there are ways that you can make it work without having to decimate the land.

Thank you.

I'm going to follow up on Tim's point a little bit here.

You're page 11.

of your confidential and proprietary Midway solar development application, which is attachment B in our packet.

Your first sentence under critical slopes, it indicates that your design will not encroach on any large contiguous areas.

and we know from Bill Fritz's presentation of the map that you have a series of different sections of pie that are not all tied together.

So when you use the sentence, we will not encroach on any large contiguous areas, I take it that that does mean that you intend to encroach on some

some fairly substantial non-contiguous areas of critical slopes, as I see back on the Meacham River side of the piece of property.

But that's just an observation.

But here's my question.

I'm not really clear here, and I think, Tim, this is also something you were getting at.

I'm not really clear here about the degree of grading

that is going to be necessitated on the site.

Now, I have some intimate familiarity with Route 53, Sol Yonesco solar site, which was the first major utility solar facility in Albemarle County that was not attached to a school building.

And I

understand that that surface area was fairly flat.

There was probably a fluctuation in elevation of no more than maybe 10 feet.

But here on the topographic, when I finally figured it out, Bill Fritz, thank you for your patience, with every line representing two feet, that there is some real elevation changes.

And I'm assuming that when the trees come out and the stumps are removed, there's going to be some grading here.

Why else would we be having this discussion about soils?

But I really don't have any firm indication from your staff or your submitted application, what is the extent of that grading, which I do feel adds to the poignancy of

Tim's recommendation for looking at ways as much as possible to preserve the high value soil that's here.

The other thing that I'm concerned about is I really don't see in here any pronounced strategies to mitigate runoff during the construction process.

as a result of removing the trees, taking out the stumps and doing any grading on the site.

Now I know you're going to be under state and local requirements, but I want to see how you're going to go the extra mile here to mitigate the potential runoff on the site.

Thank you Mr. Randolph.

Just to speak shortly about your first comment regarding critical slopes.

The reason why we added the clarifier large continuous areas is there are small pockets as indicated

in the Albemarle County steep slopes layer that are internal to the site that upon survey were identified as not steep slopes and we were focusing our comments specifically on those small areas in anticipation of a survey correcting those small pockets and areas.

to your comment about the grading.

I'd like to turn it over to our site engineer, Ricky, to explain a little bit more about the process of what we're looking at in terms of grading on the site and things will be

Thanks, Bobby.

My name is Ricky Hewitt.

Can everybody hear me OK?

I'm a licensed civil engineer, worked on a lot of utility scale, small scale solar in the state of Virginia and all the concerns that are being brought up are standards and things that we take into high consideration.

Regarding the grading, the extended grading, we're still in preliminary design.

A lot of the grading parameters are a function of

The racking that is selected, as Mr. Keller kind of indicated, that racking has not been fully selected.

But I'll say there are two types of solar racking that are standard.

One is called fixed tilt and one is called tracker.

And the benefit of the tracker, which this project is proposing, is it allows the panels to track from east to west and optimize

the amount of sunlight that they're able to absorb and turn into energy.

And one of the benefits of doing that is having a reduced footprint as compared to fixed steel type systems.

So as we think about using the tracker racking technology, it does require a bit more grading.

and that is the extent of that is still yet to be determined as we're still just in very preliminary design when it comes to that but I'll say the site currently is in a primarily a silver culture operation where the trees are regularly and by regularly I mean every 20 years or so cut down timbered and when that happens there is no perimeter erosion control measures that are put up

for those operations.

So the surrounding watershed, the buffers that we've shown are cleared.

They're not left.

They're not maintained.

And also during all those activities, there are no perimeter erosion control devices put in.

So by going in and putting a solar system in that we're proposing, you know, any clearing, any grading, any of the construction that's going to happen is going to be protected with

not only state minimums, and I believe Mr. Keller mentioned standard civil engineering practices are insufficient, and I don't actually disagree with that.

And in the state of Virginia, in my experience, developers and engineers and designers, they see the minimum standard as the goal to achieve as opposed to the

the foundation to build on and SunTribe and Hewitt Solutions and all the other stakeholders including the county engineers of Albemarle have all identified ways in which we can use the state standard as a minimal foundation to build on and we've identified a number of factors, conservative engineering factors, those sorts of things to

Okay, fine.

Yes, thanks.

I have a question about the, in the application that said you would be

painting the top soil on site by storing it.

And I was trying to understand if you intended that for the lifetime of the project.

I mean, that's typically done during a construction project where you temporarily disturb the top soil and then return it in a short period of time.

So in order to do grading, well before grading occurs the topsoil would be captured and then after grading occurred the topsoil would be replaced and then the panels and then vegetation reestablished and using that topsoil to help us reestablish the vegetation is a very important factor in our erosion control measures.

Karen?

Oh, sorry.

I didn't feel it.

It's warm.

Go ahead.

So I don't necessarily know that we need to see slides, but I think that's a question a number of people have asked about viewsheds.

But who else is up and will come?

So put a few up.

Where are you?

People move around.

So Mr. Jones, if you would just hold that as a question.

Who else was standing?

Daniel.

As the answer that there in the narrative and then slide talk about the vegetative screening portion and since we didn't get to see the whole presentation I'd like to see if that can speak a little bit about the plan for reconstitution of vegetation on the site.

They take a, it's the seventh inning stretch.

Yeah, there's a stretch, but no, that's good.

Let's have a bit about the site and then we'll go into the public hearing.

Unless Corey, Corey, you have something?

Luis, you have something?

Okay.

No, sir, I'm good.

So we have indicated, as I showed earlier on the site plan, a number of locations to plant supplementary vegetation, in addition to the current preservation of a majority of the existing vegetation surrounding the proposed

layout locations.

That vegetation is at a minimum aimed at being 20 feet in width, you know, a double staggered row of evergreen trees with a planted height of a minimum of four feet.

And we also supplement that with a number of other and in part of our CUP conditions, at least three

Plant species from the Albemarle County recommended plants list.

So the exact makeup of what the screening will look like is still to be determined as we go through the site plan review process.

However, at a minimum, it'll look similar to what was shown

So here's the piece.

So a number of things that we've heard about is how do we sort of sit with citizens, property owners next to you, your neighbors, if they should go through, who will have to wait 20 years before this happens.

So what do we do between now and year 20?

So we anticipate the species that we'll be planting on the site to be planted again at a minimum of four feet in height and that species has a growth rate of approximately 12 to 24 inches per year.

Hold it.

So then we're going to go to the public hearing.

Yes, right now I have Jane Fellows.

Jane, please state your name and address if you're associated with any organization.

Hi, my name's Jane Fellows.

I live at 1915 Thunder Ridge Road.

I am a property owner, a neighboring property, and I really appreciate Bobby and the Sun Tribe's project and, you know, I'm supportive of solar in theory, but

both Mr. Cotter and Bobby Joe said you know we live here this is our backyard but we're talking about my literal backyard and I have sent you guys a letter I really you know I am in support of solar energy and sustainability but my biggest concern is the visibility issue which you have been talking about and I'm pleased to see

that you guys are taking it seriously, but I'm positive

that if it's visible from my property that it's going to negatively impact my property values.

And in my letter requesting to you guys, I wanted to maybe flag or mark where the cuttings would be, where the plantings would be, so we could get a better sense what the impact to our viewshed would be because

It would be really hard for me to feel good about that project if it's going to impact the way I live on this property.

I've chosen a rural lifestyle for a reason and having a commercial facility in my view shed was never part of the calculation.

So I do appreciate the effort.

I do appreciate the changes that I've seen in the slides that Bobby was showing and that these issues are being taken seriously.

I really appreciate that.

And I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight.

Thanks so much.

Next, I have Chris Hawk.

Chris, please state your name, organization.

And your three minutes starts.

Good evening members of the Planning Commission.

My name is Chris Hoff with the Piedmont Environmental Council.

The Piedmont Environmental Council, also known as PEC, supports well-spotted renewable energy that protects and promotes natural carbon sequestration sources.

Solar sites should not adversely impact our natural, cultural, and historic resources that make Albemarle a great place to live, work, and play.

The Rivanna Solid Waste Authority's proposal to locate solar on a landfill is an example of an appropriate location for utility-scale solar.

PEC recommends that the Midway Solar Special Use Permit be denied in its current form.

In addition to our comment submitted earlier this week, PEC raises the following concerns.

The current state of the Albemarle County zoning ordinance does not allow for utility-scale solar facilities to receive the level of staff review nor county enforcement that is warranted.

Utility scale solar facilities are not comparable to other agricultural practices and similar uses allowed as by right in the rural area.

The zoning ordinance should be updated to include utility people, solar specific language and ordinances.

A one liner definition is not sufficient for appropriate county review and enforcement for facilities of this size and nature.

Short term short term construction induced erosion and sediment control impacts and the long term stormwater impacts

for a solar facility far exceed those of agricultural practices and buildings permitted as by right in the rural area district.

This project proposes impervious solar panels on 80 acres.

Imagine the impacts of an 80 acre building such as a greenhouse or a 40 acre greenhouse or a 20 acre greenhouse.

There are no buildings within the rural area of this size.

PEC highlights the county staff statement that quote, staff cannot make a defining that even a temporary installation

25 years or more of a large impervious area in a water supply watershed is consistent with the intent of the RA district."

No finding suggests that there is the possibility for impacts on the Meacham's River in the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.

An additional component of the staff report states that, quote, this project is unusual in that it is a use that can be removed, allowing the site to largely return to its existing condition, end quote.

While solar panels are proposed to be removed, there is little to no evidence that onsite soil characteristics will be returned to their original condition.

All efforts should be made to return the land to its prior state, including its viability for different types of equal or higher use agriculture.

Pasture land is not equivalent to productive crop land.

While, quote, decommissioning will return the property to its current pervious state, end quote, decommissioning will likely not return the property to the same productive agricultural state.

All right.

Ms.

Fellows has her hand up again, but we don't take second comments.

So Ms.

Fellows, I'm sorry.

Next, I have Elizabeth.

OK.

I have nobody now.

Wait.

I have Elizabeth Williams.

Hold on one second.

Elizabeth, please state your name, address.

Thank you.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

I'm Elizabeth K. Williams, 6973 River Hill Lane, which is on the Batesville Road.

And my property is contiguous with the northeast corner of this development.

Again, I'm wonderfully in supportive of solar energy.

I am very concerned about the Meacham's River and the runoff.

And it is true that the woods are a pine forest.

But when I moved there 30 years ago, it was a beautiful, mature hardwood forest.

And unfortunately, the owner cut them down and turned it into a pine forest.

And there was tremendous, in my opinion, damage to the Meacham's River in terms of silt,

The method used was terrible when they were logging.

They just drove the trucks right through the river.

And so I am especially concerned, since there is a concern about the impervious quality of solar farms, runoff.

It's very steep going down to the river.

I'm glad you're not planning on going in those steep areas.

So I'm especially concerned that there should be some monitoring of the river and whether it's being impacted.

with increased silt, which is the main, the Meacham's River is not considered a clean river, it has lots of silt.

The other thing is that it would be wonderful to move toward native plantings, if possible, to not be using, I hope you're not going to use

herbicides or fertilizers or anything of that sort.

I don't know how green you're going with all of this.

So those are my concerns.

I really would love to be some way to monitor the river to have some way to check and make sure that we're not increasing sedimentation silt into the Meacham's River.

Thank you.

Next I have

Sarah, please state your name and address and if you're with a group in the organization.

Hi, I'm Sarah Teeting.

I live at 1832 Craigstor Road.

My property is immediately adjacent.

When you looked at those maps of where the panels were and they had the blue line, that's my fence.

So I will be able to see this from my kitchen window.

We're right there on it.

opposed to the project.

Obviously, we have a number of concerns about its effect on our property values.

The runoff, the property is higher behind our house.

So any construction will run off down the hill into our property and then into the creek at the bottom.

We also have concerns about fencing, the effect on the night sky, because they've talked about this will be surrounded by chain link fencing and security lighting.

as well as the noise from batteries and other things.

They talked about it wouldn't be louder than a kitchen appliance.

Well, kitchen appliances can be rather loud.

So we have a number of concerns about the project.

And we were hoping that the county would take our concerns as the landowners into account and not just rubber stamp what the utility company wants to do.

All right, next.

I have Debbie Winstead.

Debbie, please fit your name, address, and any organization you're affiliated with.

You have three minutes to speak, and your time starts as soon as you start speaking.

Good evening, everybody.

I'm Debbie Winstead.

My husband, Kevin, and I bought our property directly across from the proposed site.

We're at 1905 Craigstor Road.

We initially were very much in favor of this project, but as time has gone on since February, we have several doubts and concerns that have become perhaps a bit more heightened.

After hearing Bobby's spiel again, it was kind of the same thing.

There were things brought up in February that we don't think necessarily have been addressed and we hope the planning committee will address these.

Following on from what Sally said, noise is definitely a concern during construction as well.

The traffic, we would like to know in all of these parameters how the county plans to enforce this.

We've been told that construction trucks will only come from 151, but we've experienced with CVAC in the development of Firefly, their other project that brought internet to us.

We know that subcontractors and contract, you know,

beyond subcontractors, they're going to come the quickest way.

And so we want to make sure that for this, there is some sort of county oversight to the entire project with both the environmental impact around us and our lifestyle impact of how it's going to affect all of us here.

From Jane's point of her viewshed, not to mention, it'll be in everybody's view.

And there are several of us around also who have

recently set up successful bed and breakfast home stays, and these will also be impacted, no doubt, by the construction.

So there's lots to be concerned about here, but most importantly is how the county plans on enforcing the rules around this project and seeing that proper oversight is there.

At this time, I do not have anybody else with their hand raised.

Like, one more.

Sorry.

All right.

My name is Padma Ball.

I live at 6809 River Hill Lane.

My property is adjacent to this proposed solar complex and I have a lot of concerns, but my main ones are the fact that we're on the Meacham River

and I'm concerned also about the water runoff as it is now.

Our driveway is in a 100-year floodplain.

Our driveway intersects Batesville Road and there's a creek that follows around Craigstor Road and comes and enters into the Meacham Road right next to our driveway and it often floods.

It used to be a hundred year flood plain, but it's quite often now.

And I talked to Bobby.

He was very kind.

He came out and we walked the land.

We talked about the water and he is going to work with the water engineers, but I, you know, when this project's built and done and my, if I have flooding,