Planning Commission Work Session and Regular Meeting   11/26/2024

Awesome.

Thank you.

Sorry, we're getting started a little bit late.

Good evening, everyone.

I'll call to order the November 26, 2024 Planning Commission and ask for us to establish the quorum.

Okay.

Ms.

Firehock.

All here.

All right, thank you.

Looks like we are fully staffed.

So thank you all for coming.

And with that, we'll start the work session.

I guess I'll go through all these numbers.

ZTA 2023-6, STA 2023-3, WPTA 2023-3, and OTA 2023-2, riparian buffer protection standards.

Thank you.

So this is a work session about the proposed riparian buffer protection standards.

To answer your questions, I just wanted to mention that Mr. McCall, the deputy zoning administrator, and I believe Mr. Poll, the county engineer, will be available online to provide information if you need it.

Just as a quick overview of what we're going to do today,

review of past and current buffer regulations, review of the proposed buffer standards.

We'll spend most of our time on your questions and discussion and then close off with the next steps.

So how did we get here?

This is project number one of 14 of the recommendations of these phase two of the stream health initiative.

I'm not going to read them all off to you, but just to remind you, there are 14 different projects that have been recommended for the county to pursue.

This is the one up at the top there.

So this reason I point that out is to say this is one of several tools that we'll be pursuing to consider how to improve water quality and stream health.

This is fairly focused.

It's not the entire toolbox.

It's just one of the tools.

So the scope of this project that was recommended to the board and the board passed on us.

Continuing was to alter the existing stream buffer regulations that are currently in the water protection ordinance in an attempt to get back toward the pre-2014 requirements that stream buffers be retained county ride rather than just in regulated land disturbance.

However, we keep the current exemptions for agricultural term forestry public utilities.

As part of this, we would move those buffer regulations from the water protection ordinance to the zoning ordinance, and we would update the engineering design standards manual with necessary guidance on how to implement this.

Before I get into the history of where our buffer regulations have been, I just want to mention that the buffer locations throughout the past and current and proposed ordinances are basically the same.

It's not included in the scope of this project to expand or contract the buffers over where they are right now.

So there's four categories that the buffers can fall into.

Development areas, not in a water supply protection area, where we have 100 feet wide on perennial streams and wetlands.

Development areas that are within a water supply protection area.

Public Water Supply Impoundments.

The area is directly adjacent to them, which have a somewhat larger buffer.

And then the other locations in the county, which is basically the rural area, but not adjacent to a water supply impoundment.

A hundred feet on perennial and intermittent streams or the limits of the flood hazard overlay district.

So before 2014.

Riparian buffers were required to be retained if present and established where they do not exist throughout the county.

The one difference in buffer locations in that pre-2014 ordinance was that there was also a requirement for a certain level of management for 25-foot buffers on crop land, but not pasture land to prevent concentrated water flows over the buffers into the streams.

I realized that out of the 690 square miles of the rural areas, we only have about 600 acres of crop land.

By far, most of our ag land in the county is pasture land.

Our existing buffer regulations came into place in 2014, again, with the buffers being in the water protection ordinance, but the extent of the buffer regulations was pulled back to only relate to regulated land disturbance activities.

So when you had a development project of 10,000 square feet or more, and there are regulated stormwater management and erosion sediment control regulations, you also have the buffer requirements.

of vegetation retention requirements for those projects and mitigation is required.

Structures that require building permits are not permitted in the buffers.

However, outside of those land disturbing activities,

Changes to vegetation, the buffers are not currently regulated.

So tree clearing, earth disturbance, removal or cutting of native vegetation is not regulated through most of the county in the buffers where there's no land disturbing activity that's under a permanent process.

So the proposal now is to go back to that pre-2014

where even buffer vegetation outside those LDAs is still required to be maintained.

However, the current project would maintain the existing exemptions for agriculture and forestry.

We originally set into this project expecting it to be an overlay district.

There were a lot of practical problems with how that would be implemented.

So it's now proposed as performance standards or protection standards for section four of the zoning ordinance.

I'll just point out that in staff research, most of the comparable localities, so localities above the tidewater range where the bay ordinance is mandatory, but that have buffer ordinances, by far the majority take this approach rather than the overlay district approach.

They go with these standards.

It's not 100%, but it is.

to the places that we surveyed that were comparable counties.

Loudon, Fairfax, Fuck Your, Roanoke County and Powhatan County, for example.

So I won't read this whole detailed slide off to you, and we can get into this in more detail in the questions depending on your specific interests.

There are some things that are new in this draft ordinance.

For example, the first item, 421.2, is what I talked about earlier, the expansion of buffer requirements, not just to the LDAs, but also to all buffers in the county.

Probably the greatest area of interest I would think would be 421.6, which is where the criteria for vegetation management are.

421.7 and 8 talk about by-right uses and uses that require mitigation plans.

and finally 421-9 is the section that gives the details or standards for those mitigation planes to be approved by the buffer administrator.

I'm sorry.

Planner speak.

So here just a quick comparison again under the current WPO vegetation changes are regulated within those land disturbing activities but not regulated elsewhere.

The key difference here with the proposed protection standards would be that except for permitted uses native vegetation must

not be disturbed or removed and the buffers must be maintained in as natural a condition as possible and there will be guidance in the Decide Standards Manual for how you can achieve that.

When I say except for permitted uses, there are two categories of permitted uses in these buffers.

One is uses that are by right, and another is uses that can be permitted by administrative approval, but only with a mitigation plan.

So I'll go into those two categories just in a moment.

In summary, those spyrite uses include ag and forestry utilities, water dependent facilities, passive recreation facilities that are pervious such as trails, preservation and archaeology activities, obviously buffer planting and management and posts and poles.

Whereas the second category includes uses that require a mitigation plan, a lot of them here, but they're the more impactful uses, ENS facilities, roads, streets, and driveways, street and crossings.

So all of these uses, if approved, would require a mitigation plan to repair the impacts to the buffer.

in the draft.

The mitigation plans would require replanting at a two to one ratio as long as that falls within the buffer area.

It wouldn't go beyond that.

Plantings would require to be native species and there'll be a design standards manual link that tells you what the approved plant list sources would be.

Planting standards would be included in there and that bonds can be required until the plants are established.

Of course, this is a new program that would require some level of staffing and enforcement.

Initial draft of the stream health initiative estimated that we would need one full-time employee for enforcement and landowner assistance.

Current plan is that, initially, after adoption, we would start with halftime staffing with existing staff to evaluate, but the needs in order to establish the procedure that we're trying to pursue that full FTE.

So we provided four discussion questions.

We'll be happy to provide responses to your feedback on these or any others.

Whether the ordinance meets its goals, if there feel that are any regulatory measures missing from the proposal, then I should have said they're missing within the scope of what was proposed and approved by the board.

Those of the commission have feedback about the performance criteria.

And do you agree that the buy right and buy approval uses are in the appropriate categories?

I can leave these up when we discuss.

But those are questions for you.

And then go ahead and jump into the questions and feedback.

And then we'll come on to next steps before we finish off.

Great.

All right.

Oh, everybody look at me.

Okay, all right, sure.

Would it be possible to pull up that document that I had shared?

Is that possible?

Hold on just a second.

Okay, so one of the things I just wanted to point out is this is actually a two-page document, a little handout that we had for the public back in 2014.

This summarizes our water protection ordinance back then.

And really, this is just to demonstrate we're not talking about anything new.

We're just going back to what we've had before.

And I would encourage us to go back to some simple guidance for the public like this.

that would provide clear and easy to understand ways to implement and manage the buffer.

So that's one thing I point out.

There are a few things in here I noticed.

Like for example, section 421.4 exemptions.

The riparian buffer administrator may allow an exemption from section 420.4a if the development involves a single family residence.

I think that's a little too broad.

In other places, it involves, it has this language that says to allow for reasonable use of the lot.

So if we could change that, or if we have to say something or say for one single family residence or, you know, other similar language,

There's also some other comments that were made.

Lonnie, just where was that again that you referenced?

Oh, sorry.

It's section 421.4 under exemptions.

Got it.

Okay.

Sorry.

Well, well, typically we wouldn't allow any encroachment to the buffer.

Somewhere else in here, it talked about the fact of whether it would preclude any other use of the lot.

Somewhere else in this code, it did say that.

Is it, are you thinking, because I was wondering the same thing, are you thinking it's 421-8?

B-8?

It's 15.

It gets 421-4C.

421-4?

C is what you're referring to, right?

Oh yeah, I was referring to C, yeah.

Right.

Okay.

The other thing here is a more general thing.

You know, there's a lot of discretion throughout the whole document for the riparian buffer administrator.

And so I just, I think there needs to be some way to keep that objective for the public.

I mean, I'd recommend if there's a standard operating procedure manual, but you know, my understanding is in some of their localities, and I could be correct if I'm wrong, that they actually have a committee of people from the public that actually review some of the complaints.

And that, you know, that might be a good strategy for us, too, if we want to keep it objective to establish a committee, you know, of people for, you know, where a review is necessary that there could be some public oversight.

But there just seems like to be general.

Yeah, there just generally seem to be a lot of discretion throughout the whole document.

And, you know, as someone were to raise a question, like, why was this exemption granted?

then we should be able to point to something, say, well, based upon our manual and section here, this is why it was granted based upon these criteria, as opposed to just under discretion of one person.

Can I just expand on that a little bit?

Yeah.

DAF approvals upon review, and this are under the Repair and Buffer Administrator, who is the county engineer who is also in cooperation with the zoning administrator on enforcement issues.

And there was a term program authority too at some point.

Is the engineer the program authority?

Can I interrupt for just one second?

Frank Pearl is also on the line.

I'm here.

So if you have questions, you can ask.

Make sure you're unmuted on your computer.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, as Scott said, the riparian buffer administrator is the county engineer.

There are some overlapping duties with the zoning administrator, and those are spelled out in here.

I think it's mainly with regards to enforcement.

The idea was to keep the current structure of review the same as it is now, which is done through engineering.

We could look at some oversight and understand about the committee that we don't want to start creating new committees, but if you would want to do that, I guess that's a board matter to create a new committee, unless you're just talking about staff.

So, I hope that answers your question regarding the administrator.

The program authority is not in this.

I don't think if it is, it really should just be the buffer RBA, the Repair and Buffer Administrator.

Thank you.

Sometimes when you, if I may, sometimes when you want to inch, instead of a board, another idea, when you want to ensure transparency is to have an SOPS standard operating procedure that outlines the criteria under which an exception request would be reviewed and what would be the considerations, like a decision tree.

And that way they could follow that consistently instead of like, I don't know what, arbitrary.

and then have a documentation.

It meant this, this, therefore we decided this.

It did not meet this and this criteria.

Yeah, and I would strongly support that kind of idea.

Maybe I could develop an SOP to go along with this, or those exceptions.

Some of the things grandfathered uses, one of the comments that we got fairly late, referenced this.

And I understand we certainly want to, if there are existing uses, we want to permit those, the uses that occur, you know, structures or other things that are in the buffer.

But I do have some concerns about necessarily expanding those uses, particularly if those expansions extend further into the buffer, or if

I think it's said that those things would be not considered non-conforming uses and then in the county we already have code pertaining to expansion of a non-conforming use.

In other words, we have things about

It can't be unused for a period of years.

If it is partially destroyed, two-thirds or whatever, it cannot be rebuilt.

There's already rules around non-conforming uses in our code.

So I think those would come into play because it did say they would be considered non-conforming.

Yeah, so that being the case, do we need to carve out exceptions?

specifically saying that, you know, allowing for expansions or that sort of thing.

One of the other things that was mentioned as being allowed were lakes and ponds, and I understand that's because someone can get an Army Corps of Engineers permit to build a lake or pond, or someone can build a farm pond that doesn't require a permit.

But we should have clarifying language in there if someone does that the new buffer extends to the around that new pond or that new, that new lake, and not talking about like ornamental ponds which have no business being inside the buffer, we might want to clarify that as well.

We have a big problem with toxic algae blooms.

We've had this at some of our county, county lakes.

And these, this, this creates a public health hazard.

And, you know, without a buffer around some of these waterways, you know, you have geese and other things that congregate, you have bacteria that gets in the water.

and this can create a situation we've actually had pets dying out in Albemarle County because they've been exposed to toxic algae blooms.

So maintaining those buffers, even if someone has created a lake, you know, or someone has a lake in their neighborhood, I think limiting access, you know, to reasonable recreational access to those areas and maintaining a buffer is still valuable in those circumstances.

The other thing, there's a section in there about restoration activities, and I'm glad that we're moving the direction of permitting those activities by right.

If someone wants to do a stream restoration, we should encourage that, not discourage it.

But for mitigation type things, particularly where we're requiring the mitigation,

in our manual, we should also require a tree tube cleanup because that's a part we should require what?

Once those trees are established, the tree tubes should be removed.

We have a lot of situations in Crozet where there's just massive numbers of this

Huge gobs of plastic all over the place.

And that eventually washes into the streams and just creates garbage.

And it ends up killing the trees that was meant to protect.

The other thing, too, is there's a weird carve-out for 50-foot exception.

So some of the water supply areas, this mainly affects Crozet.

There's a 100-foot buffer around intermittent streams that are in the water supply protection area.

And so that affects a lot of the areas in Crozet.

And there's a weird carve-out that allows going 50 feet inside that.

and I just don't know.

Just to allow development.

Yeah.

I think Frank has his hand up again.

No, he's fine.

His volume is off.

Can you hear me?

Can you hear me?

Oh, yeah.

Okay, so it comes from the current ordinance and it's a carryover.

The idea is that in development areas, there are no buffers on intermittent streams.

So there was added protection for stream buffers

for intermittent streams that did have a water protection overlay.

So it's kind of a hybrid of the water protection overlay district and a development area where there aren't any buffers.

So it's a reduced 50-foot allowance for those areas that are development areas within a drinking water watershed.

on page 14 and 15 of that.

It says section 4.21.8, B as in void.

Yeah, I mean,

But, you know, on that note, I mean, I think I certainly hope we're going to go back at some point and revisit this concept of going from 100 foot buffers on intermittent streams in the rural area to no buffers at all in the development areas.

I know that's not within the scope of this, but I hope that we come back to that because I think at a minimum we should have

15 feet, 5 feet, something, something, you know, the fact that we go to nothing at all and we can just, we go from 100 foot buffer to just, you can just wipe it off the face of the earth because

You know, if you think about, if you erase all the intermittent streams, you kill the stream.

And it's just like if you're your circulatory system, if you did not have capillary blood vessels, you would die.

That's the same thing with streams that those, those small streams are really critical to the health of, of the overseas.

So if you have places like Morris Creek, I have

Very little faith at this point that Morris Creek can recover because we've erased so many of the urban streams that feed into Morris Creek that it doesn't have a great shot at this point.

So there's a lot of, you know, I think there's a great case to be made to revisit that policy.

But at least with that carve out for, there should be some more guidelines at least for that.

If we're gonna say, we're gonna allow you to come into that 50 feet,

Um, once again, maybe it's with that standard operating procedure.

Is it because someone's practicing a low impact development?

For example, that would be a great, you know, say like, okay, if you're, if you're practicing lower impact development methods, maybe, maybe allowing you to encroach a little bit, maybe that makes some sense.

But we should create some guides for when that happens and when that doesn't happen.

I would say one of the nice things about Crozet is because we do have those 100-foot buffers even on intermittent streams.

It's allowed for way more green space.

Now, Crozet, I would say, is more densely developed than any of our other development areas.

So at the same time, we have more green space, but yet if you counted the number of units per acre or whatever, I'm pretty sure that we are in excess of any other development area.

And so I think this notion that we can't be dense and yet still have green space and water protection is something that we should revisit.

Because those buffers end up places where we put the Crozet Trail system.

Yeah, the way that we look at this one, you wrote the ordinance for Charlottesville, which I co-authored with Crystal Ritterwald.

We copied it off of Albemarle's pretty much.

And we did a GIS analysis to look at, could we get 100 feet on three of the major streams in the city?

And we could, but we did it in GIS.

We saw it was possible, but we also later on, I mapped all of the other streams, how wide of a buffer could they tolerate?

20 feet, 25 feet without touching a building.

or encroaching unnecessarily into a yard.

How do you deal with knowing what kind of impacts that'll have to the unbuilt environment?

We're measuring from the stream out and then seeing, playing with different widths and seeing whether, you know, did they still have a, did we, were there buildings in the way or not?

Or was it free and clear?

Yeah.

And then we also looked at how many miles or feet of stream had a buffer and which were lawns, for example.

So we kind of knew what was existing, what wasn't.

Yeah, I got you.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at the UVA south lawn project is a great example of where they've integrated an intermittent stream right into the project.

It's engineered, which is I think fine at that stage if you're an urban area allowing that that stream to come more engineered as long as it's not buried.

I'm fine with that as an outcome.

but I think we should have something.

We don't revisit this kind of ordinance.

We knew that this was broken for a long time since 2014 and yet it's taken us this long to come back and fix it.

I'm concerned that if we don't get it right, it's going to take us a lot more years to fix this.

If you look at

We live the situation Asheville just faced.

I mean, we know that this is a dire situation.

You know, like this is something that we should deal with now, particularly as the storms are getting worse.

We saw the storms that, you know, that the roads that were washed out and we didn't get hit near as bad as they did.

And, you know, we can't trust the federal government anymore to necessarily step in and be the agency that's going to protect streams of wetlands.

Just to respond to your question.

I don't have all the details in front of me or recall them, but one of the 14 recommendations was a stream quality assessment program.

Thank you.

I didn't want to say some positive things about this before I stop, and then I'll let other people speak.

There's some great things in here, particularly what was done with the manual.

They talked about what changes are allowed from what vegetation type to what other vegetation type.

There's a lot of nuance in there, and I just really commend staff for the work that was done.

There were a couple of questions.

kind of piggybacking off of Commissioner Murray with the intense rainfalls that we're seeing.

The main way that'll affect it is you see, especially in the rural areas, the buffers extend to the edge of the floodplain, the 100-year floodplain as defined by FEMA.

So as FEMA recalculates those floodplains in response to different flow regimes, the buffers will expand in the areas where we have the floodplain regulations.

don't have any particular proposal about expanding the buffer sections that are defined in a number of feet from the stream currently because, again, we're sticking with the scope or the extent that we have had and that we currently have.

But the one way I can think that it will effectively respond to that concern is as the flood hazard overlays, zoning district expands, the buffer will expand with it.

Okay, and then I remember on one of the slides I said there would be one FTE to carry this out so I'm just curious, what's the confidence level that you can get that and then if you can't is it something that would a consultant handle because I thought

I saw two little clocks, which represents 80 to 320 hours worth of work.

I think that time estimate was more to do with the development of the ordinance and the procedures.

The estimate was that we would need a full-time person to deal with complaints, enforcement, landowner support.

Information Distribution.

And again, yeah, you're right, we don't have that at the moment.

We're hoping to find half time among the staff we already have for initial implementation.

If we can't get that full-time employee a little farther into the implementation of the ordinance, yeah, there's going to be a limitation because it's likely that we're going to have

I'm not sure I'm going to respond to that.

I just wanted to clarify a little bit that staffing question, because that is a very pertinent question.

This has been a long time in coming, as even Lonnie had shared.

We don't have a great expectation to start this program with a full allocated headcount to it.

We're not sure how much of a headcount it's going to take.

We think it's about one.

Right now, our next year's budget looks

exceptionally tight as does the following year's budget.

So we're not sure we're going to get any additional headcount.

But if this does get passed or when this gets passed, our commitment is to try it and then see how we do.

We have hopes that we can initially accommodate these additional responsibilities with existing staffing.

We're going to need more than our existing staff to continue this program.

And we're hoping that the needs of the program and our ability to actually find staff and grow the staff will converge.

But right now, the next couple of years are very, very tight for our budget.

So I have a suggestion about that.

You know, once again, we mentioned the standard operating procedure, and I think it'd be really helpful to have, you know, I think all situations are not the same.

And I think having a procedure by which you rank, you know, because even if you had, honestly, 10 people doing this full time, you couldn't possibly enforce every tiny minor violation of the water protection ordinance down in Mark County.

You just couldn't.

So I think looking at things like, you know, if you had someone who is egregiously removed the stream buffer off of two miles of stream off a large parcel, that's not the same as a five acre property that's, you know, removed five feet.

It's not just not.

So I think a worst first, you know, type policy that says we, you know, that you'll rank things in order of the severity of the situation.

and then also just so you can generally prioritize this the situation.

When we have scarce resources for staffing, that is how we adjudicate things, regardless.

So it presumes that all things come in at the same time and they don't, you know, all complaints and all problems and all bad actions.

But we do target the worst first on our problems when we're doing code enforcement.

So yes.

Thank you.

Commissioner Clayborne, are you good?

I didn't even ask for us.

Smart man.

I don't have a lot.

And you all think I have a lot to say about streams, but I don't tonight because I mean, we're really just trying to go back to the policy that we already had, which was a pretty good policy.

I mean, I had a really minor comment on page eight.

B, additional purposes.

And this is just like me putting on my picky ecologist hat.

I don't know, under D, it's to protect fish and wildlife habitat.

I know we probably think wildlife includes fish, but it doesn't.

So I wondered if you could just add fish in there because we're really trying to protect the water quality.

And then when we message this ordinance out to the public, I think we

might also want to remind everyone that there's great stats out there about how much nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment buffers remove.

It's not just we just like trees on streams, but more than 90% of the nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment will be removed by 100 foot wooded buffer.

So anyway, I can give you the exact numbers, but letting people know, because a lot of times I've worked with a lot of landowners in my career.

I ran a riparian restoration program across the country and

People tell me, I want to see my creek.

I don't want to plant.

and we would say, but, you know, you really like fishing in that creek too, right?

And, you know, the fish need good water quality and they need shade and they need cool water for oxygenation.

So by having those trees, you're helping your fishing.

You're like, oh, okay, then I support this.

So I've turned a little landowner's attitudes around by just giving them that education.

So I hope that we've talked about enforcement, but I think you'll get a lot of compliance by people just understanding what is the point of this?

It's not just another regulation for regulation's sake.

and has to do with our commitment to protecting the Chesapeake Bay, which frankly, Albemarle was a leader in because this provision is allowed to be adopted under the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act voluntarily for all localities west of 81 and 60 and also out 64 towards Loudoun.

So we're doing this, we're doing above and beyond and we've always been proud of that.

So we're really just getting back to that.

that heritage of doing more for our environment.

So just really important that we have a robust education program.

I don't want to be seen as like we're going to now we're going to go get all the bad, worse people.

They're doing the bad things because people do a lot of things on their land and they don't know.

You know, they don't know that it's, why is it bad to damn stream?

I bought a house in Elmore County.

The stream was damned by somebody and I took a sledgehammer to it and I couldn't break that thing and I couldn't afford to have someone come out.

But frankly, climate change helped and the dam came down.

by itself, and now I just call it the cavern.

So anyway, the stream is babbling and healthy now, but people do a lot of stuff to their creeks, not out of willful badness, but just not knowing what they're doing, why that's not desirable.

So that's really all I had.

I'm very much in support of this.

And I hope we can, like I said, do a robust education program because, you know, my neighbors, various neighbors are doing various things, putting stone patios and barbecue grills and all kinds of things.

Some have hip camps, which aren't allowed, but there they are.

You know, there's hip camps.

Yeah.

You heard about that?

My younger brother told me like hip, like, I don't know if it means hipster or hippy, but it's like like Airbnb except for camping.

You rent out, like, yeah, you know, you rent out, you could rent a riverside campground and camp there.

And so the owners, to make it easier for these people to camp, go and cut the vegetation in between the trees and they make little fire pits and they put a picnic table, doing a bunch of stuff to make this illicit campground.

This is happening.

There are things going on in the rural area.

Another neighbor took a backhoe and rearranged everything, cut all the trees, made a new channel.

I don't think this is willful badness.

I appreciate that Commissioner Murray brought up the old brochure that we had.

And we're very focused at the moment on the content of the ordinance, but I think the expectation all along has been that we would

And I think that will take some funding.

You know, I mean, if we really will need some, and that might be a grant type thing that we could apply for funding to do a big community buffer planting campaign or something like that or awareness campaign.

Well, I think one of the benefits, my understanding is that this is more in line with the language that's in the Bay Act now than it was.

And I think the closer we can keep to that language is the better, because then we can use the materials the state has already developed for the rest of the state.

I mean, you know, DCR and DEQ already have a bunch of handouts.

And in fact, I believe the handout that we showed before was developed in partnership with them.

Yeah, and I agree that it's more important to talk to people.

I think, you know, focusing on enforcement, I mean, I think enforcement will always be necessary for bad actors, but most people, I think, are going to do the right thing.

We look at the stormwater conservation districts, you know, with

where I used to be and still sit as an associate director.

I mean, it's amazing.

I encourage people who never listened to one of these meetings to just see how many farmers and other people come forward to voluntarily spend their own money to plant trees and implement conservation measures.

Yeah, there's also, just since we're mentioning it, that the James River Association don't go, quote, bear this, but they will heck of a lot of money.

I don't know what the exact figure is, to assist landowners with riparian planting.

So for example, whenever across the street, they came in, they removed all the invasive species, and then they replanted the stream buffer.

And they even came back several times to manage the site and remove new invasives coming up.

So she's got, you know, this whole restoration project and all she had to do is say yes.

So they're doing projects all over and they're available.

I did have one other question there.

There's a lot of benefit that we get from moving this into the zoning ordinance.

So my other question is, what do we lose?

Is there anything we lose in terms of enforcement that we have now?

Like, for example, with this effect of the ability to, you know, as we're right now, it's sort of bundled in with erosion and sediment control.

Francis McCall, Deputy Zoning Administrator.

That's probably a little difficult to answer, other than we have some standard enforcement techniques that are in the ordinance.

I don't think we've discussed any additional ones that may be able to, with whatever we're enabled to do in that sense.

So right now, as you know, we're a complaint.

Base, so we'd have to get the complaints and those individuals on site to wherever those complaints come, do the investigations, make their determinations as far as what could be done.

So I'm not aware.

I see Frank just popped up.

Yeah, Commissioner Murray, we've talked about that a little bit.

As you know, the zoning regulations would go through a different process than the WPO process for stop work orders.

But if it's associated with a active land disturbing activity that is also permitted, there would be two ways to approach it now.

We would have the zoning violation and a stop work order for

disturbing beyond the limits of what's been approved.

So that's one plus four or one extra layer of enforcement, I guess you could put it for land disturbing activities.

For the ones that are not land disturbing activities, they would follow the typical zoning appeal process, which as you may be aware is a issue of a violation and then a, I think it's a 30 day Francis, you can

help me with that.

And then so I don't know, there would be something else obviously for those ones that are below the land disturbing threshold.

Now tree clearing is considered land disturbance.

So as defined in the ordinance.

So those would be covered under the ordinance if they exceed 10,000 for land disturbing in a stop work order.

But

So, and then I assume that there also be triggers when we'll be checking for buffers, right?

That's correct.

That goes on now.

I think with when somebody's proposing their building permit for their new dwelling.

In the case where someone has a stream crossing, like it talked about new stream crossing, what would it say if you have an existing stream crossing in the last Thai water events in the past several months?

The number of people's driveways have collapsed and they've had to rebuild their driveway across the stream.

So obviously that's encroaching in the buffer, but it's an existing encroachment.

Is that something that triggers, does this get triggered by that?

Now that it's like driveways that cross streams, but they go through a buffer and they already exist, but a storm rips them out.

Landowner has to rebuild it.

Yeah.

Those would not, you know, the way I've seen these happen is they don't impact any more buffer than they've already impacted.

Not really.

It's also covered under water-dependent structure or facility.

To get to your house.

I just had a couple of questions, minor stuff, but just clarity.

One, on page 11, it talks about installing signage to identify the landward boundary of the buffer.

and that is where development includes the riparian buffer.

And I'm just curious, is that a new requirement?

Oh, okay, good to know.

I was just wondering, I mean, if we're trying to preserve this area and we've got signs everywhere, is that the right way to do it?

Great.

I would say that that gives those future landowners, as this describes, it's the developer doing the subdivision.

He's required to put them up.

That makes sense.

Yeah, there's some places in Crozet and I won't call anyone out, but there are definitely some places where people have cleared the buffer.

along with the sign.

I don't think there ever were signs.

Got it.

Interesting.

I'm sorry if I don't understand this on page 15, number eight, on a lot that was of record prior to February 11th, 98, development of a single building site if

The riparian buffer would result in loss of a building site.

How do you define building site?

There's square footage.

Who defines it?

Oh, section 4.2 has a description of what a building site.

Right.

The left over.

Penn Floor.

Page 16 on the top C, the riparian buffer administrator has inclusively determined that the proposed location of the facility within the riparian buffer, both one is necessary for reasonable use.

And maybe Commissioner Murray touched on this as well.

I'm trying to understand when, is there a time when you can put a biofilter in a buffer?

I believe what you're referring to, Ms.

Firehock, is like a stormwater outfall.

Yeah, because we obviously have to get to streams for the discharge water from the facility.

But stormwater management facilities are prohibited.

Yeah.

Those are the conditions for that there can be stormwater facilities, but it's based on these conditions.

Got it.

Okay.

And then jumping down to number 13, any building or structure that existed on February 11th, 1998 may continue in its location on that date.

The continuance, repair, replacement, expansion or enlargement of any such building or structure may be allowed unless prohibited.

So this comes from the current water protection ordinance where, so long as the structure did, I'm just gonna use the example of a house, so long as the expansion did not encroach on a setback or into a floodplain or some other zoning requirement or restriction rather, then it could, based on this one, it could expand.

because the idea or the thought was not saying this is right or wrong, but that there are a lot of houses that were built before the ordinance, before 98.

That's what the date is there.

The original buffer ordinance and that it was allowing them to continue to, for instance, if you wanted to expand your kitchen and it was right up against the buffer that you could expand your kitchen still.

So I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's

And in 18-6, there are those prohibitions that come as far as it states that says you can't do it because of this.

OK, got it.

And then the last question is,

I think this applies.

You used to be able to, maybe you still can get an early grading permit based on an approved WPO.

An early grading permit, essentially.

Yeah, it doesn't change the water protection ordinance requirements or

That was all I had.

Oh, I see what you mean.

All right.

Great.

Any other including thoughts, questions from staff of us?

Yeah, I wanted to make a point about Commissioner Murray's comment, the first one about the exception and that exception.

in section 421-4.

C was from having to submit a development application for single family.

So it's just exempting a single family residence from having to submit a site-specific evaluation.

We get a lot of houses where they're

where we can tell that they're far enough a way that we wouldn't need a site-specific evaluation of a buffer on their property to build a house.

Any other questions, comments, thoughts?

That's what it should say, at least, if that's not what it says, I'd like some inputs.

Yeah, there's one small matter in here that, and Commissioner Fireheart may not agree with me on this, but

There's an issue of farm roads that I know has been an issue in the county where people have grandfathered in.

Some will come in, basically they have a lot built.

They'll put in quote, unquote, barn roads or logging roads, sometimes even with cul-de-sacs, and then come by and these roads will go in the stream buffer.

They'll violate a lot of our rules about what we can do with the standards for roads, and then come back and then apply for... Actually, we decided we want to put a subdivision here.

And now these are going to be really roads.

We should allow us to keep these roads that we just put in, these farm roads we just put in here because they're pre-existing.

So I guess the question is, how are we going to prevent that within this ordinance?

We could, I would love to hear suggestions that you have, but we could require that a change in land use.

I think we have that chart.

There's been developments, not necessarily, there's one in my neighborhood actually like this, but there's been in Virginia, where somebody does go put in a really wide entrance for their logging project, and yeah, do what you see.

They're trying to get in these roads, and then they do what I call faux forestry.

where they say, I'm doing a timber project, but they're really just laying out a subdivision without having to get a land disturbance permit because they're saying it's forestry.

But the intent is simply to clear the land.

So there's a protection that still exists in the water protection ordinance.

That's part of the water protection ordinance that's not getting moved.

That's going to remain in the water protection ordinance.

This is a chapter that Mr. Paul and I went through, went through significant revisions within the last six months to bring it up to speed with the state water control law.

But specifically, I'm looking at section 17-300D.

of the County Code, and that's, again, a provision.

Those agricultural road conversions remain subject to VESMP review.

Yeah, so that some communities have established a three-year waiting period

to discourage that sort of clearing for supposed forestry when you're actually trying to create a development.

Yeah, I think three years is too short.

I think it should be something like 10 years at least.

I mean, I think, you know, I think there's a line there.

And I think you might have made the case before that, like, if there's been a road that's been in place for 100 years, then the impacts are there and maybe we continue to use that.

But I think, you know, there's a reasonable number there where we just should not grandfather something.

And I think, you know, that's a significant deterrent to doing that.

But even then, I mean, even if something has been there 100 years, I think about even my own road, you know, Sugar Ridge, where, you know, a lot of these road roads have been put in very, you know, right next to streams, like right next to streams.

Yeah, no, I'm not opposed to that.

I don't know why I thought it would be.

I would say that we do have standards for road construction and grade.

and so a lot of those kind of kooky roads like you know like there's a road I was just looking at actually in Nelson County on the other side of the Rockfish somebody's telling me the other night oh yeah that used to go all the way up to Schuyler like how the heck did that happen the road is like straight up but apparently that was a road now it's closed so yeah we have a lot of wacky

of these old roads, but I don't think the county would permit that in someone's development plan, hopefully not, you know, when they saw.

I mean, there have been things that have been let through in the past.

I'm not going to say that that happens still, but I think, you know, codifying it and coming up some standards, I think would be helpful.

All right.

Good comments.

Like we're not.

We don't.

It's very anti-climactic.

Call a recess, but we'll do that.

We're going to put us in recess until 6 p.m.

Yes, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair.

You don't mind, please.

Gentlemen, are the applicant for Carter Machinery haven't arrived yet?

Okay.

Potentially we could flip the order if that would be okay.

No, there need not be a change if there's no objection to that.

We do still have the public comment period and the consent agenda before we get the public hearings.

But if we get the public hearings and the first applicant hasn't shown up, if there's no objection, we can take the other public hearing first.

Yes, yes.

Ms.

Firehock.

Still here.

I have Mr. Bivins, Mr. Moore, and Mr. Missel are absent from this 6 p.m.

meeting.

Good evening.

Thank you for the opportunity to make a public comment.

My name is Emily Dreyfus.

I live in the Rio Magisterial District, but I'm here on behalf of the Legal Aid Justice Center and the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition.

And I'd like to elaborate a little bit on the affordable housing needs in the county and my resources are from county publications and also the orange.6.0 report.

and my reasoning for this is that I believe that the AC-44 plan really requires dramatically different action and a different approach because of the severity of the affordable housing crisis.

Rents have increased an average of 34% in the past five years and 7% just between August of 2023 and August of 2024.

We're seeing mass evictions in the Albemarle County area, including Cavalier Crossing and that sort of displacement and housing shortages are likely to continue as the market is so incredibly pressured.

and this also does lead to a negative impact on climate change because people are having to commute from distant valley locations and Buckingham County and Louisa and other places that are putting a lot of stress on their carbon footprint and also on their dependency on cars.

The Orange.6.0 report shared that of the 27,330 families living in Albemarle County, over 5,000, about 18%, do not earn enough to provide for their family's basic needs.

They call this the self-sufficiency local standard.

And in order to be self-sufficient in Albemarle County, you need an annual income of over $63,000.

Over 80% of render households earning less than $50,000 are cost burdened.

So four out of every five are cost burdened.

And a $50,000 salary is actually around $24 an hour.

So that is far more than a lot of people are able to make.

The comprehensive housing affordability strategy data showed some additional needs, including that there are only 1,948 publicly supported housing units plus 500 housing choice vouchers in the county, meaning that over 50% of very and extremely low income people have unmet housing needs.

Almost 20% of the Albemarle residents are now over 65 years old, but efficiency units are only 1% of the county's housing stock, and that's the most affordable option for most single people and seniors to have an efficiency apartment.

So I would like to encourage you all to take a dramatically different approach to AC44, including possibly the suggestion of a transitional area.

So like the urban ring would become wider with having a transitional area where you could have increased density and also increasing the upzoning within the current development area.

Thank you.

Right.

Would any commissioners move on to the consent agenda?

Would any commissioners want to pull any item from the consent agenda?

Motion to approve the consent agenda.

Ms.

Firehock.

Hi.

Mr. Murray.

Hi.

Open.

Do we move on?

If there's no objection, move on to the Buck Island Solar Public Hearing on SP 2023-23.

And we can invite the staff report on that.

Buck Island Solar.

Sorry.

I'm the wrong person.

Thank you.

This is SB 2023 for Buck Island Solar.

What I'm going to do with this request, it's a solar facility by special use permit.

The first part of this special use permit discussion is I'm going to lay out for you the two things that need to be addressed by the Planning Commission.

Because it's a solar facility, it needs to be reviewed for compliance with the comprehensive plan, and it needs to be reviewed for the special use permit review criteria.

It's approximately 11-acre solar panels, about 30 acres of disturbed area, making about 3 megawatts.

I'm going to start with the big picture here, and that is the question of appropriateness of solar facilities in the rural area of the county.

Section 15.2, 2232, the state code requires that the Planning Commission review the project for consistency with the comprehensive plan.

This project is located in the rural area of the county.

The approximate location is shown with the red dot that you can see on the screen.

There are two other approved projects that are in this map area.

The first one is Woodridge Solar.

I've put a star to approximate its location.

And the Rivanna Solar Project, and again, a star to approximate its location.

Both of them are also located in the rural area.

The comprehensive plan does not directly address solar facilities.

During the review of the special use permit, staff reviewed this project for consistency with the comprehensive plan and staff found the facility would promote conservation and efficient use of energy resources and demonstrate leadership in energy and carbon reductions at the local level, which are concepts included in the plan.

The approval of other solar facilities in the rural areas indicates that generally these types of facilities are appropriate in the rural areas.

No resources or features are identified on or near this property that would indicate that this use is inconsistent with the comprehensive plan.

And staff is recommending the commission find this project substantially in accord with the adopted comprehensive plan.

That's the actual language is found in the code is substantial accord with the adopted comprehensive plan.

This map shows in more detail the character of the area.

The location of the proposed Buck Island solar application is the circle.

The approximate panel area of the Rivanna Solar Project is the red outlined area.

And what I tried to do there was to actually go around the areas that are actually in panel.

So you can sort of see the scale there.

And I just used a circle as an approximate because we're going to talk about the specifics of this project now.

So this plan shows the design of the solar facility.

The panel area is approximately 11 acres.

Access is to Campbell Farm Lane, which is a public road.

This is Campbell Farm Lane.

And the access will be there.

Excuse me.

The limits of, excuse me, shows the limits of disturbance

The buffer to adjacent properties.

The panel area is well removed from any stream buffer area and no disturbance occurs within any stream buffer.

No critical slopes are impacted.

Staff opinion is that the design of this facility substantially minimizes visibility from adjoining property in public streets.

The project was reviewed for compliance with the criteria for a special use permit and staff is able to recommend approval of this application.

I would like to point out that we have some changes in some of the conditions.

Made a mistake on condition one when I was writing it.

We generally just say general accord with the comprehensive plan.

I had the narrative in front of me and I just continued to rattle off the entire narrative because the application plan is an attachment to the narrative.

It should just be the concept plan.

And that's what this does.

And then condition 14,

Over the years, we've done these special use permits for solar facilities.

We've been refining our conditions to make them better.

And one of the ones we've done is to not allow above ground wires.

except when you need to use above-ground wires to avoid stream buffers or wetlands.

So this is the standard language that we've been using recently.

I copied an old condition when I did this, so we'd like to replace it with this.

We don't believe there are any stream buffers or wetlands that are going to be disturbed, but this would allow them to be avoided if anywhere identified.

So we are recommending approval.

We're recommending the Planning Commission move that this be found substantially in accord with the Adopted Comprehensive Plan.

And we are recommending approval of the special use permit with the changes to conditions one and 14 recommended by staff.

And that concludes my presentation.

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

Thank you, Mr. Fritz.

As we're future casting, what percentage of our energy are we looking to get from solar?

I guess we're looking at the climate action plans and so forth.

I couldn't find that off top of my head.

I don't remember if there's a number in the climate action plan.

There isn't anything in the comprehensive plan and it wasn't part of our review.

I can't answer the question.

Climate Action Plan might have that information, but I'd have to dig deep.

When staffs reviewing these applications, does the scale of the project factor into whether you look upon them favorably?

So the one that you showed us as an example just for scale that's nearby is a utility scale solar, and this one is not.

So do we look at them differently?

Because I think with the utility scale solar, we're getting a lot more power generation.

This, on the other hand, is smaller.

So one of the things that staff did consider on this particular one, again, they're about 11 acres that are under panel here, about 30 acres being disturbed.

It's in the rural areas, the minimal outsize in the rural areas is 21 acres.

So they could divide this, put a house on it and remove it from agricultural production.

and that would be by right.

Richard Murray, go ahead.

Question for Saphon.

So I know in the past we've talked about some guidelines about vegetation, encouraging, and I know particularly the natural heritage community talked about, committee talked about encouraging planting for pollinators and plants.

Sure.

I'm going to answer two parts of this question.

So we've learned a lot in going through the past solar and working with the solar proposed solar ordinance and finding out what's available out there and what best practices are in other parts of the Commonwealth.

And one of the things that we've done is we've had some excellent conversations with the state.

And one of the recommended conditions is that this be a certified pollinator smart project.

So that's one of the conditions.

The other one that we have in there, which sort of goes with that because the pollinator smart program.

in my opinion is sort of a misnamed program because it's not just about pollinator species.

It also does soil regeneration, retention to stormwater runoff and it and promotes wildlife habitat for animals other than pollinators.

So one of the other things we're also doing with this particular one is we have a condition recommending fence heights that are recommended by the state to either exclude deer and yet allow passage of small animals or allow easy access by deer and provide for small animals.

So the fence either needs to be short enough for the deer to get over or tall enough that they can't get over and then a four inch gap at the bottom to allow small animals to go through.

That's what the recommended

Another question, so seems like this is about 10 acres of disturbance per acre of photovoltaic cells.

It seems higher than a lot of the other per megawatt, I think you're saying.

Well, yes, 10 acres per megawatt, sorry, which seems a lot for

Is there a reason why?

There probably are economies of scale, but I haven't gone through and haven't.

I need to go back and look to see what the amount of disturbances per acre for megawatt in the past projects.

I simply don't know the answer to that right now.

So I can't compare this with other projects.

Yeah, I was looking at a couple across the state and across the nation.

It seems like 10 is quite a bit more than the average, but maybe the applicant could talk to that.

Good evening planning commissioners.

I'm Lori Schweller, attorney with Williams Mullen, representing Buck Island Solar, LLC, the applicant.

So with me tonight is Eric Alves-DeSa, who will present the request for special use permit and substantial accord with a comprehensive plan to you on behalf of Nexamp, Buckeye Island Solar LLC is wholly owned by Nexamp Solar.

Also with us here is Ryan Jogger, who is with Bowler Engineering, the civil engineering firm for the project.

As Bill explained, this project is in the southeast part of the county and the proposed solar facility would be in the northeast corner of the subject property, which is about 105 acres.

It's very carefully cited to avoid impacts to neighboring residences.

You can see that though the project is off Buck Island Road, it is actually abutted by Campbell Farm Lane.

And so there are residential properties along the eastern side of the project.

And so Eric has worked carefully with the neighbors to make sure that there's sufficient buffering.

You can see here the site entrance, which is Campbell Farm Lane.

So we're coming off Buck Island Solar through Campbell Farm Lane to the site, which would be behind those trees there.

We're going to take a couple of minutes to talk about community engagement.

The SUP application was submitted last December and of course we reached out to Monticello to make sure that we got the necessary evaluation from them.

It's five miles away and so there won't be any any negative impact there.

But Eric immediately started reaching out to the neighbors and we had our

Community Meeting in February and following that we've been discussing with several neighbors shown by the blue dots on your screen, such issues as buffering and access easements and tree removal, all of those things.

that concerned them because a lot of the concerns that we heard at the community meeting, frankly, were as a result of the Rivanna solar development.

And so neighbors were concerned about insufficient screening and they were concerned about stormwater runoff.

And so Eric has worked throughout this time with the neighbors to make sure that we had

We brought them to a place of comfort and so our application concept plan has been changed a couple of times to increase those buffers and we are currently working with Rob Nicholson who owns Rooks Ford Farm which is the 4,500

Acre Farm to the north and west of the project and we're working with him on buffers now and that that property is held in conservation easement by the county.

Good evening.

Thank you planning commissioners for spending your Thanksgiving week with us.

My name is Eric Alves de Sop.

I'm the development manager and I'm based out of Nexamps, Washington, D.C.

office.

Our company holds itself to a really high standard when it comes to site selection, site design, and engaging with the host community.

Each one of these projects is unique in its own right.

And I hope that at the end of this presentation, the commission largely agrees that this is a well-cited community-scale solar project.

I'm gonna click back to this and pause on the view from Buck Island Road.

So if you look down Campbell Farm Lane and follow that yellow arrow, you'll get to a wall of trees that looks quite dark.

There's going to be, starting at the first tree there in the background, there's going to be another 150 feet of trees preserved and to remain standing for the entirety of the project.

So that's been through many, many conversations with both the fuel, Gary Fuel, neighbor whose home you see here.

and also the Basry family who's to the right, aka to the north of this photo there on the right.

Their wish is whether there's at least 150 feet of forested buffer to remain and we have a tree preservation easement with our landowner to make sure that that's enshrined not only in the special use permit but via easement as well.

The only break in that 150 feet

will be for that site entrance to continue forward into the project area behind to where the site will be cleared.

In our design right now there is a slight S-shaped bend in that access road as it clears through that 150 feet and we intend

before getting to the board of supervisors that we make that S band even more pronounced, such that if you're standing on Buck Island road, like the photo on the right, or if you're the fuels whose driveway is near the tip of that yellow arrow, there's going to be no way to have a direct line of sight that isn't through trees.

So a few of the

Just getting into some of the site selection criteria.

This is a fully screened site.

It's got good flat topography throughout, and there's ample space on the property for us to avoid any wetland features.

We're utilizing Campbell Farmland, as I had just shown, that way that we are avoiding or at least limiting any new impervious surface area.

Although there are approximately 30 acres of trees that must be cleared for this three megawatt project, these are the same 30 acres that would be timbered regardless.

This property has had a history of timbering over the decades.

It was last timbered about 10 years ago.

Everywhere that we're proposing tree clearing is in that regular periodic tree clearing.

The clean power from this project displaces fossil fuel electricity.

and those avoided greenhouse gas emissions would require 2,200 acres of US forest to be able to sequester.

So although 30 acres is a considerable portion and took a little bit to kind of answer that question of why is there more limits of disturbance on this project for a smaller megawatt system size capacity?

It's due to the tree clearing.

So if we're looking at the panels,

Akerage, her megawatt.

This is on par with what's typical.

But if you're looking at the area of the limits of disturbance, because there are trees here, and we need to clear wide enough so that any trees left standing aren't casting shade on the project, it does essentially sway that metric some.

I also put in a quick table here just to compare us to the nearby Rivanna Solar.

Our project is a lot further from the road, and it's also a lot smaller.

We're out of public view, and I think from the day that Buck Island Solar is built, you won't be able to see it.

Whereas at the time that Buck Island Solar is built, you probably will still have some views of Rivanna Solar as their landscaping matures over time.

Aside from the project benefits that I've mentioned, Solar makes for a quiet neighbor with no traffic, no effluence, no sewer or water or noise, and no burden to public services.

All the while it does boost real estate tax revenues for the city, machinery and tools tax and potentially rollback taxes as well.

All while aligning with the state's clean energy goals, climate action plans and the concepts that staff mentioned in the county, the county's comprehensive plan.

Do you want to spend just a little bit of time talking about who is next amp?

We are an industry leader and a veteran of the solar space.

We've been busy with community solar, community scale solar at the heart of our business model for over 15 years.

And we have over that time built to end to end expertise at every step of the solar development timeline.

I like to say that we do everything under the sun because we are the developer.

We oversee the construction.

We are the long-term owner operator.

and we maintain our project sites as well as do the energy sales with Dominion and also customer subscription, essentially the folks who sign up and participate in the community solar farms as part of the Virginia Shared Solar Program.

And for the last couple of years running, we have been the number one community solar provider in the country.

What that leads is a long-term partner for the county and one point of contact through and through.

Quick highlights just to hit on this overview are that

The construction duration is going to be roughly 12 months, an operating term of at least 25 years, but up to 40 years with a decommissioning period at the end of about six months.

There's no future expansion and there's no energy storage.

On the landscaping plan here, there are a lot of different greens, but I want to point your attention to what's in the red SUP area.

On the east side, we have that 150 feet of tree preservation on the right.

on the north side, we have at least 75 feet of existing trees to remain in place.

As we hear back from US Army Corps on our wetland delineation, we'll seek to expand that.

And then on the west and south, there's ample vegetation on the site.

And with that,

If you do have any other slides to finish, that's quite okay.

Yeah, if that's okay, I'll speak.

Go ahead.

I just wanted to kind of, the last one really is just to walk you through the site a little bit more detail.

Again, the red border there is the special use permit area.

on the far west, you'll see floodplains, the creek delineation and the WPO buffer.

Our limits of disturbance are avoiding those buffers and saying beyond those setbacks.

The Limits of Disturbance right now is essentially like a worst case scenario for the extent of the tree clearing.

We have gotten good early indications from the Army Corps on our well and delineation.

I think it will allow us to make this site a little bit more compact and hopefully reduce the limits of disturbance as we go through the site design phase.

The access road in Brown that you see coming in from Buck Island Road

has a little bit of a curve to it.

Like I said, we're going to make that S shape a lot more pronounced.

That access road as it comes into the site and goes south towards the south, I think there's a little bit of a pointer here is going to be where our

Nexamp and Dominion Utility Poles will be located.

So we intend to have those poles all behind that 150-foot buffer with the last overhead wire coming here and then going across a neighbor's parcel who already has an existing pole and wire so that easement from Dominion already exists on that neighbor's property.

That is what's

That's a scope that's bubbled across that parcel in north along Buck Island.

Those are existing poles and wires in place, but we'll have to, because of the amount of electricity coming through the project, we'll need to be upgraded to be bigger poles and bigger wires.

And this last slide is just an aerial image with, you know, some like the true color to it.

And you have some stormwater facilities shown on there.

Can you talk a little bit about how you plan to do the stormwater facilities?

Are this just going to be retention basins or are they going to be biofilters?

Do you have an idea about how you're going to do this now?

Good evening, Ryan Yager with Boulder Engineering.

Just, you know, we often encourage, I mean, certainly don't require just a suggestion that, you know, it certainly is much nicer if you can do those biofilters, because then you get, you get treatment of quality, not just quantity.

Understood, understood.

I'll just add that at this stage right now again this is our conceptual site plan so what we've bubbled in is the

conceptual stormwater management facilities.

It's still quite preliminary, but that's good feedback.

I just have a question.

I noticed in your application, you did talk a lot about your setbacks, stepbacks, setbacks from the road and screening for the neighbors.

Can you say a little bit more about the northern part of the site?

I think it's only 25 foot from the boundary there, or is that just from the, that is from the boundary of the property, right?

Yeah, so this green existing vegetation to remain, again, the site right now is

relatively mature loblolly pine that has been growing for over 10 years now.

And the adjacent parcel to the north, should be like this area, is under conservation easement.

Oh, I can't.

Yeah, it's 75.

OK, that's better.

I see, because the first little arrow is that between that little dash line and then this is 75.

It was it was really hard to read.

I couldn't.

Yeah.

75 feet of trees, but it's about 130 feet from the boundary.

Okay.

Okay.

That's what I thought I had read, but then looking at this drawing, I was confused.

All right.

Thank you.

Right.

And yeah, just a clarity.

So the 10 acres per megawatt, that's what's kind of struck me.

But so you're saying that the reason for that is just the amount of trees that you haven't to clear to give you, obviously, the exposure.

And then is it also topography?

Is that part of it as well?

There is a stream that runs essentially here.

You can see the hatching.

But the main creek essentially tracks the west boundary.

And like right in the, yeah, right there, just go here.

There's, it terminates here.

Our first very preliminary wetland assessment from last year.

We believed it continued a lot further.

Hence why like our current site layout is pushed a little bit further north.

Our most recent delineation that is with Army Corps for approval has shortened that tremendously.

I know one issue that we had recently was, you know, there's a lot of places that were assessed for where streams were, but we had an extended drought, you know, over the past year or more.

And so a lot of things, a lot of streams aren't really apparent that would normally be intermittent streams.

So I hope that was taken into account when you're doing that assessment.

Oh, sorry, I said, I hope that was taken into account the drought that we had for the past year when you're doing your assessment because a lot of the streams that places where there are clearly would be, you could clearly see a stream normally, you would not have been able to see a stream over the past year because of the extended drought that we had.

So this dark gray here, some dark gray here, and I think if I zoom out, I don't have it on this.

The areas that are dark gray are areas of critical slopes.

So the vast majority of our site, our site limits of disturbance are free of critical slopes.

Okay, that's good to know.

Mr. Clayborne had a question earlier.

Thank you.

My question was around the county and what their goals were in terms of being able to say we're claiming this amount of energy by renewable sources like solar.

My reading of the county's policy is that's intended to support the Virginia Clean Economy Act.

And so I look at those goals of 73% of the Commonwealth's energy will be from renewable sources by 2035 and 100% by 2050.

And in Dominion territory, which we are here, this is a Dominion shared solar project,

They're required to provide 100% of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2045.

So this will contribute to that as part of the shared solar program.

No one online.

If you don't mind, I just want to

Laurie Schweiler for Buck Island Solar.

I just want to touch on a couple more conditions.

Bill talked about some of the special use permit conditions, and I wanted to discuss two more of our special use permit conditions that were recommended in the staff report.

One is the validity period, meaning how long would this special use permit be valid if it were approved by the county?

and usually that means, you know, when do you need to begin construction?

And currently the condition is written as commencing three years after approval.

Next amp fully expects to comply with that, but we would like to have

Moore in line with the recent Woodridge approval, a five-year period.

We note that Rivanna had a two-year period back in the 2018 approval, and they needed to extend that three years for five years.

And it's because there's so many state approvals.

Of course, there's the site plan at the local level, water protection ordinance work and so on, but there's also state approvals.

And we just, it just seems more efficient, you know, we'll

work as fast as possible, but rather than having to come back to request a special use permit amendment, if it's not complete, if we're not ready to break ground, we wanted to see if we could have a little bit longer period.

That was our first request.

The second one is regarding the Pollinator Smart Certification, again,

The applicant will certainly do everything possible to obtain that certification, but it is something that has to be granted.

It's not a guarantee.

And so this language that we're suggesting is

identical to the language and the Woodridge Solar Project, which basically provides that we'll do everything we can to get that certification.

But if we use all commercially valuable efforts and fail to do so within that period of time, then the Zoning Administrator could approve something in its place consistent with the vegetation plan that Buck Island Solar provides pre-building permit.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We're closed up public hearing.

The five-year.

Sure.

Carolyn.

So the history of these projects, Rivanna Solar was originally approved with two years.

They then came back and amended their special use permit to add three more years.

So it was two separate approvals.

Ivy Solar was approved for three years.

There's also another project the applicant didn't mention, which is the Midway Solar project.

It was approved for three years.

Woodridge Solar was originally intended to be for three years, but due to the scale of the project, the sheer size of the project, five years was selected.

Point out that

We are recommending the three years.

We have a comprehensive plan that's under review.

We don't know what that comprehensive plan is going to say.

We also are going to be bringing you, hopefully in January, a proposed ordinance for solar energy systems.

We don't know what that one's going to say.

And we would recommend that that's why you have permits expire so that if things change, they can be accommodated or accounted for.

the applicant would always have the opportunity to come back and request an extension.

That's the answer I have on that.

Thank you.

Sure.

We like to avoid conditions that say diligent efforts because that can get into one person thinks it's diligent and the other person thinks it's not.

I do understand the applicant's concerns.

We have spoken with the people at the state who run the Virginia Pollinator Smart Program.

We believe that it is a program that'll be around and is around and can be achieved.

And that's why we wrote the condition the way it is.

Again, if the applicant's unable to do it for whatever reason, they can apply for an amendment to the special use permit and demonstrate their diligent efforts to the Board of Supervisors, who can be the ultimate arbitrator of whether or not the actions have been diligent.

and therefore we're not recommending a change in that condition either.

I think it was a well-prepared application.

I think it's in a reasonable size scale.

I remain flummoxed by the fact that our county does not have a solar policy right now.

We do have the Climate Action Plan, but the Climate Action Plan actually discusses, I know the supervisors had the best of intentions when they wrote it, but it talks about reusing

using rooftops and brownfield sites and already developed sites.

It does not talk about solar farms, if you will, in the rural area.

It really says first, use up all the disturbed land possible rather than this type of landscape.

I think that when the county updates their solar policy, they will

change that.

So I don't, unfortunately, I don't feel like the comprehensive pan gives us very good guidance, except for our goals for sustainable energy and climate.

But nevertheless, here we are.

I'm not suggesting we hold up this application until we finally get around to having a solar policy or finish that Galdarn comp plan.

that's been going for several years now.

So at the scale that this is and with the extra work that they have put into step back even farther from the borders and work with the neighbors, it doesn't appear to me to be something that's going to be glaring out from a high hill and causing a nuisance to the neighbors.

Happy to weigh in and say that I am sort of supportive of the project and I'm thankful for the applicant's response to my question, but I will say that I do feel pretty strongly that the county should have its own goals around how to mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions, whether it's solar or whatever the renewable energy sources.

Nothing stops a hundred of these proposals from coming through.

And just because you can do it is a good thing.

Doesn't mean we want to have them peppered all over the county.

So having some kind of goals or road work, road map, I should say, we're working towards will certainly be helpful.

Just answer the question, you know, how does this help us move the needle in the way that we want to move it?

So but other than that, I'm certainly fine with the proposal and it's a nice project in my perspective.

Yeah, I agree with everything that's said.

I mean, I think one of the things that the factors here is the fact this was a timber farm of... Right, it's already disturbed, pretty disturbed.

Yeah, and, you know, for those who may not know, Laudlawley is not really a native tree for most of Albemarle County.

So this is not even a, this is not even really a native tree planting that we're removing.

So, particularly if we can

If we can replace some of that cover with native plants to the pollinator smart program, then we may actually be improving habitat to some degree over the long term for this area.

I'm in support of it.

I also, I appreciate staff's comments upon the conditions.

I mean, oftentimes these projects are resold to other people.

And so having those commitments firmer rather than looser is probably a good thing, particularly if the project does get resold.

I do have a few comments.

Just to try to bring a little bit more context into this, a lot of my comments are around the fact that we don't have a policy.

And I think it needs to really take into account many factors.

And so I'm going to give a little bit of information.

So there is a tool, it's called iTree.

I had never heard of it.

It's the USDA.

Yeah, you probably have.

But it's got some, they're just starting to use it and actually it's an emerging science in terms of looking at forest and the overall measuring the value that forests have.

And obviously there's a lot of intrinsic values, right, from

Blutting Impacts, right, moderating temperatures.

I mean, we can go on and on.

We know that pollutants, the greenhouse gas, carbon secretion, all of that.

But it starts to put a value on some of this and just for Virginia.

So Virginia ranks third.

out of the continental 49 states in carbon uptake, so in our forests.

And it's actually, it ranks 24th in total forest acres, so that means our forests are actually performing pretty well.

Virginia trees and forests store 550 million tons of carbon overall, worth 94 billion of avoided climate change cost.

This is some of what that iTools is beginning to do.

So I think we're beginning to really understand what our forests are doing.

It's not just forest, right?

Because it's the soil.

I mean, it's, when we're talking about that, it's not just the trees.

And it's even agricultural land.

So I think that's just something that we need to weigh and understand the importance of it.

And I'm not saying this as pro or against this particular project.

I just want to put it into context.

So in terms of the total carbon, this is the uptake piece.

So yearly, how much carbon is going into our hearts?

40% of our total carbon in Virginia.

So it's significant and nationwide is 60%.

That's the uptake.

That's not how much carbon it can actually store, right?

Because it stores carbon every year.

So I think those are important and we can, you know, there's information out there so we can all get more and more familiar with it.

Staff are obviously our planning commission, the community, a couple of other bits of information that I gathered.

So,

I think we all know what's been happening with data centers in Virginia.

I didn't know that Virginia has now the largest conglomeration of data centers in the world.

So second is Singapore.

So this is a three megawatt.

three megawatt plant, right, or site.

And it's 30 acres.

We heard why that was.

Just to put it into a little bit of context, just with data centers.

This is 2023 numbers.

There's 1,900 megawatts, the 1.9 gigawatts of multi-tenant data centers, 2,100 megawatts of single-tenant

Data Centers, with 1,300 megawatts currently in construction.

Maybe some of those are completed by now, since this was 2023 data from Johnson and Los Al.

They're a major national, international real estate company.

They do a lot of other things.

So it's over five gigawatts.

Projections is for this to double by 2028.

and Five Times by 2030.

That does not fully count for AI and what that might bring.

Again, just to begin to put it into context of what we're dealing with here in Virginia.

To think that we're going to do this with solar,

how much of our forests are we gonna need to take up?

So again, I think we just need to be aware and bring all of this into our thinking and into the policies that we begin to develop.

And solar, there's pros and cons for every energy source.

There's a lot of vilification of obviously,

Gas and petroleum products, coal, natural gas.

But they all have pros and cons.

And I was thinking how many, I was thinking maybe seven, six, there's 10, 11, 12 different kinds of ways we can get energy, right?

They all have pros and cons, a few from solar.

So solar panels, so carbon is, and I couldn't find the data on all the greenhouse gases.

Carbon is the one that is, you say, you produce the carbon in its production and it has carbon.

But it also has several other greenhouse gas emissions that happened during the manufacturing of it.

So nitrogen trifluoride, sulfur hexafluoride, hexafluoride ethylene,

and so those, just for an example, are anywhere between 12,200 times worse than carbon in terms of greenhouse gases to 22,800 for the sulfur hexafluoride.

So these are all greenhouse gases that within the manufacturing of solar panels, it's created.

78% of solar panels are made in China.

I'm pretty sure that these solar panels are either made in China or partially made in China.

98% of solar panel components, one or the other, something in that solar panel is coming from China.

So there are

Certainly some concern since how that is being manufactured and the labor that's being used for those panels and for the greenhouse gases that are being emitted in the process.

And eventually decommissioned, which is another one of the, just a few of the cons.

use of caustic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide, I've named several already.

Water and electricity consumption during production, emissions of greenhouse gases during electrification production, creation of waste, carbon emissions, toxic waste, unsustainable mining practices and habitat loss, use of hazardous chemicals and materials during manufacturing, high energy input, soil degradation, and water pollution from silicone mining,

Impacts on Wildlife, Shelf Life, and Recycling Challenges.

And we don't know once we decommission this exactly what's going to happen.

Again, I'm not saying this or this particular and I don't want the applicant to take it that way.

I'm really saying it for our benefit as a county and as we begin to think about what it is that we're up against and put this into context.

because it's not a simple solution.

And I think we need to think critically about it and comprehensively.

and not, you know, I'm afraid that what happens is that we just see these one at a time, one here, one there, one there.

What is it doing?

And let's take it all into account.

I mean, all this information, it's available online.

I went to government sources for the most part or something like Jones Lang LaSalle, but it's all there and there's a lot more information and there's a lot of debate.

about using farmland, agricultural land, and forest for solar and wind.

So that debate has not resolved.

And I mean, there's pros and cons to it, and you can read about both sides of the argument.

But by no means has that resolved.

And so I think here in Virginia, we're kind of in the forefront to some degree, both because of the amount

of Energy that we are going to, so we're going to be doubling, Dominion says they're doubling in 15 years.

So they have to double the amount of power that they have in the next 15 years.

So that's a tremendous amount.

Nationwide, I don't know Virginia, but nationwide, solar is only 8%.

No, I appreciate that context.

And I was literally just reading an article the other day in Virginia Business and Dominion, clearly they have climate action goals to fully electrify by a certain date.

And there's concerns there with the demand for data centers and what that is doing.

And so they literally, I think signed the MOU with Amazon to start exploring nuclear, but like where I'm going with this is

The pace is not sustainable the way it is.

And that's why I mentioned or asked a question about our own goals.

So I could see us getting tons of these applications and there's no guardrails to kind of determine, you know, how to move and make our decisions.

But I really appreciate that context because it's real and it's not sustainable.

So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, some of the things in there too is, you know, when we talk about

We don't have a rural area plan yet.

And some of the things like we're removing, as part of this, we're removing land out of commercial forestry.

Well, what is our goal for how much commercial forestry we want in Albemarle County?

Anything we do is changing the mix of land uses in the rural area.

Yeah, some localities have adopted a percentage of how much land they're willing to have go to solar, you know, keep so that they're looking at how much should be agriculture, how much is forestry, how much is wild habitat, and, you know, so that they have a balance.

And once it goes over that, so there are different tools in the toolbox, and I don't I'm sorry, but I don't none of you have anything to do this, but I don't understand why I'm all county.

is taking so long with his solar policy.

I understand we're doing a zoning review or doing the comprehensive plan to do all these things, but you know, I recommended our consultants to James City County.

They said thanks because that's a good firm doing our work.

They hired them, they got their reports, they wrote a policy, they adopted it, and it's in place since last fall.

And yet we're still plugging along trying to get a policy.

So

Just very frustrating.

I have said in the past, I'll just say it for the record, I do look at what is the current land use very heavily.

And if this was, say, a mature hardwood forest, which actually would be less disturbed, would be sequestering even more carbon than, say, a forestry site where it's constantly cycling through pines, I would look at it differently.

I would probably vote no on a mature hardwood forest being disturbed.

And another thing to know is that most of the carbon that's sequestered in the forest is actually in the soils of the forest, more so than the trees.

So I look at this site and I see it's been timbered over and over again.

And so what I'm looking at this forest, I'm thinking it doesn't have a thick duff layer.

and it doesn't you know the soil has been so disturbed so much that the topsoil is probably relatively thin compared to say a forest that had matured over a long time and would be holding a lot more carbon so I look at all of that but I will say in the staff reports and in the reports we get from consultants and then we should probably vote on this application but um

they talk about it always says this use can be returned to farmland in the future and that's why I asked them about the grading if they had to do extensive grading at this site because when you in some other projects not this one per se where you've just scraped the top foot of or more of top soil off that's that's soils gone those ag soils are gone it to return that to active productive farmland would take

I will say, though, that just as it's much better that this be pine plantation than an oak forest, for example, which would be sequestering more carbon, it would have been even better if this was a low quality hayfield.

Then it would fit.

Maybe somebody's going to make more money off a solar field than the pine.

We can have a solar overlay zone of where we want it.

There's already a map, and again, I really think we should give our applicants a break and get to the vote, but there's a map by the Department of Energy that shows the prime places for solar.

That's already out there, and it's available because it shows where you can hook up to the grid.

I use these maps in my work because I'm in the field of forest conservation.

So I use those solar maps as a map of threat to standing mature forests.

So anyway, that data's out there.

Albemarle County could just look it up for Albemarle County and know where the prime starts are for solar and also bring that in with the Habitat Course Map and other data we have about where our best quality areas we don't want to disturb.

So we've got the data to create a map of where we would like it and where maybe we want to discourage it.

But again, we have no policy.

I don't agree that the COMP plan gives us clear guidance

at this point, but I'm not going to hold this project up because of it.

I'm sure the new comp plan will have guidance or policy will address this, but I don't want this businessperson to be sitting here waiting on our county, which is taking way too long in my opinion.

Right.

So, Mr. Chair, just as a reminder, there would be two different votes.

There's one regarding compliance with the comprehensive plan, and then there's one regarding the special use permit.

I move to find SP 2023, 00023, Balgal and Solar.

Okay.

Mr. Firehawk.

Hi.

I move to recommend approval of SP 2023-00023 Buck Island Solar with the conditions outlined in the staff report with changes to conditions 1 and 14 recommended by staff.

Mr. Murray, Mr. Clayborne, Mr. Carrazana, Ms.

Thank you.

And Mr. Chairman, make just one comment.

Also, the vote is done and good luck with the board of supervisors.

But

Okay, we're moving on to our next item.

We have a staff report, please.

Good evening.

My name is Chris Taggart.

I'm a planner with the Planning Division of Albemarle County Community Development.

Also here tonight is Margaret Malaszewski, who assisted with the review.

I'll be giving staff's presentation for the special use permit and application.

The subject property is located at 721 Rye Road West, Northside Libraries, directly to the West, and their primary commercial buildings and media area.

Both Rye Road and Rall 20 Ion are entrance quarters.

Parcel canines warehouse consisting of multiple structures at the front of the property with paving surrounding.

Special permit request is for outdoor storage display and sales of construction equipment and vehicles in the entrance quarter overlay district.

referred to this as outdoor storage.

The plan shows demolition of the eastern portion existing warehouse buildings, storage area to the south and east of the brick-faced building, which is satan blue on the concept plan, enclosure of the storage area with a combination of security and chain link fencing, new planting area along the west side of the building and along the front of the property, and new parking along the north side of the storage area.

Machinery and Equipment Sales, Service, and Rental is a by-right use in the Zoning District, but outdoor storage is a special use in the entrance quarter.

SP's for outdoor storage are reviewed under Section 30.6, which limits the factors to be considered to determining where their outdoor storage is consistent with the entrance quarter design guidelines.

They are being reviewed this proposal in October this year and request that revisions focus on increased landscaping to make the proposal more consistent with the design guidelines.

At its November 4th meeting, they will be reviewed, a revised proposal included revisions to create planting areas along the frontage and along the west side of the building and increase landscaping along the northern perimeter of the storage area.

They are being considered the revised landscaping and voted unanimously voted to recommend approval with conditions.

The conditions are listed here and we can bring them back up if needed.

On November 18th, the required community meeting was held at the Places 29 CAC meeting.

There were questions on the equipment visibility, the type of equipment that would be stored at the site, and impacts the site access.

Staff did not identify any unfavorable factors, and the favorable factor for this request is that the outdoor storage used to be consistent with the entrance quarter design guidelines.

If there are ARBs recommended conditions are upheld,

For this reason, staff recommends approval of the special use permit for outdoor storage.

Thank you.

And let me try to ask my question as I'm tired.

The parking area and understand that they're not generating new impervious service.

And I also understand that they're just using this slab of one of the buildings are tearing down for additional outdoor equipment storage.

But we do have standards for trees in, I guess, parking lots.

I don't know if this is not being thought of as a parking lot because it's equipment storage.

Yeah, so is that the difference that this is a lot of equipment parked, but it's not being called a parking area?

Correct.

So it's equipment storage.

Okay, that's really unfortunate because this is a massively paved site.

And so I understand the applicants are not making more pavement, I get that.

But it's, and I'm sure treat islands would probably be in the way of moving some of this big equipment around.

But it just seems like a shame that we're redeveloping this, we're getting very little improvement to this massive paved site.

Are we getting additional stormwater management?

They're not generating an additional new stormwater, so we're also not getting new stormwater management because... That would be accurate.

That's probably accurate.

And do you happen to know, this is probably more like a frank poll question, but do you happen to know if...

This site, and maybe the applicants engineer knows, is there stormwater from this site that runs off being treated or is it just running into storm grains?

I don't know if this site is so old that it was paved before stormwater regulations kicked in.

Yeah, so it might be that this site doesn't have any stormwater management and all this pavement is just going to the Rivanna.

and then the other thing is, if this is equipment that's being used, I do believe though, I read that they are cleaning their equipment and then capturing all the grease and whatever else and containing that and cleaning it.

So maybe they can say more about how they're, when they present, how they're containing just the general runoff of from this equipment store on site, but I wish we were getting better stormwater out of this redevelopment.

Stormwater Management, I mean, we're getting plenty of stormwater.

Okay, we'll open it up for public hearing.

Ask the applicant.

Hello, my name is Connor O'Donnell.

I'm with the law firm Gentry Locke as a planner working and consulting with Carter Machinery on this project.

This is also Carter Burkey.

He is a facilities manager, so we may jump back and forth to answer any questions.

So at the community meeting last week, the theme of the questions kind of just centered around getting an idea of exactly what's going on here and introducing the project.

So while this special use permit is just limited to us meeting entrance quarter guidelines, happy to expand outside of that and answer any questions that you all have.

And so just for some overall context where we are in this process is that we are applying for the special use special use permit currently for outdoor storage.

But we are a long way away from getting to this concept plan.

The order is a little bit strange.

So we this is coming first.

But what you see in the concept plan is likely about two years away.

Still need to go through the land disturbance permits, get a demolition permit, move through a major site plan amendment.

And so moving through the order of getting the permits is kind of confusing.

A lot of what I'll answer here is as best as I can without having a full site plan in front of you, which again will come quite a ways down the line.

So again, I'll focus on the landscaping, but we'll try to address other questions as you have them.

But with the ARB, we did a fairly, based on their comments, we came back to them through two meetings, made substantial changes to the landscaping near Rio Road.

And primarily, the visual impact that you're going to see here is at the western part of the property where there's a double layer of evergreen trees on a nine-foot planting buffer.

and as well as additional landscape islands for trees in the front and also ARB on the east side of the property, which is up next to the library, wanted to see some type of landscaping there to break up the pavement.

There's about 60 feet of pavement on a private drive between the library and the building.

And so there's proposed 20 foot width landscape island there.

and something worth noting for the property too is the elevation difference from Rio Road to the rear of the property.

At Rio Road near the evergreens, it's about 515 feet and about 504 feet at the rear of the property.

So there's a fairly significant slope.

The tallest equipment types that we'll have are about 12 feet.

So the slope from Rio Road going down is already hiding 10 feet as the evergreens grow.

I will leave it there and happy to clarify any points regarding

Ms.

Firehock, the trees in the back.

We have a landscape plan that we have to move through as part of the site plan.

Because we're on the entrance quarter, our site plan will go in front of ARB.

That is a quick one.

So the buildings itself, they're not the best looking buildings.

Are you doing anything to the facades of those buildings to improve their look at all?

They are not the most beautiful buildings.

There will be some minor facade changes to the front.

There are currently no windows.

There may be some small windows added.

And then some type of where the overhang is now, some type of change that.

is to follow up on the question on storm water.

So, I'm not the engineer on the project, but this, looking at the GIS, there's no wild property grades towards the south.

Yes, I would imagine everything on there is going into the stormwater system.

And so as part of the land disturbance permit, all of those, you know, the erosion, semen control, the water ordinance, the runoff will have to go through the entire permit process with the major site plan amendment.

and so we don't have, I don't have any details for you right now on what the storm water will look like.

Go up to the, come on.

Hi, I'm Carter Burkey.

I'm the Director of Facilities for Carter Machinery, and we have

think up to I think we have 38 locations now and we have a zero tolerance policy for washing any equipment outside of a wash bay, meaning our wash bays cycle the water through a oil water separator before going to sanitary.

But inside that wash base, it won't be sitting in the rain.

Yes, ma'am.

So you saw yourself run up, but that's still, that's good.

And it applies to all, both new equipment.

When we get generators from CAT directly, we have to wash them because of carbons that come off the exhaust and going back into the groundwater.

It's something we take very seriously, so.

No closing.

You're always nervous when you get bumped behind a solar hearing.

But I was very happy to see that that's relatively popular, I suppose.

So no closing comments.

Again, I think we are

This concept plan is where we want to go, but we'll be in front of the ARD again as final changes come through.

And they worked very closely with us to get it to a level that they were happy with.

All right, with that, I'll close the public.

Bring it back to the committee.

I had a quick question for staff.

So given when this was, was it 1970s?

70s or so.

Yeah.

So obviously we've had a lot of changes in both in quality and quantity for our stormwater.

Yeah, there's no change.

Yeah.

Well, we can't, you know, request profits from the dice, but, you know, it would be nice to see things like permeable parking spots and,

You know, various things that they might do to leave the site better than they found it.

Not just the screening from the entrance corridor, but actually your good corporate stewardship.

Like I said, it can only get better and it will be better.

The landscaping you're adding is better than it is now, okay?

It's really ugly to be frank, but I'd love it.

I'd love to see you all put a maybe even greener stamp on this.

I know it's equipment rental.

I've rented heavy equipment myself.

I've been to these kind of places.

But it would be nice to see it be as green as possible.

You're getting your turn with this property.

And what can you do to leave it better than you found it kind of thing?

So that was vague enough, counselor, hopefully.

Same to all incentives.

All right.

I move to recommend approval of SP2024-20 Carter Machinery Outdoor Stores Display and Sales with the conditions ads recommended in the staff report.

Second.

All right.

Ms.

Firehawk.

Hi.

Mr. Moore.

Excuse me.

Hi.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

You moved to the board of supervisors.

Thank you.

All right.

Yes.

So I attended the Crozet Community Advisory Committee and we had a presentation about the Beaver Hill mobile home community and that was a very packed house.

It's a very interesting proposal in the sense that

would be requesting rezoning of an area that is currently rural area to allow for more mobile homes next to Crozet.

Which also

was requesting expansion, and there's broad support.

We had the exact opposite.

Neighbors showed up out of the woodwork to say, yes, by all means, add more mobile homes.

We need mobile homes.

So that was a great support.

But this one, if you were to side with us, particularly, I think the

The understanding that people said, when we bought our homes here, we understood this was rural area, that this is what it says in the Crozetmaster Plan.

And now you're saying you're going to change it to something that's not in the Crozetmaster Plan.

And so it was very interesting to hear that discussion.

We had a meeting of the Historic Preservation Committee and I know it's like I get cheers just for the fact that we didn't have to do anything.

That's a long back story if anyone is listening online.

Anyway,

We went over the comprehensive plan, goals and objectives.

That's what our job was, and then it will be coming to us to review as the commission eventually, probably in February.

The challenge of what we reviewed is, I wouldn't say there was anything really new in there, per se.

I mean, it re-emphasized the need for dark skies ordinance, because that is relevant to our preservation of our cultural landscape.

being able to see the night sky on the countryside.

We talked about the role of the Historic Preservation Committee.

We talked about the fact that we met, I think everyone believes on that committee that we need a Historic Preservation ordinance.

because we do spend a lot of our time, people have to get a demolition permit, but we have nothing in our county that prevents someone from just demolishing it, as long as it's done in a safe manner.

So because we don't have an ordinance.

So it was a lot of the same stuff that was in the last comp plan.

What was interesting, though, was that in reading the last comp plan, it was much more clearly articulated.

In other words, I felt like we could just take in the last comp plan chapter for CERC preservation and just pasted it into this one and it would have been a bit clearer.

So in speaking to staff, there was a lot of this staff draft something and then all the staff help and then everyone wordsmiths and people stick in different words.

And so it needs a good deal of editing.

There's a lot of redundancy, extra words, confusion of what's the objective versus the action.

So I don't want to over dramatize this, but I guess I did actually ask the group why are we even rewriting this when it basically says the same thing as the last chapter.

We just need to get on with getting this work done.

So staff is going to go back and I will say that staff noted our county staff at the meeting that

A lot of what we were recommending was how they had it originally.

So we said, well, please go back and unedit some of this to make it clearer.

It's very hard when everyone is contributing to a group writing project.

I'm sure in your careers, you've all been in those meetings and those processes.

So they're going to work on editing it for clarity and getting rid of duplicative statements.

But at the end of the day,

I just hope we can hurry up and have an ordinance and do the things that we said.

Last comment, I'm sorry I'm going on a lot.

The last comment I want to make is that one emphasis we really want to put into this comprehensive plan is that we need

Staffing Resources, because the historic preservation has a lot of charges of education and outreach and all these things.

But in the last comprehensive plan, we asked our staff to help with historic preservation.

and we're still asking for that.

We don't have a full-time staff person dedicated to that.

Staff is very supportive of that because, think about it, we don't have an ordinance, so how do we get people to not take down their historic structure or outbuilding or barn or whatever or

Destroyer, Scenic Viewshed.

It has to be through education, but we're very hamstrung because we don't have the resources to do that work.

So I could get into a lot more detail.

Yes, we will have that in February.

And I'm hoping that from the work of our committee yesterday, you will have something much more clear and concise.

Well, one of the things that I was hoping, you know, I'm just a little bit disappointed to hear you say that it's going to look very similar to what we already have.

Because, you know, as I as you're Julian, other people talk about how we give undue weight sometimes to these these larger states owned by wealthy people in Albemarle County.

It does talk about hearing, telling the narratives of all different people from all walks of life.

And I think I mentioned to you in past reports from the committee that we are talking about having a historic

recognition program that like looks at all different types of vernaculars and different you know so not just like there's all the plantation houses of Albemarle County and that's the only story you know to look at general stores and farms and all of the you know all of those different types of structures and places and people so that's very much the emphasis and that that's very strong in there

But again, without resources to do this work, to tell those stories.

I mean, talks about collecting narratives and posting them and documenting and having a database so you could like turn on a layer at Admiral County and see all these historic resources, documenting cemeteries, all of these things.

But again, without resources, it's just gonna, to be honest,

will sit here eight years from now.

I probably won't be sitting here, but eight years from now, it'll be like, look, here's the historic chapter.

It's just the same.

So to your point, yes, we did emphasize those different stories in different places.

And we've been talking about that for the last year and a half.

But again, we just we need the resources to actually make it reality.

And I'm happy to share with you the version that I

Yeah, I mean, I just think about there's these, you know, I don't know if you've read the historic account of the, the Ragged Mountains, which is extremely biased that was produced by UVA a long time ago.

There's a lot of stuff in there that talks about the people that used to live in the Reagan Mountains, about how there was a lot of interracial marriage, and how there's a lot of self-reliance and the kinds of businesses and people that used to live in those places, and the kind of communities that used to live in Albemarle County.

And I think that that context is something that is often overshadowed or lost.

And so I think, I appreciate

As I said before, I really appreciate Albemarle County's rural area because of how diverse it is.

Okay.

One more moment.

This is a quick comment.

Just for the good of the order, I guess, and for my sanity.

That's too much, right?

We had an extra planning commission meeting on our calendar, but it got scheduled.

I don't know which came first, the chicken or the public meeting, but there was a planning commission meeting here that I was at, I guess, a week ago.

It was also the same night that they scheduled a public community meeting in my district.

and so I received many emails from very unhappy Albemarleans about what they learned at this community meeting and how they detest whatever, I'm not gonna say what it was, but anyway, everyone's mad and it's even more awkward for me because I couldn't go to that meeting because I had to be here.

So somehow with staff to make sure that a commissioner isn't put in the position of choosing this dais or the community meeting.

if we can possibly never do that again, especially for the controversial site, because it's just very awkward for me to explain that I couldn't attend the meeting.

I'll just start.

I hear you.

Sure.

We went to the board on November 20th.

The items that we were dealing with, the items we were dealing with was the Development Area Land Use Action Chapter.

Interesting conversation that we had with the board about the documents, the structure of the document, and some of the actions that were posed therein.

It's probably going to like change your schedule just a little bit.

I think I'll have more information for you at December meeting about going back to the board and sort of bringing the development area and rural area land use chapters back to them for one more review.

Moving into the AC44 thing, I think it's giving you a preview of things that are coming to you.