Developers of US Light Energy returned to Crawford’s planning board during its February 26 meeting and provided a major update to their solar farm proposed for Long Lane, including a new stormwater management system.

US Light Energy previously appeared at Crawford’s January 24 meeting and discussed the project’s remaining concern with the planning board: stormwater. The developers wanted to use level spreaders for the project, while Town Engineer Scott Quinn requested detention basins. At the end of the meeting, the developers asserted that they would continue speaking with Quinn and reach a plan that both parties would be happy with.

Martin Schmidt, an engineering consultant from C.T. Male, stated that he and the developers, since the last meeting, decided to implement the detention basins per Quinn’s suggestion.

“We understood the town’s concerns and we want to create a project that everyone’s going to feel comfortable approving,” Schmidt said. “So if you guys want the detention basins that Scott Quinn recommended, we wanted to give it to you.

“We created a new site plan that incorporates four large detention basins to retain the stormwater. I’ve worked with Scott, he did recently send out a comment letter on those, he’s reviewed them already,” he continued.

Schmidt noted that the solar farm’s size remained intact following the addition of the basins and that he and US Light Energy need to make a few minor adjustments based on Quinn’s feedback. Quinn then expressed his satisfaction with the current plans.

“There are some minor adjustments that we need to make based on his comment letter: some additional labeling, raising the berm a little bit, just some minor corrections or revisions to be made.”

“I think we’re on the right path here. We got to clean up things, but I think it’s a better plan than where we were a few months back,” Quinn said.

Members of the planning board told the developers that they would need one more meeting to review and tweak the project’s current plan before moving forward; after this, they would consider a negative declaration. At the end of the discussion, the board then motioned to close the public hearing.