CHERRY VALLEY - Reunion Power's application for a 24-turbine wind farm on East Hill was not accepted by the Cherry Valley planning board Tuesday night.

Chairman Jeffrey Wait said Reunion's application would not be accepted until they had gone through a required "pre-application conference," which had not been held prior to Reunion's submission of their proposal on July 7.

Reunion could resubmit the application in August with any modifications or additional information requested by the planning board after the conference was held Tuesday night, Wait said, which would then make it a formal submission that started the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR) clock.

The pre-application conference consisted of a brief explanation about the proposal from Reunion's project manager David Little and a grilling from two planning board members who had questions about the application and the project.

Little said the application included all of the basic information about the project "based on what we know today," but left a lot of questions unanswered that would remain as unknowns until further work was done.

"It spells out pretty clearly what we want to do," he said. Little said the application identified where each of the 24 wind turbines would be located, who owned the land on which they would be built, who the abutting landowners are and where proposed roads would be constructed, among other items. The facility would cover 1,200 leased acres of land from a dozen landowners.

Following Little's comments, planning board members Walter Buist and Liz Plymell asked a series of sometimes scathing questions, one of which was about an item on the Environmental Assessment Form which asked "Does the site include scenic views known to be important to the community?"

"Honestly, I thought you put this in here for comic relief," Buist said before asking about Reunion's response. "And your answer to that is?"

"We have no," Little said.

Buist said he was curious how Reunion arrived at that answer.

"We have a visual analysis that's being done right now," Little said. "We do not have, for example, the exact inventory of nationally registered properties. We're working on that, we have that."

At this point, the meeting was briefly interrupted when a female member of the audience said "You're so full of (expletive)" quietly.

"I'm sorry, I take offense to that," Little said.

Several audience members began to respond, but Plymell quieted the audience and said they were not looking for public comments at this time.

"The way the question is worded, a simple 'yes' would have probably been the more appropriate answer," Wait said.

Little said he wanted to make clear that the answer didn't reflect Reunion's thoughts about the area.

"In no way is this diminishing the importance of the viewscape of the area," Little said. "This is an absolutely beautiful area."

Buist also presented a copy of his electricity bill and asked Little to clarify the discount Reunion was negotiating to provide Cherry Valley residents with if the turbines were erected.

Little agreed that there was some confusion on the subject and said 50 percent would be shaved off of a consumer's bill for the electricity itself, but no savings would be given on the transmission costs. He said the net result would be approximately a 25 percent reduction on the total electricity bill.

Buist asked about the $375,000 figure presented by Reunion as the amount of money that would be going to the town under the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement. He said while he didn't want to characterize the figure as misleading, he wondered if the wording was somewhat inaccurate in that it leads one to believe the town of Cherry Valley is going to get all of that money. He said this might not be the case, as Otsego County apportions the money.

"Theoretically, (the town's portion) could be zero," he said.

Little said $375,000 represented Reunion's estimate of how much money would flow into the Cherry Valley community, not necessarily the town government. He said typical PILOT agreements result in 50 percent of the money going to the school, 30 to 40 percent going to the town and the rest going elsewhere. He said the town and county negotiated together how the money would be apportioned and that the community as a whole best decides how to divide the funds.

Buist questioned whether Reunion would be willing to use a U.S. based manufacturer of equipment for construction of the turbines instead of Vestus, a Danish company.

Little said they absolutely were willing to use a U.S. manufacturer, but indicated that the problem is that General Electric only has a 1.5 megawatt turbine they could use, as opposed to a 3 MW turbine produced by Vestus. He said since the East Hill farm would be relatively small compared to most commercial wind farms, they wanted to maximize efficiency and maximize the amount of electricity produced from the 24 turbines they would construct.

Plymell's questions largely focused on what she thought were potential infringements in the site plan on federally protected wetlands. She said the substation and staging area both appear to be impacting wetlands and would need to be relocated.

Little said this may be the case, as the map included in Reunion's application presented "pre-survey locations" for all of the items.

"There's a lot of information that we still need to ferret out," he said. "We want to stay away and avoid wetlands. Period." He said they would consider relocating or eliminating a turbine from the project if it was necessary to avoid wetlands.

Plymell suggested they consider relocating the substation to the other side of the hill, as it not only impacts a wetland in its current location but would be next to County Route 54, which is a scenic byway.

She also asked that in the future application, Reunion provide details about what types of vehicles would be used in the staging area, what hours they would be operating and whether it would be paved or not.

Plymell also questioned Little about the visual impact of the project and said both the State Route 20 and County Route 54 scenic byways would be affected. She asked they take into account the visual impact from various locations, not just from State Route 166.

Little said the project's visual impact was an important part of the many factors they considered in the site's placement and that a lot of effort had gone into the site's layout.

"Of all the impacts from the project, no question the visual impact is at the top of the list," he said.

Plymell asked about what materials would be used for each turbine's foundation, noting that nothing was mentioned in the application.

Little said they would not know exactly what they needed to use until test holes had been bored at each turbine location. While each turbine could have a different foundation, he said he would be very surprised if there were large differences in the makeup of the location.

Wait asked that a list of pesticides that would be used at the site be included in Reunion's final application submission.

Copies of the application may be obtained by filing freedom of information requests, Wait said, and a copy will be put in the library for viewing. Little said Reunion would seek to include a copy of the application on their website, but he was unsure when they would be able to get it online.

The next planning board meeting is August 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the town garage.