Planning Commission Meeting   8/3/2021

Oh, yes.

And there's the queue.

This meeting is being recorded.

Oh, thank you so very much.

It didn't say it.

No, it didn't.

Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to the Planning Commission meeting for August the 3rd, 2021, 6 o'clock electronic meeting.

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

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

Yes, I will.

Ms.

Firehock.

Ms.

Moore.

Present.

Present.

There he is.

Thank you.

Well, the roll's been called and that means we have a, and with the members who said present are here, we have a quorum.

Thank you very much, public.

We have, does anyone care to pull anything from the consent agenda?

OK.

Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda items?

Oh, I see.

Are you moving?

Daniel, is your hand up?

Tim, are you moving?

I am.

You're moving.

Is there any discussion?

Hearing none, madam, would you please call the vote?

I wish Council that we could just do this by acclamation, but I understand you said we can't do this by acclamation.

Yes.

Mr. Clayborne?

Aye.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye.

Mr. Bailey?

Thank you very much.

Those have been approved.

The consent items have been approved.

So we're going into our public hearings tonight, and we've got a number of ag-forest items before us.

And before we do that, Scott, could you turn yourself?

Don't turn yourself on, but could you reveal yourself, please?

There you go.

Oh, you're in the forest.

Look at you.

Yeah.

Look at you, right there in the forest.

Could I ask you a question before we move on just so that it's out there?

Sure.

Although both the state-enabled conservation easements and open space easements and the Agricultural and Forest

both aimed at generally the same thing, which is rural land conservation in most cases.

There is no real tie between them.

The enabling authority at the state level is entirely separate and the programs exist separately of each other.

Having said that, there are quite a few parcels in rural Albemarle that are in both.

either because they were added to the district some time ago and the owners have since decided to do a permanent form of conservation of these myths or because ownership has changed or something like that and people have made other decisions.

Thank you.

So then I should turn down my

my caution about the article by Alison Brody that was in the progress on July 24th that basically painted a, not a very good, a good image of conservation of easements.

It's true that there is no bleed over.

Thank you so much.

That's why I come to somebody who spends time in the woods and can help me turn down my anxious, me being anxious.

But if you haven't seen it, so I don't want anyone to be anxious, but if you haven't seen it, it was in daily progress on July 24th by a person called Alison Brody Champion.

And so you might, since we've been told that it's okay for us to not be too concerned, you might want to read that and take a look at that.

And so on that note,

I will present each of them separately.

OK.

So then we will go into the AFDs, 2021-01 Henley Sugar Hollow edition, and then the Neff-Mormon River edition, which is 02, and then 03, which is the Maddock-Jacobs Run edition, 04, which is the Hatton District Review, and 05, which is the Totier Creek District

I just need to share my screen.

I need to get faster at doing this.

Okay, so thank you.

Yes, we have five agricultural and forested district items tonight, three requested additions and two district reviews.

I'll just go over them briefly and show you the recommendations and then I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.

So the first edition is the proposed Henley addition to the Sugar Hollow District.

You can see the district in green there and the proposed addition in red.

And this is a parcel of 19 acres, which is almost entirely made up of important soils and has five development rights.

And so therefore is qualified to join the district.

and the AFD Committee recommended approval of this edition.

Item 02 is the NEF property, which is proposed to join the Mormons River District.

Mormons River is our largest district and you can see the extent of it in that map.

And again, the proposed edition is in the red.

These are three parcels.

with 111 acres of important soils.

Each parcel has multiple development rights and so is a valid addition to the district.

And again, the committee recommended approval.

O3 is the Matic property for Jacob's Run.

This property is 69 acres.

with 51 acres of important soils, one development right, so it's enough to qualify it to join the districts.

People have occasionally asked about additions like this one.

Why is it so far from the district?

Actually, the gap that you see between the Matic parcel in red and the rest of the district in green, a lot of that area was the original core of this district, which is where we measure from.

Those parcels have since

withdrawn, but the core is the core and does not change.

So the way we evaluate these is that the old way the code read was that they had to be within a mile of the core.

Now it says they should be within a mile of the core, but they can be farther if they're agriculturally significant, which there certainly is.

So in either case, this would be a valid addition to the Jacob-Throne district.

We have two district reviews and just to review what these reviews are every 10 years normally these districts come up for a check by the Board of Supervisors to ensure that they are still valid and appropriate and

sufficiently intact shape that they make sense as a conservation district.

It's also the one time that landowners are able to withdraw from the district if they want to.

By right with no penalty or analysis, it's simply a matter of writing to us and say, please remove me during this review.

And it happens.

So this is the Hatton District Review, despite the fact that it says Batesville there about a third of the way down the page.

This is the Hatton District down on James River in the Warren area, 860 acre district, nearly all of which has important soils for agriculture.

It's all in the rural areas.

We have one withdrawal request

of a parcel of 86 acres that's there in the crosshatch in the middle of the district.

The owners have stated that they intend to rejoin the district after dividing off a small parcel.

Many of you will remember that these districts prevent the creation of lots of less than 21 acres, except in the case of family divisions.

And you can see this property is owned by an LLC, so it by definition can't do family divisions.

And in any case, I believe the,

two or three acre parcel that they're proposing to remove wouldn't qualify as a family division anyway, but they hope to do that division and then rejoin with the remaining 84 or 83 acres.

There are no parcels in this district that are in the open space tax category.

Therefore, we don't have to worry about the recent policy about notifying parcels of potential removal in five years and this district can be renewed for 10 years.

I can review that policy if anybody has any questions about it.

The Toyota Creek District, which lies just north of the Hatton District, the area south of Esmond and Porters and stretching up to the east and north from there toward Keene.

There's a much larger district, 6,700 acres,

Also, for its 10-year review, also has one request to withdraw, which is the crosshatch again up there at the top near Keene.

Again, this is a parcel with no parcels that are in the open space tax category.

Therefore, you don't have to worry about the possible removals and the review period is 10 years.

And the committee recommended renewal for 10 years with the withdrawals for, well, actually the,

with the withdrawal for the previous district.

And with Todier Creek, the withdrawal request came in after the committee meeting.

But in any case, the recommendation was for renewal for a 10-year period.

So I'll stop there to take questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Questions?

Yeah, there you go.

Are there questions for Scott?

OK.

That's actually a very good question.

Back in 1980, when the county went through a comprehensive rezoning, all of the parcels that existed on December 10 of that year were granted five development rights as a one time thing.

So they aren't generated through subdivision.

They were granted once and no more are ever created.

These are for lots less than 21 acres.

So each parcel has those.

As parcels are surveyed and subdivided, those rights are tracked on the plots.

I'm sure of a commodity that travels around with pieces of the land and they get divided two here and three there as the parcels get subdivided.

Thank you.

OK, Corey, are you good?

Scott, one thing that I noted is as we look at each one of these districts, we look at them essentially as separate and unique districts.

And I thought it would be helpful if in the future you could provide us with some sense out of all the acreage that's in each one of these

Ag Forestry Districts, the percentage that is actually in conservation easements.

This district in Warren, the Hatton district reviewed east of Warren, I should say, constitutes 20.6% of the properties are in conservation easement, which is a very low

number and is really the basis of the board's desire to move to an every five-year review on ag forestry just to try to invigorate the level of conservation easements so people don't park properties in ag forestry for a period of time

reap the benefits and then decide to move on.

And I know there are tax disincentives that make that more difficult.

But still, I was struck by the fact that it's only 20.6%.

And then we're going to be looking at the Toddier Creek District momentarily.

and I'm not trying to take anything away from that and that's almost 50%.

That's 49.7% of all the acreage in that ag forestry district is actually in a conservation easement, which certainly is an improvement over 20.6%.

But I do think it would be helpful in the future if you could provide the planning commission

with a breakdown on where things stand with each one of these districts in the county.

So we really have a basis of comparison to know moving forward, are we really increasing the amount

a property that is in conservation easements or is it decreasing and actually then being able to measure that over a five year period.

I know we don't have enough data yet to really measure that in a meaningful way, but we could begin to track this over a five year period, both at a planning commission level and then the next level as well.

Just so I understand, we do provide the easement acreages for each district that's under reviewed.

You know, it might be nice to have an average, something to go by.

I'm not asking you to do a complete chart of all 28, but it would be nice to have some basis of comparison.

And also, how are we doing as a county versus other counties that have similar ag forestry programs?

I mean, we like to think that we're doing well, but we don't have the comparative figures to really

That's true.

I'm sure we could track down the stats to compare our ag four districts overall to other counties without too much trouble.

I would like to suggest so that we separate the question of ag four districts and conservation easements.

The board's concern in the last few years with the ag four district was not whether or not the land could be under easement or was under easement, but whether or not the land was in the open space tax rate

and getting a conservation related tax break, but was not actually land that had the potential to be developed.

And so that it was getting a conservation tax rate for doing nothing.

They are two separate issues.

We do track conservation easements held by the county and all other holders in the county.

And if you're interested, I'll be doing a presentation on easements, the county's easement programs.

September 15th with the board, so you might want to tune in for that.

It's very strange saying that.

And so I think it's important to keep the two things separate.

Rick?

Understood.

You're absolutely correct that I'm mixing apples and oranges here, but I do think it's useful to know as we go forward when we're looking in the Ag Forestry District

How much of that property is really committed legally in perpetuity?

Understanding with certain of the holders of those conservation easements, the term in perpetuity is not necessarily in perpetuity.

because they can sell that asset.

It's dedicated to them upon death or termination of an agreement, but it doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to actually be in perpetuity.

OK.

OK, great.

Thank you very much.

Tim?

I see where Rick is coming from, and I certainly understand

from the many discussions that we've had in Ag and Forestry, the point that Scott is making about keeping the two separate because they really do have different enabling legislation and one I think is actually focused on agriculture and art and forestry.

more and the other one is actually on rural land protection.

And there is a nuanced difference here, I think.

I do think though, Scott, it would be, and I support what Rick is saying if it's not too onerous and I don't see why it would be.

I think what would really be helpful in each of these districts would be to see the amount of land that is protected due to its forestry classification, the amount of land that's protected due to its agricultural,

and the amount of land due to its open space qualities.

I think that that is really the part that directly relates because they're the three components that the state allows us to do within ag and forest.

And then you consistently do show us, and you've actually done this in some past presentations, I know.

Sorry, that's our,

Internet issues in the county.

I think it would be interesting to see in aggregate the number of development rights that are, we won't use the word protected, but the number of development rights that are set aside in the district by the designation.

Thanks.

Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate having the guidance.

We've already been talking about trying to improve our sort of annual reporting on conservation programs in general.

Other questions, comments?

So the one thing I would like to also just, I'd like to sort of add a support to the whole piece of looking at the three different determinant, or the three different types, because I was struck by last week, I don't remember who the person was, but when they made, they made that a climate or yeah, climate,

presentation to the supervisors and the number that was used, the number that was shared with them was a 4.2% of the agriculture, 4.2% of the rural of our rural land is actually engaged in agribusiness.

and that's so you can go talk to your colleague from last week because I'm not saying it was you but it was somebody who made a presentation to the board and that was a number that I was struck by and so if we really have all this rural land but we're not doing a lot of farming on it that's something that I think you know just

Could we just bear that out?

Could we understand what that means?

I don't know where that number came from.

I'd be interested to find out.

It sounds like that's a pretty limited.

Yeah, I do really appreciate the commission's interest in these rural area issues.

And there's been a long period in the past where I think a lot of the focus on Ag 4 reports was, let's get through this quickly.

So the other question that I had is, would it be helpful if the Hatton District and the Tochia Creek District were combined since they seem to share a border and they seem to share some boundaries and I didn't understand, I was posing the question if that would be useful if that could somehow be blended together but I don't know why they're not but

When the districts are created, remember the designations are not created, even the names are not created by the county.

These are created by volunteer groups of landowners who either individually or through cooperative effort pull together the 200 acre minimum that's needed to start a district.

Back in the day when we had lots of new districts being formed, it was up to these community groups of cooperating landowners to choose where to put these districts and what to call them.

I wouldn't say it really makes any significant difference for the county

Operations to combine nearby districts.

It might cause a lot of confusion for people who identify with the district they're in because some of these, there is a sort of a community aspect to which district you're in and which one identifies with the area you're in.

Well, it could be, you know, the Hatton, the Hatton-Todier district.

Right.

Which has been, preserves everyone's

I don't think we gain much by doing that.

Yeah, so you don't get, as long as you don't gain much, it just seems that it's got another district that you have to keep track of as opposed to consolidating them and having one district, having one fewer districts to deal with.

Okay, cool.

Just, Julian, I think, you know, it's again the enabling legislation for both of these and the way a district is constructed and built out from a center point in an originating element.

So I think that there would have to be a change in the Virginia enabling legislation if you wanted to do that.

And maybe you want to talk to council and maybe they want to put it on their priority list or not.

But I think that that's really it.

And in terms of the agribusiness,

I think that whoever did this within the county and I guess it's Charles' job and maybe Andy's job as well as Scott to speak with the climate person who we're going to see very soon, maybe we'll have an opportunity to bring this up as well but there's a definition for the forestry, the horticulture and there is no way that that figure can be accurate given the amount of land that is in pine plantation

in the county that we all see on a daily basis.

Now, there might be conservation issues that we would challenge because of the state, the way the state manages that in terms of runoff and hydrology.

I'm glad that what I can do is stir up some dust

Anything else for Scott before we open it for public comment?

All right, we have Neal Williamson.

Good evening.

Neal Williamson with the Free Enterprise Forum.

Former Secretary of Agriculture Todd Haymore often said, agriculture is Virginia's biggest business by far.

I take huge issue.

with the number of 4.5% agribusiness.

I fear that this is something to create a wedge in agribusiness of certain types with more than 95% of the land mass in rural areas.

This is not parkland, and too often we think it is.

This is workable land that people are on tractors working every day.

When you look at the ag forest districts, these districts came together because landowners came together and they brought these districts forward volunteering to give up property rights for a period of time.

I also take issue with the idea that ag forest districts aren't worth as much as conservation easements because they're not in perpetuity.

The land is protected.

It is regulated.

The question for the Planning Commission

is how much land in this time of needing affordable housing and lack of development area land is the right amount of land to be perpetually protected.

Is the Planning Commission ready to take a look at that and perhaps even look at how much would be appropriate to be perpetually protected, perhaps even purchased through a PDR program?

Albemarle has a very solid one with the ACE program.

versus having someone voluntarily give it up.

As I've mentioned to this group many times, there is no public hearing for a conservation easement.

Yet every five or 10 years, depending upon district, these landowners have to go through a public hearing process.

Why?

What is the purpose?

Part of it is the restrictions that allow them not to subdivide a small parcel, as you see with the LLC that's in the Hatton Ferry District.

Development rights that are set aside have value and they're giving those rights up.

It's important to recognize the rural area community is doing a great deal to support the rural area both through agribusiness and through voluntary conservation easements and voluntary ag forest logistics.

Then I will close the public hearing and bring it back to us.

And Mr. Clark, Scott, if you would sort of guide us through how you'd like to, or if you'd like to make comments.

And commissioners, if you have other observations.

How long have we been doing this?

OK.

I just need to share my screen, and I'll put these motions up.

Commissioners, do you have any additional questions, comments?

OK, then would someone care to make a motion?

I need you to unmute yourself because we're in this profile.

Oh, I know I can do it this way.

It's okay.

I can do it this way.

There we go.

I can see everybody again.

Thank you.

I'm direct of approval of AFT

Is there a second?

Is there a seconded by Tim?

Is there any further discussion?

Yes.

Mr. Bailey?

Aye.

Mr. Keller?

Aye.

We need you on mute, Rick.

You cannot move it?

OK.

Council, can you shake his head vigorously?

Charles, can you unmute him for a second?

There you go.

Now you may speak, Rick.

Aye.

Thank you, Charles.

Ms.

Moore.

Aye.

Thank you.

Can we go to the next one?

There we are.

We have a motion for the net Mormon River edition.

Rick, did I see your hand go up?

Did I see somebody's hand go up?

Tim, moved by Tim, seconded by Rick.

It's recommended.

Tim, would you like to speak to that, please?

No, because they're mutually exclusive.

Of course, of course they are.

I do.

One or two.

And it was seconded by Rick.

Is there any further discussion?

Ms.

Moore.

Aye.

Mr. Randolph.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Moving on to the next one, sir.

So we have before us the Maddock Jacobs Run edition.

with someone like, moved by Danny.

Seconded by Jenny.

Any further discussion?

Mr. Randolph.

Aye.

Ms.

Moore.

Aye.

OK, so now we move into the Hatton District Review, I think.

Yes.

Is there a motion before us for this one?

Is there a second?

Seconded by Tim.

Is there further discussion?

Mr. Moore.

I'm sorry, Ms.

Moore.

Aye.

Mr. Keller.

Aye.

Aye.

OK, thank you very much.

Can we move to the next one, please?

Would someone here to speak to or make a motion for a tortilla creek district?

Is there a second?

Second by 10.

Yes.

Mr. Bailey?

Aye.

Ms.

Moore.

Aye.

Looks like we've moved them all forward.

Mr. Rupp, there he is.

Scott, did you get what you need from that?

I did.

Thank you very much.

I would just like to, again, call to everybody's attention the agricultural census, which is done every so many years, five-year updates.

The last one that's relevant for us is 2017.

It's nass.usda.gov.

and it actually shows the numbers of acre in different types of farmland like grassland, for pasture and different kinds of cultivation.

Yes.

N as in Nancy, A as in Ann, S as in Sam, S as in Sam, .usda.gov.

Thank you very much.

In particular, you want to go to the tables and table eight in particular speaks to farms, land and farms, value of land and buildings, et cetera.

But there's also ones for what we're producing.

You can see how the fruits really gone were high with apples and now are high with

Thank you very much for that.

Okay.

So we will move on to our, hearing other comments on that piece, on the iForcio piece.

We're going to move on to SP 2021-06, the Ivy Landfill Solar Facilities.

Scott, could we have your report please?

Yes, this is a public hearing for the Ivy Landfill Solar Facility and Ms.

Amber Lee Young from Community Power Group is here to speak for the applicants.

I think she has some colleagues with her as well.

So this is, I believe, the third of the special permit requests we've had in the county for solar energy generation facilities in the rural areas.

This one is unlike the others in that the proposal is to locate this facility, which has about 15 acres, would have about 15 acres of generating panels on top of the existing Ivy landfill by the Solid Waste Authority.

So the proposal includes three separate areas of photovoltaic panels on top of the capped landfill, a total of 3.1 megawatts generating capacity occupying only 15 acres of the 300 acre site.

Again, built on a closed capped landfill and with a design approach that essentially sits on the surface rather than being dug into having a foundation posts

underground like you've seen with the previous two applications that have come in.

Refresh everyone's memory, this is the site outlined and written is the landfill of the materials utilization center with the entrance on Dick Woods Road down here.

And of course, bordering I-64 here to the north and Broadax Road to the west.

This is a portion of the conceptual plan for the proposed facility.

It gives a pretty good sense of scale, I think.

The entrance in the buildings, a lot of you are probably familiar with.

And the intake area for household waste down here.

And on cap sections of the landfill, these blue areas are where the panels would be.

You can see there's the central road that comes through the landfill for access and maintenance.

And just a couple of things to point out.

These converter boxes that are located here and here, those are the converters that take the DC power from the panels and help get it ready for AC distribution across the power lines.

And as you'll see, those are, again, grouped toward the center of the

of the landfill area.

And that's important because those are the main generators of noise impacts from these solar facilities.

Just to zoom in a bit, this is the northern section of the conceptual plan.

And again, you can see the inverter boxes and there's a section of above ground conduit running over the surface of the landfill.

Again, this is capped landfill and can't be excavated or dug into.

So this is running over the surface.

and then the southern portion that's closer to the office buildings and the intake area.

There's two more areas of panels and the area where the power coming from the panels is connecting to the existing transmission lines that come through the site.

So I will just run through a quick summary of the,

special use permit consideration criteria from the zoning ordinance from this use.

First item is substantial detriment to adjacent properties.

Under noise impacts, we've generally found that these inverters are compared to residential AC units.

In this case, those inverters are gonna be about 1,500 feet or more from existing dwellings.

And once you get

that distance from an inverter that's producing something in order of 60 to 70 decibels, you're well under 10 decibels by the time you get to those nearby dwellings.

So it's a scarcely noticeable level of noise.

And again, that's only happening during the daytime because the panels don't operate at night.

So this is not considered to be a substantial detriment with the nearby properties.

As far as visual impacts go, the applicants did extensive work on visibility of the panels and glare and glint produced by the panels on surrounding properties on the Saranig Roads and of course

Interstate 64 is an entrance corridor, so that was a special concern.

Although the initial analysis that took only topography into account showed that there could be visibility from surrounding properties.

The fact that there is such an extensive amount of vegetation, both on the site and in the surrounding site, meant that there were no significant visual impacts found.

The Glint and Glare study, again, indicated no impacts on roads or dwellings.

The applicants can, I'm sure, talk about this in more detail.

Harmony was the purpose and intent of the chapter.

This can be a challenging item for a utility generation site.

However, while this site is in the rural areas, it is already an existing public facility, landfill.

It has no real potential for future agricultural or forestry use on any timescale that we can expect.

It is located in the watershed of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.

However, again, it is on an existing public use site and it is putting impervious panels on top of an impervious landfill capsule.

The area of impervious surface is not really changing, would not change.

The character of the runoff might change to some minor degree and that can be handled during the site plan review.

Overall, however, it's not a significant change.

limited service delivery is not an issue here and conservation of natural, scenic and historic resources.

Again, I'll just repeat what I said in the previous slide as far as visibility goes, again, this is a landfill, so there are no significant natural resources on the site to be impacted.

All right, public health, safety and general welfare.

The real issue of substance here is just having an appropriate emergency response plan for any fires or other emergencies associated with one of these facilities.

As we have with the previous special use permits, we are recommending a condition of approval for the applicants or the site owners to supply training to the Department of Fire Rescue.

And VDOT also reviewed this for road impacts and

found it acceptable.

There's no real traffic generation for the site once it's in operation.

There, of course, is for construction.

It's fairly brief, and this is, again, only a 15-acre panel facility, so that would be a temporary use.

Parking would all be accommodated within the site, and after that, there would be nothing generated as far as traffic, except for occasional maintenance visits.

Alrighty, so consistency with the comprehensive plan.

The plan does say that the county should promote conservation and efficient use of energy resources.

So allowing this kind of renewable energy source is consistent with that.

Natural resources section of the comp plan is very focused on water resource protection, but given that this site is already disturbed, already impervious, there are minimal impacts or changes to water quality from this proposal.

and both the natural resources section and our recently adopted climate action plan encouraged the county to support renewable energy sources, which this would do.

So we felt that it was consistent with the comprehensive plan.

Wanted also to mention that beyond the special use permit, as a utility facility providing power to the public grid, this proposal subject to a compliance with the comprehensive plan review by state law,

and we do this for any such generating facility like this and given comments from the previous slide, we would recommend that the commission find it in a court.

So in summary, we found three favorable factors, the source of renewable power generation, compliance with the comprehensive plan and no change to the already impervious site in terms of its runoff characteristics, didn't find unfavorable requests,

and recommending approval of the special use permit with these conditions.

I realize these are pretty small, so I'll have to go over any particular ones you have questions about.

Thank you, Scott.

Are there questions for Scott at this particular point?

It makes recommendation, I'm sorry, it makes reference to engineer in the decommissioning piece of this.

Does that need to say professional engineer?

I just heard the word engineers used very loosely.

That's a change and we hadn't actually discussed that.

I suppose that's a change that we could make fairly easily.

Given that the plan would have to be reviewed and approved by the county attorney and the county engineer, I would think that they would expect that anyway.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Rick.

Scott, I had one question.

I was not clear in this proposal, where it says on page two, the solar panels would be installed on frames that rest on surface mounted supports, rather than the typical underground concrete support blocks.

My recommendation would be when this goes to the board that you have much more explanation as to what surface mounted supports look like, how they're configured, the material that they're made of, how they are actually secured to the ground, given what transpired in

the town of Scottsville last week with a microburst where all of a sudden you have really intense winds, heavy rain.

I immediately thought as I read through this application, well, what happens if a microburst hit the site and how would these frame go ahead and hold these panels against intense high winds or

For example, in a derecho, which can fell oak trees.

So I think it would be useful when this goes to the board to have some diagrams and further explanation about what the surface mounted supports actually look like.

Sure, yeah.

And I appreciate that.

Myself, I'm not a professional or any other kind of engineer, so my description may have been somewhat insufficient there.

But fortunately, Ms.

Young is here to speak for the applicants, and I'm sure she can describe that in more detail.

OK.

Anyone else?

Tim, you're unmuted.

So I have a question that perhaps that's got to imagine that you'll defer to the community power group.

So on their website, there's two things that I'm interested in.

One is their website.

So this is a two megawatts power project, which is fine.

And they show a layout on their website for this particular project here.

and so I would like some reconciliation between what we're seeing and what they're putting out on the web.

And then the other thing here that I'd like some discussion around is on their website they show gas bins with 10-foot clearances.

I assume that's because the site is off-gassing as it matures and lives out, it's going to have to off-gas.

So if it's going to off-gas, I want some idea of how flammable those gases are.

and since we're not necessarily grounding or how are they going to ground those structures so that they're struck by lightning.

We also don't have some sort of combustible event up there on Dick Woods Road.

So those are my two and I feel I understand if you need to defer to Ms.

Young.

But my one thing was on their website, they're looking, it's a very different, it's not very different, but it's a slightly different, it's one megawatt

less than what we're talking about tonight.

So I want to be clear, what we're talking about is the public-facing piece of the organization, and the project plan that we have coming to us tonight.

Yes, thank you.

I have not seen the version on the website.

All of the conditions that you have in front of you tonight are referring to the 15 acre, 3.1 megawatt plan.

So, but I'm sure Mr. Young can address that.

I share your concern about the fire hazard from the methane off-gassing of the landfill, which of course is managed by the,

waste authority.

As I understand it, that safety standard is reviewed and imposed by the Department of Environmental Quality when the proposed facility goes through their review, which generally follows the localities review.

And what I heard from Ms.

Young in our conversation was the same as what you found is that there will be DEQ mandated offsets from the areas where the

Methane is being extracted from the landfill to ensure that there isn't an immediate fire hazard.

Thank you.

Are there other questions before we go to the applicant?

Just curiosity, kind of along the same lines.

Two of the main kind of power lines are above ground, which typically, I understand this is a no-till site, but those are typically varied a lot of times for safety reasons and others.

So just as she's discussing how robust are these above ground conduits or how are they marked to prevent, not that I think that, actually, I don't know.

I don't know what the landfill uses of equipment or maintenance is that they could strike one of these above ground lines and what kind of safety

Yeah, I don't think we've seen in the application a specific design for that overground conductor.

I'm sure Ms.

Daniel, are you OK waiting until we get to Ms.

Young for a good one?

Yeah, I was directing it.

I figured I was directing it, Ms.

Young.

Thanks.

Anything else for Roscoe before we invite the applicant to?

Thank you.

Ms.

Young, welcome to Albemarle County's Planning Commission meeting.

Thank you.

Yes, good evening everyone.

My name is Amber Leung.

I'm a senior project manager with the Community Power Group.

I'm just going to share my screen really quickly.

Thank you.

Yeah, and thank you very much to the Planning Commission and the Community Development staff as well as any members of the public for taking your time to review our application tonight.

Just a quick

Note about our company.

Our community power group is based out of Maryland.

We have about two gigawatts of solar in operation or development across the United States.

We have a strong focus in the mid-Atlantic.

All of our staff is located in Virginia or Maryland.

And we also have extensive experience working on projects on landfills.

We have a portfolio of projects, including five different sites, about 70 acres in Maryland, as well as another portfolio in Massachusetts.

So we're very familiar with sort of the technical and design implications of locating on landfills and are very excited to work closely with the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority as well as DEQ on some of those matters.

But definitely want to speak to some of your questions.

So I'll get to that just in a minute.

As Scott already summarized, our project is comprised of three proposed solar facilities, each approximately one megawatt of alternating current.

Though the parcel itself is over 300 acres, our project, including the panels as well as the interconnection area, is proposed to be about 15 acres of that area.

The electricity that will be produced by the project will not be credited to any specific meter within the area, but will go into the distribution grid.

to provide clean energy to nearby homes and businesses.

And this is part of compliance with the Virginia Clean Economy Act that was passed in 2020, which seeks or which directs utilities such as Dominion to procure solar, particularly on previously developed sites, as well as a large amount throughout the state.

So just a little bit more about the site.

The Ivy Material Utilization Center began its landfill operations in the 1960s.

and it was acquired by the County of Albemarle and the City of Charlottesville a little bit after that time and it operated for several decades before its final closure and capping in 2002 and so the site has an active solid waste permit with Virginia DEQ and goes through extensive monitoring today and so Community Power Group was fortunate enough to win an RFP with Rivanna Solid Waste Authority in 2017

for this opportunity to develop these solar facilities.

And so we work very closely with the folks at Rivanna and really appreciate their support of this project.

So Scott's already sort of gone over this design for the project.

So it's three one megawatt solar facilities that will be installed on fixed tilt racking.

And as he already discussed, there'll be several inverter units placed throughout the site, but we

take efforts to locate those as interior to the site as possible in order to minimize any potential noise impacts, as well as to make them easily accessible for maintenance.

Because we make a commitment to be very extremely careful about no penetrations to the landfill caps, all of the conduit, and I'll show you a picture of what this looks like in just a second, but sort of describing it, all of the conduit coming from these inverter panel locations

will be above ground up until the point where we get to the southern part of the site when we're able to underground that in order to cross this driveway and reach our interconnection point, which is a Dominion utility pole existing on site.

It's like this red area right here.

So this is a photo of an existing landfill facility that we constructed.

I believe it's one of the ones in Massachusetts.

And so here you can see the panels are installed on fixed-hilt racking, which is very common for a ground-mounted solar facility.

But instead of driving pile posts into the ground, they're simply attached or surrounded by a concrete ballast.

And so it sits entirely above the ground and there are no ground penetrations needed.

This is also actually a common practice on rooftop projects where you're not able to penetrate the roof membrane.

And so even at 70 or 80 feet in the air, they're able to provide enough concrete ballast in order to secure those panels to a roof surface.

And so we're sort of using the same strategy here where we're applying enough concrete to the base of the system so that it won't

shift or uplift during wind conditions.

It's a little difficult to see in this in this picture, but on the right here you can see a little bit of a conduit run that's coming off of the panels and that's what will be running over the caps landfill areas down to the southern end of the site.

And so it'll be a metal conduit sitting on top of a piece of concrete that will be spaced throughout the conduit and then beneath that will be a material

So if there's any shifting, there won't be any disturbance to the ground.

But that's an example of what that will look like.

And so we haven't gone through very detailed engineering of what the exact placement of that conduit, but that will be part of our site plan development as well as our permit with Virginia DEQ in order to protect the landfill cap and also make DEQ as well as Rivanna very aware of where all our material is going and what the operating conditions will be.

in order to protect the cap as well as to provide Rivanna with knowledge of that.

So as Scott mentioned, we prepared a Glare study, a Glinton-Glare study for this project in order to assess the potential impact for motorists along I-64 to the north, as well as Dick Woods Road to the south.

So we utilized a software tool called ForSolar, which is developed by the Department of Energy and the Federal Aviation Administration

to assess the potential for glint and glare of a solar facility throughout the entire year.

So a year of sun positions as well as the specific perimeters of our project.

And so for these routes you see here and the specific perimeters of our project, no glare was predicted.

We also pay close attention to what the potential noise output of this facility will be.

And so as Scott discussed, the typical noise output of a solar inverter is between 55 to 65 decibels, which is similar to a dishwasher or a residential air conditioning unit.

and that's when you're standing right up against it a couple of feet away and so as you cover a wider distance away that sound dissipates and so because the closest residents to this facility are over a thousand feet away the noise could be expected to be less than 10 decibels at any kind of distance like that and that doesn't take into account any vegetation or other obstructions that may be in the way between that noise produced and the observer

in their homes.

So we expect the noise from these inverters to be much less than current road traffic or what could be expected on the material utilization center from their typical activity as a recycling center during the day.

If approved during the special use permit review, we would go to site plan, amendment, and development.

And that's where we'll do, as mentioned, additional stormwater review in order to determine any potential impact from the facility on the existing stormwater facilities on site.

We'll also be going through a DEQ landfill closure permit amendment process, in which case we'll review the project as well as the particular and specific design parameters from detailed design documents.

in order to determine whether there's any potential impact for the landfill cap and will be required to address those impacts before moving to construction.

They'll also address the risk of the project to the current landfill byproducts, which do include leachate as well as landfill gas.

There are active and passive gas vents on the site.

Over half of the capped facilities

are construction waste as opposed to municipal or household waste.

And so that does produce less methane than what you might expect from a landfill that's entirely residential waste.

But we are very aware of the methane production on this site.

And so we'll be doing detailed surveying of the location of those vents, calculations about the gas output.

And then we'll be locating our equipment and facilities an acceptable distance away from those vents.

And then we'll also be pursuing final building permits and electrical permit before we move to construction.

And so currently our projects are also under study for interconnection with Dominion and that process can take a long time and there are potential for delays.

And we're also undergoing procurement with Dominion and so that

Could lead to some delays, but our expectation and hope is that this project will complete its permitting by the end of 2021 and move into construction by the end of the spring in 2022.

And the typical construction period for a ground mounted solar facility of this size is about two to three months.

Only a couple of weeks of that time period will be the heavy lifting in terms of receiving panels and materials to the site and using a forklift to move those panels to the construction area.

That process is actually very quick because it's pretty formulaic and then the remainder of that time period would be dedicated to wiring as well as interconnection at the utility pole.

And I also note here in this diagram that some of the existing paved areas that were able to utilize for construction parking and staging during that time frame.

I hope I answered some of your questions, but really welcome any more that you have and really appreciate your time.

Thank you, Ms.

Young.

Tim?

It's really interesting for us to see your approach due to the fact that the contours have been capped.

that there won't be, there can't be land disturbance.

And so you have developed these above ground boots, I guess, if we wanna call that the legs, so to speak, would fit in.

My question is, do you then have the length of the legs vary so that you can keep the same angle or inclination of the solar panels?

In other words, if the contour is dropping down,

Yes, we do use a variable height design in terms of the actual height of the post, but I don't believe it will differ more than maybe a foot at the largest extreme.

So we attempt to maintain a 25 degree tilt throughout the totality of the project.

And so I believe there will only be minimal differences in the tilt.

or excuse me, in the post supporting the racking.

Thank you.

And so the follow up to that is obviously you're doing projects where you don't have to do this kind and you do where for the layman's terms, you plant the posts, the support posts in the ground, most likely again with a concrete

in concrete under the surface.

Yes, there is a bit of a cost difference here.

And it does create additional costs.

I believe the figure is maybe $0.05 to $0.06 per kilowatt, which can add a significant cost to a project.

worked that into our proposal and are working that through with Dominion.

But it does create a slightly additional cost.

However, because this project is fixed tilt, there are no motors associated with it.

That would be part of a single-axis tracking facility.

And so there are savings met in two.

Well, thank you very much.

I'm actually asking these questions.

for future projects and to think about past projects that we've encountered.

Maybe not for you because you're doing a lot of this, but for us, this is a learning process.

And we have, many of us had significant concerns about topographic and contour manipulations of sites that in theory are going to be returned to their existing or have the potential to be returned to their existing conditions in the future.

And I think that what you're showing us isn't

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And I guess to that point, that reminded me about the question regarding our website and the updated site plan.

So thank you very much for pointing that out.

The reason that the plan has changed a little bit since what is shown on our website is we identified the areas where it is as minimal the slope as possible and are locating the panels on a flat high area.

I have four questions for you, Ms.

Young.

Thank you also for your presentation.

The first question is, I want to talk about methane vents.

OK.

Number two, the northwest quadrant that is shown on your

attachment two and that you showed us the overhead photograph is not receiving any panels.

Curious as to why you're not putting any panels in that northwest quadrant.

You've covered the northeast, the southeast and the southwest, but clearly omitted is the northwest quadrant.

Sure.

Because, yeah, we would love to maximize the benefit for Rivanna in terms of the income that would come from this project to offset their maintenance costs.

And so typically we would

looked to maximize the area that is feasible.

However, with this site, we found that the available area in the Northwest quadrant was minimal due to the higher slope in that area.

And additionally, the way that the Virginia Clean Economy Act was drafted, they only procure facilities up to three megawatts.

Okay, wonderful.

But that doesn't rule out in the future.

You might potentially find it cost effective to go ahead and engage with the Northwest Corner.

A question about the construction staging that you showed us the timeline.

No, it will not.

Okay, final question is about cost, which is where you ended your discussion with Commissioner Keller.

And wouldn't it be the case that though this may be more expensive for you to actually install, when it comes time and we're looking out 30, 40 years, when all of us, except for you Ms.

Young, the rest of us may be pushing up daisies at that point, I wondered about

Yes, thank you.

That's a very good point.

And I think you're very much correct in that the decommissioning of this facility will be much simpler than other facilities where there have been extensive pilings into the ground.

And also, because we aren't proposing any land disturbance besides at the southwest point of the site where we're doing the interconnection, there would be less restoration needed on our part in terms of moving in the ground.

Anyone else?

Like my fellow commissioners have already said, thank you for your expertise tonight.

And this question is more for my knowledge.

This is still a new project type for me.

But I was curious, are there any disadvantages, like structurally, for this installation method versus, you know, your traditional concrete footings?

And I'm asking mainly just thinking through what climate change is doing.

We're seeing more natural disasters.

Hurricane stretching out this far is not uncommon now.

Like you mentioned wind uplift.

Do we still get the same kind of structural characteristics with this approach?

The only disadvantage here is a slightly reduced production potential because that's the biggest advantage of going to a tracking system where the panels tilt and follow the path of the sun, is that you're able to get the greatest amount of solar energy production from the site.

And so that's the biggest, I guess if you were to say a disadvantage, that would be the biggest one for us.

But from a structural standpoint,

I don't believe there would be any disadvantage from this from a structural standpoint because we have to do a significant amount of calculations in order to ensure that there is significant amount of balance.

And it is a common, as I mentioned, a common practice for rooftop systems as well.

So a follow up on Commissioner Clayborne's point.

I haven't yet seen a landfill application of a movable panel.

Just because that would create additional weight and then the motors themselves make it introduce additional complexity in terms of making sure there aren't emergency situations around methane because of an active motor and the chemicals involved with that.

Then a quick follow-up would be, has your company done this type of installation in a non-landfill place?

Have you encountered an environmental situation where either county or jurisdictional

Yes, I don't believe we've encountered any environmental or code-related reasons that have prevented us from doing a tracking system.

Typically the reason that we would, we have done fixed-tilt systems on a non-landfill application, and the reason that we may choose to do that is because

Single access trackers require long straight rows that are oriented east to west.

And so if the site is maybe kind of a weird squiggly shape or there's not an opportunity to install these sort of long corridors, then we would choose a fixed tilt system.

So just a final clarification.

No.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

So just before we go and open to go to a public to see if the public wants to has any questions or comments for you on this.

My only question that I have is, so I know you're aware we've had earthquakes here.

So that's, you know, you're aware that you're doing that kind of work.

And so while in a number of the other

Projects that we have, they've been in places on sites that didn't have some of the peculiar aspects of this site.

For instance, there wasn't any methane gas.

And so I noticed in your report to us, on page five, you said there will not be any on-site staff.

And so then that led to my question, since we've got these peculiar situations here and we have some things that might have some higher risk to it, where will the staff be and how quickly can the staff get to the site if they should go forward from the supervisors in the event that there's an issue?

Yes, that's a great question.

And so there are on-site staff that Rivanna employs for the maintenance of the site.

And so they will be there.

We will be doing training with them in order to help them visually detect if there are any issues.

But from a specific solar maintenance situation, we typically have a maintenance crew visit the site one to two times per year.

and we would be employing or creating a long-term maintenance contract with a local company.

And so there are a number of maintenance companies for solar facilities in the greater Albemarle, Charlottesville region and because of the large amount of systems that are being proposed.

and part of, if I kept it extended.

So part of the training, I understand there's an obligation to train the first responders.

I assume that part of that training would be with your on the ground consultant or the service agency that you get with that.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Any other questions before we see if there's people from the public who care to comment?

Okay.

Well, isn't that something?

Then Ms.

I don't, just to say thank you again very much for your approval of your application as well as, sorry, your review of our application as well as your questions.

Thank you very much.

We've enjoyed it so thank you.

Commissioners, comments, observations?

Yeah, I think

I started saying I think this is a great project.

I think it's awesome to see solar land that is a brownfield like this that has really no other practical use be able to find a creative way to apply solar to it.

I think the comment I would just make, I was just down last week at North Carolina who, for those that don't know, is the second largest adopter of solar in the United States of California.

and on a per capita basis is greater than California of solar installations.

You know, Virginia currently has about 550 megawatts installed.

They have 5200 megawatts planned for installation, given a lot of these different legislative acts.

I would just from a planning commission standpoint, one comment meeting with the director at the North Carolina Clean Energy Tech on North Carolina State's campus, who has been doing this for a while and tracking this, given North Carolina's adoption of it.

His point was that the value is the connection to the grid and that they have seen already in some of their legacy sites upgrading panels to newer technology because they have better production capabilities and so he's actually assumed and this is his take but he's assumed that once something goes into this land use category and special use that it's likely to stay there for longer than 30 years

because the cost and the ability to get into grid and the substation of movement of the electricity is the expensive driver of a project like this.

It's not the individual cost of a panel.

Thank you, Daniel.

That's very helpful.

Thank you.

Other comments?

Okay, who wants to step into perhaps make, Scott, would you put your, now remember, we have two.

Before I get in trouble, we have two.

We have the one for the SP and then we have one for its compliance with our comp plan.

Is that correct, counseling?

Thank you.

And I also think that, yes, Rick, I think we also had, I didn't see any heads, I saw heads that nodded in the affirmative about making the change, the engineer to add the word professional.

So I want me to,

Okay.

Is there a second?

Seconded by, is that a finger?

I saw Daniel.

Tim, did you put your finger up?

Daniel.

Seconded by Daniel.

Is there any further discussion?

Ms.

Moore?

Aye.

Mr. Bivins?

Aye.

Mr. Randolph?

Aye.

Mr. Keller?

Aye.

Mr. Bailey?

Oh, Daniel said I, but apparently my trigger finger was too quick for the mute.

I actually heard you.

Is that everyone?

So that has moved forward.

So that will move forward to our supervisors.

And then for the second piece, please.

for whether or not this is proposed as in compliance with our comp plan.

Is there anyone who would care to make a motion one way or the other?

I'll make a motion.

Motion moved.

Thank you very much.

Is there a second?

Tim, I apologize for your finger going up.

Tim, seconded by Tim.

Is there any further discussion?

Mr. Bailey?

Aye.

Mr. Randolph?

Aye.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye.

Mr. Clayborne?

Aye.

Thank you very much.

Ms.

Young, so you've heard from our commissioners that on both the special use permit and on the compliance with our comp plan that we've approved those and we will be sending that recommendation along to our supervisors.

I think as it was advised to you to being able to speak to those issues that I think you heard us bring to

and also perhaps change the image on your website so that that all sort of locks in there together might be something you might want to consider.

I think you've heard that we've got a great project.

Thank you very much.

And perhaps you can design a new ready kilowatt with a solar tube to it.

Thank you very much.

Have a good evening.

Are there committee reports?

Tim?

No.

No.

Okay.

Did I see any other hands go?

No.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Have a few updates for you.

We had a board meeting after our last meeting on July 21st.

The board approved the Jefferson Mill hydroelectric project that came before this board.

Interesting project that moved through.

And then during the daytime of that meeting, we had a presentation

from the Planning Division's Natural Resource Manager, Kim Biasoli on the Stream Health Initiative Phase Two project.

It was a lengthy work session with the board on that one.

And I have invited her to come and present an overview of that to this Planning Commission to kind of keep you all up to date with that information and that project as it continues to move forward.

And that, if I may, I'd like to touch base on our schedule to see

I've realized that we have that scheduled as a work session for next week.

And then we have a week off and then we have a public hearing scheduled on the 24th of August.

And initially we had planned for two public hearings and now we will only have one.

And so I was thinking for the sake of efficiency with time and y'all's schedules of moving the stream health presentation to the 24th so that we can

add a little more to that meeting than just one public hearing.

So I wanted to gauge the commission's response on that and see if that sounded like something worthwhile.

Yeah.

It is the Haupt property day camp.

OK.

Commissioner, do we have a council?

Do we have to take a vote to change our meeting?

Fine.

Councilman Tim.

OK.

How are we folks?

Are we okay?

You're okay?

You're okay?

I'm looking for a thumbs up.

Oh, look at that.

I like that.

I like that.

Well, actually, given the fact I'm going to be away for three weeks in September, I would prefer to do as much work as possible in August.

But you will.

You will.

You will.

OK.

We're just going to pile it.

We're going to go back to our intense COVID times when we were here till 10 o'clock.

Yeah.

Does everybody remember those days?

Oh, 10.

I know that pales in comparison to the supervisors.

But for us, that was a hard workout on Zoom.

And while I'm looking ahead to September, I wondered if-

You know, I know it's a tentative agenda, but it's, you know, it's a lot of Crozet stuff going on.

I didn't know if Charles was secretly trying to make me pay back that time.

Yeah, there's a lot going on in September.

It's going to be a busier fall, I can guarantee that.

And I will say we will be bringing forward some updates and materials to share on the Rivanna River corridor plan.

We had actually hoped to maybe get to a public hearing this month, but we're going to postpone that a little bit.

We'll still share the info with you all, as well as with the board.

a little bit later at that August meeting as well.

And then again with the board in early September.

Okay.

So we're good about the scheduling piece.

And when we get to that point, we'll adjourn on August 24th.

Is there any old business?

Any new business?

I'd like to sort of follow up on the comments that Rick and I were making about ag and forestal and whether we could memorialize that as some sort of recommendation that that sort of information start to be

part of these presentations.

I know that Scott has done that sometimes in the past, but I think that all of these are important, especially as they're starting to be these discussions of the rural versus development areas, the percentages of each and the value of land use taxation.

So I think it would be helpful for us to see that.

And I don't think it would be onerous to collect that information.

The second one is about what we've just been looking at.

And I wonder not to mind Charles's business, but I wonder if this is the kind of Bill Fritz couple of hour review of what the latest technologies are for the mounting and whether there are ways that we can have more protection of our existing Piedmont contours.

whether there's starting to be other technologies as opposed to this heavy-handed civil engineering, significant land movement, soil movement, stacking of topsoil and creating detention ponds for solar farms.

It seems to me that if we're planting them

in the rural areas in effect agriculture, then is there a way that they could be more sympathetic as this one by definition had to be, although we know that there was significant manipulation to have the landfill there.

But since we only have three at this point, and the last one was pretty significant in the contour manipulation, I wonder if we could

maybe have a little bit of exploration by staff, senior staff, and then a report, and then possibly we could think about suggesting that there be a policy change, Andy, that would maybe put some other constraints in.

And I realize that we now know that there is a financial cost trade-off, but I think Rick Barry

wisely pointed out that there could be significant cost savings at another point down the road.

So I'm not sure how they figure out their long-term cost on these, but it might mean a re-evaluation of that.

So I don't want to make the meeting go much longer, but I do think that these are both important things.

The rural always gets kind of short shift

because the other kinds of issues are so pressing.

And this is an opportunity for us to reflect on these two important sets of issues.

Thank you, Tim.

Yeah, I'll say I appreciate your comments, Commissioner Keller, and I'm happy to say that Mr. Fritz and Scott Clark are actually our internal team that we've put together to focus on these solar applications.

They've been reviewing best practices and looking at what we need to do as far as policy goes and ordinance requirements, things like that.

And I believe we'll have some good opportunities to dive into some of that.

with the ordinance overall that we have upcoming over the next few years.

And that will be one of the more pressing items due to the number of applications that we're discussing internally already.

I think I remember, it might not be the correct number, but there were 16 locations where there's a substation adjacent to agriculturally zoned land in the county.

that would lend themselves to these, what did the folks from Rappahannock tell us?

The first ones to cherry pick in the county.

So if we, I don't believe this was one.

So if there are three of those, and I mean, two so far of the 16, I think we're going to see the applications coming in adjacent to those very quickly.

So it would be good to speed up this operation if we could.

I was just saying it's one of the interesting somewhat trends.

So I guess track solar a little bit based on things.

One of the interesting trends to your point, Commissioner Keller, is that a lot of agricultural or forest lands that have been planted as they're getting

harvested some of them and we're seeing conversion of them to solar.

As you think about it, it usually takes 20, 30 years to grow new trees.

And so I don't know if it's diversification, but they're switching over to a different asset than putting solar in on some of those lands that were traditionally tree farms.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

So just take a small moment here before we go away and to thank the anonymous person or the anonymous individual who sent some of us The Color of Law book by Richard Rothstein.

to also let that person know if he or she is listening that a number of our colleagues have already read it and sort of digested it and had it on their shelves when you sent it to us.

But we appreciate the gesture and thank you for sending that along to us.

So on that note, our next meeting will be on August the 24th.

And so we, unless there's someone who wants to say something before we do that, we stand adjourned.

at 742 on this particular Tuesday evening.

Be safe.

If you're going camping, keep all of your digits and make sure that you're wearing, make sure you wear, make sure you wear that stuff to keep the ticks away.

Bye-bye everyone.

See you then.

See you next, see you in two weeks.

There we go.

I'm getting off.

I'm getting off.

There's Julian.

There's Charles.

Okay.

Just us.

Just us.