Concerns... Loss of Trees, Greenery & Open Space: Don't Cut Trees for Solar
In 2015, Mayor Warren's administration entered into a deal with Ameresco, Inc., to lease public property to the energy company to construct and operate solar panel installations at 13 sites in Newton, including rooftop arrays on 11 city buildings, and ground-mounted solar/solar carports at five locations. The deal required City Council approval. All but two of those sites, including six non-controversial school rooftops, have been approved. The City Council resisted allowing solar panels on the highly-visible, historic slate roof of City Hall, and this site was removed from consideration. On March 23, the City Council approved solar carports at Newton South High School despite the loss of two trees and two more planting spots.
There was extensive debate on whether to permit the chopping down of the trees in the Newton Free Library parking lot to allow development of solar carports. A majority of councilors either spoke strongly against the Library carports. The sites in the table below were proposed last year. City Hall was dropped as a potential site. All have been approved, except for the Library site.
There was extensive debate on whether to permit the chopping down of the trees in the Newton Free Library parking lot to allow development of solar carports. A majority of councilors either spoke strongly against the Library carports. The sites in the table below were proposed last year. City Hall was dropped as a potential site. All have been approved, except for the Library site.
The NVA supports solar power in appropriate locations that do not impact the city’s shrinking tree canopy. We opposed the Library carports for the following reasons, many of which are cited in Julia Malakie’s post and second post on the NewtonForum.org blog, on her own blog, on the Newton Tree Conservancy site, and in her March 23rd Newton TAB letter. These reasons include:
- Cutting trees on public property for solar sets a terrible precedent. The monetary benefits and carbon reduction rationalizations being cited in support of cutting Library trees could also be used to support tree cutting in parks and passive recreation areas, and along Commonwealth Avenue and other roads where trees offer screening and noise buffering.
- Trees have benefits in addition to absorbing CO2. They provide cooling shade, noise and visual screening, habitat for birds and animals, and benefits to human health - physical and emotional.
- Newton’s Zoning Ordinance (diagram below) actually requires one “interior” tree (i.e. not just trees around the perimeter) for every ten parking stalls in parking lots of this size. The ordinance should be enforced, not flouted.
The Library parking lot is perhaps the only public lot in Newton that meets this standard, and it shows — in how much better it looks. When the Library was designed, so was landscaping, including designing around what is now a 30” diameter white oak (photo below) on the southernmost island, that would be cut down because it would shade the carports on the middle island.
There are several large trees (below left) in the Library parking lot that it would have been terrible to cut down. The “small” caliper trees (below right) that were being dismissed as expendable or easily moved, are the large trees of the future. Every large tree we value today was once this size. Installing carports would have precluded achieving the truly green canopy that should be here.
City councilors were being pressured to decide quickly, before a state solar incentive program (without which these carports would not be financially viable or sufficiently profitable to Ameresco) hit its cap. They’re were being told Newton’s project would reduce carbon emissions and help prevent global climate change. But both these claims can’t be true. More reasons:
- While everyone hopes the Legislature will eliminate or at lease raise the cap, as long as a cap exists, the incentives will be fully utilized. Another community will install the solar capacity if Newton doesn’t, and vice versa. So Newton’s decision would not affect climate change until and unless the incentive cap is eliminated.
- Proponents cite the cost savings to the city of solar, but for the Library carports, the savings are less than $17,000 per year, or about 20 cents per resident per year.
- If the Administration is so committed to encouraging the use of solar power, why doesn't the City incentivize the owners of Newton's many flat-roof commercial buildings to enter into deals with for-profit solar companies like Ameresco, rather than cutting down public trees on publicly-owned land?
- Construction of carports to hold solar panels in the Library parking lot would have been development on, and involved the long-term (20-year) lease of, public property. In 2014, Newton voters overwhelming passed Ballot Question 5, demanding that the City allow residents the ability to vote on development deals involving the sale or long-term lease of publicly-owned property. Once again, residents have had no vote on a deal that uses publicly-owned assets to benefit a private company.
The picture above is a rendering provided to the City Council with the trees deleted and attractive Photoshop carports added. Developer and vendor renderings always look beautiful. Some city councilors, while acknowledging that the carports will be unsightly in reality, have hypothesized that the car ports will at least provide shelter from rain and snow, and that the lighting underneath them will make the Library parking lot safer at night. The photo below of the solar carports at the REI parking lot on Route 9 shows that snow and rain could easily blow under the carports and the lighting provides no safer ambiance than that provided by the lighting already in place in the Library parking lot.
The vendor in this deal, Ameresco, is a multi-national company worth more than $700 million in sales. Ameresco is a leader in obtaining solar leasing and energy-efficiency upgrade deals with municipalities, public school systems, military bases and other public facilities. The company founder and CEO, George Sakellaris, is a successful, wealthy yachtsman who has been generous to elected officials seeking higher office - from both major parties. He is reported to be particularly close to Secretary of State John Kerry. According to the Federal Election Commission, Sakellaris has spent more than $220,000 on campaign contributions and according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, his political contributions have added up to more than $234,000 since 1999. Ameresco could have been expected to do this deal even if it did not include the Library parking lot, and that is exactly what happened. (Sakellaris taking Ameresco public in 2010, and one of his yachts pictured below. Photos from a Neo magazine profile of Sakellaris.)
It is very interesting that the effort now to save the Library trees feels like a repeat of a 1989 battle that played out back when the library was under construction. The Board of Aldermen wanted to save as many trees as possible on what had been a wooded site with wetlands. The administration of then-Mayor Teddy Mann, determined to build the new library on that site and to have as many parking spaces as possible, succeeded in having cut down most of the trees that the Aldermen had wanted to save. In 1989, the anti-tree side wanted the trees cut down to allow for more parking spots. Today the anti-tree side wants the trees cut down to build carports to hold solar panels.
Everyone supports renewable energy. We all care about the planet. But some green advocates have been arguing that a given area of solar panels can offset more CO2 emissions that the same area of tree canopy could absorb. They say solar panels are more "efficient" at handling carbon than are trees. The logical conclusion to that way of thinking is that we should clear cut forests and install solar panels everywhere which, obviously, is not what we should do. The Library parking lot looks the way parking lots should look - full of trees. Lets support trees in all the places that trees can grow, and solar where trees cannot grow.