More than 60 people from across the region and beyond attended a Shutesbury Public Library forum this week to confront state energy officials over solar siting rules that residents say strip towns of control over their own land. At the center of the debate: five proposed solar projects that could have cleared roughly 29,000 trees across 190 acres in this small Franklin County town.
The session was part of a series of public listening sessions the Healey-Driscoll Administration has held on energy facility siting, with earlier stops planned in Worthington, Pittsfield and Blandford, according to a notice posted by the town of Blandford. In Shutesbury, the gathering drew residents from across the region as well as online participants, and state officials including climate chief Melissa Hoffer, Undersecretary of Energy Michael Judge and clean energy siting director Rick Collins fielded hours of pointed questions, as reported by the Recorder.
Residents Say the Dover Amendment Overrides Town Authority
Much of the frustration centered on the Dover Amendment, which speakers said allows solar projects to override municipal authority even when a town wants to protect its own forests and farmland. Joseph Graveline called the amendment a cudgel, and Judge himself acknowledged that it limits how much municipal authority and project requirements towns can actually impose, per the same Recorder account.
Janet Sinclair pushed back on how some of these developments get described, arguing that projects covering 30 to 40 acres should never be labeled small. “These are not small projects. We should not call them small ever,” she said, according to the Recorder's report. Sinclair added that local communities should be allowed to protect forests and farmland, and said she believes the Dover Amendment should not apply to these projects at all.
Fears Over Deforestation and Battery Storage Risks
Katherine Harrelson, who is affiliated with the Community Land and Water Coalition and Responsible Solar Massachusetts, said state support for these projects is leading to potential deforestation and other impacts on the environment. Lenore Bryck raised a related worry, saying tree removal for solar projects could destabilize climate-regulating biodiversity, and she asked how an imperfect technology could be allowed to replace one that already works perfectly well.
Safety concerns extended beyond trees. Jeff Weston argued that battery energy storage systems are not safe, telling the crowd that a single unit can hold 111 pounds of so-called forever chemicals, and that an accident could pollute the entire Quabbin Reservoir. Weston noted that Shutesbury sits near Boston's drinking water supply and that the town's trees help filter that water, and he said Shutesbury received no state-level help in defending its own bylaws. Underscoring the stakes, a Shutesbury solar project experienced a fire in April.
State Officials Admit Towns Feel Stuck
Hoffer offered an unusually blunt admission from the podium. “The reason you feel stuck… is because we are stuck,” she said, suggesting the 2024 Siting and Permitting Law itself may need to change. That law was designed to streamline siting and permitting, engage local communities, strengthen environmental protections and enable responsible clean energy development, but it also imposes a 12-month municipal permitting deadline and requires local governments to issue a single decision on permit applications for small clean energy facilities.
Judge said towns can reject projects based on poor site suitability scores and that the state wants to deter development in unsuitable locations, steering projects instead toward already built environments like roofs and parking lots. But Michael Dechiara countered that poor site suitability scores do not actually let towns reject projects, and said towns that try to protect their drinking water face litigation while being barred from charging developers for the independent consulting expertise they need to fight back. Dechiara said industrial-scale energy siting poses outsized risks for small communities with limited resources. Hoffer added that stormwater regulations apply in all circumstances, and that liability for any pollutant release can fall to the developer or property owner. Appeals of town project rejections go to the Energy Facilities Siting Board, officials noted.
An Underused Grant Program and a Costly Local Fight
One tool meant to help towns like Shutesbury has gone unused. The Intervenor Support Grant Program, administered by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, is meant to provide financial assistance to municipalities, organizations and individuals who cannot afford lawyers and experts in siting board proceedings — but as of the forum, it had not been tapped at all.
That gap has been expensive for Shutesbury. The town's 2021 solar bylaw, intended to protect large swaths of woodland by limiting development size, survived a 2023 Land Court lawsuit from a solar developer that was ultimately dismissed without prejudice, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. The bylaw remains in effect, but residents approved an additional $30,000 in legal fees at May's annual Town Meeting to support the Planning Board and Select Board, on top of what town officials had already paid in litigation costs tied to the project proposals.
Developer Economics and a Neighboring Town's Experience
Financial pressures on developers themselves have also shaped the fight. PureSky Energy previously cited the declining rate structure of the state's SMART solar incentive program, along with rising costs for land, interconnection and equipment, as reasons for pausing its Shutesbury projects.
Court Dorsey told the forum he was shocked by the direction renewable energy development has taken, arguing that large solar projects are simply cheaper to build on undeveloped land, which is why developers gravitate toward forests and farms in the first place rather than already disturbed sites. He suggested people are trying to protect land and water on behalf of everyone, not just their own towns.
Nearby Northfield offers a cautionary tale. Its Planning Board rejected plans for solar projects covering 80 acres, only to be sued by the developer before the two sides eventually reached a compromise involving some of the land. That disputed farmland was known to colonists as the Little Nile for its productivity, and a separate Northfield proposal — three solar arrays on Pine Meadow Road estimated at $20 million and spanning about 76 acres across three tracts — was cleared to proceed after all parties agreed to dismiss a Franklin County Superior Court appeal.
Calls for Systemic Change Continue
Aaron Saunders told the forum that western Massachusetts has endured disproportionate development pressure, and argued the 2024 law was designed to help communities stop harmful projects but that decisions are now being reversed. Graveline went further, alleging that solar developers involved in the industry are themselves writing the regulations the Healey administration is now enforcing — and he drew a historical comparison, likening the region's current impacts to the loss of four towns during construction of the Quabbin Reservoir and to the costs associated with Boston's Big Dig Central Artery Project.
State Senator Jo Comerford attended the session and said during the forum that the meeting showed how much work remains. Outside the library, protesters held signs opposing solar siting in forests and urging developers to build instead on already disturbed land, underscoring a frustration that, despite hours of state testimony, left many in Shutesbury unconvinced that relief is coming soon.
