Kirby Farm Solar Application on Hold Indefinitely

The application for a solar farm on Kirby Farm has been postponed indefinitely while the applicant brings in a new engineer.

The first hearing of the application was supposed to be held Thursday, but Gary Hall, representing KDC Solar, sent a letter to the township requesting a delay.

The application is looking for the installation of a 55-acre, 49,000-panel industrial-scale solar power plant on the 106-acre residentially zoned Kirby Farm.

The farm would power only Sanofi-Aventis on Route 202/206 in Bridgewater.

According to David Soloway, attorney with the Land Use Board, the applicant was working with Birdsall Engineering until very recentily.

“Birdsall has gotten in a lot of trouble because its principals have made allegedly illegal campaign contributions,” he said. “The firm is in the process of perhaps being dissolved or sold.”

Birdsall has been under investigation for skirting the state's pay-to-play laws by allegedly reimbursing its employees for their personal, unreportable political contributions.

For that reason, Soloway said, the applicant is in the process of switching engineers, and the new one hired will have to closely examine the plans.

Until that time, the application has been put on hold.

But, according to township engineer Paul Ferriero, the application has not been withdrawn.

Because of that, any decision to approve a new solar ordinance for the township would have no effect on the application.

Soloway said that up until a few years ago, a governing body was allowed to change an ordinance and have it affect any in-progress applications.

“But the legislation saw fit to do away with that rule,” he said. “Now it is called a time-of-application rule.”

That means that only ordinances in place at the time the application was filed would affect it, regardless of any changes made later to the town's ordinances.

Since the KDC Solar application has not been withdrawn, the ordinance—which may include a clause about prohibiting solar farms and requiring that panels only power the property on which they stand—would have no affect on it.

Land Use Board chairman Lance Boxer said they do not yet have a date for the rescheduling of the application.

“They will have to re-file the application with us,” he said. “It could be June, July, we don’t know. Once we have a fix on that, we will let everyone know.”