Somerset Zoning Board of Appeals - August 6, 2026

Can you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. This is a meeting of the Somerset Zoning Board of Appeals. This meeting is held pursuant to Mass General Law Chapter 48 and the Somerset Zoning Bylaw. This meeting is being telecast live on SATV and the recording is available on

SATV and YouTube. Just to go over what we're gonna do tonight is we have a few issues that we want to go through First thing that we're contemplating going through with the use and then we're gonna go revisit the public safety issue and Then we'll talk about noise, hopefully. So those are the three things what we'll do We'll take those in segments. So we'll do the use first and we'll

take you know we'll have the board last questions of whoever makes a presentation by the use and And then we'll move on. Then we'll open it to public comment.

You have to come down to the corner to the microphone, name and address, and then whatever your comment is, you direct your comments to the board, don't direct it to the applicant. And the applicant can decide whether they want to answer now or as in the past, what they've done is take the questions and then issue a document with responses to the comments or questions that are posed during the meeting. so

it'll be up to them what they want i'll let them say what they want to do tonight um i don't want to make any assumptions for them so summits at energy storage llc for 1606 riverside apple summits at mass petition of somerset ng llc regarding the property owned by summits at riverside 1606 LLC located at 1606 Riverside Avenue and says is that b2 live 203 for a plan development under the section

6.10 of the town of Somerset zoning bylaws to allow for the construction of a commercial battery energy storage system that's located within the underlying industrial zoning district and business industrial overlay district as shown on the application plans file with the town clerk Okay, at last month's meeting, the issue about the Dover Amendment was raised and

the board was looking for some more information about the Dover Amendment. I'm going to read a memorandum that we received on this from Attorney Frank. So it's a memorandum addressed to Stephen Catterett, Chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals, from Arthur D. Frank, Jr., Esquire, Law Offices, Arthur D. Frank, Inc., 209 Bedford Street Fall River dated July 31st regarding deaths. Dear Chairman Catterett, at the Board's

July 16, 2006 meeting, individual members requested more information on the application of General Law Chapter 40A, Section 3, the Dover Amendment to the BEST project submitted by Flatiron Energy. In connection therewith, I have prepared this memorandum to explain the statute's purpose and review its pertinent language. the dover amendment originated in 1950

by 1950 mass acts 325 has been expanded from protection of land and structures for religious purposes for to educational uses 1956 mass acts 586 Public Services Organizations 1952 Mass. Act 438 Child Care Facilities 1990 Mass. Act 521 Discrimination Against Disabled Persons 1999 Mass. Act 106 and Solar Energy Systems 1985 Mass. Act 637 The intent was to give these uses protection from

prohibition or regulation by municipalities. Mass General Law Chapter 48 Section 3 Paragraph 9 states, no zoning ordinance or bylaws shall prohibit or unreasonably regulate installation of solar energy systems or the building of structures that facilitate the collection of solar energy except where necessary to protect the public health, safety, and welfare. The

same act, 1985 Mass Act 637, that added solar energy systems to General Law Chapter 40A, Section 3, also created a definition of solar energy systems to Mass General Law Chapter 40A, Section 1A. Solar energy systems, a device or structural design feature, a substantial purpose of which is to provide daylight for interior lighting or provide

for the collection of storage and distribution of solar energy for space heating, cooling, electricity generating, or water heating, emphasis applied. The words provide for the collection of storage and distribution of solar energy are bolded and underlined, so the emphasis applied refers to those words. In 2019, the Massachusetts Land Court in PLH LLC v. East Longmeadow ruled that the

protection afforded to solar energy systems is similar to the protection for schools, churches, and child care facilities.

There must be an analysis and a balancing of the need to prohibit or regulate measures against the legislatively determined public interest in rolling out facilities for the collection of solar energy. Battery energy systems, BES, were included under this protective umbrella in Duxbury Energy Storage LLC versus the Duxbury Zoning Board of Appeals 23 MISC 0000643 Mass Land Court

2025. The court in Duxbury analyzed the facts of the case against the language contained in General Law Chapter 40A, Subsections 1A and 3.

The judge reasoned that the cabinets storing the batteries were "structures as required in Section 3," applying the definition of structures contained within the Duxbury zoning bylaws. He then reasoned that the best, one, collects energy by drawing it together from the grid to charge the battery units in the storage cabinets. Two, stores the collected

energy in the batteries for later use. Three, distributes the energy by discharging it from the battery units back to the grid. This satisfied the definition in Section 1A as to collection, storage, and distribution of the solar energy. Based upon these findings and subsequent rulings, the court concluded that the vest was protected by the Dover Amendment. In the case before the board, it too must apply these

same methods as outlined in Duxbury. Section 2.0 definitions of the Town of Somerset ZBA bylaws defines, quote, structure as Quote, "Anything constructed or erected, the use of which requires a location on the ground or attachment to something located on the ground." End quote. Flat iron has represented in the public hearing that the boxes

housing the batteries will be erected upon formations located on the ground. Electricity from the grid generated by solar power will be vectored to the batteries where it will be stored for later use. When the electricity is needed, BESS will distribute it from the batteries back to the grid. If the Board finds that this satisfies the standards set forth in Duxbury, that Board must also make a separate inquiry as to

whether there is necessity to protect the public interest that outweighs the legislatively determined public interest in rolling out facilities for the collection of solar energy. The second inquiry may be bifurcated from the first threshold inquiry as additional information regarding safety of the public health and welfare is introduced. i trust this information will prove helpful in

the board's deliberations and meet with your approval very truly yours dr d frank esquire special counsel um we also have the building inspector mr aguiar here tonight so if he wants to speak on on this also you can do so at this time thank you good evening board good evening somerset james aguiar building commissioner in the town of somerset So I've always

said, even before my time in Somerset, that I felt this use was protected under the Dover Amendment, specifically Master General Law Chapter 48. So I'm glad that Council and I concur. I think the correspondence is spot on, and I think this use is afforded those protections. That said, I have another comment that I want to make. First, I don't want anyone at home to think that my role is to be there

before or against this project or any project. My role is to interpret the laws, regulations, and codes and apply them as I see them. In this particular case, I know it's been debated that the battery energy storage system is not a generation facility.

I think when you sense, we can all agree that that's the case. However, elsewhere in our bylaw, We have a use that's called an electrical substation. That's in, I believe it's subsection D, and those uses are allowed by right in both the industrial and the overlay district. Now, just like the generation facility, we don't have a definition in our bylaw that says what a substation is. nor could I find any case

law that defined it. However, if you apply common sense again, like you do with the generation facility, a substation collects power generated elsewhere, either a singular source or multiple sources, and redistributes it to the grid for use by the end user, which in this case is the consumer. If that doesn't define what a large scale battery storage

system does, I don't know what does. So in my opinion, I think the path chosen to permitting is correct. I believe the use is allowed both under the Dover amendment and the section that I just cited. So I have no comments regarding another permitting path that could be chosen. I think this is the appropriate path. Does anybody on the board have any questions from the building inspector? No. Or council? Okay. Does

the applicant want to make any comments on this information before the board discusses this? Yes. Yeah, I'm offering you the opportunity to have a comment. Hi, Jeff Ganguly, Folio Ag, outside counsel for Folio. So I prepared some comments after our last meeting because the discussion we had at our last meeting, I just thought we weren't necessarily all on the same page. And we had some issues come

up, some questions which have already been touched on about definitions or terms in the bylaw that aren't defined. So I just wanted to go through a few things. It'll take a few minutes, so please bear with me. So we're going to talk about the bylaw, and obviously I acknowledge and understand we didn't draft the bylaw, but in talking about the bylaw, I'm just going to refer to, you know,

the drafters or Authors, you know your predecessors that the town in in creating the Somerset file, okay? Okay, so the drafters of framers of the bylaw as we just discussed made electric generate electric generating plant electric substation transformer station and storage allowed uses as of right in the industrial district In the case of the applicant's parcel, its prior

use, that referred to above ground fuel storage tanks that housed fossil fuels. So, question is why were all those uses allowed as of right? What was the intent of the framers of the Somerset Zoning By-law in having all these uses allowed as of right? And I think it is reasonable to conclude that they considered the production and distribution of electricity to be important to the town

of Somerset, economically as an essential and critical service for the town and for the entire South Coast region, right? Because not just the town of Somerset was going to benefit from production and distribution of electricity. So I think we can reasonably conclude that this was in the legislative intent, statutory intent, of creating the

Somerset bylaw, to have all these uses allowed for the production and distribution of electricity. These uses are still allowed today as of right. They have been on the books for decades. The town could have revised the zoning code to prohibit or repeal these uses, but they haven't. They did create the business overlay district, but when they

did that, they kept all the underlying uses for the industrial use allowed as of right. So I think we can still conclude reasonably that electric power production and distribution are important and desirable in the town of Somerset. Based on these uses Flatiron could propose a coal-fired power plant on the site and that would be an allowed use currently. However coal-fired

power plants are dated older technology. They're not being built very frequently anymore. Part of that is because that type of electric generating facility or plant comes with adverse impacts that we'll call externalities, right? They have air emissions, water emissions, particulate matter, ash waste, a bunch of externalities. The best day for the former coal power plant that was located Jason to

the site and the fuel tank parcels supporting that that use on the best day that plant operating properly had far greater externalities than a properly functioning best facility coal fire power plant said so big use allowed as a right and some said but you know that wouldn't be the end of the story would have to go through. development plan reviews and

industrial use, and it would need a host of other permits. It would need a state air permit, it might need a federal air permit for the air emissions, may need a water permit. It would certainly have to go through MEPA, Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act, the purpose of which is to assess and mitigate adverse consequences of these large

uses. The proposed BEST facility doesn't require any of these permits. Doesn't need an air permit, doesn't need a water permit. It doesn't trigger any jurisdiction under MEPA for generating any of these externalities. So given the legislative intent of the bylaw to allow uses in the industrial district for the production and distribution of electricity as of right, is

it not reasonable to conclude that if BEST technology had been available at the time the bylaw was drafted, that it would have been an allowed use? That seems a reasonable conclusion.

Now, it wasn't available at the time. It has not been amended yet to add that use, but, you know, that is part of the inquiry that needs to be made in determining whether a use is going to be allowed. And as the building commissioner just stated, the uses that a BESS facility is consistent with, including storage, electric generating facility, are not defined terms in your bylaw. And

at the last meeting, I think Attorney Frank noted that where a term isn't defined, you have to reasonably interpret the term or set of words in the bylaw. And there are a line of cases in Massachusetts case law that sort of guide that interpretation. And I'm just going to read from a couple of them. They all refer to each other. I'll give you all my citations afterwards, Arthur, by the way. They all repeat the same

sort of conclusions in all the cases and quote from each other. Where a by-law does not define its terms, courts use ordinary principles of statutory construction to determine their meaning. Absent express definition, the meaning of a word or phrase used in a local zoning enactment is a question of law and is to be determined by ordinary principles

of statutory construction. when construing a statute that does not define its words they are to be given their usual and accepted meanings as long as those meanings are consistent with the statutory purpose courts first look to the statutory language sorry pass that one the terms used in the zoning bylaw are to be read in the context of the bylaw as a whole and to the

extent consistent with common sense and practicality they should be given their ordinary means courts derive the words usual and accepted meanings from sources presumably known to the statutes and actors such as their use in other legal contexts and dictionary definitions and in the the ducksbury case that was just referenced they go through this analysis they had a question about whether the best

facility constituted a structure they read their own definition they also included definitions of the word structure from black's law and a couple other dictionaries so we've had some questions here about storage and whether a best facility constitutes storage and storage is not defined in your bylaw so i looked up The definition of storage in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the online dictionary. I did not go to the

library. But Merriam-Webster is available online. This is the definition of storage in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. And there's three separate definitions. Space or a place for storing, an amount stored, memory, which refers to computer memory storage, that's one, 2.

The act of storing, the state of being stored. 3.

The production by means of electric energy of chemical reactions that, when allowed to reverse themselves, generate electricity again without serious loss. I'll read that again. The production by means of electric energy of chemical reactions that, when allowed to reverse themselves, generate electricity without serious loss. That is a battery. So battery is in the definition of

storage. Storage is an undefined term in your bylaw but is an allowed use. Court cases tell us we have to look to the legislative intent of the words in your bylaw when interpreting these words in undefined terms. It seems very clear from the allowed uses in the bylaw to include electric generating plant, transformer station electric substation in storage that the intent was to promote

and allow the production and distribution of electricity which is what the best facility does that's all I have. Any questions for anybody that's spoken so far before we start to discuss this.

Okay, so we've talked about use.

Now this will be the third meeting. You can't hear this? Okay, so we've spoken for the last...

Ron, is this stuff on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we've spoken during the last two meetings and now this meeting about use whether this is a new salon by right the last meeting we asked about the Dover amendment exemption whether it's fault fell in the Dover amendment exemption the reason personally the reason that I was curious on whether or not the Dover exemption applied because it still gave us

the ability to evaluate public safety, health, and welfare if we feel that the exemption applies. So it doesn't limit us, but it doesn't, we would make a ruling, we would make a finding that the Dover exemption applied and then we would not make a finding on whether or not this is a use of law by right, correct?

I think I told you at the last meeting you had three paths that you could explore. One was use allowed as a matter of right. The second was whether it would have to be a special permit under the bylaw. The third was is the Dover amendment applicable to the situation. I think if you follow what Mr. Aguiar just said, he felt at least two of those paths are correct. That it's a

use a lot as a matter of right and and it's an exemption under the Dover amendment. So just I'll just say personally I agree that With two of these things being a Patrick a foul. I do believe this is storage so I believe that storage is a use a lot by right and And we could permit this under the plan development approval that we were working under this application.

I also do believe that the Dover exemption applies to this because I think that the questions laid out in Dover, in Duxbury, I believe that the battery units, those are structures under our zoning bylaw definition of structures.

And I do believe that it stores collected energy, and that energy is then distributed when it's discharged from the battery unit into the grid. So I think that the criteria that he looked at in Duxbury, I think that applies to this. So I don't know what anybody else's feeling is. Is that what you were looking at, Jim?

That's correct. Okay. Just for the record, too, the building flow definition instruction is also the best quality direction.

After reading the memorandum sent to us by our attorney, attorney Frank, I'm not gonna repeat what the chairman said, but I agree with what he said as far as this falling under the Dover Amendment exemption. And I like the fact that we need to, if we decide to go with this particular type of use, have an analysis concerning public health, safety, or welfare, as opposed to I understand that it falls

under two from the building inspector. We just heard from legal counsel for Flatiron. The Dover amendment kind of encompasses everything that we were looking for in our past meetings. And that's something that I would be okay with as far as abuse.

Any other comments by the board so we can all want this of the public comment Specific to the use not anything else. Does anybody have any comments on the use? All right, see if there's no comments with will close the public comment on the use issue so if We seem to be in agreement that this falls under the Dover exemption so we make a fine we make a finding that this is falls under

the Dole exemption, correct? Yeah, what you can -- the findings should state that the containers that will be affixed to the ground are structures and that in these structures there will be batteries that will collect energy and store it and that at some point they will discharge that energy back out onto the grid so that they -- the definition complies -- it

complies with the definition in general laws chapter 48 section 1a and it complies with chapter 48 section 3 paragraph 9.

okay so we need a we we need a motion to make that finding correct yes so someone a motion to make that finding i would make a motion that we find this the particular use of this as falling under the dover amendment umbrella whereas the construction will be affixed to the ground and the structures will contain batteries for storage that will resupply the grid second steve monasai

steve catterett so now we'll proceed with the with the second part of this because as in there's a second part of this in attorney frank's memo the second inquiry that will be additional information regarding safety of public health and welfare. So at this time, I want to read-- well, at this time, last meeting, there were some comments made about the public safety issues as related to more police-related matters

rather than fired upon related matters. The applicant provided responses to those comments. the board through the chairman reached out to the police chief and i just want to read you an email exchange that we have with the police chief about this issue i sent an email to the police chief and attached to the police chief with a flat iron responses to the comments made

at the last meeting so this is what i received back from the police chief good morning steve i specifically reviewed the response of providing the applicants answers to issues regarding site security and other police related matters Somerset Police Department maintains opposition of acceptance of the security plans in place.

Deputy Chief Jay Borges and I met online with several representatives of the Flatiron project as detailed in our letter to the ZBA. At that time we discussed at length not only the ongoing security measures after completion of the project but also our concerns regarding site security during construction. Trespassing, lozenge, and other issues were discussed and addressed

by Flatiron in a satisfactory manner. If you would like to discuss this further, I'm happy to meet with you or speak via phone at your convenience. Thank you. William Tedford, Chief of Police. I also reached out to the Chief about any conditions that he would feel were appropriate. If you remember, the Fire Chief in his letter had conditions in the letter that He thought should

be included if there was a positive finding by the positive decision by this board. I just want to read the response that I got to that. The police chief indicated that Steve, we would request access to any surveillance camera systems installed on the property. This to include live views and recorded video. And just so it's clear, I did. I did ask the police

chief permission to read these emails this meeting and he granted me permission to do so. So at this time, I'd like to have the fire chief come up and just review some of the fire safety issues that were spoken about at previous meetings, and then the letter that he presented to us, provided to the board, and just have an opportunity

for the board to ask him questions about his letter and any other information regarding fire safety. Chief Barrows, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Barrows, Fire Chief.

chairman the chairman did ask me to come this evening to speak to any concerns you folks may have answer any questions mr chairman what i'd like to do is just offer a bird's eye view of where the fire department is currently with the flat iron team if that's all right with you i can either entertain questions or run through um the presentation previously provided by chris groves of the flat iron team

so you can hear comments from the fire department's perspective i think that's a good linear approach for us to take if you do have questions you may actually get some questions that you hadn't previously had by just running through that with me so we can proceed however you'd like mr chan I think if you present the overview and then go into the presentation I was made before and the comments they have

on that and I think once that's done then I think then the board can ask because everybody's in agreement with that we can proceed that way okay so we'll proceed that way thank you can I is this the one that you guys can hear me okay just want to look this up a little bit so I don't have to punch you over thank you great day thank you I just

want to speak to our typical order of operations when we have a project similar to this presented to our town. You folks are very familiar with this process. Typically, a proposal will land on either your desk or another board's desk, and then various departments are asked to make comment. That's a typical order of operations. We usually supply a one or two page letter with some

bullet points, okay? And then you'll either approve or deny. And then from there, if there are any other approvals that are needed, they're granted, and then those projects will land on my desk or the deputy chief's desk for permitting, et cetera. Um, where I currently am with Flatiron is we've actually entered in what I'll call a deliberative

process already. We're pretty far along in the process, which is further than we would normally be. And I offer these comments because I have a quite a bit of draft documents, okay? And we're actually ahead of where I would normally be with a project like this, and I want our residents to know that that is a normal normal part of the process right now. I shouldn't have finalized documents, but I am

very comfortable with what's been submitted to me to this point. I have a very open dialogue with the Flatiron team. We talk several times a week, at least on the phone. They're very, very responsive to all of my requests. Some of the deliberative process is a little bit sensitive because it's back and forth. I might make a comment or see something, hey, can you change this? And the response isn't as simple

as a 30 minute, okay, we'll just do it this way. They have to go back to another technical team to turn around and see if they can deliver on the request that I have of them. Just so you understand, my point of view on dealing with this team and our interactions, they have been very, very responsive to this point. I have yet to get a no for anything that I've asked for,

and we are working on a few other things that I've asked for as it relates to the site, and I'll kind of get into that. So just to give a little bit of preference, I did speak to Mr. Groves earlier and asked if I could use his presentation, because you folks have already seen that presentation. I didn't know if you had any questions based on it. I did cherry pick a couple

of sheets that I think are more relevant. I'm going to stay away from anything that's technical as it relates to their equipment. I'll let them speak to that stuff, but just offer some comments from my perspective on his equipment. And I asked Ms.

Hannah to help me out as she can flip through the slides for me.

So we're going to start right on slide deck number four for anybody that's watching at home. What I've handed to the board this evening and what you see on the screen has been posted on the town's website. Nothing that I'm discussing tonight hasn't already been discussed publicly or posted on the town's website. I believe that as we go through this deck, if you guys have any questions, please feel free to interrupt

me and ask me questions. I think by going through this slide deck, I'm going to answer all of the questions that are on the conditions that are at the end of my last four pages of my last position letter for comment, okay? So what we're looking at here is the overall site design that's been updated. There have been numerous things that have been updated over numerous discussions with the Flatiron

team. The first of which I'll address is the three entrances to the site. You'll see at the bottom right there's a grayed-out entrance down on the bottom. I did ask members of the team if it would be possible to put in another additional entrance to the site for emergency apparatus. One of the reasons I asked for that is Depending on what's happening, any response to that site would be dynamic, would obviously

have one objective that we're trying to achieve, right, which is to prevent any further propagation from one unit to another, potentially. And if we have apparatus on an access road, we don't want to clog it up, so having a third access point is very helpful. It also helps with entering the site and having to swing big apparatus, so I applaud them for making that change for us. The second change that I

want to know is at the top left of the site. That's what we're describing Excuse me, we're proposing to have our staging area for our fire apparatus with their initial design and they wouldn't really know this about the way that they operate We would have had to have stopped on County Street folks get out open a gate you know this could have been at any hour at the night you know three

o'clock two o'clock in the morning in the dark so they accommodated us there they moved the staging area to the top left which will allow us to get all of our apparatus off of the street before we have to open any gates or enter the site that being said if we did respond onto the site our goal would be to not actually enter all the way onto the property and get you

know close to these battery units we want to operate from the safe separation distance the distance that you see there is just over a 100 feet from the nearest unit which is the recommended safety distance for us to be operating at. And as we continue to discuss site development, we're looking at having that staging area as kind of a command location. And when I get further into the slide deck, some of

the things that I've asked them to incorporate that they're currently working on, we would be able to control and monitor from that 100-foot distance, safe distance, without having to actually access the site, which kind of led to some of the other site changes.

Any questions to this site layout? Okay. Hannah, if you can jump to slide nine, please. All right, so I just want to talk about, you know, some of their definitions on the bottom. You see the skid, you see four pods up top. I just wanted to get a look at that as we start to talk about if one unit was involved and some of our tactics. This is just a visual picture

for you folks, and we'll come back to that. Hannah, if you can go to slide ten, please. Alright, I'm not going to speak to the specific technology, but what you see there on the right, what they're calling a battery rack or inside of a pod. If we had a thermal runaway event from one of the batteries inside of one of the four pods, this is what you're looking at. And one

of the things that I'd like the public to know is if there was an event like this, our goal wouldn't be to have an offensive attack and throw a bunch of water at this battery that's involved in fire. Our goal would be to cool adjacent units if needed. So what they would probably see in this case is a smoke plume and an event that could last, I'm not going to try to

define an exact amount of time, but it would be ongoing and our goal would be to intermittently cool any exposures. You know, I hear a lot about dumping water for hours and hours and hours. That wouldn't be the goal in something like this.

It would be every battery that you see in there, we would want that to be consumed for that that event to end to come to an end does that make sense all right and that's an important distinction to make because with um with these Technologies and fighting these fires the goal again it's not to dump hundreds of gallons of water on the involved unit it's to intermittently cool adjacent units as needed

if needed um slide 12 please Okay, so this is a look at, again, your skid on the bottom, your four pods on the top, a translucent image showing the four pods can, you know, with all of the battery arrays inside of them. Each unit is going to have its, you know, safety features there.

You're going to have sensors with gas, smoke, heat detectors. You're going to have a fire control panel on there. Some of the safety measures that were discussed, your deflagration panels on top, your venting. that would happen if any combustible gases started to build up in there. So one of the concerns and one of the safety features of these units, and I'm trying to explain where my comfort comes from in the design

of these things, some of our concerns, if we had an event, a thermal runaway inside of one of the pods, one of the concerns would be the buildup of gases within a confined space, right? And these gases just continuing to build and build and build and build until something kind of exploded, right? The safety features in the pods are redundant. You have sensors inside that would sense any type of gases

being released and would vent these gases out before it was able to build, right, and come into this catastrophic event. If that system failed, the backup to that would be your deflagration panels. So if the venting didn't take place and pressure built, those panels would then pop off the top and allow that pressure to come out. I like redundant systems. I believe in the first system, but I like the second system.

And when we talk about our fire suppression efforts, I'm going to explain to you how I asked these folks to come up with redundant systems for the fire department as well. There were some questions last time regarding the fire alarm system or setup.

Does anybody remember? I watched back your last meeting. I don't remember what the questions were. Does anybody remember? I think it was a public comment.

Okay. So I don't know what the written response was. I didn't read it. I can say that whatever system, the final system design will be compliant with NFPA 72. You know, there's some tweaks that we can make to that. But I think there's some confusion sometimes with The signals that are sent to the monitoring system, you do have what's called

in our world an alarm activation, something's going off, it detected smoke or something like that. This is an actual alarm, right? There are different signals, it could be troubles or supervisories that are not, they don't require an emergency response. But the final design of the system will be compliant with NFPA 72 100%. And that's something that the

deputy chief will work with the installers on and we'll have it tailored specific to Somerset. So there won't be any concerns with that system. Do you folks have any questions on the alarm system at all that I might be able to touch on?

So when would the fire department receive this alarm? Typically the way that it's being presented right now, okay, if there's a signal that's generated, let's say a smoke detector, right? So you're going to have several technologies within these pods. They'll detect heat, they'll detect gases, they'll detect smoke. Let's say for the sake of this discussion, one of

the detectors detects smoke within a pod. A signal will be transmitted to a central alarm company. They'll pick up the phone, they'll call the dispatchers, they'll dispatch the fire department in that order, okay? And that happens pretty quickly. Right now, as proposed, we have a horn strobe system on the outside of the pods. That would be used

so that we could visually and audibly hear what unit is involved. We'd also have that information at our staging area as well, but that's a little bit of a redundant system. So if you have a trouble, I'm not going to call it an alarm, but a signal is sent or a supervisory based on how the system is set up, you're not going to have an alarming or an audible sound. You know,

a trouble sometimes in our world is basically telling us that something's wrong with the system, someone needs to look at it. It's still going to work okay, but something's just not right. That doesn't require an audible alarm or, you know, an emergency response with all of our apparatus. Does that answer your question? Yeah, that does. No. And then if you... Would you know which unit was the issue before you

left the station, or would you know that when you got to the staging area and you looked at that module at the staging area that allows you to know what's going on when you get there? Yeah, we typically know what's involved. So when the central alarm gets called, there's a lot of information that comes over that they then transfer to our dispatchers. We have two types of signaling systems here in town.

Either it's like a central monitoring, right, or we have what's called radio boxes. Our radio boxes are instantaneous. They would go from a building directly to our dispatch center.

Both have their pluses and minuses. A radio box system is a little limited with the details that it can provide, right? But the information that's being sent over from Central Alarm, we would know what unit's involved and obviously we would confirm that when we got there to the staging area. I got a question. I'm going to slide three. What are the widths in between the battery

storage units? Like if you had a fire in the middle of one of those units, how wide is, can you bring fire apparatus In the middle of it, how wide is all the spaces? If you're talking about the array of all of the units. Yes, how wide are the spaces in between? Can I address that question in just a few more slides? Yeah.

All right, thank you. Okay. And would you be notified, would the fire department be notified with just smoke or heat and smoke or what would be the conditions that you would be notified by the alarm system? I would say the defining term would be an alarm activation. Whether it's a malfunction of the system, if it alarms, we're going. So it could be an actual triggering event or it could be a system

malfunction and that's actually very common. We go on, you know, system malfunctions all the time. So I think the delineating term you're looking for is alarm activation versus one of these reporting features. Okay. You know, like a supervisory alarm or a trouble alarm.

I'll give you another example that does not apply to this best system. If there was a post station by the door, someone slams the door, a wire gets a little loose, That's a problem with the system. That's trouble. We're going to get a trouble alarm. Now it's not my job to say, hey, what's going on? They need to call their technician and come down and identify that's the device. It was a

wiring issue. The supervisory alarm, again, doesn't apply to this project, but just to give you a concept, someone's in a building, they turn a valve on a sprinkler system inadvertently and they shut it off. We're going to get a signal that says basically, hey, it's a supervisory alarm. Somebody did something to the system. It still works, but you might want to put eyes on this. Your alarm activation,

we're going to get notified, whether it's a system malfunction, it's a heat event, it's a gas event, or something like that. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's good. Thank you. Okay. Hannah, can you scoot ahead to slide 19, please?

Okay, again, just to reiterate, you know, when these folks get, if they get, when they get to the permitting process, that's when we do a deep dive on our deliberative process. All the UL testing that's been done, Mr. Groves spoke to this, this is the testing that they use to validate, you know, these units. I'll let them speak to how that's done, but the testing has been done, they have passed, and

what's been demonstrated is if you look at the pod that's highlighted in green, was basically set into a thermal runaway event with direct exposure. All of the contents of that pod have to burn out without any, when I say fire suppression efforts, I mean cooling of adjacent units or any of that stuff without any propagation to any of the other adjacent units. I mention that because those are the things that bring

me comfort and when we get to our fire suppression plan, What this testing is showing us is if there's one pod that's involved and no pooling of adjacent units are done, we're not going to have a proper propagation event. And this is a UL listed, you know, process that these folks have to go through to demonstrate that their units are constructed in a way to prevent any propagation beyond the involved

unit. Okay. If you can go -- yes. There was some concern at our last meeting about what you had mentioned at the beginning of your presentation. Gallons and gallons of water being dumped on the site to extinguish whatever the incident may be. You just mentioned that your goal was to cool the adjacent pods, as so not to prevent propagation to the

next pod. Can you kind of explain when you meant intermittent cooling, what are you talking about? Are you talking about a certain amount of time? Is there a lot of water involved in that? Can you just explain that a little more, please? - Yep, I sure can. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna walk up on the stage just to point at a couple of things, and then I'm gonna further

address your question on the next slide, okay? - All right. - I'll try to talk loud enough. Please let me know if you can't hear me.

So if this is the involved unit here, we've got four pods, okay? With the technology that we're proposing, we'll have the ability from a distance... We'll have the ability from a distance to monitor the adjacent units, and then some of the other components will be able to measure what's happening inside of these other adjacent units. From there, if we have another remote, the batteries, et cetera, from, you know,

other remote areas. So if these adjacent pods... We're starting to get hot. We're going to move along. We don't want to throw water at the involved unit. So if we dump a bunch of water at an involved unit, two things are going to happen in my opinion. One, we're going to prolong the event. However long, you can define how long it's going to take. I'm not going

to do that. We potentially prolong that and make the conditions worse. You can have a bunch of pop in and spark in and a lot more smoke generated. So our goal isn't to throw water on it. It's counterproductive to say this. We want the contents of that space to burn out. We want them all to burn out and at that point it's not safe in my opinion. We're going to stay away

from it. We're going to let their team come in and determine that everything is burnt out and then they have to decommission it. Remove whatever else needs to be removed and install the new meat net. Does that help? And I'm going to further quantify that with the next slide, okay? Slide 21, please. So this is probably the meat and potatoes

of... you know, the fire protection system. And this is something that, you know, for me is a layered approach, right? A bunch of different layers that are kind of coming together. I'm going to talk about fire suppression and air quality monitoring, two different pieces. First we'll talk fire suppression and then air quality monitoring. So with the

proposed staging area, we're able to pull off of the site, okay, and then The final design there and the technology that goes in there, we're still in the deliberative process over this, so I don't want to get cornered into, you said it's going to look exactly like this, okay? There'll be some technology there that helps us interface with what's called the fire rover. You can see that up in the top

right there and there's a bunch of apparatus on the top of that pole. So the site is going to be remotely monitored by another company that has access to that fire rover. If there's an event at that site, inactivation, like as I tried to define earlier, inactivation, This system is going to come online and someone will be remotely monitoring immediately. So, scenario. We're all in the north end of town. We get

an activation. They're going to come online. First of all, we'll be notified. This system will come online and we'll be in contact with someone that's monitoring this system remotely.

So they can say to us, we're looking at a fire event in... grid 25, pod 2, whatever it is, looks like we have some fire lapping and they're using infrared to see through the smoke, looks like the adjacent pod to the left is getting hot, do you want us to cool it? Yes. Intermittently cool, stop. This rover system will be placed, again, I don't want to be pigeonholed into exacts, but let's

just hypothetically say we have six of these at agreed upon locations. They can start the cooling process before we get there, or if they just see smoke, they can hold off and do nothing. We arrive, we take over the system, and now we can see if there's any smoke. We can see through the smoke with the infrared, we're reading temperatures, we're in communication with the system, we know if adjacent units are

heating up or not. And for me, this is option one. This is the best, you know, layer, if you will, of our redundant system to be looking at this problem from a distance greater than 100 feet away. We don't have to send anybody in there. Are you with me? So now we can cool any adjacent unit if need be, not dump thousands of gallons of water continuously on a unit that's burning

because our goal is not to get water in that unit that's burning, okay? That's priority number one. We're going to cool. Okay. The second thing we'd want to use this system for is smoke dispersion if needed. So best case scenario, right, one of these pods is in thermal runaway. All the smoke is going up. None of the smoke is escaping the site. We don't want to do anything with the smoke. Let's

just hypothetically say that smoke is starting to drift to the south. Well, we use one of these monitors on a fog pattern to disperse the smoke. We still haven't entered the site, and yet we're using fire suppression tactics to deal with what we're presented with. And sometimes when we get questions from the public, it's our end objective

is cool adjacent units, control the flow of smoke with life hazard being right at the top, right? How do we get there? There's a bunch of different steps based on what we're presented with. In our world, we call it an incident action plan when we arrive. We look at what's in front of us, we know what the ultimate objective is, and we take the best path to that objective. Okay, so cooling

of adjacent units, we can see through smoke, we can disperse smoke if need be.

Okay? The second layer of our system is going to be... Just a quick question.

The fire roll system, these are the pole rockets, is that correct? That's correct. Yep.

Yep, so let's just say for the sake of discussion, there's six of them strategically located, okay? So the second layer of the system, this is number one, the most desirable, everything's working fine, okay. Again, for the sake of the discussion, we have eight yard hydrants placed strategically with master streams affixed to them that we, all we have

to do is open the hydrant, we can angle this master stream, And what that allows us to do is a couple things. We can lob water from that hydrant to cool an adjacent unit if we needed to. Let's say there was a failure of the rover system, which we wouldn't anticipate, right? But this is part of our redundant system. We can cool an adjacent unit, or we can open up a fog

pattern to disperse smoke if we had to. So in either of these cases, again, when we talk about the flow of water, the amount of water, we're not looking to run the fire rover for... Pick the amount of hours in your own mind.

Five, six, seven, eight hours, whatever it is. We're not looking to do that. We're not looking to run eight hydrants all at the same time. There's eight of them or whatever the numbers have land on so that they're in strategic places to function in a redundant fashion to suit our needs. The third layer, we'd have an ear on the hydrant with a gate so that we could then put hose line. easily

on that and then we could lob water from a safe distance if we had to. If we had an angle, I believe one of you were asking about achieving a certain angle, if there was a particular angle that our rover couldn't get to perfectly, we could use that method, which I think with the design we'll be able to reach all aspects of the units with our primary with the fire rover, but

we would have that third redundant option. And to speak to that point, I think they're highlighted in yellow. We had discussed putting some pedestrian doors in the sound wall to allow access for emergency personnel only. And then putting some caches inside that wall kind of near the hydrants and what that would allow us to do is If the order was for one of my members to go in and activate one of

the hydrants They don't have to carry equipment with them, which is somewhat labor-intensive. They open the door. They grab the equipment that's right there It's in proximity of the hydrant whatever the locations are they go to work they get back outside of the door to safety and So we've got three layers to the fire prevention plan and like I said, you know, this has been a game of inches for us in

this deliberative process. I initially started, I think, in either my first or second position letter considering an NFPA 15 deluge type system, but This offers some advantages over that system. It gives us sight through the smoke. It gives us distance. It gives us the ability to have a strategic placement of water to cool rather than a deluge

over an entire enclosure, if that makes any sense. So you can see how these things change and evolve. All right, now to talk to the air monitoring and some of the layers that we have. In discussing air monitoring with the team, one of the topics that came up was fixed air monitoring systems that could monitor products of combustion potentially leaving the site. And we're looking

at currently Trying to mount them on the fire over poles so these are fixed.

They're always there This is the first layer all right we show up We pull into the staging area all the fire suppression activities take place like I had just previously described We're at the same location. We haven't moved now all of a sudden we can access the air quality management system What's leaving the site? We haven't had to go over with portable meters to go metering. We haven't entered that zone because

my goal is to not send anybody in there. We don't want to go in there if we don't have to go in there. Okay? So this is the first layer. In addition to that, we've discussed having some predetermined locations at the perimeter wall.

So now we bring monitors supplied by the Flatiron team, we go to these predetermined locations, we hang the monitors there, we go back to the staging area, those monitors report back to the staging area. So that's the second layer of air quality monitoring we have potentially, right, because they're still working on this problem, we're in the deliberative

process right now with these folks. We have this first layer of air quality monitoring right adjacent to the units. If nothing's leaving the scene, we're measuring at the second location, the perimeter, right? So we've got two layers. Now the third layer would be handheld mobile units that our folks could carry outside of the wall, if need be, if we had any concern that smoke was migrating that far. But the first two

layers, and I think this is the most important piece of it if we're able to achieve it, We're monitoring these things from the staging area. We still haven't gotten near the units, which is my goal, is to keep our personnel out if we can. So three redundant layers there. Some of that stuff is still in development. I applaud them for their diligence on this, because I know that some of it's a

big ask, right? And I think that they're doing a fantastic job, and they've been very responsive with what I feel would be the best fit for Somerset, given the proximity of the neighborhood just to the south. Any questions on the air quality? I just have a couple questions. Sure. Yeah, so as I understand it, the units that would be on the rover system, the fixed units, would go through automatic updates, so we

wouldn't be calibrating those. The portable units that we would be hanging in predetermined locations, yes. I would prefer to have them at the fire department because the way we operate, I would even say not at the fire department on the apparatus. If we're all out in the north end of town, we don't want to stop at the station to pick them up. We just want to go straight

to the station. You know the facility and then hang them. But you know some of those finer details are things that will work out at the policy level, the department policy level and we'll kind of integrate them into the emergency response plan which kind of gets me ahead of into my next topic but it's a great thing to speak to since you brought it up. I think a lot of folks would

like to see those two documents, and let me just digress for a moment. The emergency response plan and hazard mitigation plan are two documents that the Flatiron team will have to develop and hand to us for approval, right? Those are documents that I don't want to see in final form right now because the site is still developing.

Does that make sense? I wouldn't want to regret a manual five times myself. Why would I want someone else to do it? There are already some very small components that have been put in the draft form that will need to be updated based on things that I've asked for, and I don't know that I'm done asking for things. So I don't want that in final form. Does that make sense? If

this project moves forward and we get into the plans, middle plate phase, the permitting phase, all of that stuff, my ask of them would be to have those documents completed approximately prior to going online. Because in that framework, in that period of time, I'll be developing my policies, and the two will need to work together. They'll need to be seamless, right? So I don't want to see either of those two

documents in their final form just yet. Does that make sense? Okay. I have a second question. This is for Flatiron. So if there were air monitoring devices on the port of the fire roller system, would there also be fixed monitoring on the top of the wall just in case what was going over the wall But you know so you had say the point just this is I'm just throwing numbers This

may be totally wrong say the pole was 35 feet high and had a mind for 35 and The wall is 25 feet high, right? So if what was going over the wall was at 25 and not at 35, there would be a potential for the air monitoring system not to pick up anything because at 35 it's above what's going over, what's leaving the site and going over the wall. So has

there been any consideration to put fixed monitoring on the top of the wall?

No, because the fire rover would be innermost to the site. So the tallest gas monitors would be on that fire rover system closest to the battery units. And then the lower height monitors would be affixed at strategic locations around the perimeter of the site. So the intent is to use the fixed, the monitoring systems that are going to be hung to look

at what may be not monitored by the fixed monitoring system on the poles where the fire rovers system is. Is that correct? - Yeah, that's correct. And we do, just for your awareness, we do have Chris Groves available virtually, as well as Kevin from Hazard Dynamics. They're just kind of waiting for us. If you have further questions, we just want to respect Chief's time. But they are available if you have

additional questions after. I think I would like to have make them available when we finally get Jensen Hughes under contract. Sure. Which we don't have yet because I'm sure under their review they would have they may have questions that the board doesn't have so rather than take up a lot of their time and I you know so we would probably wait and I don't know I mean that's up to everybody else

too they're literally on call right now so if you have questions they're already waiting for you and it sounds like Chris actually is listening uh - Yeah, he's listening and just if it's helpful, the gas detectors are anticipated to be mounted at five meters or 16 feet and the portable monitors that we'll have will stand mounted at a head chest height near the wall. So there will be monitors at a lower

height on site. - So the ones on the, how high would the ones be on the fire roller poles? Yeah, 15 feet below the top of the wall, right?

- Correct, yeah. - So if there was something above the wall, and your margin of 15 feet then you don't really know what's going on above 15 feet so the fire rover poles that monitor would be higher than the monitor at the perimeter of the site so you would have something above 15 feet you would have height hierarchy there okay great okay thank you you're welcome do you have all the equipment

you need pertaining to if you have to go in and fight Some type of supplies. Do you have all the equipment you need? And is there anything special that you're going to need? We're doing pretty well with equipment. There are certain things that, of course, like the monitoring equipment that we're talking about, the perimeter, I'm considering

this all extra equipment. But even with the specific question about where these things are going to be located, as far as I'm concerned, we're still in the deliberative process.

That's where I am. I'm looking at this as a commitment, a good faith commitment from these folks. But we're still in this deliberative process as to where. Any extra equipment that you need over and above will be supplied by them, not by the town. Right. What I would say to that is I think you're alluding to the community host agreement, no? i don't want to misquote you is that what you kind

of yeah i think for me personally that would have that would be best served going through the board of selectmen okay um yeah i wouldn't deal directly with a company with things that would probably be best served through the community host agreement and i don't want to speak out of turn on that but my my needs would be known would be made known to the town administrator and the board of selectmen

i would let them deliberate on that all right thank you Anything else question wise? No good. Okay, no, what's that? Nothing else for me. Any other questions? No. So we'll open up to the public if they have any questions for the fire chief. He can choose to answer them right now or he can choose to provide answers at a later time. That's going to be totally up to

him. Good evening. Can you hear me okay in the back? Good.

My name is Paul Healy. I am a Somerset resident. I'm a retired public health physician. I'm not seeking a job. What I'm asking you to do is I've sent you many documents. They're mostly questions that I'm trying to do is to understand the situation. Because as a public health physician with training in occupational and environmental medicine, I

look at some of the consequences or the preparations for certain situations. So for instance, with the excellent job that the chief has done, he's brought out inferentially, not specifically, the personal protective equipment that he may need to have. So in my role as an occupational medicine physician, I do pre-screenings for individuals to see if they can

wear the equipment. Do they have the right type of respirators? Those types of things that protect them. This gets at your public safety, health, and welfare issues that you need to address, if not you, then hopefully the Board of Health. Now, so I look at the situation here more from an excavation, construction, and operational issues. The chief's done a great job working with Flatiron in getting

a lot of the questions I'm interested in as a physician to try and understand. So let's talk about the excavation issues that relate to an event where they'd have to put water on it. We know that that area where the flat iron is going to put theirs is where the oil storage is. What we don't know is what is the content of the soil in that area and what

depths. Now, I don't know that they're going to go more than six feet to put anything down, probably closer to three feet. So it starts to raise questions whether the soil there is really something we need to test. My argument is we don't know what we don't know. The reason I say that is if we look at the side where the plant is, we have lots of documents that you go through

the deeds that show where they buried ash residue and oil residue. And if you look at, for example, and that's a 100-year-old plant. So if you look at what we've learned from Brayton Point, we know in the top couple of inches that there are high levels of arsenic above the RCS2. For those who don't know what that is, it's the reporting concentration for soil for industrial. The 2

means industrial. RCS1 is for residential. My point is I'm telling you how I look at these situations, why I'm asking the questions to try and understand how you're going to approach it. The relevance of the excavation part is to what the chief has said. We don't know how much water they're going to have to put out, but where is the water going to go and what is the contamination of various

heavy metals in that top layer that may be washed off? We know that there's a tunnel from one side to the other. Is that going to be closed off?

Are we going to, if it goes into a stormwater system, do we understand whether it's going to be appropriately collected and have we evaluated it? Do we know if there's any wash off onto the roads, are they going to be cleaned off? Those are the types of ways to think about it from my perspective. My point I'm trying to bring out is we are sort of in silos. And I try and

pull things together to look at it from different ways, from the cyber security issues or the other side. I agree this is probably a low risk of something happening.

But if something happens, it may be catastrophic or at least perceived by the public.

And I think that there has to be shown enough concern to the public to make sure that we think about these things, the health and safety and the welfare of the public. Thank you. Thank you.

So just a follow-up to that, but I know you may not need to. So is this site an MCP-listed site? This site is not an active MCP-listed site, to my knowledge. I will follow up with a written response to Dr. Healy's comments, but to my knowledge, it is not. So having been involved in this type of work for dozens of years, I would assume, and this is, and I,

I don't really think this is an assumption. But before you start a construction, you'd have to assess the soil. And you'd have to come up with a soil management plan. That soil management plan would have to be submitted to DEP for review. so that the regulation for the contaminated soil issues and what you may leave behind after you develop the site would be a DEP regulatory issue and that would not be

an issue that the Zoning Board of Appeals would have regulation over. We refer to it in our decision where we make a general statement that you have to comply with all applicable rules and regulations But the rules and regulations that would cover the contamination or potential contamination at the site would be the MCP and that would be administered by the DEP. That is correct. Thank you. Are there any

other questions for the fire chief on his presentation with the fire safety concerns? Anyone?

Okay, seeing that there's no questions, then what we'll do is if you want to make the presentation you had tonight and go through that, and then that may generate some more questions from the board. Chief Bausch, thank you very much. If I may ask, if you do have any questions for either Kevin Maher from Hazard Dynamics or Chris Groves regarding safety, we have them on call until... I just

wanted to allow you an opportunity to ask them any questions and we can pull up their, their on virtually.

So I could pull that up if you have questions.

I think at the last meeting I had asked what type of liability insurance you have to cover this site, the whole site. That is correct. We did provide a written response to that. I'm happy to read that written response out loud if that's helpful. Okay, we go to you. So my question would be is you have enough insurance to cover any liability that you have on that particular site on everything? Yes. The

structures, the batteries? That's correct. Okay. First of all, the assessment now, Steve. Just out of curiosity, the presentation you have tonight, does that include the noise assessment? That's exactly, or only what it's focused on, is just noise. So that's why I said if there's any other safety-related questions, I can pull up Kevin and Chris. No, I think that

it would be, I think, I know, you know, next steps, Complete peer review.

I think if we can get the peer reviewer on board and I mean this has been a really protracted process trying to do this so if we can get the peer reviewer Jensen use on board for the fire safety issues I think that any other discussion about safety issues once it would be once that we have them on board because we've heard from the fire chief the We've heard from

the police chief also via email, you know, so, and we've asked questions about safety issues at the previous meeting and this meeting. So if the board doesn't have any additional safety related, then we can go into the noise presentation. Awesome. Thank you. Okay, we're all set. Let me just switch presentations. Give me one minute. Yeah, that's right.

I got my hands. I got my hands.

Okay. So I think we went over all of this already, but just to reiterate for the audience, our goal is to complete peer review ideally before the next meeting, which is scheduled for September 3rd. And then we already went over the site design. I just included this slide because at the last meeting we didn't have an opportunity to put it up on a big, easy to access or easy to view way. So I

think we covered this with Chief Ferris' presentation, but if there are any questions about the design, this is the most up-to-date version of the design as issued on 7-10, the meeting on 7-16. so i will pause there if you have questions about the design itself before i pass it over to joe to talk about noise so the bullet dimensions are just what's shown on the plan correct all the setbacks

from for the sound wall to the various streets that's correct yep good okay i don't have anybody else any questions no we're all set thank you

Good evening again my name is Joe Capolino I'm the project manager for BHB we handle the site design landscape design and the acoustical assessment for this project. As you guys know, since our first meeting where we presented a layout that had Tesla mega pack batteries and we had an acoustical assessment done, we had since updated our plans. On May 29th,

there was a set of plans that were submitted that showed the revised layout with the Fluence batteries. So we immediately decided to update our acoustical assessment as the data what the batteries produce noise level wise for tesla is not the same as fluence it's not interchangeable so you know for your benefit and everyone's benefit we revise our acoustical assessment so i just want to start off by saying that the

acoustical assessment and you'll see on some of the figures that i get to is based on the the design that was submitted on may 29th right they are fluent batteries It does not reflect the design that the chief, Mr. Groves and Hannah have been working on. That was just on the screen. I do want to preface this because we once the chief is satisfied we will and the peer reviewer has reviewed

our documents that was submitted on the twenty ninth or the stormwater report to update to the fluent based design there was the plans obviously and there is this acoustical assessment once we receive comments on that we will update the acoustical assessment and I do want to say that you know when you apply common sense and how noise works The updated design which pushes the wall even further away from

Stephen Street will improve the results so anything we're talking about most likely we'll be able to present slightly slight improvements, although what we have is compliant with.

town of somerset board of health regulations and mass dep so i know there might be a comment well this acoustical assessment doesn't reflect the plan that flatiron has been showing at the presentations but i will say from a sound perspective you will see improvements and when i say you see improvements there'll be tenths of a decibel improvement

as you i've explained at prior meetings decibels are a logarithmic scale right so if you go up 10 decibels you're it's not going up you know, 50% from 20 to 30 decibels is going up a lot to logarithmic scale. So when we see improvements, we see very minor improvements, right? So I just want to preface that. So let's get into this and some of this information you've seen, but anytime we're going

to talk about sound, I just want to set the stage a little bit. So we see the town of Somerset noise level criteria and residential is what we're looking at. That's obviously the most sensitive. abutting use that we could have when we're talking about noise. So during the daytime, which is 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., the allowable level is 60 dBA, adjusted decibels, and at nighttime it's 55 dBA, and that's 10

p.m. to 7 a.m. You can see on the right there are some common outdoor and indoor sound levels from a federal highway administration publication on highway noise where a lot of this technology started was obviously sound mitigation on highway corridors to residential and you can see a suburban commercial area kind of like what we're talking about on county street typical outdoor level is 65 DBA and so

I believe that the town Somerset regulations most likely referred to this information published by the FHA. In addition to the town standards, we also consult the MassVP noise level policy from 1990 and that states in a worst case scenario, there can be no increases of more than 10 DBA allowed from ambient. It does say and tell the Somerset and the math EP guidance you would measure noise at a property

line but it does specifically say for residential uses you should measure that structure and that's why you'll see in the report we submitted there's daytime and nighttime results but there's 2 tables of results there's at the property line and then there's also at the resident that the facade so we can assess at the residential structures It also

says we need to address pure tones, which are a different type of sound that actually come with some of the lower operational levels of some of the equipment sometimes.

So it basically causes us to have to do almost a third analysis, which you will see if you read the report. And that's specific to MassDEP.

So we just talked about you know the increase from ambient right if we didn't have mass DEP regulations we most likely wouldn't have to consult with ambient we would only have the town of Somerset regulations to look at so we just look at the total noise right but because we have that we before we do anything we set up monitoring points to measure ambient sound right and so we are

establishing criteria for us to meet by monitoring sound at two monitoring points shown on this map for two weeks and we did that in the fall of 2025 so that was the monitoring that was supporting the original application in February of 2026 so that just kind of makes sense where we are in the timeline think the the data is still applicable and then what we do

is you filter out hours that have high noise and protect high noise from wind and precipitation and you also filter out insect noise and that's per the mass EP policy they're asking for the nine basically the 90th percentile after you filter out all these really loud events right so that's actually a benefit to the in the end the end user for the people protecting any analysis we don't get to use the

loudest hours. What we record in ambient monitoring we have to filter insect noise out we have to filter out loud wind and I think that's especially applicable in this community and there's more information on that report but basically what I'm saying is you can see that we have very constrained. ambient noise levels to meet in regards to complying with MassDEP. Is there any questions on that? Okay. So, you

know, through the planning board and I think maybe our first meeting, there were some questions on, you know, the modeling parameters. And actually there were some questions from the public at one of our meetings. So we do, in the model, attribute a point source to each battery, each medium voltage transformer. the main power transformer and the control building which is cool so there are

cool units on control building also I think this was the public comment the augmentation units are also included so again we talked about what augmentation is they're not batteries that are They're on day one of what they might be there your 5 so you have more batteries later on in the light was a facility but for the purposes purposes of this we have everything

including augmentation modeled with a point source of their noise level. Right, and the model runs are performed with all equipment operating concurrently. I think that was also a comment from the public, so I just wanted to say that. And that's operating at worst case scenarios. So all this equipment is doing what it does, whether it's a transformer or a cooling fan on a battery unit in a worst case scenario.

So we're going to talk about what that is. Addition of sound is not linear.

We talked about a logarithmic scale. For example, if you have two identical sources of noise, say 50 dBA, your resulting noise level might be 50.3 dBA. It's not 100, right? You don't add dBA units together. And so I think I just want to get that out of the way. The model is using this CADNA software, which is the internationally accepted standard. Again, there's a lot. Just a question. Yeah, go ahead. So

I know this was based on the previous design, but so this has 96 batteries just right now. How many batteries are proposed? It's the same amount. That's the 98, sorry. So there's 80 Fluence batteries and 18, sorry, Fluence batteries, day zero batteries, and there's 18 augmentation units. So sorry about that typo in this. That doesn't

change we're just the revised design slides those augmentation units further away from Stephen Street so the that's why I say we'll see some benefits from the revised design because basically the modeling is is still. Pretty current to the noise level it's just some things are moving around but to the benefit of some of the receptors. That makes sense. So yeah,

so it's 80 batteries and 18 augmentation units. Yep. Okay, 25 medium voltage transformers, one main power transformer, and there are two points on the control building that are representing cooling fans on that. So I'm actually, the Fluence SmartStacks were modeled with sound levels corresponding to 90% fan speed of the nine fan configuration for

daytime operation and 70 fan speed for nighttime operation i'm going to talk more about that on the next slide just making sure that is on the right slide um so our team for this version of the acoustical assessment because there were a lot of questions about where you're getting this temperature data right and so our team at bhb had a meteorologist analyze the last 29 years of temperature data from the new

bedford municipal airport nation national weather service observation station and the reason it's 29 years is because that's when they started recording so that's all the data we have that is the closest closest observation station that we have to this site during this time the maximum recorded temperature was 102 degrees fahrenheit in July of 2011. I believe there was a global heat wave in July

of 2011, and so that's where we got that temperature from. So 90% fan speed with these specific units corresponds with ambient temperatures of up to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Sound level data corresponding to that condition, which is confirmed by third-party testing, was utilized to input into our model. So that's how we produce our results. That obviously envelopes 100% of recorded

temperatures, because 102 was the highest, obviously. So then we get to nighttime, where we chose 70% fan speeds to correspond with 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Sound level data corresponded to that condition, confirmed by third-party testing, was utilized for a model. And this corresponds to 99.99% of nighttime temperature from that. from that weather station so here we finally get some

graphic representations of results so just want to point out that the sound contours that are shown in color here 50 dba is the green 45 dba is the blue i kind of labeled those two on the graphic because those are kind of what get beyond the site no contours um of a different color or higher intensity escape the site in these daytime results. But I

do want to point out that this map shows the facility sound level. It's not possible to create sound contours that also add ambient sound because ambient sound doesn't have a point source. Right? So, if you, I'm just saying this because if you study the results table you'll see there's facility sound level in one column and then there's the cumulo sound level in the next column and the cumulo sound level is always

going to be a few dBA higher because that actually adds the ambient as well.

So the contours, if you pick a point and you try to match it up with cumulative sound from our results, it might be a few dBA off. But if you look to the column left in the report, you'll see what the facility sound level is. That's what we're actually producing. And that's not to... try to muddy the results, that's just to be clear for when you're reviewing the report and interpreting results.

So our results in the daytime, the town standard as we've looked at on the first slide is 65 dBA. at the property line and our highest result at any receptor is 49.9 dBA. So we're 15 dBA lower, which as I expressed on a logarithmic scale, it's not just 20% lower, it's a lot lower than the town requirement during the day. And then we also have the mass DEP standard

which we you know we talked about is not a total sound level it's a increased limit and so our largest model change in during the daytime is 5.4 dba and that's at a facade of a residential receptor the reason why we note that separately is because you'll see the facade results are lower in dba but the increases are higher So you obviously have higher sound at the

property line, but the increases are lower. And then, you know, you get the sound lessons as it travels from the property line to the facade, but you get a higher increase. And that's because when we look at a residential facade, we actually lift the receptor up in elevation to make sure we're looking at a bedroom on a second story and sound travels upward. So we actually get a higher level increase

but a lower total so that's why you kind of have to look at both to make sure you're complying with town of somerset in the most stringent case which is at the property line and then complying with mass ep which is increase assessed at the second story of a residential home okay sorry i i know that might be confusing you were looking at me like that that was confusing so if you

have any questions i can stop here before we go to nighttime So basically, when you measured the ambient sound, so what you did was you compared what you measured to what the model predicts, and that's how you got the increase at the res-- The increase is just basically what the sound level is going to be after construction versus what we measure, right? - Right, so you monitor

towards the residences on Stevens. You have M1, you have the ambient daytime 44, that increases off the 44 that you mentioned in the ambient. - Exactly, exactly, yep. It's hard to, if you reviewed the assessment, you can see the pages of tables because we have so many receptors and like I said we have daytime and nighttime for both property line and at facade. So there's pages of charts.

Really hard to express that on a PowerPoint. I think it makes sense when you go look at the results in the chart which not only I know you guys will do but the peer reviewer will do. Yeah, I was just trying to just show where that change was coming from. Yeah, that increase. Somebody just kind of had a basic understanding of where you got the increase. Yeah, it's assessive. What the sound

will be at that receptor point after construction versus what it was measured at without construction, which is what we call ambient. Okay. Okay, so in nighttime, the town standard drops to 55 dBA at the property line, and our highest sound level measured, I'm sorry, modeled, not measured, modeled was 46.3 dBA, so we're still a decent, excuse me? Oh. like I was saying 46.3

dBA, so we're still about 9 dBA below the town standard. Again, then we consult the MassDEP standard and this is where we get the largest model change in ambient and I think we've talked about this where nighttime operation is our most constrained. Right, so basically you end up looking at what is your nighttime increase at a residential property and the highest we have is 8.5 dba and that's again measured at facade

second story facade level over that residential which you know from the previous slide you can now deduce that is the most constrained way we can take a measurement on the noise impacts of this project so it is in compliance Do you know which of these residential units had the highest, that lodged, that highest change from ambient and nighttime?

Yes, so I believe R63 is the car wash. So that's actually, even though that's not a residential use, we do get some of the highest readings, modeled sound levels there. We just do include that. We don't separate the receptors by use. Again, if this is a residential zone, it doesn't matter if there is a car wash there now. 20 years from now there could be an apartment building.

You don't know. So when there are residential districts abutting the site, which there are, we don't say, well, this is a car wash now. So we do report that.

I believe in all cases that is the highest, but we do get some higher...

Model results at receptor 41 and 36 which are the resonances on Stevens and Desmond. Those are, you know, those are our most constrained points which I think, you know, would be obvious to studying these maps but, you know, what this shows is that with the proposed walls which are doing the mitigating, we're in compliance with some very stringent regulations.

Yeah, so the report like I was saying it has those very long charts. There's there's all the receptors and you know With addresses like obviously the addresses aren't on these graphics, but the addresses are there So you can you can pretty much easily see where those high? Points are so like I said And I think we will get some improved results down at Receptor 41 and 36, the corner of Desmond

and Stevens, because the sound wall along Stevens with the augmentation units moving upwards into the site and then the sound wall of the southwest corner moving more into the site based on the concept that's been revised with the fire chief's input, you're going to see a slight improvement. okay from that 8.5 thank you and again i'm not going to quote a number we're going to give you know

by the time this process is over we'll be able to quantify that exactly okay so we have some conclusions here and that will be the end of my presentation and we can do some more questions and i think all this is pretty much we went over but you can see that our increase in daytime ambient in daytime from ambient sound levels is expected to range from 0 to 5

dBA which is in compliance with the MassDEP guidelines. The increase in night time at the property line is 0-7 dBA and then at the second story facades is 0-9 dBA. Again, that's the 8.5 just rounded up for this bullet point.

Just want to point that out. Not trying to slip in another receptor with a higher result. We do have a pure tone analysis included in the report. I'm not technically expert enough in sound to describe more about the pure tones. We will bring that person when the peer reviewers dive into it, but we do an analysis at lower operational levels of the fan speeds to make sure there are no pure tones.

That's driven by MassDEP and we did pass that analysis in our model. And then obviously you know, nothing against the town of Somerset, but when we comply with MassDEP, which I believe is more stringent, we comply with the town of Somerset Board of Health regulations by a wide margin. Can you describe the noise? Like what does the noise sound like? You know, like so, you know, is it like a hum?

Like if, you know, what does it actually sound like? Yeah, so there are a few different things going on. There are the chillers, which are, I believe, more of a hum. There are the fans, which I believe more of a cooling fan sound. The transformer has both as well. I believe we did a presentation where we showed more of where the noise is

coming from, so we actually have I did say we place a point source in every battery. There's actually two point sources on every battery. And we're happy to show you that, but we place a point source in the chiller, which is at the bottom of the SmartStacks, which you've all seen those sections. And then we place a point source higher up in the pod, to model that what's coming from the cooling

fan. So, you know, it actually becomes very detailed, more detailed than I explained here because, you know, this is a public type presentation, but because there are different types of noise, different levels vertically where noise is coming from on the pod, we separate that out. So, like I said, there are a couple of different things going on.

But yeah, I know that might not directly answer your question, but it's not almost one sound. I've been watching some of these AI units at the building and I've been listening to some of the sounds off of these buildings. They're tremendously loud. I'm talking, I could never live next to one. Is that anything like your... I have not personally worked on a data center project, but I

believe there are There's more equipment associated with those than will ever be associated with this use. There are generators which are extremely loud for backup power. I don't think it's a comparable I don't think it's a good comparison. I'm not an expert in that. I've never worked on one. But generators are way louder than any of the equipment. Do you know where the closest units are

to us that we could take a ride up there and take a listen to them? Oh, sure. Yeah. Go ahead. The Cranberry Point project in Carver, Massachusetts is probably the closest. Probably less than 40 minutes from here. I can't get it close. I'm on a field trip. So we had a previous application where there was a noise concern and just so everybody could kind of hear what the noise was, the applicant actually brought

in a video with sound so you could kind of hear it. So I don't think everybody in the town of Simpsons is going to drive to Cava to listen to this thing. But, and I understand you could do, you know, one of the, obviously one of the things was, well, they did something with the audio on the video. I mean, it's like, all right, we were just trying

to get an idea of what it sounded like, you know. So if that was possible in addition to whoever wanted to go up there to carve or wherever else to listen to one of these things? We can explore opportunities to organize a visit.

I can't guarantee that's an option but it has been something that has happened in the past. We do have a site under construction, it's not operational yet so that's not an opportunity but we can explore opportunities to bring you all out to a site i would also say though like directly adjacent to the site is the pottersville

substation much of that electrical equipment is generating very similar similar and comparable noises because the loudest noise producers on our site are the same equipment right we have a substation that's just the same equipment as what's on the National Grid substation. So if you actually go and stand by that National Grid substation, you can get a decent

comp. It's not gonna be the same output necessarily, and again, we're modeling worst case scenarios, but it'll give you an idea of what those sounds are like. And then when you add the batteries, the batteries, we're really just talking about those fans in the chiller system. But the MPT, the main power transformer that we also refer to

as the substation on site is the loudest component and that would be comparable to the sounds generated from the Pottersville substation. Yeah, maybe it would be helpful if there was, if anybody was interested to arrange a site visit for the board and we could just go to one of these and so it would be a similar size facility. like the one in carver is that similar size to what this is going

to be i don't believe so carver is a smaller facility um and then because these sites are like access is controlled we would have to get permission from the site owner so it's not i don't want to say it's like a minor ask it would be require much facilitation. We are happy to explore the opportunity though and as you can imagine we are connected and are more likely to succeed in getting

a site visit. So happy to explore that but cannot guarantee. So I don't want to speak for anybody else, but my concern would not be necessarily the noise that's inside the facility. It would be outside the facility. So I personally, I don't need to get in the facility, you know, because I mean, that's not where the issue is going to be. The issue is going to be somebody who lives on Stevens

or Desmond, you know, when they say the thing opens up and they say, I can't sleep at night because the noise is stopping me from sleeping. I just like to It's my concern, and I'm not speaking for anybody else, but my concern would be off the facility, you know, at a distance where it's a similar distance to where these receptors are. I would think the residential receptors are the most sensitive. The

car wash, I understand, you know, there are houses right behind the car wash, so, I mean, that would be another concern, too. But, I mean, just to get an idea of that off the facility. We can consider it and follow up before the next meeting on like the feasibility of something like that. And similarly if you know a site visit isn't feasible maybe we can try to organize some sort of like

listening exercise. I know as you mentioned other development types have done similar activities. It would require some coordination though so let me look into it and see what's feasible.

If you could give us a location of something that's a similar size So we're not going to listen to something that's half the size and going, "Yeah, okay, that sounds good," or, "That sounds acceptable." I think what you have to keep in mind is we could send you to a similar size facility, but they're probably not using the same product, right? The Fluence V2 product is newest to the market. As products

have improved in efficiency, they've also improved in output. So I think it's a valuable exercise to get a comparison because I'm confident even those sites aren't going to be noisy. But you have to keep in mind that the technology is different and this would much likely be quieter than any older product at a site you could go visit. I will look into what sites might be comparable though. Great, thank you. There

aren't any sites with the fluence i'd have to look i'm not sure offhand in massachusetts i do know there would be nothing with the fluency too okay that we're proposing okay thank you yeah sure and i i did have one more slide about um you know obviously we're not committed to a certain type of barrier um but we do have a lot of options that are which is precast concrete that actually has wood particles.

That's what's typically used on highways. And then we've also been using a composite material, which is what you see, the yellow, In the bottom image, not saying this wall will be yellow, I'm just saying there are options for the aesthetics of this that are going to provide not only the sound screening to the abutting properties, but also visual screening, which we've talked about. Our

site will also have trees required by zoning at 30-foot intervals around the entire site, like a ring. and then we'll have this sound wall and obviously we keep pushing that back from Stephen Street which I think is a benefit but also you know there would be an opportunity for the town to you know help select the aesthetic the final aesthetic of this barrier would it be possible to I know like so if we had like a

wind turbine right so they do those balloon tests right so you can see what it looks like at a certain height would it be possible to get some mock-up or something that was the 25 foot height at the location where the wall is going to be so we could see what that looks like from stevens street and from county i think so i think that's a pretty I think what you're asking for is a scale

markup, actually a markup 25 feet high. I don't know how many.

Listen, even if you had two posts 25 feet high with like a line with like flags connecting the two posts, right? So that would visually, we would say, okay, this is what this is going to look like from Stevens. There's a location where the wall is going to be. That's what the height is, you know. I'm not saying you got to build one panel of a wall. At this point, but if

you had something like that, so was it the elevation where this wall was going to be? And it would give us an idea because I mean seeing is a lot easier than trying to conceptually see this in like some cross section or something like that. So actually we don't and not that you asked for it, but we don't do balloon tests anymore because it's hard to kind of comprehend the scale and

then there's wind and weather and things blow around. So we have done some drone flights where we fly to the elevation and people look at drones that have some lights on it. I have just done one in Massachusetts I did not like. It's still, the drones are tiny in comparison to you know like a residential building we're proposing right. So I mean we'll look into that. We are Flatiron has projects in

construction. We are using a wall from, that is similar to that wall in Chelsea that's 22 feet high. You know, again, I don't know if there's, I'm not saying there's extra, but if there is a, that's actually in construction, so if we could grab a piece, you know, I think that's probably the most likely, but this, no, it's 22 feet high in Chelsea. No, no, honestly.

Oh no, I don't know anything about the she was asking me if I know anything about the current sound wall on Riverside I do not know how tall that is. Okay. Yeah, I was just saying there is a sound wall already on the power plant parcel It's you don't really notice that when you drive by because you know fresh and whatnot, but there is one there I would estimate it's probably between

16 and 20 feet. That's just an estimate so if you are looking for like an immediate kind of gauge That would be another good thing to look at. And do you know how tall the fuel tanks are offhand? 27 feet. No, the fuel tanks are a little tall. Then I don't know. They're in the 40-foot range. But we could also add dimensions of the fuel tanks to give you more comparisons and

landmarks. yeah whatever you could do just so we could visually see you know at the elevation of walgam because i know like you got the containment dikes around the fuel tanks right so i'm assuming that's going to be lower than what you're going to be so you know so then we got to figure that out you know so We can look into opportunities. I think it's a reasonable request. I'm a

visual learner myself, so I understand where the request is coming from. I don't want to guarantee anything, but we are absolutely willing to accommodate unique requests like this, and we'll get back to you on the feasibility. Because I mean, I'm going to be honest with you. I had a concern about this sound wall when it was as close as it was to Stevens when we started this process. Now it's been moved

back. a considerable distance from where it was in the beginning, right? So I want to see what that, I had an idea what that would look like on Stevens, but with this move back, I don't really have a good idea what that looks like, the setbacks that they have on the plan and the chief's presentation. So if we could get an idea of that, you know, and give us a better idea

of what that's going to look like. Yeah, and we are in the process of updating our visual renderings to reflect the latest design as well. So that's another way we can help support the visualization of this. And I will say the increased distance between the sound wall and Stephen Street will also create a really large green space.

between that area so it will be a very big improvement from the current conditions and we are also open to community feedback on you know how we beautify that green space to make sure it is a usable or to the extent feasible usable green space for the public okay thank you okay any questions from the public about the noise this presentation on the

noise okay Seeing that there's no questions anything else if you want to present tonight or We just have one more slide Just a reminder. We do have a community giving program that we allocate funds quarterly to Nonprofit organizations operating with the community you can see on the screen the list of organizations that received grants last quarter That application is open Kelsey. Do you know when till? Thank you.

It's due September 15th. So it's a really simple application. I strongly encourage anyone who has a non-profit in the community or, you know, interest in obtaining funds. They're smaller dollar allocations, but we want to show good faith and that we are contributing to this community and it aligns with our company ethos. We want to be good neighbors

and this is one way that we are. Thank you. Just one, this Chelsea site, so is part of that wall built? No, so it hasn't been constructed yet. Is there a site that you know of with a, even if it's a 20-foot wall or something? I don't think so. So we've mentioned this site in our response to comments I think two meetings ago, but there's the Medway project. Yeah, yeah,

yeah. I want to caution that that is, well, it's 300 megawatts to start, so it's almost double the size of our project. Okay. The reason we use that as a comparison is because they're actually, their sound wall is very close to the residences across the street, and the batteries are right up against the sound wall. their modeling

results showed increases at those residential receptors of nine dba um nine point something dba again i said there was one in hours that's 8.5 so i think it's a similar like model of what goes on to when you have an industrial you know this type of use near residential neighborhood right and that i believe the construction is complete you can you can see it i'm not telling anyone to go to medway

i'm not telling it it's it's different technology is i Hannah mentioned, and again, why I personally don't think a site visit is useful is because you go out on a beautiful day and it's only 70 degrees, then it just opens up, well, we didn't hear it at what the model says. It's like, well, you need to go out when it's 113 degrees to hear what the model is saying, so you're never

going to hear that, right? So there's always risk that you don't get what you're looking for. So again, I'm not telling people to go there, but their sound, their acoustic assessment is posted online. their site plans are posted online. You can see in aerial imagery that it's, I have never been there, but I can see that the construction is complete. So their sound mall is closer than ours. Their battery units are

closer, it's larger. So again, I think it's a good comparison when you're talking about, well, should this be considered because it's noisy or whatever, you know, obviously it's been done in Massachusetts and that's an operational facility. So that's why we brought that up before when we talked about setbacks. But again, I think with your questions now, it's

something that, you know, you can read their acoustical assessments, you know, perhaps the peer reviewer can read their acoustical assessment compared to what we did. But I can tell you that what we do and what other consultants do is pretty you know aligned with these regulations and this this type of modeling and using the same software where

is that in midway i can't remember the address but i i believe their sound wall and so your question is like 22 feet high so again it's pretty close to what we're proposing and i will say the reason we're proposing a 24 foot high sound wall is because our site slopes downward towards the residences so when we run our model with a shorter sound wall, 'cause I think that was asked by

the board before, we don't get the appropriate results, right? So Flatiron and our team, we're proposing something that works, right? We don't want to propose something that doesn't work.

you know and the taller your sound wall and the longer it is the more money it costs we didn't come in here with no sound wall and say like oh these things don't make noise we're showing you up front what it takes to to deliver a project that complies with all these really stringent regulations so i think that kind of gets lost when we start talking about like this and like we

came in here with this because this is what works and we've looked at a shorter sound wall you know we want to give something that protects the public health and safety, right? So that's why ours. There's a 24-feet wall, and another community might have a 22-foot wall for a different technology or a different site or a different distance from their receptors. No, we understand the cost. We hear that a lot.

That's not unusual. Anything else? Anyone in the public? Anything else?

Okay. Then I think the next thing we have to do is get the peer reviewer on board. So we're really working at that and it's just been a really long process for whatever reason. So we're working at that, but we need to get them on board because I think that the September meeting, we do want to have the peer reviewers in here and just have their

findings and then, you know, there should be back and forth between our peer reviewer and your team, you know, so that we get some -- by the time we get to the meeting, we can see SEE WHAT THEIR REVIEW WAS AND HOW THEIR ISSUES WITH OUR PEER REVIEWERS' ISSUES WERE ADDRESSED OR QUESTIONS ANSWERED. SO, YEAH, SO WE'LL PLAN ON DOING THAT AT THE NEXT MEETING. OKAY? GOOD. AMY, ANYTHING ELSE?

GOOD? OKAY. DO WE NEED AN EXTENSION? DO WE NEED AN EXTENSION? SEPTEMBER? SEPTEMBER 30TH? I THINK WE'RE GOING TO DO SEPTEMBER 30TH. YEAH. OKAY. WELL, GOOD. WELL, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. SO WE'LL PLAN ON THE MEETING IN SEPTEMBER. Good, thank you. Steve's got minutes. Yeah. Right? Minutes to approve. Yeah. Okay, next item, administrative matters. We have the minutes from the July 16th and July 23rd

to approve if ready. make a motion that we approve the minutes for july 16th and 23rd second steve monasai steve catterett i and then this is just an administrative we received an email with the town's annual policies that's the drug policy fraud pregnant workers fairness act and sexual harassment we need to sign those and get those back to the town and i believe we can just submit those to you amy okay good

any questions on that nope okay motion to adjourn make a motion to adjourn second and i'm going to say steve catterett i oh yes unbelievable your system and i wish i was wrong then but i was around but i wasn't um because