Zoning Board of Appeals - July 16,2026

Hey, you know what's crazy? My wife is on her phone, right? Looking something up. I don't remember what it was. Some female thing she wanted to buy. Part of clothes or something. You know, like, Oz or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever. The next day...

I showed them a video of it and they said they could not arrest me because it wasn't somebody that was in person. It's like a video. Are you kidding me? So they're telling you they had to see him do that? They had to see him do that. Somebody had to see him. I said, I did see him.

It was on a camera. And they were like, well, sorry, it doesn't work. I said, it works for speeding tickets. It doesn't work for anything else.

Hey.

Yeah, no kidding, right?

West Nile virus.

You got it there?

Yeah.

way he's like nationally drinking water are you this is an East product So if you show him this, I didn't. No, but if he was on school property, you show him this and tell him the same thing? No, I don't believe that. I can't believe that.

No, I believe you. What I'm saying is I can't believe that's the law. I can't believe it either. Yeah, I know. So you got a whack job like that?

Yep. Say he was in front of the school. Yep. And you had the footage.

You bring it to the police department. Sorry.

I said, I said, I said, what if we have, what if we have one of the women, administrative assistants here in the building watching the cameras?

Does that make a difference?

What do you say?

If she was there and seen it, like in person.

That's what I'm saying.

And he looks right at it because it looks like it.

I'm gonna have to go down there and take notes. So we've seen the thing with the water department, they're still testing meters, clawing. Did they get that door? I mean, that meter's hydrant. You see the email with that stuff? I didn't see that.

I saw the fire chiefs. Yep. That's the one, it might have been towards the end, the fire chiefs. I'm not sure. Well, it's not in this one, Dave. It's not in that. I don't think it's in this one. What are we waiting for? This was the new one that we just got the new one. Is that TV going to work? You know anything about TVs? You know anything about TVs?

You know how to turn them on and turn them off. You want to help him set this up, Steve? What are we going to do? I can volunteer you.

Which Steve? You. Not me. Head of cool assistance, Mike, Steve, you guys can help him set this TV up. Nope. So we're going to have to continue this for the next meeting. God dang it, what's wrong with me? I'm not bad at it with my home system. This is another level, and I don't want to mess with that. I agree. That's not right. No, it is right. Yeah? Yeah. But it's his responsibility. I'm going to tell

you what, thank God I have that. What's the attorney's name for these people? He's 35 years old.

G-A-N-G-U-S-T-E-D-E-N-E-T Thank you.

Someone from all up to cat six. Yeah, no doubt. I know enough to be dangerous.

Yeah. Are you all set? Could you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? Pledge of 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.

okay this is a meeting of the Somerset zoning board of appeal this means held pursuant to match General Law 48 and the Somerset zoning bylaw this meeting is being uh recorded and I believe it's also being televised live on YouTube just a couple things so I'd like to thank uh Superintendent Schoonover for getting to the point where we were to have this meeting as of last night at about Actually until this morning at

about 8:30 it really wasn't certain that this meeting was going to be able to take place. So I'd like to thank him for the efforts to make this happen.

A couple things. There is no sound person available so we don't have any access to the sound capabilities of this room. the tv the tv the cfd is apparently password protected so we won't be able to use that either so what we're going to do is we won't be able to have a powerpoint presentation tonight okay same deal what we're going to do is we're going to we'll

have the applicant present their information the board will ask questions then we'll open it up to the public for comments Again, if we could form a line just to make sure we don't have anybody up here for a half hour so we could restrict it to five minutes in the beginning, but then after that, as long as we go through everybody, if you want to come back up, you're

certainly welcome to come back up. Same format as the first meeting we had on this. Okay, Somerset Energy Storage, LLC, for 1606 Riverside Avenue, petitioned Somerset Energy Storage, LLC, regarding the property owned by Somerset Riverside, LLC, 1606 LLC located at 1606 Riverside Avenue, Cessna's map B2 lot 203 for planned development of the section 6.10 of the

Town of Somerset zoning bylaws to allow for the construction of a commercial battery energy storage system abbreviation that's located within the underlying industrial zoning district and the business industrial overlay district as shown on the application and plans filed with the town clerk. One other thing. So due to a scheduling conflict, the fire chief was

not able to attend. The fire chief sent out a letter yesterday, and I'll read that letter when we get to the pod on public safety. And if you have any questions about that, I did talk to the fire chief. He's willing, if we have another meeting, to come back. It's another meeting. We just have to coordinate with him. So what we'd like to do first is

if we could have the applicant present the storage and how they think, how this falls under the bylaw as a use. And then the board will have some questions about a use. And then what we'll do is rather than going to the safety presentation, we'll take comments as they pertain to the use and the bylaw first. Then once we've gone through the bylaw and the use issue, then we'll move on to the safety issue. Okay?

So there's a microphone over there that I believe works. Yeah, yeah. What we'll do is remove this TV. Is there a cord that can hold it? Can this go up there? Can this go up there? We've discussed this at several meetings so I don't have too much new to add.

Somerset presently doesn't have a specifically addresses BESS as a use. However under existing zoning bylaws in the industrial district there is allowed use for wholesale business or storage where goods within a closed structure that is allowed use in the industrial district. There are other uses that are substantially similar to the use including electric generating plant and the

The electrical substation, but essentially, you know, our position is that the project is a battery storage project and storage is allowed use within an industrial district. So the other uses that were in the lab that you sent to us, so at this point you're looking to go ahead with the storage use, correct?

Yes. Okay. Any questions on as a storage use?

- Okay, so the zoning bylaw talks about storage inside the closed structure. Can you just elaborate on why you think that that piece of the bylaw, that bylaw, for multiple purposes, right?

One is to give back energy to the grid, which is more consistent with electric generating, but the other primary purpose of a battery storage facility is to store electricity within the battery, the batteries that are placed on the site within enclosed structures.

So, you know, the primary use is a storage use within an enclosed structure, in this case multiple structures located on the site in the industrial area. And just so we're clear, enclosed structures, just tell us what you're referring to as the enclosed structures. Do you want to explain that?

So the batteries themselves, and we'll get into this a bit more in our presentation, sit inside of modules which sit on racks organized within an enclosure. The enclosure is similar to a connex box, a structure typically used for standard storage of dry goods or other materials. So it's very similar in both structure and nature to really any

other type of storage. But in this case, as Jeff pointed out, this project will be storing energy from the So the enclosure is basically similar to a conic box, but each... so my understanding is that these are grouped into groups of four, right? Is that correct? Yeah, so the way the SmartStack is structured is there's four pods that sit on top of the skid. The whole thing is often referred to as

an enclosure. So it's one enclosure over the four pods, or does each pod have its own, each one has its own enclosure? I mean, like, in the industry jargon, we would just call the whole thing one enclosure. If you want to use, like, the smart stack terminology, it's four pods on a skid, the whole unit, or the whole entire enclosure is then referred to as a smart stack.

So it's like one enclosure over the four pods? Correct. Yeah, sort of. We can, in part of the presentation, which we did email to all, shows what those structures look like in greater detail. Okay. That enclosure, now if you have a fire in that battery, is that enclosure, is it a fireproof enclosure? Does it... Does it contain the battery? That is correct. The enclosure is

designed to contain any sort of thermal runaway incident to only one pod. That is what they have to prove through the large-scale fire testing is that the fire remains within one of the pods that is part of the enclosure. Chris is going to speak more in detail about this during the safety presentation. I'd like to hear a little bit more about it. Yeah. Thank you. I have a question. In one

of our last presentations and meetings we had with you, there was something mentioned about cooling fans that would be placed above these storage units. If this particular project has storage units that are similar to Connex boxes, How is that an entirely enclosed structure if there's a fan on the top or on the side of this particular storage facility? I mean, if you're going to put a fan on top of something or

behind something or on the side of something, there has to be something to allow ventilation into that unit. So then, hence, it's not a completely enclosed storage unit. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Yeah, Chris can come up and talk more about the location of the fans. What I will say though is really any type of storage will include some type of airflow in most cases, like your air controlled

storage systems. I can speak on that. So Chris Grose, Director of Fire Protection and Safety. These pods in these battery modules are liquid cooled. So they're utilizing a chiller system. So each pod actually just has four access points at the bottom that connect down to the lower skid. There's chillers on either end of that skid, and there's

liquid cooled piping that goes to each pod from underneath. So the pods themselves are hermetically sealed-- not hermetically sealed, but they're weather rated enclosures. They do only have a ventilation fan opening that's a requirement by NFP 855 for explosion control. Those aren't normally open. They're weather rated. The louver would open only if there is a

thermal runaway event with subsequent gas release. The fans, maybe you're referring to from the cooling side, is the chillers themselves do have a fan located at the bottom skid, but that's not, that's just, pushing air through the chiller system. It's not actually bringing air, introducing it into the pods themselves. When I look at the section in the bylaw that you're referring to that, in your opinion, qualifies

for battery storage, it's kind of great to me because when I think of storage, something is enclosed in a storage type of container and that's the end of it.

There's no ventilation, there's no, it's kind of a stretch for me. I guess I would have to say that you are interpreting this particular section of this industrial district to classify for battery storage. I can't make that leap to say that batteries for this particular project would classify as being stored within this particular bio?

It just doesn't resonate with me where I'm comfortable saying, yes, I totally agree with you that batteries apply to this particular section of the bylaw for storage. I guess if I could just point out by analogy, if the batteries were in a warehouse, a warehouse also has ventilation and HVA systems. Any storage facility has ventilation, vents, fans, any type of

building, a grocery store. So the idea that there is a storage structure that doesn't have ventilation is just not correct in my opinion.

How do you get the goods without an access point?

You're using an example of a grocery store or a storage facility to, in my opinion, it's apples and oranges. It's not the same thing. But that's just me. I'm just speaking for myself. I'm one member of this board. As it stands right now, all the information I read and the presentations that you've given us, along with some of the comments by those in the audience, I

just can't, not yet anyway, unless you prove me wrong, I just can't make that leap to say that the interpretation of this particular section of the bylaw would accommodate battery storage. That's all I'm gonna say. I'm not gonna beat it into the ground, but that's where I stand so far. - Okay, I'm not sure what else to say. I mean, it's the, Storage where all

goods are within an enclosed structure. The batteries are within an enclosed structure.

Zoning bylaws are not perfect. You know, there's no way to draft a zoning bylaw to address every conceivable use that exists and so we have to use reasonable interpretation of what's written in the bylaw in order to accommodate the use. That's how we address every type of use in any zoning bylaw in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. So what what is being stored? Is it batteries being stored or the

electricity being installed, stored inside the batteries? The saying is the storage use. It would be both. The batteries are being stored in an enclosure and electricity is being stored within the batteries.

is the commodity yeah so we could just have attorney frank uh just give us some information on this and some research that he did the massachusetts appeals court in the case of paul versus the zoning board of appeals of edgartown 28 mass appeals court page 249 the 1990 case implemented what they call the rule of reasonableness and what they said was terms used in the zoning

bylaw should be interpreted 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 meaning so the the bylaw really centers 4.2.6 a centers on three main points storage goods an enclosed structure. There have been several definitions in cases regarding what an enclosed

structure is. In one instance, it was a permanent building that completely obscures its contents from view. Any permanent structure built for the enclosure of property and any permanent space separated from the outside by a continuous top or roof and solid exterior walls on all sides with limited openings. such as vents or small windows. The interior is obscured from view. So those are some of the common uses of

the term enclosed structure. Goods have been defined very generally as any type of product or commodity. In this case, Attorney Ganguly has told us that they're storing both batteries and commodity electricity in the battery.

As far as storage, it's the process of placing or keeping items, materials, or data for future use. It's items being kept in a designated area or facility until needed in the future. They told us in one of their narratives that the electricity comes in off of the grid, they store it in the batteries, and when the time is right, they send it back out to the grid for resale. The court is telling us this is your

guideline, this is what you have to do as board members to determine whether or not this use fits under 4.2.6.

Any other questions from anybody on the board? All right, then we'll open this to public comment, just on the use issue. Ed Souza, 130 Picasso Street, Somerset.

The ordinance category includes structural whether it's equivalent was drafted for generic buildings not for high hazard utility equipment. An interpretation that lumps best into that category is arguably an expansion of the bylaws intent. It should be viewed as a change and it should be requiring a special comment. Thank you. Alan Smith, Chairman of the Board of Selection. So Massachusetts does

not expressly require municipality to allow battery energy storage systems by right simply because the zoning bylaw is silent on best. What the recent Attorney General's decision does say regarding the 2025 Massachusetts Land Court decision is that it strongly indicates that a municipality cannot prohibit or unreasonably regulate many best projects,

particularly where the facility facilitates the collection of solar energy except where necessary to protect public health, safety, and welfare. If the zoning by law does not mention best, a municipality is not required to treat best as a use by right. A local zoning official may still need to determine what category applies or whether a site plan review

or other permit is required. So the fact that you have to determine what category it fits into, the fact that the applicant has consistently changed the categories that this fits into. The email from Foley Haig lists four different categories this fits into. Could be energy generation, could be storage, could be consistent with, shouldn't say similar, they use the

word consistent with, a transformer consistent with a substation. BEST is not listed on the chart of approved uses. That requires this board to make a determination which category they feel it may fit into.

Even in Foley Haig's own email, they point to the zoning bylaw and say that if it's consistent with or similar enough that you can consider it under section 7.5 of our zoning bylaw. 7.5 is a special permit. That's not what's being applied for here.

The applicant should either have to withdraw and reapply or amend the application to a special permit. The discussion that you are having right now just leads to the fact that this is not specifically indicated in our zoning bylaw. And for you to make a determination means that you have to consider this under a special permit. Do you want to respond to that?

Which mic is it? Hank, hold on one second. Please. Yeah, you always have the opportunity after somebody says something, you can, if you would like to, you'll have to be, if you'd like to be, you can't. Yeah, but it's within your, really it's within the zoning enforcement officer's ability to make the interpretation of whether use is allowed under any of the existing

use provisions. In this case, the zoning enforcement officer has deferred to you, the zoning board. You are able to make the interpretation We've made very clear that we acknowledge that BESS doesn't exist currently in your zoning bylaw because most of your zoning bylaw predates the existence of BESS. This is not something that is unusual in uses that are applied for and exist throughout the Commonwealth and have for

many years. We've seen this many times going back to cell towers and all types of uses. You can reasonably interpret the zoning bylaw provisions to consider this an allowed use and if you determine that you don't think it is fit squarely within the allowed use under 4.1.4 you can issue a special permit for something that is substantially similar to use that's not listed. So you have the ability to

do that and then yes that is a special permit. As far as The Commonwealth not requiring best use within any individual municipality, that gets a little more complicated because there's case law that exists from the Supreme Judicial Court and the Land Court that treats battery storage systems the same as solar generating systems because there are structures that facilitate the

storage of solar energy. Solar is protected under Mass General Law Chapter 40A, Section 3, Paragraph 9, which is also known as the Dover Amendment.

So there are multiple cases that exist right now. There was another case that came down yesterday from the SJC, the Petersham case, where they have taken the position that if you de facto determine that a use is not allowed, that is a use that facilitates storage of solar energy or water, facilitates solar storage that you are running afoul of the Dover Amendment. So please keep that in consideration. Okay. Go

ahead, Mr. Mendes. Lloyd Mendes, I live at 46 Anaheim Street. I'm going to disagree with my esteemed fellow board member, Alan Smith. We live in a highly developed technological society with new inventions all the time in industry. If we define our bylaw to mean that we can only do things that were written yesterday, that means we can never build

anything that's current. That means we have to push away all modern investment. A more sensible, reasonable approach is to use the right that the bylaw gives us, that Chapter 40B gave us, to ask is the proposed use similar to a use that is permitted in the bylaw? And number two, is it not substantially more harmful to the neighborhood? I argue that obviously, yes, this is not exactly like anything that we've seen

before. Look at any other investment happening in America today. Nothing that is being built in America today is exactly like it was 10, 15 years ago. People ain't building coal plants anymore. Sure, a lot of people even in this room would love to have a coal plant come back, just like it was in 1960, but this is not 1960. If you have the right to determine if this is substantially similar, now

whether or not it is less harmful to the neighborhood, that's not up to me to say, that's up to Our expert, Fire Chief Barrows, he just wrote an excellent letter on ways to make this investment safer. It's up to your third party reviewers.

I won't comment on that part. I'm only commenting on the first part. You have the right to decide, and it's perfectly reasonable for you to decide that this is substantially similar. I'd like to address, I believe it was Mr. Smith's reference to Paul versus Eggertown. the reasonableness rule, it would be unreasonable for you to apply

that reasonableness rule and mandate that they put these batteries under one continuous wall and under one continuous roof because your own fire chief has just sent you a letter saying it's safer if the walls and roofs are separated because it allows these firefighters a safer way to access the the facility to control any blazes so reasonableness means human reasonableness it doesn't mean going back to reading from a

checklist you gentlemen are not checklist checkers you're here to make a reasonable judgment that's my position thank you thank you kathy souza somerset mouse um As far as the definition of storage, I believe, and I could be wrong, but the battery cannot survive on its own, storing the electricity without the storage unit. Unlike if you have grain in a storage unit, you can take the building away, you can

still have the grain. any other similar product. To me that's a special permit, right? I don't think that battery sits out there and survives without that battery rack, those protections, those humidifiers. It's part of the battery. I think Lloyd just made an excellent point for why this is a special permit. So, you know, I agree with what he's saying. If you have to rely, that's why we

have a special permit process, right? Because we can't rely on past zoning, and this is the exact example of a special permit. Thank you. I did just want to respond to a couple of the comments, one from the attorney from Foley Hague. I didn't I never said that you should deny this and that this board should violate the Dover Amendment. What I was talking

about is in the email from Foley Hague on page two, number two at the top of the page. It says Massachusetts law requires municipalities to allow best by right where the bylaw does not address it. My comments were that that is not the case. That's not what the Dover Amendment says. That's not what the Attorney General's guidance has been, that you have to allow it because

it's not just the opposite. You can't deny it solely on that basis, but you don't have to approve it. This should go the special permit route so that the board can consider what items that are approved uses in our zoning bylaw chart might fit to the point that Attorney Eichmann made. might fit items on the chart. Just one last comment. Nobody is saying that they can't possibly build on this site.

We're saying it's not a use by right. So if they weren't going for battery storage or Brayton Point wanted to go and put a nuclear plant there or something other than what is just a common thing in the ZBA, We want to make sure that we have the use by right part is not something they can just fall back on. So making this decision

that's saying that this is a use by right and doesn't have to go to a special permit process can have huge effects down the road. Like you did it, you made this decision here, and I understand not every decision is always the same, but this is a perfect example of And I don't get why they don't want to go down the special permit. Maybe they could come

up and say, "Hey, we don't want to do that. Tell us why." Because we're not denying you. We're just saying that we want it not to be used by right. We want it to be by special permit. Maybe you can come up and say why you don't want to go down that process. No one has said that we don't want to go down that process. taken the position and made

the case that it's within your ability to approve this as a NAS of right use based on the language in the bylaw. In the memo we provided you, we pointed out that if that is something that you are unable to do, that you have the ability to make the special permit determination pursuant to 4.1.4. We've been open about that and pointed that out. that would be a special permit before the zoning

board so that is the same group of people that we have here and would be largely the same process we're going through under development plan review with the same review of the project and materials so we're not saying that we don't want to do it we're asking you to make the determination we're making our case for why we don't believe it's necessary but that determination is up to you

I'll also just add we've been engaging with the town of Somerset since April of 2025. We've been following the town's guidance on which process we should be in, which applications we should be filing, and that guidance led us here to that section of the bylaws. So as Jeff said, we don't really have a preference for how you do this. But we do want to be treated fairly

and we were guided down this path. It is absolutely reasonable to use one of the many definitions that battery storage fits within and permit this as we've applied and as we were guided to apply. As Jeff said, we don't have an issue either way. We just ask that you treat us fairly in this process. Thank you.

Just to add to that, yes, part of the reason we're here and you're making the determination instead of the building inspector is because, like for many projects throughout the state, we requested a zoning determination from the building inspector. So we requested the determination and he deferred to you. Can you just elaborate on that,

though, because that's not really my question. So you have guidance on opinion from the building inspector? that this should build a planned development approval process, not a special criminal process? No. We don't have written guidance. When we, after numerous meetings with many different town officials, we asked for a determination at which point the building commissioner

deferred to you all. But the building commissioner was one of the people that we met with and who supported this application initially. I understand it could be murky to some people, but again, reasonableness, this use fits within many categories that are within your use table. Okay, so you had meetings with them and verbally this was the path that they indicated you should

follow, is that correct? That is correct. I think maybe it might be helpful if we had a building inspector come and we could talk to him about this. I just want to be more clear about what guidance we received whether that's written or not on January 9th we got a message that included Jim Magyar, Mark Iulucci and the town planner Amy that we had asked me and miss larkin had asked

probably back in december i can go back and we have this correspondence if we should go the special permit route or through the zoning board of appeals through the plan development process at that time with those three folks on the correspondence we were told to do the plan development application through the zoning board so that is on January 9th me and Ms Larkin have that correspondence as well the people in the

town do that I named and so then we you know prepped our application submitted February 26th so There is written correspondence. It's not like a letter of determination, but we were directed this way, and I think that's what Ms. Larkin is referring to, like treated fairly. Now we're six months into this process almost, and we had tried to get that clear guidance to come down this path, so I think that's kind

of where we're at right now. So was it sent email? Yes. And who did this email come from? I believe it came from Ms. Messier. I just found it on my phone. Again, it was January 9th. but mark yaluchi and jim aguiar were copied amy was the one who sent that um there's probably more down the chain i'm just you know going off what i had i you know was not aware that you were not

aware of that conversation okay thank you sure Okay, Lloyd Mendez again. I'd like to respond to the sense we're getting, the implication that somehow planned development is a cakewalk. This is a good process. Look at the letter you just got July 15th from the fire chief. He's in multi-stage negotiations with this applicant. It's part of a plan development. And the things they're talking about are serious

things. And the applicant is agreeing with the fire chief at each step of the way. The plan development is not like some easy kindergarten version of of a real program. It's a good way to assess projects. Work with the project -- work with the system we have, this planned development system. Sure, if we have to go the special permit, it'll take more time, but if we have to go, sure, I'll come

and defend the project then. But don't slam your own -- the town's legal way of evaluating these projects through planned development. It's a good process. Thank you.

So I just want to speak to the idea that the applicant, Flatiron, relied on the town planner of Somerset to determine the best approach for this. I mean, this isn't somebody putting an addition on the house in the town of Somerset that isn't represented by council.

that isn't a substantial company that's done other projects similar to this in the past, doesn't have the ability to research other decisions in the state of Massachusetts. Again, we have the email that was sent to the board from Foley Haig expressing all the reasons why this is a use by right. So the fact that the company decided to potentially take one person who works for the town and say, well,

this is the way we're gonna do it because this person said it versus seeking a legal opinion from their council as to what the best path is based on similar projects that have been done in other municipalities in Somerset. To me, it's the approach that small applicants that come before this board use, not multimillion dollar corporations. in all fantasy of the town planner

it is my understanding through emails that i have received that she was not the sole person involved in this and i i know when we read an email at the last meeting that was from attorney eichmann of kp law that would went to mr ag yard there was a there was an opinion on the use issue so to characterize it as the town planner was the

one who decided this no that's wrong that's absolutely incorrect and i don't think that's fair just want to clarify a couple of things here because i've been coming to a lot of these meetings i believe in the first planning board meeting ms mcdonald let this company know that they should be applying for a special permit so they've known for quite a long time that town and its elected officials told

them special permit is the proper way to go. In fact, they never even got to the conditions, right? Mr. Little had a whole bunch of conditions. They never even got to read those conditions in that plan development because that board agreed that it needed to be a special permit and they didn't want to give a recommendation, correct?

They didn't want to give a recommendation. So I know that I was there and I heard... Her say to you guys, you should be doing a special permit. I don't believe that the letter that we received from the planning board said this has to go through the special permit process. I mean, we have the letter. We'll look to see if that language is in there. But I do not believe that they

specifically said this has to go through the special permit process. They did not. They said there was a lot to be done. It did not mention special permit. It was an unfavorable policy that's made full time that she thought it was a special permit. Excuse me, Mrs. Sousa. That's one member of the planning board. We get a letter from the planning board as a whole, not from one member of the planning

board. So the letter, you can watch the meetings, and if that was her opinion, I respect her opinion, but the bottom line is we get a letter From the entire planning board. So a lot of times we get letters from the planning board and the vote is they recommend that we should approve it and the votes for the one or three or two. So obviously they will want to agree with that.

The argument was they didn't know that they needed to do that. And they said that they had conversations, nothing in writing was the first thing that they said. They also had a conversation with Mrs. McDonald, who was an elected official on the planning board, about this. In her opinion, it should have been a special permit. So it wasn't a secret. It's avoidance, Steve. They're trying to avoid that. I'm not.

saying one way or the other if ms mcdonald had that opinion or not i'm just telling you that this is the letter that we got to the zoning board of appeals from planning board regarding recommendation letter for a plant development for summer energy storage llc proposed best at 1606 riverside avenue census map b2 lot 203. Please be advised that at the meeting of the Planning Board held on May 6, 2026, the

Board voted 3-2 to issue an unfavorable recommendation on the plan development proposal due to the lack of information submitted to the Planning Board for review. That's the entire communication we got from the Planning Board. They're required to send that to us? we're required to get that and look at this nowhere in this communication doesn't mention mention a

special permit just this is just a factual thing i understand what happened in their meeting because quite frankly i've never watched their meeting i don't have any interest in watching their meeting on this because i think that that can sometimes cause a zoning board member to be swayed one way or the other. The information is presented to the planning board, and I think that

interferes with the zoning board of appeals review process. Enough said, thank you. I just hear a battle. I just, just for clarification, do you have a letter of determination from the building inspector? Do we have one? Not that I'm aware of. Did he ever write a letter of determination? Not that I am aware of. So anything other than that, the

letter of determination has to come from the building inspector, not the town planner, not the town administrator. And without that, it has to be this board's decision. So the town planner did not write a letter of determination. I don't believe there's any letter of determination signed by the town planner or anyone. So everything else is just an

opinion. I believe that the building inspector referred this issue to the board. So anything that was given prior to this moment right now is an opinion? Because there's no anything in determination. The town planner is not a... Under her authority, not give a determination. She can give an opinion. If she would like, through you, would she like to speak on it? No, she does not. Oh, okay. And we don't have an

opinion from anyone. Mr. Alucci, the town planner, anyone. Okay, I was just going by what the company was referring to. I'll do a FOIA request for those emails and those letters. They were alluding to the fact that this was the process they were told to go. So I'll do it for your response. They just stated that this is the process that they were verbally instructed to pursue. Okay. They don't have any,

and they can correct me if I'm wrong, but what I heard when they were up there was that they don't have a letter of determination from anyone. So they weren't advised to go for a special permit. They were advised to go this route.

Am I correct? They were not advised to move the special... We're going to let them answer that question. Okay, thank you. I was never present at any of these meetings. I don't have any idea what was said.

Yeah, we weren't formally advised. We worked with Mark Ulitschi, Amy Messier, and the building commissioner, James Aguiar, informally, as we do with every project development, to understand how we permit this project. Very common. I assume other types of users for big infrastructure projects would do the same thing. Because of the scale of

this project, it does take a long time to compile applications. So we always have preliminary meetings with town officials to inform which application route we should go. We are not trying to state that we have any formal determination. All we're saying is we were informally guided to be on this process. And when we formally requested a use

determination, from Jim Aguiar, it was deferred to this board. So you captured everything correctly.

Yeah, I just want to clarify the reason why I came up and referred to that email is because I believe it was Mr. Souza had said, can you let us know why you're avoiding the special permit? And in that communication, it's clear that we were open to the town's guidance on how to enter the process for our initial permit application. We thought that was important. So, you know, I wasn't trying to

open up a can of worms of avoidance or... I wanted to respond to that comment because I thought that was a good point and important to respond to. I also want to clarify that I did not come up here to throw the town planner under the bus. The fact remains that the communication came from her to me and Ms. Larkin and there were other town officials on there and I assumed that

she had consulted with other people and I clearly said it was an email correspondence and not any type of written determination or anything like that. So I apologize for what this has caused but I thought the original question was why are we avoiding a special permit and I just want to show that our team was guided this way and we were open to either process and we were

referred to this process which I again I I think to Mister Mendez's point is is you know detailed enough to get through this. Thank you. And the other question anyone else any comments. If you're prepared to take a vote on a finding you've got one of 3 choices. You can find that the use is allowed as a matter of right under 4.2.6. That it's a facility where storage of goods will be in an enclosed

structure. That's one choice. Your second choice is to go that this type of use is similar in respects and that a special permit is warranted under, I think it's 2.1.4? 4.1.4. 4.1.4. Your third choice.

Because there is a third choice, is that you can make a finding that the Dover Amendment, Chapter 48, Section 3 applies because this project involves the building of structures that facilitate the collection of solar energy. But at some point, so they could go forward as a Dover Amendment exception, but at some point, You're going to have to make a finding as to whether there's going to be

proper protection of the public health, safety and welfare. But you wouldn't have to make that determination tonight because there's still a lot of material to go over. So you've got three choices. So use allowed is a matter of right, it's in need of a special permit or it's protected by the Dover Amendment under 48 section three. Understanding that if you choose number three, You will at some point have to

take evidence and make a finding as to how they're going to protect the health, safety and welfare of the community. I'd like to hear from the building inspector before I make any type of a decision to see what he's got to say about it. I'd feel more comfortable with that.

Yeah, I also would like more information on this Dover exemption and how it applies to this before. What I don't want to do is back ourselves into a corner where we end up making a decision that ends up getting an appeal and we end up losing total control of making a decision that obviously the safety issue with this is, I'm going to say obviously, personally, that's the biggest issue that I have

with this. So if... What Arthur just explained, if it was a Dover exemption but the safety issue still applies in, I don't want to make another decision that wouldn't give us the ability to review the safety issue. So I would like some more information on the Dover issue before I would feel comfortable to make a vote on, to take a vote on this.

I would agree with my colleagues. I want to hear what the building inspector has to say. As I read the statement of the whole purpose of the zoning bylaw at our last meeting, it's about safety for the residents, first and foremost. We also have to take into consideration that our neighbors across the bay are directly affected by anything that happens in this particular facility, too, if an incident Should go

back real quick. So yeah, I would like to get some more information from those folks before I go ahead and make the determination on whether which way we should go with this particular project. Okay, so I think we're on agreement. Mike, you're on. So that's why I said it could be a. I think we're in agreement that we're going to

seek some more information. We'll have the building inspector come to the next meeting where we can talk to the building inspector. We can do some more research on the Dover amendment issue and see how that applies here. Just so we don't make a decision on the use and get ourselves back into a corner, okay? The thing too is you could ask the applicant to submit something on just the Dover amendment. Yeah,

that's a good point. So we could also have the applicant submit something on the Dover amendment that we could have reviewed by author and- John. Or yeah, attorney or whoever. Yeah, okay.

Okay, so you would stand comfortable just with that? Okay, okay, we'll do that. Good, okay, thank you. I have one really quick question. And just how is this related to solar? Just so I can process. That's why we need to look into the Dover Amendment to see whether or not it is, right? Because sitting here right now, I don't know any of the case law on this. I don't know how, you know, if there's

some place that does solar, some solar field somewhere that puts electricity in here. So that's in case they don't do battery and they want to do solar instead? Storage of solar, then I don't want to say, you know, and not know. Okay, thank you. All right?

Okay, if you want to do the safety presentation, what I'd like to do first though is read the letter from the fire chief and then you can make the presentation. Okay, this is a rather lengthy letter and this letter is available on the website, on the ZBA website, where the information is about this project. What I'll do is I'll read this. This is going to take a little bit

of time and then we'll have the... Applicant make a presentation and then the board will ask questions and then we can open that up for public comment on the safety issue. This is addressed to the Somerset Zoning Board of Appeals from Chief Jamison T.J. Barrows dated July 15, 2026, regarding supplemental fire department review proposed salt cod battery energy storage system theft.

Since issuance of any previous position letter regarding the proposed Salt Cod Battery Energy Storage System, members of the Somerset Fire Department met with representatives of Flatiron Energy on July 10, 2026 to continue our technical review of the proposed project. During that meeting, Flatiron presented additional information and conceptual revisions intended to address several operational

and life safety concerns previously identified by the Fire Department. While much of the information presented remains in draft form and continues to undergo evaluation, the meeting provided additional information necessary for the department's ongoing review of the proposed installation. While several items remain under evaluation, additional review will be necessary as the project continues to evolve. Meaningful

progress has been made in addressing a number of the operational concerns identified in my previous correspondence. This letter summarizes those developments, identify those areas that continues to require further evaluation, and should the zoning board of appeals ultimately approve the project, respectfully recommend several conditions intended to further enhance firefighter

safety, emergency response capabilities, and protection of the surrounding community. Among the topics discussed during the meeting were several revisions to the proposed site layout intended to address operational concerns previously identified by the Fire Department. These include an updated turn analysis, meaningful improvements to site access, and revisions to

the proposed Fire Department staging area, including its size, location, and overall configuration.

The meeting also included productive discussions regarding fire suppression strategies, hydrant configuration, and perimint air quality monitoring. Collectively, these revisions and discussions represent a significant improvement over earlier conceptual layouts and provided the fire department with additional information necessary to continue its technical review. One of the more significant discussions centered

on revisions to the proposed site layout intended to increase separation distances between battery units. In response to concerns previously raised by the fire department regarding firefighter access and operational flexibility within the site, Flatiron presented conceptual layout revisions that increased separation distances throughout the site, most notably between opposing battery unit faces. Although

these revisions remain subject to continued review and refinement, they represent a meaningful improvement over previously submitted conceptual layouts. From an emergency response perspective, increased separation distances offer benefits beyond improving firefighter access. Additional spacing between battery units has the potential to reduce the likelihood of thermal propagation from one unit to another during

a thermal runaway event, while also providing firefighters with greater flexibility for hose line deployment and defensive firefighting operations from safer locations. The potential operational and thermal Mitigation benefits associated with these revisions were discussed at length and while they remain under review, the concepts presented represent a positive step toward improving overall

site safety. In addition to site layout revisions, considerable attention was given to identifying a fire protection strategy appropriate for an installation of this size and complexity. Following additional evaluation and discussions with the applicant, it is my opinion that the most effective approach would incorporate multiple redundant layers of fire protection rather

than reliance upon a single suppression method. Among the fire protection concepts discussed during the meeting was the incorporation of a fire rover remote fire suppression system.

From an operational standpoint, this technology offers several advantages including early fire detection, continuous monitoring through visible light and thermal imaging cameras, remote activation, and targeted water application.

One of the system's most significant operational advantages is its capacity to begin cooling adjacent battery units immediately following detection of a fire event prior to the arrival of the fire department. Upon arrival, responding personnel would have the ability to assume manual control of the fire rover system from the designated fire

department staging area, allowing fire suppression operations to continue from a safe location while minimizing firefighter exposure to smoke, radiant heat, and hazards associated with a thermal runaway event. Depending upon incident conditions, the fire rover system would then be utilized to provide intermittent cooling of exposed battery units as needed or assist

with smoke dispersion, allowing responding personnel to manage the incident more effectively while reducing unnecessary exposure to hazardous conditions. Although the fire rover system offers significant operational advantages, the fire department does not view it as a stand-alone fire protection solution. Rather, it should be considered the primary component of a comprehensive fire

protection strategy, incorporating multiple redundant layers designed to improve firefighter safety and enhance protection of adjacent battery units. An important secondary component of that strategy is the incorporation of strategically located yard hydrants equipped with permanently mounted monitor appliances.

While these monitors would not constitute a standalone fire suppression system, they would effectively complement the fire rover system by providing an additional layer of exposure protection and, when conditions warrant, assist with smoke dispersion. Properly located monitors could be placed into operation rapidly with the labor intensive deployment of multiple hose lines allowing

personnel to remain focused on other critical emergency operations. Final hydrogen quantity, location, and distribution throughout the site and overall configuration should remain subject to fire department review as the final site layout is developed. Another topic discussed during the meeting was the installation of permanently mounted air quality monitoring devices

around the perimeter of the facility. From an emergency response perspective, this capability would provide significant operational benefits by allowing incident commanders to continuously monitor atmospheric conditions in real time without requiring personnel to enter potentially hazardous areas. During an incident involving a large-scale battery energy storage system, rapidly changing atmospheric conditions may

influence tactical decisions including firefighter positioning, the establishment or adjustment of operational control zones, and the evaluation of protective actions, if warranted, based upon actual incident conditions. When integrated with the proposed fire rover system, perimeter air quality monitoring will provide incident commanders with continuous situational awareness from the designated fire

department staging area. Together, these systems would allow suppression efforts, atmospheric monitoring, and overall incident management to be coordinated from a safe location while reducing firefighter exposure to products of combustion and other hazards associated with thermal runaway events. Given the

proximity of the proposed site location to surrounding residential neighborhoods, I believe permanently installed air quality monitoring would represent an important enhancement to the overall emergency response strategy while further improving firefighter safety and the protection of the surrounding community. Lastly, Flatiron also presented

an updated plume dispersion study during the meeting for departmental review. Although a copy of the revised study was not provided to the fire department at that time, the presentation offered additional information regarding the analysis performed. Upon receipt of the finalized plume study, the fire department will continue its review to better understand the operational implications of the findings.

Given the importance of this analysis in evaluating potential impacts in nearby residential areas and informing emergency response planning, I respectfully recommend that the finalized Plume Disparity Study undergo an independent third-party technical review as part of the overall project evaluation prior to final project approval. Should the zoning board of appeals determine that this project should move forward, I

respectfully recommend that the following conditions be incorporated into any approval. Collectively, these conditions are intended to address the operational and life safety considerations identified through the fire department's review while enhancing firefighter safety, improving emergency response capabilities, and providing additional layers of protection for the surrounding community.

One. Fire Department review of final site design. Prior to the issuance of a building permit, the final site layout including battery unit spacing, apparatus access roads, pedestrian access points, operational corridors, hydrant quantity and location, and the fire department staging area shall be reviewed and approved by the Somerset Fire Department. Two, additional emergency access. If permitted by applicable

regulations and site constraints, A third fire department emergency access point for emergency apparatus shall be incorporated from Riverside Avenue to the southerly end of the property. Final design and location shall remain subject to review and approval by the Somerset Fire Department. Three, fire department staging area. Prior to the issuance of a building permit, the fire size,

location, and configuration of the fire department staging area shall be developed in coordination with and approved by the Somerset Fire Department. Four, integrated fire protection and monitoring system. The project shall incorporate the fire rover fire suppression system as the primary component of an integrated fire protection and monitoring

strategy. The system shall provide early fire detection, visible light camera monitoring, thermal imaging for hot spot identification, remote and manual operation, targeted water application, intermittent cooling of exposed battery units as needed, operation from the designated fire department staging area, continuous monitoring before, during, and

after an incident, continuous thermal monitoring of involved and exposed battery units, 5. Yard hydrants and fixed monitor appliances. Prior to the issuance of a building permit, the final hydrant quantity, spacing, location, distribution throughout the site, overall configuration, and supporting hydraulic calculations demonstrating adequate fire

flow and duration shall be submitted to, reviewed, and approved by the Summits at Fire Department. The proposed water supply shall be demonstrated to provide sufficient flow and duration to support the anticipated fire protection strategy for the facility.

Six, fire department equipment caches. Strategically located equipment cabinets shall be installed at determined locations throughout the site. The number, location, and contents of these cabinets shall be subject to review and approval by the Somerset Fire Department.

At a minimum, each cabinet shall contain hydrant bags, 1- and 3/4-inch high-rise hose packs, and any additional equipment identified by the Fire Department to support rapid deployment during an emergency. Perimeter air quality monitoring. Prior to the issuance of a building permit, the final design, number, location, capabilities, integration, and monitoring parameters of

the perimeter air quality monitoring system shall be reviewed and approved by the Somerset Fire Department. Permanently installed air quality monitoring devices shall be installed around the perimeter of the facility and integrated into the overall emergency response strategy. The system shall provide continuous real-time atmospheric monitoring during an incident and allow responding personnel

to remotely evaluate changing conditions from the designated fire department staging area. Eight, annual functional demonstration of fire protection system. All fire protection monitoring and emergency response systems, including the fire rover system, currently mounted hydrant monitors, air quality monitoring system, gate access systems, and associated

communication equipment, shall be inspected, tested, and maintained in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations. Documentation of testing shall be made available to the Somerset Fire Department upon request. The fire department shall reserve the right to witness periodic functional demonstration of these systems. Records of all inspections,

testing, maintenance, and repairs shall be maintained and made available to the Somerset Fire Department upon request. 9. Emergency Contact Technical Support 24 hour technical support from a qualified technical representative familiar with the installed battery system shall be available to respond with emergency personnel and provide technical assistance during any incident involving the facility. 10.

Pre-incident planning cabinet. A secure Knox accessible pre-incident planning cabinet shall be installed at the primary entrance. Final location to be approved by the Somerset Fire Department containing current site plans, emergency procedures, contact information, safety data sheets where applicable, emergency response plan, hazard mitigation

plan, battery specifications, hydrant layout, shutdown procedures, and other information deemed necessary by the fire department. 11. Fire Department Training Prior to commencement of commercial operation, the owner shall provide comprehensive site-specific training to all Somerset Fire Department personnel and any mutual aid fire departments identified by the Somerset Fire

Department. Annual refresher training shall be provided to Somerset Fire Department personnel. Refresher training for identified mutual aid fire departments shall be provided at intervals determined by the Somerset Fire Department. Additional training shall also be provided following any significant modification to the battery technology, fire protection system, air quality

monitoring system, or emergency response procedures. 12. Final ERP/HMP approval. Prior to commencement of commercial operation, the Final Emergency Response Plan and the Hazard Mitigation Plan shall be submitted to, reviewed, and approved by the Somerset Fire Department. Any subsequent revisions to either plan shall likewise be submitted to the Somerset Fire Department for review and approval prior to

implementation. 13. Final Acceptance Testing. Prior to commencement of commercial operations, all fire protection, monitoring, and emergency response systems, including the fire rover system, permanently mounted hydrant monitors, perimeter air quality monitor system, gate access systems and associated communications equipment shall successfully complete acceptance testing witnessed by

the Somerset Fire Department. Any deficiencies identified during acceptance testing shall be corrected and the affected systems successfully retested prior to the commencement of commercial operation.

In closing, I appreciate the continued dialogue that had taken place between representatives of Flatiron Energy and the Somerset Fire Department throughout this review process.

Since my previous correspondence, the applicant has provided additional information and conceptual design revisions that have assisted the fire department in its ongoing technical evaluation of the proposed project. While several aspects of the plan continue to undergo review, the discussions to date have provided greater clarity regarding

a number of the operational considerations previously identified by this department.

Should the zoning board of appeals determine that this project should move forward, I respectfully request that careful consideration be given to the recommendations outlined in this letter, as I believe they would significantly enhance firefighter safety, emergency response capabilities, and the protection of the

surrounding community. Finally, I continue to recommend that the finalized plume dispersion study undergo an independent third party technical review prior to final project approval. Given the importance of this analysis and evaluating potential impacts in nearby residential areas, an independent review will help ensure that emergency planning and protective actions are based upon a

comprehensive and objective evaluation of the study's methodology, assumptions, and conclusions. Likewise, I believe the final battery technology, fire protection systems, air quality monitoring systems, and other critical life safety features incorporated into the project should be subject to independent third-party technical review by qualified professionals with demonstrated experience in utility-scale battery

energy storage systems. These reviews should be based upon the final project design rather than conceptual plans presented during the permitting process. The Somerset Fire Department remains committed to continuing its coordination with the applicant through the design process to review future submittals, evaluate additional technical information as it becomes

available, and provide operational input regarding fire protection, emergency response, and life safety considerations. Respectfully submitted, James and T.J. Barrows Fire Chief.

So at this time, we'll have the applicant come up and make their presentation. They're limited by the fact that we don't have any audio or visual screen that they can project this on. If they make this presentation, we can coordinate with them. They could provide a copy of the presentation that they make, the slides that they were going to present, and we could put that on the website if they're willing to

provide that. And they've indicated that they will do this. Yeah, so we will provide the slides. We came up with a workaround so that you all can hopefully view the slides at the same time.

So Kelsey is in the back. If you would like the slides emailed to you right now, please in an orderly fashion. line up with Kelsey, you can give her an email address and she'll email you the slide deck so you can follow along on your phone. We can set up a computer here for the viewers at home.

I think we had to do this in another meeting where you, Brian, just panned the camera to the slides. So we'll set up another here and then we have another laptop that we'll put up for the board so you can look at the slides So you don't have to look on your phone. So for the board, we're bringing up this big laptop for you to take a look at. For the public,

if you would like a copy emailed to you of the slide deck, please go visit Kelsey in the back. And then I will have a presentation up here. I think that's the best we can do right now. And we will post this on the town website after. We appreciate your flexibility.

So I'll just give everyone a minute to get situated here.

And I will say as always if folks have questions about the presentation we will hang out after the meeting you're happy to ask those questions um you will I've never seen anything with the W-H-A-L-L-E you are able to get a copy right now as well you will need to connect to the wi-fi to be able to receive an email right now Somerset Middle School's wi-fi is guest-sms you can join that wi-fi network to

receive an email with powerpoint presentation again appreciate everyone's flexibility here this is this yeah this is this yeah good steve are you good over there yeah we're all set awesome thank you very much for getting so much stuff of course I'm going to go ahead and get started while folks are adding their email address.

You good, Brian? Awesome. Okay. Thank you everyone for joining this evening. My name is Hannah Larkin. I'm a project manager with Flatiron Energy and I oversee our Salt Cod Storage project. I have a master's degree in urban resilience and sustainability from the University of Colorado Boulder. That's how I got into this industry. I care about combating climate

change. I consider myself an environmentalist and outdoor enthusiast and that's really what drove me to want to develop battery energy storage projects because of the positive impact they have on the environment. I'm joined by my colleagues this evening, many of whom you've met already. We have Chris Groves, our Director of Fire Protection and Safety. Kelsey Perry, our

Senior Manager of Community Engagement. Aaron Baker is over there. Wave your hand, Aaron. Thank you. Aaron is the Vice President of ISO New England. Joe Capolino is just coming back from the bathroom. Sorry, Joe. Joe is our project engineer from VHB. We have Jeff Ganguly, our legal counsel from Foley Hoag, and then we are also joined by

two guests this evening. Adam is from ESRG. He joined our first planning board meeting, or I'm sorry, zoning board meeting. And then we're also joined by Kevin Marr. He's with Hazard Dynamics. He's going to be talking about this evening our plume study. I do want to address one comment that Mr. Monez, you made earlier regarding safety impacts

to residents in Fall River. As evidenced by our plume study, we don't expect any threat to anyone, even immediate residences along Stephen Street from this project, even under worst case scenario conditions. Kevin will get into that in the plume study, but I just want to correct that on the record. There will be no impacts to residents in

Fall River or residents in Somerset from this project, even under worst case scenario conditions.

So we're going on to slide three now. zoning board recap and objectives just so everyone can follow along in our last meeting we reviewed the update deliverables we had public comments and we followed that meeting by providing the response to those comments to the zoning board those are now published on the town's website we provided funding for the peer reviewer to allow that work to begin

we have provided an updated acoustical assessment and we've also provided an operations and maintenance plan for the facility In this meeting, we do want to, so we already discussed use. We would hope to have some sort of discussion on the status of the peer review. And it is our understanding that you will need an extension following this meeting. So I just want to raise that as well.

We will get into a safety discussion after I'm done with my comments here. And then my understanding is we'll open the floor to public comments. As we have in previous meetings, for efficiency's sake, we will be responding to all public comments in writing following this meeting. We will take questions from the board, and we'd be happy to

address any of the public's comments that you would like us to address. But again, just for the sake of efficiency and having a record of our responses, we would like to respond in writing. Okay going on to slide four. So the responses the comments from the first meeting on the website for this project the town's website for this project So they did

provide those responses and they are available for everybody to look at on the website. Thank you Okay, we are on slide four titled design refinements.

I So following our last meeting, we've been working closely with the fire department to refine the design. There's been no major changes that would impact zoning. However, there has been some changes to address fire department concerns and make the site more compact. So this updated design has been reviewed by the fire

department. The updated design increases setback distance from Stevens Street to battery enclosures. In our last design, The enclosure, the distance from the property boundary to the closest battery enclosure was 110 feet. In our latest design refinement, that distance has increased to 147 feet, and that again is from the property line. So from the

closest residence, you'd add approximately 50 feet to that distance. So we're at just about 200 feet from the closest residence with our closest battery structure.

This refinement also set the sound barrier further back from the property line on Stephen Street. On the eastern side of Stephen Street, closest to Riverside Avenue, it is still a 50-foot setback from the boundary of the property to the sound wall. On the western side of Stephen Street, that setback distance has increased to 156 feet from the

property boundary to the sound wall, and that's on the side adjacent to County Street, or perpendicular to County Street. This creates a much larger green space along County Street. You can see this in the image on the side up here. And again, this will be online for folks who don't have it in front of them now. This design also provides additional space for fire department staging and improved accessibility of

that staging area. So previously, our staging area was in the southwest corner of the site after further conversations with fire department we moved the staging area to the northwest corner of the site so they can pull into the site and have a staging area immediately off where they pull in and they don't have to turn around or drive around far along the site to get to that staging area we've also added

an additional access point along riverside avenue This is just to give a third access point to the site that would be used only in the case of an emergency. It would not be the main access. All of these refinements reflect a meaningful incorporation of both public comments and fire department feedback. So going on to slide-- - Just a comment. - Yes, of course. - From a discussion I

had with the fire chief, the third access, the one on Riverside, allows them greater apparatus access And he was looking for that so that they could just, there's another point that they could just drive in rather than having to turn once they're inside. So if you look at slide five, you can see the previous design side by side with the updated design. Going on to slide six. I'm just

going to set the stage here to get into our safety discussion. There's a few high level facts that are important to understand as we get into a deeper safety discussion. So I just want to set the stage for to pass the mic over to Chris here. So this slide is slide six entitled What is BESS? So BESS stands for Battery Energy Storage Systems. This list, battery energy storage systems are large rechargeable

battery systems that store electricity for later use. There are various types of battery energy storage systems. Lithium ion batteries are most common in modern utility scale applications. A lithium ion is a broad category of batteries.

Within the lithium ion family, there are various sub-chemistries. This is a point that often leads to misinformation and confusion about the safety of battery storage systems. We are proposing the sub-chemistry lithium iron phosphate or LFP. An alternate subchemistry that was more frequently used about a decade ago and into the early 2020s was nickel manganese cobalt or

NMC. These subchemistries are very different. Lithium iron phosphate or LFP is generally considered a safer battery because it has a lower risk of fire. They tend to have longer life spans and they do not contain heavy metals. Nickel, manganese, cobalt batteries, on the other hand, do contain heavy metals. They have a higher energy density and they

perform better in certain temperature ranges. So they're totally different sub-chemistries and I've seen that get confused a lot. So just again, we are proposing a lithium iron phosphate battery for the SELFCON storage project. Moving on to slide seven, entitled external components of a battery energy storage system. When we talk about a battery energy storage system, we're not just talking

about the enclosures. The system also includes a main power transformer, which sits within the switchyard. The presentation up here has arrows pointing to everything. I'm just going to kind of describe the site and move on. Every battery energy storage system requires a point of interconnection to the broader electrical grid. That point of interconnection for the Salt Cod

Storage Project is the National Grid substation directly adjacent to the site.

On the site you'll also see maintenance buildings, sound barrier, and the medium voltage transformers.

I think that's it. I'm going to pass it off to Chris now to get deeper on battery storage safety. The layout on this slide is not the current layout, correct? That is correct. This is one of the original layouts. That is correct. And we are working on getting updated renderings. So there is a disclaimer on that slide, but thank you for clarifying. Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Hannah, for that. My name is Chris Gross. I'm the Director of Fire Protection and Safety at Flatiron. My primary role is product due diligence, so working directly with the battery manufacturers, reviewing their documentation and safety information. I lead code compliance reviews for the site and the products themselves. I also handle any emergency response coordination, supplier engagement,

and direct engagement with the fire departments. My background is I have a bachelor's in mechanical engineering. I've been in the battery space for about 10 years now. I started working as a contract manufacturer building these systems in 2014. In the last four and a half years prior to joining Flatiron, I worked with one of Fluent's competitors, a global manufacturer of battery energy storage systems. We sold

over, I think, five gigawatt hours, primarily in Australia, Europe, and in the US. I am a UL9540 technical committee member. which is the standard for battery energy storage systems. I also participated in the 2026 NFP 855 task groups and I'm also on six or seven of the 2029 revision task groups.

I also have some background from the South Carolina Fire Academy in industrial fire brigade and hazmat operations and hazmat technician. So, give you an introduction to the Fluence SmartStack product. Fluence is a US-based Tier 1 battery manufacturer. These systems are built in the US. The chillers come from Texas, the enclosures come from Arizona, the batteries come from Tennessee. Everything is integrated

in the US before it ships to site. The product is, as Hannah mentioned, LFP chemistry. There are a number of safety systems integrated into the product. I'll explain in later slides. Size-wise, as Hannah mentioned, it's very similar in size to a 20-foot Connex box. It's 24 feet long, about 8 feet deep, and it's about 13 and a half feet tall, which would be equivalent to a 20-foot ISO Hi-Q container.

When we look at the internal structures of a Beth, there are many different components. At the smallest level we have the prismatic cell as you can see here. This cell is contained, so there's jelly roll or anode cathode material enclosed within an aluminum case and then filled with electrolyte. It has a top cap with terminals on it. There's a pressure release vent that blue kind of

oval shape on the top. So in the event of a thermal runaway event, that vent would initially open and vent the cell prior to thermal runaway happening. These cells are integrated into battery modules. So I think 104 of these cells are in each module. There's 24 modules in the battery pod or enclosure. You can see on the far right. So these are

self-contained inside of the system and we'll go into more detail on the next slides.

So this is a bit of an iteration on Fluence's existing product. They've always had this pod type configuration. In the past the pods would be ground mounted side by side, interconnected with bus bar links, and then they would be connected to a separate inverter, also ground mounted as well. In this design, it's a modular architecture, so they've taken those pods instead of having them all on a string, they've

placed them on top of a smart skid. So within the skid, as I mentioned before, they have a chiller on either end of the pod. There are the power conversion inverters that were previously separated. Those are integrated into the skid. They are liquid cooled as well. You have other auxiliary components like fusing, switching, there are dehumidifiers and HVAC systems within the skid, and there's a

fire alarm panel per skid. The pods themselves, they are integrated with a number of safety systems I'll review on the next slide. They also have electrical connections in the plumbing connections to facilitate keeping the batteries at an optimal temperature. So typically the way these things arrive, the skid would arrive, they'd be bolted to a foundation. These pods are

designed fully secure, quick connect, so the pods just drop on top of the skid, they're locked into place, and then there are four windows that have quick connect fittings, just like an air chuck, where you connect the thermal management system, you connect the electrical, And then it's good to go. There's no say field wiring or any additional. It's really just plug and

play once they arrive. So the safety systems for the pods themselves, they have environmental sensors in the pod monitoring temperature and humidity. They also have multi-criteria smoke detection, heat detection, and gas detection in each pod. On the front face of the doors, there is an NFPA 69 system that is a ventilation system. Should a thermal runaway event occur, release gas into the enclosure.

This is designed to be detected by 10% LEL and activate the fan system and keep that at 25% LEL or below. So LEL is the lower explosive limit, so it's on the ventilation side it's a safety factor of 4 because you're keeping it at 25% and the detection is 1/10 of LEL. On top of the pods themselves are integrated deflagration panels. This is a passive means of protection. They are designed to fail at a

lower pressure than what the enclosure can withstand. So in the event that the fans do fail, there is a subsequent ignition of the flammable gases. The deflagration panels will open up and vent through the roof of the enclosure as opposed to the doors.

Integrated, obviously these pods, you can't see it directly in this, but they are fully fireproof boxes. They are steel construction, fully welded. Within the walls, ceiling, and bottom of the enclosure is rock-wool insulation. It's a very thick insulation. It's primarily used as sound absorption in fire-rated walls. Within the skid itself as I already mentioned there

is a chiller, the HVAC system, the fire alarm panel. There is smoke detectors within the skid as well to catch any electrical fires. The power conversion system and on either end of the skid is a fire alarm horn strobe to notify the fire department which unit is in alarm.

So this is a comprehensive approach to these sites. It's multi layers of protection. First, obviously, it's product design and manufacturing. I won't go through this in full detail, but of course, the system has a battery management system, it's thermal protection, it's explosion control, electrical fault protection, and the fire alarm system. As I

mentioned, these systems are all fully integrated into a factory. They're UL listed at the factory. They perform extensive factory acceptance testing before they ship to site. That is something that our self Flatiron will go witness and ensure that before the pods arrive on site, they've been fully tested. The product is you well listed and certified

under you all listing There's an extensive probably a hundred something plus you all listings for these components There is no component that goes within these systems that is not itself you all listed so all the fire alarm Fire detection systems are UL listed, the wiring is UL listed, the zip ties are UL listed. Every component of a UL listed system has to have UL certification of the sub components as

well. And then all of our designs are analyzed by third party fire protection engineering firms and by peer reviewers. You can see on this next slide, responsible parties, obviously at the very top is the Somerset Fire Department and the ZBA. For the town, your peer reviewer is Jensen Hughes, very well respected company in the industry. As an owner's engineer, we

use Fire and Risk Alliance They are NFPA 55 technical committee members as is Jensen Hughes. They handle all of our suppression systems, our fire alarm designs, and any work that we receive from our construction partners they review as well. Our other partner is ESRG. They will be doing the hazard mitigation analysis, the emergency response plan, and the subsequent fire department training.

They also will be handling any decommissioning of the site as well. From an EPC side, there will be a fire protection engineer working for the construction firm.

They will handle the site design, fire alarm design. That is TBD at the moment as we have not yet selected a contractor. And then we have Hazard Dynamics. They are the vendor handling the plume study.

So when these systems are designed and installed, the overarching NFPA standard is NFPA 855. That is for the installation of battery energy storage systems. Going into that, the system has to be UL listed to UL 9540 and must pass 9540A performance-based testing.

It has to have a NFPA 72 compliant fire alarm system. It has to have explosion control compliant with at least NFPA 69. It can have NFPA 68 as backup like these systems do as well. And then obviously the system I mentioned is UL listed. The battery DMS is listed to UL 1973 in the power conversion systems or UL 1741. This is a compliance overview for the Fluent SmartStack system. As you can see here,

there are a significant amount of IEC standards as well. The system is compliant to these are international safety standards for the battery systems. In addition to the UL standards I mentioned before, everything from the cell, module, rack, and system level is marked. One I didn't discuss as well is all of the battery modules themselves also are UN 38.3 listed. That is for the transportation and safety of the

batteries during transport. We talked a lot about what is UL.

So UL is abbreviation for Underwriters Laboratory. They were created and founded in 1894. They provide testing and certification of electrical, mechanical, and chemical consumer and commercial products.

They have very strict requirements on receiving certification. It includes undergoing third-party validation testing of the components, thorough design reviews, and actually factory audits to maintain that UL listing. That's what allows Fluence to build these in a factory, and when they ship, they have a UL stamp on them as opposed to a system that was Just custom built, kind of thrown together in

the field and then you have to do a field certification of those units.

Part of that testing involves UL9540A. So this is a multi-part test. The first test is just at the cell level. So film heaters are applied to the cells themselves. They're heated at a constant rate until they go, until they vent and then go into thermal runaway. What that test tells you is at what temperature does the cell vent on average and go into thermal runaway on average,

and also the gas composition of that cell once gas is released. All lithium ion battery systems fail the performance criteria for that test because they produce flammable gas, so they must move to the next test. The next test is a module level test.

They take that same cell with the film heaters applied within the module, they heat that cell at the same rate, and then they look to see how much propagation occurs during that test. So for it to be a valid test, that cell must go into thermal runaway and it must propagate to at least one adjacent cell, and then you determine if it's going to propagate throughout the entire module, essentially.

In the sixth edition of 9540A, they introduced a new installation level test. It's called a large-scale fire test. In that test, you purposely fail the battery systems and have to ignite the system until it is self-sustaining flame. You have to essentially burn up the entire unit and demonstrate that at separation distances that the manufacturer proposed

that it's not going to propagate to an adjacent target unit, either the unit behind, beside, or in front of that system. So Fluence has already passed They've provided the cell level report, the module level report. We're waiting on the installation level report now, but they've already completed this twice for the SmartStack product. These results have shown that there has

been no unit to unit propagation, no pod to pod propagation, no thermal runaway was observed in any adjacent units. there was no deflagrations and gas data sampling was recorded. So in this test they essentially take a propane premixed burner like you would use to light your lawn on fire.

They essentially put it through an opening in the door. They're directly impinging flames on the batteries themselves until it's self-sustaining and then they turn off the fuel and allow the system to burn.

In addition to that, during this test, it is a completely passive test. No suppression is allowed for outdoor ground mounted units. There's no additional safety systems on or present. It's a simulating a worst case event where there's no active protection systems. Everything's passive.

The second layer of protection obviously is on our project development and AHDA approval side. You can see that Massachusetts has adopted the NFPA 1 2021 edition, which adopts NFPA 855 2020. We as a Flatiron Energy are committed to installing this site in line with the latest requirements of NFPA 855, which is the 2026 edition.

We will perform site-specific hazard mitigation analysis and that is what has been agreed to with Chief Barros. When we look at the site from the safety features discussed in Chief Barros' letter, from the water supply, we are considering these fire rover automatic fire monitors with backup hydrants on a private hydrant supply throughout the site. Those are

the little blue dots you see on the screen. That's in addition to the existing hydrants. There's a hydrant on County Street, two on Stevens Street, and one on Riverside Avenue. We have three fire apparatus access points. We have one on the northwest corner of the site onto County Street and two onto Riverside Avenue on the north, sorry, northeast corner and southeast corner. We also will

incorporate at least three man doors into the sound wall itself as the chief requested. These will be man door access only for his department to open and he will have those pre-planned boxes with his hydrant wrench and hose lines so they do not have to get them off the truck.

The fire river solution is a very robust solution. It's an FM approved system. It's factory mutual. It is approved for as a primary suppression means of protection. So it could replace the sprinkler system in this room and be fully compliant according to insurers and building codes. That system integrates flame detection, thermal detection into the system. These systems

are 24/7 monitored by a central monitoring station within the US.

They have been installed in over 850 sites to date and have responded to over 3,000 incidents and are on the way to have 500 suppression actions to date. These systems are primarily used in the waste industry for fighting the small consumer lithium ion batteries that people just throw away into your trash. Those can be damaged in these recycling facilities instead of the entire trash burn.

They will automatically get notification and activate these systems.

As I mentioned, the batteries are monitored 24/7 by the fire rover system externally. Internally, there are a multitude of sensors monitored by our remote operating center where we manage the battery asset. In addition to that, the fire alarm system will also be monitored 24/7 by a central station monitoring service similar to an ADT. where that alarm will go directly to Central

Station and go directly to the fire department as well. We are committed to doing annual inspections of the site. That report will be done by our third party ESRG. They will come inspect the site on an annual basis when we do the annual fire department training refresher. That we'll look at to ensure that one, the condition of the battery systems themselves are in good condition,

that alarms are being actively monitored and addressed, and if there's any other issues they see from the site such as excessive vegetation growth or other potential avenues for a fire incident. The system from a security standpoint, this site will be fully enclosed with either the sound wall or chain link fence. All the gates will be locked and

secured with Knox box overrides for the fire department. We have positioned the Fire Department staging area in the northwest corner just outside of the gates so they can pull off County Street. The chief's concern was staging people on the street and shutting down the roads. They can pull onto the site. There's enough room for them to park multiple apparatuses, stage. We will have in that

northwest corner also a first responder station. It will include live video feed monitoring of the fire rover cameras. It will include the gas detection system.

It will include a SCADA view of the batteries themselves, their energization status, their state of charge, as well as any alarms that are present at that time. Just a question.

So the fire rover system, so you're still working with the fire department on how many poles we would need to place the fire rover system on, correct? That is correct. And you're also going to continue to work with the fire department on the hydrant placement inside the sound wall? That is correct. Primarily the fire rover system will aid obviously directly at the

best itself. It will aid in any direct suppression to adjacent units to cool them down intermittently. It can also be used for smoke management using hydraulic ventilation.

We can push that plume away from Stevens Street toward the substation to the north. The fixed hydrants that are essentially around the perimeter of the site, it will have fixed fire monitors themselves. They also have an empty two and a half host connection so the fire department can deploy portable monitors if needed. to assist them as well so the fire rover

system it will be connected directly to the municipal supply with its own fire pump so literally the the fire department has to do nothing that system will automatically charge itself and be fully operational there will be remotes where they can manually take control of the system and operate it while on site yeah do you know Do you know if the Fire Rover system, can they

monitor that remotely from the station? So the Fire Rover is working on an app-based interface for the system that would allow, yes, it would allow the chief to have remote access from, assuming we give him access to the system. And then if it's app based, they could also access that system through an app if they were on site in the

staging area? So in the staging area, there will actually be permanent monitors that are hardwired to the system. The benefits of the FireRover system, they have redundant communication. They have hardwire and cellular backup. In addition to that, they have 24/7 battery backup on the system and it's fully... They mandate, one, a monitoring service and two, a long-term service agreement. They're able

to have an AI-based heartbeat of the system, so they can manually control the system periodically, exercise different the monitors themselves and be able to have constant communication with the system. Thank you. In addition, I didn't mention it before, but all of the battery systems will also be under a long-term service agreement. So the battery manufacturer

themselves will be inspecting the units periodically should there be alarm that warrants a technician on site they will be deployed I know in the past we've said these are unmanned systems and speaking with our operations team we do intend to have a full-time employee on site Monday through Friday for these sites they will handle more of the day-to-day maintenance activities associated with the site and

then larger teams will come in periodically through the year to do major service on the equipment as necessary. As Chief Barrows mentioned separation distance from the site so when these are tested in the 9548 testing they're tested at the minimum distance that the manufacturer recommends. In our site for SALCOD, the back-to-back spacing exceeds Fluence's minimums by almost 2 feet, 1 feet 9 inches.

The side-to-side spacing exceeds Fluence's minimum by 1 foot. The smart stack to the medium voltage SCID exceeds by 3.5 feet. And then our row-to-row separation remains consistent with Fluence's 10 feet separation.

We talked about it a little bit earlier, but site monitoring, the batteries are constantly monitored for voltage, current, temperature, thermal management, state of charge. All that feeds into our energy management system where we can get data analytics and we have remote operation of the site. The site securities and fire alarm panel will be going to central station monitoring as

mentioned and that will relate directly to the emergency response and Flatiron's designated subject matter experts. All of these devices are monitored 24/7 by multiple parties. And lastly, we have our training operations which all led Adam speak to more but Flatirons committed to the fire department and training them. We also have Spoke to the chief about training

his mutual aid partners in Swansea and Dighton will be able to attend that training as well We'll have a site specific emergency response plan The fire department will be trained on before the system goes into commercial operation annual refresher training happens yearly and And then we also have an approved decommissioning plan and a vendor that's approved from our side to handle that. That being said, I'll turn

it over to our partner at ESRG. Good evening everyone, members of the board, members of the public. My name is Adam Jakubowski. I work for Energy Safety Response Group where I'm a senior consultant. In addition to working there, I am a career firefighter, a member, a supervisor on a regional hazmat team, a fire service instructor, and I do have a bachelor's degree in engineering and fire protection engineering. I

apologize, I might not follow the slides precisely, but I'll cover all the material. Just to provide some discussion on our involvement with this proposed project, to date we've released two draft reports. They're site-specific reports. And it's important to say that because they remain in that draft status as the site evolves, right? Anytime there's a change made, we

need to make sure the analysis didn't change so that we can update it accordingly.

The first report is a hazard mitigation analysis. Chris brought it up. Essentially, it does a deep dive into the components and safety features of the system so that we can identify potential gaps. We have to look at very specific failures that are identified in the code. like thermal runaway or what if the chiller fails? What if the smoke detectors fail? We need to make sure that there are no gaps and that's

what that report does. To adequately assess those failures, we need to look through all of the documentation. So product documents, testing documents, we need everything so that we can do an accurate assessment. Now as a firefighter, when we look at any incident, we want to do four things. We want to prepare, we want to respond, we want to mitigate and then we want to recover so the emergency response plan does just

that in collaboration with the somerset fire department it helps them to prepare respond and mitigate any potential emergency now firefighters we love to train for everything regardless of likelihood right we want to be proactive not reactive and that's the intent of the emergency response plan that emergency response plan covers tactics staging locations Everything that's been discussed, all

of the equipment that will be installed on site, and perhaps most importantly, it includes phone numbers. And those phone numbers will also lead them to us as hazard support personnel. Chief Barrows in his letter, I believe, called it a qualified technical expert or something along the lines. So I have the pleasure of meeting with him and his team. That qualified technical expert 24/7 available by phone is

a familiar face. So if they respond to an incident, they can call that number and somebody will pick up and somebody will be on the road to respond to assist them, but be available by phone for help during that interim time. And additionally, there's that recovery part, right? We prepare with an emergency response plan, we train them,

we do a site walkthrough with them, annual inspections, as Chris said, annual refreshers, but there's that last piece, that recovery. We are near releasing the draft decommissioning and stranded energy management plan, and that's our plan to recover the site. So let's get that stuff that failed out and properly dispose of it, recycle it, and recover from any

potential incident that could happen. So that's our involvement with the project. Thank you, Adam. So as Chief Barrows mentioned in his letter, he had 15 points essentially outlined in here. Flatiron has agreed to all of the requests from the fire department. There's a few at the end that weren't mentioned in his letter, which were the annual inspection report from ESRG. That is a report that we're more

than happy to submit to the fire department and the town officials on a yearly basis to ensure that we're being a good steward to the town. We're also designing the site in accordance with NAP 855-2026, even though that is not the currently adopted fire code in the state of Massachusetts. In our host community agreement, there'll be a number of concessions for providing funding to the fire department

to provide additional equipment, as well as paying for any overtime associated with the training and response to these sites. With that being said, I'd like to turn over the presentation to our other vendor, Hazard Dynamics, who can speak about the plume setting that was performed for the site.

So just to confirm, the chief offered these recommended conditions.

You're saying that the conditions that he has right now, you're agreeing to those conditions right now? Correct. We've agreed to every condition outlined in the chief's letter. Okay. These may not be his final conditions if this were to go forward, but that's a start for sure. I got a question. I got something on my mind. What type of liability policy do you have if something really happens around

that neighborhood? That's a great question. Erin, do you know more about our liability policy offhand? I know we did answer this question as part of our planning board responses. I don't know offhand. We do have quite hefty insurance policies for every aspect of the project.

as is required by our financing parties.

So I could provide a follow-up written.

Appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Good evening. I'll stall while Chris gets the stuff there. All right. So yes, my name is Kevin Moore. I'll talk about a little bit about my company as well as my background. So if you move to the About Us slide, Hazard Dynamics, we were founded by researchers from the University of Texas at Austin. At the university,

this was about 10 years ago, we were actually some of the very first researchers to look at the battery energy storage fire system safety issues through a grant from DHS FEMA, in particular to support firefighter safety. We worked with folks from across fire service departments across the country, including FDNY. as well as our local Austin Fire Department,

Honolulu, folks who were interested in battery energy storage systems and how to help them figure out how do they develop tactics to keep people safe. So that was the main thing. So we developed a lot of methodologies to evaluate, to test, to predict and to understand battery fire dynamics. And through those methodologies, we developed a lot of ways to now evaluate those. And we don't want to have them in papers that

no one read. We actually want to have them out used by folks. So we decided to start hazard dynamics to help folks like Flatiron, as well as other fire departments. We've worked with four municipalities to try to understand these same questions. How does the fire from a battery energy source system affect the community and the people? To

date we've worked on over 140 best projects, from small ones to large ones. We've provided these types of mitigation analysis for more than 60 gigawatts of energy storage across the country, as well as internationally, Scotland, South Africa. We conducted nearly 50 best plume analyses, and I'll talk about that here, because that's what we're considering today, over the

past several years. So for myself, I'm a partner and principal engineer here at Hazard Dynamics. I have background in battery fire dynamics, fire protection mitigation, fire safety best practices.

My doctorate was in aerospace engineering. I was doing combustion and fluid mechanics research at the time for jet engines, but translated a lot of the same fundamental physics to battery fires. And that's kind of what I've been doing for the past almost 15 plus years. I was a former research faculty at the University of Texas Austin. That's where we did a lot of the fundamental work. That was not only the basis

for the methodologies here, but also the basis for some of the UL testing, some of the best practices that we have currently. And then here, what I'm doing here is similar to what I've done before, is basically presenting some of the fire plume analyses, and I've done this in past EFSB hearings as well as other public forums.

So to start, I just want to give a little bit of background on kind of the scope of what we're tasked to do and a little bit of background on plume studies in general. So at a high level, objectively, we want to evaluate any toxic gas hazards from the bass fire that are released into the environment, in particular for this salt cod site here in Somerset, Massachusetts. The main tasks were that

we would develop an approach, use an approach that we developed using FDS, and that stands for fire dynamic simulator. It is a fire-based computational fluid dynamics code that was developed over the past almost 30 years at NIST. So this is the National Institute of Science and Technology. So very well validated, very well developed by some of the

smartest fire protection, fire scientists in the world. So we use that site mostly because it is fire specific. So we can actually address all the nuances, all the complications, all the dynamics that have so much physics involved in a very simple package that we can use. So what we do is we simulate not just one scenario, we simulate various scenarios of wind conditions based on local wind data. And we do this

because we're not just sitting there saying, hey, what's going to happen? We're really trying to understand what's the worst case that can happen. You've heard a lot today about worst case scenarios, how important it is for the fire service to understand what worst case scenarios are, and we're trying to help that. One of the big purposes of

plume studies is to help the fire service understand, hey, if there is a worst case scenario, and we'll talk about what that might look like, what do they need to do, what can be done to make sure that the public is safe? So here what we've been doing is the main task is to identify worst case scenario distances for CO and potentially other toxic gases that might be resulting from a battery

fire, a battery, a best failure. We look at two different elevations. One is two meters from the ground, so six foot person is about two meters. So this is your ground effect. So if you're standing outside, this is what you'd be impacted on.

We also look at five meters because of the local Homes around there might be some two-story homes. So five meters is more of a two-story, somewhat on their balcony.

So those are kind of the elevation levels we're looking at. When you did this at this site, now they're proposing a sound wall that's 25 feet high. That's obviously higher than the two meters or the five meters. So how did you take that into consideration when you looked at this site? So we're able to model that explicitly.

So in our computational simulations, we're able to put in a sound wall at various distances. So there's multiple sites. There's multiple units. We can kind of look at the effect of that sound wall, which I'll cut to the chase and I'll kind of give you a preview. It helps, right? So that's one thing that it does actually help significantly in the area of the sound wall as well as downstream of the

sound wall. And the sound wall you looked at, so we've seen two versions of the site plan, probably a third one tonight. The sound wall keeps moving away from Stevens Street on each version. Which version did you look at with the sound wall? So that's again, Adam had mentioned how HMAs and a lot of things they do are iterative. Same thing for us. As the sound wall moves, we

iterate. As they make design changes, we iterate. As they make layout changes for whatever, from request for the fire service or whatnot, we iterate. And that's the beauty of being able to run a model so that we can run a simulation, show how the changes affect that, and show that yes, it's improving or not improving, then we can make hopefully better decisions. Yes, and so the latest in this presentation, the latest

results that you see here were updated based on the layouts we have. Now, of course, we will go back through those again, like Adam said, a lot of stuff are in draft form at this point for that reason. So when we get everything finalized, we'll make sure we go through one last kind of iteration, make sure everything is completely correct, dot I's, cross T's. Thank you. No problem. And so just briefly

on a background of plume dynamics, I think it's really important to understand what is a plume. I think people inherently understand what plumes are, but I think sometimes it's important to set the stage. So I want to make sure it's clear that all fires release hazardous products to the environment. It doesn't matter if it's a vest. It doesn't matter if it's a car. It doesn't matter if it's a home. It doesn't

matter if it's a couch because you're celebrating a football game with it. Either way, they all produce hazardous products. As these products are released, wind can transport the products away from the fire. This is what's the plume. This is what's referred to as the plume. During this transport, products are mixing with air, and what that does is

it decreases the concentrations of those products. So as you move away from the site or from the fire, as you go downwind, your products are actually decreasing, and that's important to understand. And then the other thing that is really important to understand is that the average wind is actually what's determining transport and mixing downwind of the fire.

So wind, as we know, isn't just constant all the time. It's on average a certain amount, and it gusts a little bit this way, gusts a little that way.

But when it comes to toxicity and it comes to plume dynamics at large scales, it's actually driven by the average wind. That's what's actually dominating the mixing, dominating the decrease in concentrations. And so on the next slide, the key health thresholds, it's very important to understand. So now that we know what a plume is, the question is,

how does that potentially affect folks downwind? How does it affect the community? And we use these key health thresholds. And some of these you might be familiar with. So one is called the ideal age. So this is a level that's immediately dangerous to health or life. And like the actual description says, the definition is basically if you

are exposed to that concentration, you have an immediate threat to life and can cause severe health effects or preventing escape. So this is something where fire service says, hey, we say, hey, look, you might have ideal age within-- 10 meters of the best or whatnot, they would say we want to make sure we're on SCBA because they

don't want to be affected by that. There are other levels that are important considerations.

So one is the acute exposure guideline level. So that's called short for AGL. This is an EPA defined health threshold for single short term exposures. So this is different than say, hey, you're OSHA. I work in a mine or at a dust factory, and I get exposure eight hours a day for years. This is a short acute exposure. Here we have three different levels that typically are defined. Starting with the worst

is AGL-3, so again, life-threatening type effects over that timeframe. AGL-2, I highlight this because this is a really important one that we use as a reference a lot for fire service, kind of when they start looking at tactics for, say, evacuation or whatnot.

This would be AGL2. This is where irreversible or serious health effects happen. And the AGL1 is basically noticeable discomfort irritation. This is no different than saying, hey, I have some allergies. It's spring. I have a little bit of a sore throat because of the allergens in the room. But once I go inside, I can recover. I feel

better. And so in particular, we look at carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide, the reason for that is that's the most abundant toxic species in lots of the test reports. This one included for the 9540A. The table there has some of the health effects thresholds for your reference. So again, IDLH is about 1200 ppm. AGL3, which is similar of a thing, is about 600 ppm. AGL2 is about 150 ppm. And to

put that in reference, that's typically where your in-house carbon monoxide detector will start blaring, right? So around that type of concentration. AG01 for CO is not defined by EPA. One last thing to mention is that we are on AGLs, is that we're using 30-minute exposures because again, talking to fire service, talking to the folks that are trying to keep the community safe, that we ask them hey what

is what's the response time that you guys are looking for and oftentimes they're saying 30 minutes is kind of the thing that we can say that hey we can get people out we can make we set up monitoring stations we can do something within 30 minutes so we use that as a threshold so agl is not just the the number but it's also that that concentration over time which is really important

And finally, you know, our, we use our source terms for our, in terms of our inputs are based on testing that Chris has mentioned, UL9540, as well as large-scale fire tests. So I briefly want to kind of walk a little bit. What about other combustion byproducts besides carbon monoxide? We'll get to that. We do discuss that. We use carbon monoxide as a kind of

a surrogate, if you will, to just understand, hey, this one's the one that's most likely going to affect people immediately just to do the max. Things such as VOCs we'll look at. Oftentimes you look at the testing in UL 9548. The VOCs are really, really low, and just coming out of the battery themselves or the fire themselves,

they're not going to actually reach any concentration limit. We'll talk about other things such as a hydrogen fluoride is one that's been in the news lately. It's a little bit more complicated, but we'll talk about that in a couple slides as well. I'll get there. And so I do want to point out about modeling. There's something about

modeling which is kind of interesting, and I think everyone's heard it, where it's trash in, trash out. Anybody can press go on a model, not that hard, but really to really understand what that means, you have to understand the inputs. You have to understand what inputs make sense, what inputs do not make sense, and then you have to understand how those inputs affect the output and interpret that in a way that

is useful and you make decisions. So here, again, we focus on trying to not just say, hey, this is what's going to happen, but what's the range of possibilities, what's the worst case? We look at various different things. So in a fire, the main source term is called heat release rate. That's how big a fire is. So a larger fire is going to have a larger heat release rate. So for reference,

a couch fire, for example, is about maybe one megawatt. So that's like your couch.

If your couch is on fire, about one megawatt of energy. So the way we do it, we want to basically make sure we're using the correct heat release rates because that's very, very critical in our model. Those are actually calculated from information based on cell module test data from UL9548 and large-scale fire tests. So we're not just

making a muffle of some literature that somebody did on a different system. We're using the exact system that's being considered and putting the correct inputs in there based on the testing that we have. We're also saying well, let's look at different fire range sizes based on the testing So we're able to interpret what a large fire would

be so that's representing kind of a worst-case burns That's something that's very well involved.

We also look at small fires because sometimes Unfortunately small fires can happen and sometimes those can also potentially have some some adverse consequences as well So we look at those as well So in this case, you know, we have about 10 megawatts being an estimate of a large fire and about two and a half as a small fire We also vary our inputs. We use kind of a low speed wind of

about three and a half miles per hour. This is recommended by the EPA for chemical releases. So this is again best practices. We also say, hey look, let's also look at some high wind cases because the high wind will tend to bend the plume down over and bring some of the concentrations lower to the ground level. To do this, we look at wind roses from local weather stations. And so here you

can see the wind rose for the weather station closest to the site. And in this particular wind rose, we use what's called a 99th percentile wind speed. So basically 99% of the winds are going to be less than this at any given time based on historical data. So this is the very, very extreme windiest day you can imagine. And then of course, as we mentioned earlier, we do look at the 24

foot sound wall and we start varying that around, trying to make sure we understand what the worst case scenario based on the geometry of the site.

And so the next slide here is the carbon monoxide exposure results. I'll go through this very quickly. Here you can see some of the outputs. We can actually simulate what the plume will look like. So you can see that there. So that looks like a plume. We can then also calculate and estimate how far away it takes to reach certain thresholds of toxicity. So at a two meter level, the ideal H

and then the AGL 2 and 3 for CO, for carbon monoxide, it's never reached.

So this is saying that at two meters, you will never have a level that is higher than a severe, a serious health effect. At the five meter level, it's a little bit different story. You will have some effects, but they are within, as you can see for the AGL-2, a little under 100 feet. And again, within the distances that are maintained close to within the property, as well as does not reach

any nearby home, which I think is 200 feet away from the, about 100. 190, yeah, it's almost 200 feet or so away from the site. And to put this in more of a visual, if you go to the next slide with the buffer and plume maps, this basically shows you kind of what's the, you know, if you draw a circle around the site, how far away would that go

in any direction? So wind can go in any direction. So we want to understand, you know, what is the radius of exposure, potential exposure for the fire service to understand what they might have to be approaching and what they might have to do.

The blue lines there is the radius around how far away the AGL-2 reaches. And as you can see, it stays mostly almost all fully contained within the site. Second image there shows actually what a plume would look like. So for this situation to happen, you have to have a large spire, which as Chris mentioned, there's a lot of protections, layers of protection to prevent that from happening. You also have to have

a really, really high wind, right? So the 99th percentile wind happened. And you have to have that wind direction go into the direction of where someone might be located, right? And so in particular what we've shown here in this thing is we're saying, hey look, there's a home south of the site. If you had a worst case wind, high wind in that direction, that's what you would see on the ground. So

that's the plume, that's the region of area that you'd say, hey, that's probably somewhere that might be, has some hazard. And it does not, in this case, does not actually go across the property line. It does not reach the home. Next slide on hydrogen fluoride considerations again, some questions about some of the other things in there. We do not specifically model hydrogen fluoride for a couple reasons. One is that

hydrogen fluoride is not typically measured in testing and this is one of the things that we just don't have the data. It's inappropriate to use data from other tests which may be using different cell chemistries, whether it's NMC's. The other one is that hydrogen fluoride is actually not inert. What that means is that when it encounters

something like the ground or metal or trees, those things will sink in the hydrogen fluoride, it will absorb the hydrogen fluoride. So it's no longer in the air. A lot of the models out there, almost all models I've seen out here, does not yet have a way to account for that sink. So now when you make these measurements and try to do these models, when you actually have hydrogen fluoride models, they're

all wrong. And so at that point, it doesn't necessarily make sense to reference decisions on community risk based on models that are incorrect. So we typically do not do that. What we do instead is we kind of look at it more qualitatively. What we like to look at is we like to say, well, Where's the hydrogen fluoride coming from? Is it really the batteries? And you go, well, yes, hydrogen fluoride can

be released from batteries. But like Chris said, you have cells. That's where they're released.

They're inside containers, which are often made of other plastics and metal. And then you have other wiring, plastics and metal, bus bars, plastic or metal. You have the enclosure itself, which is metal. so the likelihood of all that hydrogen fluoride passing through and meeting and touching all those other things and not reacting and going away is very

very low so the question is where would hydrogen fluoride come from it's actually not the batteries and this is what most experts are looking at and are the consensus is coming where it is actually the other materials in the battery system itself so the plastic wiring uh the plastic casings those kinds of things at that point At

that point, they're no different than typical plastics and other combustible materials we have in homes, we have in stores, we have in commercial facilities. So when it comes to, again, purpose of the plume study, try to help the fire service understand how to handle a large-scale fire, we now can give them a little bit of information to say, hey, look, what you're facing is in some sense no different than what you

normally face on a day-to-day basis in terms of your training and your tactics. So that's kind of where we land there. And just to wrap up, a couple high-level points. So no carbon monoxide toxicity thresholds were exceeded. at any distance at the ground level, so two meters. We looked at worst case scenarios, which is large fire, high wind scenarios. And again, the concentrations that are on the ground are

not expected to cause any serious health effects. And finally, the surrounding area has a mix of residential, commercial, and we looked at all the different potential folks and buildings around, and based on the on the model results and then the wind direction of the sites, it's unlikely that any of the homes or buildings will experience

any toxic level exposure to carbon dioxide during failure time. So with that, I'll be more than happy to answer any questions. I know it's a little technical, but happy to answer anything that you have on your mind. So other compounds besides the hydrogen fluoride like VOCs and VOCs, it's a common combustion, you know, SOCs are all common

as a combustion byproduct. What about those in the modeling? for exposure for somebody on Steven Street if there were a fire to those kinds of compounds. Yeah, so in our full report, which I don't have a seen full report yet, which you will.

I know that's being communicated at some point. We do actually do the entire plume.

So we look at the full combustion products. And from there, we're happy to include other potential compounds you might be concerned about. We're happy to include those. We typically look at the main ones from Toxate, Sanpro, Socio, VOCs, and then the hydrogen fluoride, which we handle more qualitatively. Those are kind of the three that are mostly if you're talking to toxicologists and people who

know a lot more about toxicology than I do, you show them the list of things in the battery and they go, "These are the ones." Right? So those are the ones we focus on. Okay. Thank you very much.

Anything else? No, I think we're ready to turn it over to the public. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

A couple of quick questions. This is going to be critical infrastructure, correct? When it's all said and built, it's going to be critical infrastructure to ISO in New England?

Is that a question you can answer? Oh, great. Okay. So that leads me down to, I think, did you actually work at the power plant? No? Anybody actually work at the power plant? I did. So we had a MARSEC at the power plant because we were critical infrastructure. So... Are you guys addressing MARSEC level terrorism? Because it's critical infrastructure. Now you're putting a target

in Somerset for terrorism. Power plant was a, we had a security plan for that. It's worked out. We trained with the police department. You guys got a plan for that? So you don't have a plan for that? - That's our plan. - Okay. So we'll look for a security plan. How close is the school to the front gate of your, now you're gonna add more gates, right, for security purposes, because more gates are usually

less secure. Do those gates have ram protection, so somebody can't just ram through the gate? Want me to keep going so you can get all the questions? Okay. How close, I think this is probably in your plume analysis, right? How close is the school that should be you should have that answer today probably answer that for everybody thousand feet two thousand feet three thousand feet yeah yeah um i'm

gonna answer this question because it's pretty straightforward the school is over 1500 feet away from the facility and that's measured at the property boundary we do not want to do back and forth like this but are happy to entertain any additional meetings and prefer to provide answers in writing so our Answers are clear written and not yeah, and

not misconstrued. Of course, yeah, absolutely. And then nobody, nobody will read them. That'll be good. 1500 feet. So your plume analysis when they go and possibly a terrorist attack goes in because you are not going to have anybody there personally for security, I believe. I think it's going to be probably cameras. Maybe a red button, someplace in a control room, some security guard is probably going to

look at cameras. You're not going to have anybody on site. We would like to see somebody on site. I think you should have somebody on site. It's critical infrastructure. So in that whole scenario that somebody breaks in to cause harm because it's critical infrastructure, what happens if they put C4 on your batteries? Is that in your plume analysis? No. So an explosion isn't in it. Because that's the real threat.

The real threat isn't a fire. We know how that stuff works. The real threat is security. And that was always considered a port. So there was always a MARSEC level down. So as the MARSEC level went up, so did the security. Whether you had to have people on site, whether you had to have police. So how is that being addressed? because guys, that's a serious concern and I'll leave it at that. We'll let you respond to

some of those questions. We will invite the police chief here to see what their concerns are. That wasn't part of this. Mr. Mendes, go ahead. Mr. Chairman, if it's alright with you, I'll just address you and I won't get into a discussion with everyone in the audience.

We have systems in place in this country. We have the fire department. We have an excellent review from the fire chief. Fifteen items. No, I'm not enough of an expert to say whether, in fact, the applicant has actually addressed his 15 or his 18 points. Of course, I'm going to have to depend, as you do, on a peer reviewer. But that's, again, part of our system. Now, previous speakers have said they

want to personally control who's going to be in charge of security, who's going to be in charge of handling the fire hydrant. That's not the way we work. We have systems in place. We have a very professional fire department. We pay for it.

The surrounding communities have volunteer fire departments. We have a professional fire department. We have a very professional police department. ISO, by the way, is a very professional powers manager, and they also have... security, they deal with security. And by the way, I also have a lot of personal experience with security issues. So I don't treat it as,

in a child, so I don't, do you mind if I talk louder? So I don't treat it in a childish, dramatic way. I recognize that security is vital to people's lives. We have systems in place to protect people's lives. Let's use those systems and not just throw it out into the public for anybody who's got a pet idea to try to impose his pet idea on it. Depend, rely on the fire

department, rely on the police department, rely on the systems we have with ISO New England to protect our security. That's from an old military and state department guy who believes in the system. Thank you.

Listen, no back and forth with people. He was trying to speak in chatting. There shouldn't be any back and forth by anybody. I agree. Lloyd included, anybody here. I agree. So we're not going to get with little back and forth things going on.

I hope he doesn't do it again. Not interested in that. I hope he doesn't do it again. So I know the questions aren't being answered. So I'm asking the questions. Am I expected to email them as well? Okay. Okay.

I have a question about, so we say we have a fire, worst case scenario we have a fire, firefighters come out, where is the contaminated water going?

How's it controlled? How's it collected? Where does that head? Say that we have a fire rover or whatever calling has an accidental release, where does that contaminated water go? So I'm guessing, I haven't fully reviewed, I'm guessing there's gas detectors, I'm guessing there's smoke detectors. And there's multiple fire alarm panels. The fire alarm panels are reporting to the fire department. So they're going to,

I assume, have a master panel within the fire department. They received the alarm, say it's a smoke detector, in storage bay 15. I would like to know, so the fire alarm goes off in Storage Bay 15. Does it set off the fire alarm for all of them or is it isolated? So I have buildings on campus where one building goes off, it sets them all off. I have

buildings where one goes off, that one goes off. What's the process from there? Is the fire department responding to the one smoke detector that went off? Are they in communication with... So the weight is all on our response. Our fire department, yes, they're excellent. Our police department, yes, they're excellent. Yes, they are going to have to respond.

So is there a plan in place? The smoke detector goes off. The neighbors can hear the fire alarm going off without a doubt, right? So are we sending a community notice? Is it recommended that we send a community notice that we're on our way? Don't do anything. Stay put. Or do we wait for the rest of them to go off and, you know, same thing with gas leak, right? They're not going

to enter if there's a gas leak. Or do we have a special hazards team now for gas exposure? And is the facility being shut down? So one smoke detector goes off in one storage unit. I'm guessing it's point ID. We know exactly where it is. Are we shutting down the whole facility or are we going to be just hoping prior to that? It's just, I mean, it could be a ground fault.

It could be a faulty detector for all we know. Has Fall River been involved in the process at all? They shut it down when we have a necessary... That's all the questions I have. Thank you. Quick questions. Have you guys provided all the SDS sheets to the board for all of the things that you're measuring in the plume? I think you guys want to review those SDS sheets. You

guys all know what those are, right? So you can look at the hazards and the distance for fire. It has a lot of different things in there.

They used to be called MSDS sheets. I think you guys should ask for that since those things they're saying they can't model for certain I think it was what was a hydrogen sulfide or something like that but one of the things I don't remember what it was but you should know what that is the board should all be able to get that and review it so you know exactly what those hazards are I just for

clarification I heard Jensen Hughes mentioned and I heard a third party reviewer. Is Jensen Hughes the third party review for the zoning board? I also know that Flatiron mentioned they use Jensen Hughes or is it ESFG? I'm not sure the acronym for the other company that spoke. So is Jensen Hughes your third party connection or the zoning board or both? So we have a contract that was under review. with Jensen

Hughes and the town will be using Jensen Hughes as our third party consultant. Thank you. It's also important to note that so we don't have them on board yet. So we haven't had them look at these things yet, but we'll do that. Second, the fire chief also mentioned the third party review. I will not speak for the fire department. I do not know if they're

going to use the same consultant as the zoning board or a different consultant. But Chief Barrows did mention in those recommendations and in his letter that he believed it should be reviewed by a third party. so we can clarify with him whether he's going to use the third party reviewer for the zoning board or they're going to

have a separate third party reviewer for the fire department. Okay? Mr. Chairman, Jim Pimentel 210 Dwelley Road. Is this just for questions or can I make a comment? No, it's public comment so you can make a comment because The history has been, it's comments, it's questions, it's whatever. Okay, because I heard something about questions. And I wasn't able to be here at the last meeting when you asked if people were

for or against the project. So let me just start off by saying this is the first time I've been able to address the board since getting off the board about a year and a half ago. So I just want to say from firsthand experience, having been on the board with all of you for 15 plus years especially you mr catarat except for mr alfonso i know the time the effort the commitment that you guys

put into doing what you do and i just want to say that i appreciate the thoughtfulness the seriousness that you take it with in the performance of your duties so that said i support the project i think it's A common sense use for the land given what was there forever. What was there on that property was basically fuel to produce energy. It was a storage facility

and that's essentially what we're talking about now, just a different type of use of storage. As a Somerset resident, I support the project for the jobs and the revenue that come with it. proud fourth generation union bricklayer. I commend Flatiron Energy for committing to build the project 100% union under a project labor agreement. The kinds of jobs that would be on that property if the project is built

are the kinds of jobs that sustain this community on that property and Brayton Point for decades. right, through the construction, operations and maintenance of those power plants. Obviously, it goes without saying that, like everybody here, I care deeply about the safety of our residents and would never want to advocate for anything that I thought was going to harm our community. We all have families, we all have

friends, neighbors, right, so that goes without saying. That said, it's important to point out that battery storage isn't something new. It's not as if the Artemis II space mission came back from the dark side of the moon a couple of months ago with this technology. Like any technology, it evolves, it gets safer. Safety designs, protocols, standards get put in place to make

it better. It's come a long way in just a few short years.

If we're going to deny anything from being built in the town that potentially causes the slightest bit of harm, why don't we just outlaw the gas stations in town? How about all the gas lines that run into everybody's houses and onto the roads? Right? Let's not stop there. How about the propane? We just have to have a little bit of perspective when we're talking about these things. Thank you.

I think it should be asked that if you guys do want a security, a third-party security, team that the company should pay for that.

I don't know if the police department may want that to make sure that we're protected. So I would I would ask that and here's the whole thing right when we're talking about use by right or special permit. No one's saying Jim that no we don't want these projects. It just might not be the right spot for this project. These things are gonna pop up in Massachusetts. but maybe it shouldn't be

1500 feet from a school or maybe the project should be smaller right so it isn't critical infrastructure maybe the bigger project needs to be down the road right so it isn't as close to the school so when you say it's a use by right and that is a key thing right now and a big decision for you guys because a use a use by right you can't say i want you to

do this with security Right? That goes into the special permit. Once you say it's a use by right, they can talk with you. But once it's used by right, they say, hey, it's a use by right. I don't have to do exactly what you want to say. Right? Because it looks to me like we're almost in that special prop that we're almost doing the special permit right now compared to just saying,

oh, you know, you got to have your cutbacks or things that you normally do on the ZBA, which take an hour. When you're talking about projects like this that have never even been seen before, it really warrants a special permit. Because the special permit process, if you are feeling uneasy about something, it's too close to the school, you can deny it, because it's in the special permit process. You can't just

deny, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think you can just deny this if you say it to you, Spyright. So plan development. we have the ability to put conditions on planned development decisions so that's not accurate that we we can't we can put the same conditions on a planned development decision as we do on a special permit decision So that statement's not accurate. We did it for Prismian. Yeah,

we did it for Prismian. We did it for the scrap metal.

board feels that the decision can stand up to the appeal. That's the most important thing in denial. Okay? So we can deny plan development applications. Go for it. you may be finding that some jeopardy you can deny it yeah so so attorney frank would just point out so we said before that we need to do more research on the dover act and

its application it's it's uh application this application that's probably using the same word twice which if you can follow but that's so because even if it was under the dover exception and we thought there was a safety or health you can't prohibit Except we necessary to protect the public health safety and welfare. Yeah, so if we felt we needed to protect the public health safety and welfare,

then we could deny it even though it's under the door exemption. Correct?

Yeah, that's what the statute says. Sorry. I wanted to know, did the old power plants pay taxes to this town for the residents to, do they do that? My top electric or whoever the entity was that owned my top electric? The old power plants that we had, whatever ones. Yeah, that's not the example. Did they pay taxes? Yeah, they paid taxes, yeah.

They did. My understanding, I mean I'm not the tax assessor, so I don't want to commit to whether or not they actually did pay their taxes, but I do believe that the town did send them a tax bill. So it should have helped our town fix things or whatever you would use tax money for, correct? Whether they paid it or not, I mean that's what they should do. right shouldn't it

help our town like to make the residents maybe taxes lower or not lower i know you'll never go lower but not to go up or it there's a reason why i'm i'm just well i would assume having lived here for 64 years because there were three years when i didn't live here um i would assume that the tag the taxes that were paid by the power plants

We're part of the budgeting process in the town. What part it was, I couldn't even tell you. Okay. To be absolutely honest. My point is that they're coming here tax-free, correct? They don't have to pay taxes? No. They have to pay taxes. Is that a thought in the last- That's not my understanding. No. Okay. So you will be paying taxes. That was one question that I just wanted to make sure that

they weren't getting a free ride. I heard something about the state might pay it or whatever. I don't know. I just wanted to clarify. So, so, so we, the zoning board of appeals doesn't get involved in taxes. That would be if they made some agreement with the town about the taxes, that would be the board of selectmen. And that would have to go through town meeting,

I believe. Correct? Yeah. It would be tax incremental finance. Okay. I just wanted clarification. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else?

Just one more comment that I forgot to mention earlier part of the Submission materials that we sent just yesterday to Amy and that will be published online. It does include a comparative risk assessment. That's a study completed by a third party that helps to conceptualize the risk of a facility like this as compared to other standard uses and it actually like takes a step further and looks at uses

that are around within a five mile distance of the site. It is quite dense report but really interesting and helpful as you think through like to a few comments i heard tonight like how do we think of this risk in the broader risks that we live amongst every day and don't really think about um so i would encourage folks to take a look at that document um just want to point that

out thank you so we will contact the police chief to see what he thinks he needs and then Third party reviews are typically paid by the applicant.

So we'll do that. We'll also do the research about the use that we thought about before. And we'll also be once we have the fire consultant on board, once that contract finally is signed, then we'll forward these materials to them for review also. Anything else from any board members? No. No. Okay. So the next meeting. Yeah. Amy, what's the next date we have for this? Oh, we think we

have. Yeah, if we could. August 6th is the next date for Flatiron. Okay. So the next meeting for this, the Flatiron application, will be August 6th. Okay. Yeah, so we have, Amy did the extension.

We can do that after the... Yeah, we just have one more item to approve meeting minutes and then after we adjourn then we can do the extension. Okay. Well, yeah, so the extension, so we need an extension from them because this would be the end. This deadline is the end of July, correct? So if we don't get an extension, we would have to take a vote tonight. If we get an extension, then the question

is, well, how long do we think we need an extension for? I don't think this is going to be done in August. No. So- In the September? In the September 30th. September 30th? Do you agree with that? Okay, so an extension to, so we need a motion to grant and to extend this application deadline to September 30th.

I'll make that motion. Second. then i'm miranda i steve otis i steve catarat okay good all set okay next item uh minutes we need a motion to approve the minutes from the may 28th june 4th and june 25th 2026 meetings i make a motion to approve the minutes as presented second steve motorside miranda i steve catterett i motion to adjourn make a motion do we make a motion to continue to the

sex do we do that yet we don't need to make a motion no then we're just going to continue i don't think we don't need to okay make a motion to adjourn it's open so it's open yeah we just have the next meeting date yeah the public hearing but that's a good question i need a second book i made a motion to adjourn second you're not miranda i see monocyte steve catterman