Wareham Special Town Meeting
Monday, January 13th, 2025, 7:00 PM
Wareham High School, Viking Drive, Wareham
Wareham is holding a Special Town Meeting in January 2025.
Warrant Article 4 up for vote at the Special Town Meeting would change where ground-mounted solar installations are allowed to be installed in Town.
Read on for the full information on Article 4 and the background of solar installations in Wareham.
Warrant Article 4: Large Ground-Mounted Solar Installations
If passed, Article 4 would allow future large ground-mounted solar installations to be built only in the Business Development Overlay District (BDOD), and not in any other districts within the town. Proposals for large-ground solar installations in the BDOD would still have to be approved by the Planning Board through a site plan review and special permit process, just as any other project would.
The BDOD is an approximately 1,200 acre area in north/central Wareham located both north and south of Interstate 495. The BDOD currently consists of cranberry bogs, forested land, four large ground-mounted solar installations, and a couple of small business campuses. According to the Town’s 2023 Zoning Bylaw, the BDOD was “intended to create office/R & D use opportunities in a campus-like environment using the existing agricultural uses and natural landscapes as amenities for the businesses located in the office parks.” (Wareham 2023 Zoning Bylaw, Section 450).
See the map of the BDOD, in purple, below.
Read the full Town Meeting Warrant below.
The Facts on Solar in Wareham
According to an analysis of areal imagery by Community Land and Water Coalition, Wareham already has over 260 acres of large ground-mounted solar installations within its borders. All of these projects, highlighted in orange below, have resulted in the loss of forest and wildlife habitat, and most sit on top of the Plymouth-Carver Sole Source Aquifer. These solar projects have resulted in habitat fragmentation in environmentally sensitive areas.
Map of existing large ground-mounted solar arrays in Wareham, outlined in orange below.
According to the 2023 report by Mass Audubon and Harvard Forest, Growing Solar Protecting Nature, since 2010 Massachusetts has lost significant forest acreage, biodiversity, and productive farmland to solar development. The state has lost approximately 8,000 acres of forest to large industrial ground-mounted solar. But this forest loss is not distributed equally. This graphic from the report below shows that southeastern Massachusetts, particularly Wareham, has had a higher proportion of solar development than many areas of the state. In fact, only four counties – Worcester, Hampden, Plymouth (where Wareham lies) and Bristol – account for 75% of the state’s ground-mounted solar.
At the January 6, 2025 Wareham Planning Board Public Hearing for Warrant Article 4, the Planning Board specifically stated that this solar rezoning proposal was being put forth to limit the amount of deforestation and habitat fragmentation in Wareham from large scale ground-mounted solar. The Planning Board states that currently there are virtually no restrictions on where ground-mounted solar can be built; Article 4 is an attempt by the Board to limit solar installations in an area already proposed for development, and already mostly developed, and get solar away from residential areas. The Planning Board also stated that the allowable zoning for solar can be changed through Town Meeting in the future, if residents or the Board found an even more suitable or appropriate zone within the Town for large ground-mounted solar.
January 2025: Seven Pending Solar Projects in Wareham Outside of BDOD
There are seven other proposed large ground-mounted solar projects outside of the BDOD in Wareham. These projects include 27 Charge Pond Road and 150 Tihonet Road, 140 Tihonet Road, 0 Route 25, 370 County Road, and 91 & 101 Fearing Hill Road. There is also a proposed solar array at 0 Tihonet Road currently undergoing MEPA review. The total area of deforestation from these projects, if they get built, would be 278 acres. The proposal at 91 & 101 Fearing Hill Road is coming up for site plan approval and special permit review in January 2025. The projects at 27 Charge Pond Road, 150 Tihonet Road, 0 Route 25 and 370 County Road Solar have been denied by the Planning Board, but are suing the Town for approval. The proposed solar project at 0 Tihonet Road has not yet come before the Planning Board.
Residents must be aware of the tactics used by solar companies, who threaten to sue the Town if their projects aren’t approved, and urge the Select Board to defend against these lawsuits in court, so Wareham can maintain control over its solar siting and protect its forests.
Unfortunately, confining solar installations to the BDOD in the future will not prevent these projects from being built. If the solar developers win in court, it would mean that these projects can move forward, even if the zoning laws have changed since then.
Solar and Sand Mining
Wareham is underlain by thick deposits of well-sorted, clean sand. This sand is very valuable to the construction industry, and unfortunately commercial/private land owners in Wareham are taking advantage of development opportunities from solar to mine the sand below the ground and sell it for profit. This sand mining is occurring without earth removal permits and environmental monitoring, at the risk of the townspeople.
In 2021, Wareham Town Meeting passed a unanimous vote to audit the amount of sand that had been extracted from the town. In January 2022, the Board of Selectmen voted to hire an expert to audit volume of sand AD Makepeace has mined without permits and if any fees and penalties are owed. Unfortunately, this audit has not been completed.
In response to the lack of enforcement, Save the Pine Barrens filed a demand letter to the Town in November 2022.
Upcoming Changes to the State’s Solar Siting Law
Wareham is not the only town dealing with an onslaught of solar proposals. Rural towns in Massachusetts are being targeted by solar developers for their large tracks of undeveloped land, fueled by financial incentives from the state to build solar as quickly and cheaply as possible.
In 2024, the State passed an omnibus climate bill, which includes solar siting reform. Towns like Wareham will only have 12 months to approve new solar proposals (anything under 25 MW) once this law goes into effect.
WBUR provides a brief summary of what is in the new climate bill when it comes to solar siting.
It is possible that the Town of Wareham is proposing this zoning reform when it comes to solar in order to get ahead of the State’s more restrictive solar siting and approval laws that will soon be put into place.