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Shepherd's Run hearing postponed until Sept. 21

Sep 13, 2021 6:00 am

Natasha Vaughn-Holdridge is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media the members of the Copake Town Board at a meeting Sept. 9, gave an update on the town's pending litigation against the state Office of Renewable Energy Siting. Deputy Supervisor Richard Wolf reported that a court hearing on the request for a preliminary injunction scheduled for the previous day had been rescheduled to Sept. 21. “We will report on that decision when we’ve received it,” Wolf said. The town is the lead petitioner in a civil action against the Siting Office along with five other towns and seven nonprofit groups and grassroots organizations. The case concerns the Shepherd's Run solar project proposal. “Petitioners are seeking to have ORES’s regulations invalidated, to obtain a preliminary injunction preventing ORES from acting on the 94C siting application before it or accepting new applications.” Wolf said. The petitioners are asking that the filed applications be returned to the Article 10 siting process, which was previously in effect. The town of Copake passed a law in 2017 which limited the size of solar energy projects to 10 acres. The size of the Shepherd's Run project has been reduced several times by the developer over the past year. The original size of the project was 500 acres. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.