Witness warns single‑plant change could reopen years of Bennington solar litigation

Annette Smith, executive director of Reminders for a Clean Environment, told the Senate Finance Committee on July 10 that H.0710 — a bill that would revise the definition of a 'single plant' for electricity‑generating facilities — risks reopening a long‑running legal dispute over two adjacent solar projects on Apple Hill in Bennington.

Smith said the two projects are currently the subject of repeated litigation and regulatory review, with a tangled history of Public Utility Commission (PUC) rulings and appeals to the Vermont Supreme Court. She described a sequence in which one project’s standard‑offer contract was denied and another approved, leading to litigation over whether adjacent arrays that use different roads and interconnection points should be treated as a single facility.

Why it matters: Smith argued that revising the definition now could create new grounds for challenges and renewed filings in cases that she said have already consumed more than a decade of local and state resources. She told the committee that residents and local bodies have been sued in multiple forums — town, state and federal — and that many potential witnesses avoid public testimony for fear of exposure to litigation.

In her testimony Smith detailed multiple court trips and administrative filings: she said parts of the dispute date back to 2013, that the projects have been to the Vermont Supreme Court several times, and that re‑filings and procedural challenges have prolonged resolution. She also raised land‑use concerns, saying many of the reviewed projects sit on prime agricultural soils and could be affected if the bill allows incremental expansion of adjacent generation sites.

Smith provided programmatic counts, as presented to the committee: she reviewed roughly 108 projects in the 1–5 megawatt range, about 450 projects in the 150–999 kilowatt range and about 384 projects in the 50–149 kilowatt range, which she said could amount to 943 projects that might be affected under the bill as described in her testimony. She said those figures come from her file submissions to the committee.

"This is an extremely litigious applicant," Smith said, and "the people in Bennington really need this to stop," urging the committee not to change the definition while litigation remains active. She also noted the bill’s language traces back to prior single‑plant legislation originally aimed at wind projects and warned of unintended consequences if applied more broadly.

What the committee did next: Committee members acknowledged the complexity and the risk that legislative change could affect pending cases. The chair said the committee would hold the item and send a note to the town of Bennington and its town attorney inviting input; the committee did not take a final vote on H.0710 during this meeting.

Next steps: The committee indicated it may refer parts of the bill to the Senate Natural Resources Committee for further consideration and more technical testimony before any final action.