CTEC Solar, a Bloomfield-based company, is preparing to install infrastructure for a 13-acre solar array at the Norfolk Transfer Station.
“They have already done the survey and cleared the trees,” said First Selectman Matt Riiska. “Now they are clearing away the stumps and getting ready to build the array.” He predicted installation will begin in late spring or early summer.
New Jersey Resources, that state’s equivalent of Eversource, has leased the land from the town and will pay the community $40,000 a year. The proposal was passed at a town meeting two years ago.
Riiska said that residents’ experience of using the landfill will not change. “When they drive in the entrance it will look the same,” he said. “There is still a buffer along the road and in summer you won’t see the panels.”
The solar array will encircle the transfer station, but Riiska said there is no danger of the town not having enough land for its own purposes. “We don’t need more room,” he said. “We have cleared an area for people to put brush and debris and we have an area for compost. We have plenty of land. We will just get $40,000 a year for land we can’t use.”
He said New Jersey Resources is responsible for all costs and permitting and will have to maintain the trees around the site to prevent any of them falling on the equipment.