By This put up was authored by Amy Lavine, Esq.
A latest appellate court docket determination from New York upheld a planning board willpower discovering {that a} photo voltaic farm software was exempt from newly-enacted restrictions on the sitting of photo voltaic vitality amenities as a result of the appliance was pending when the laws was handed.
The property proprietor on this case submitted an software for a photo voltaic farm in September 2013 and the appliance was deemed “full” by the city’s Division of Planning, Surroundings and Land Administration in September 2016. Earlier than the appliance was determined, the city adopted zoning amendments in November 2016 that restricted allow approvals for photo voltaic vitality manufacturing amenities to “solely on these lands beforehand cleared and/or disturbed on or earlier than January 1, 2016.” The planning board decided that it ought to contemplate the photo voltaic farm software underneath the prior zoning code provisions, nevertheless, as a result of the laws additionally included an “exemption” for functions that had already been deemed “full,” and in April 2017 it granted web site plan and particular use allow approvals for the mission. The petitioners then commenced this litigation to problem the planning board’s willpower.
The appellate court docket discovered affirmed the planning board’s determination and located that it was not arbitrary and capricious or an abuse of discretion for the planning board to evaluation the photo voltaic farm’s software underneath the zoning standards that had been in place previous to the city’s adoption of the brand new photo voltaic farm restrictions. Because the court docket defined: “Right here, the plain language of Native Legislation 23… exempted the mission from the provisions of Native Legislation 23, together with the requirement that permitted photo voltaic vitality manufacturing amenities ‘solely on these lands beforehand cleared and/or disturbed on or earlier than January 1, 2016.’ Additional, the Planning Board’s willpower that Native Legislation 23 permitted it to evaluation [the] software utilizing the standards for a particular use allow in place instantly previous to the enactment of Native Legislation 23 was neither unreasonable nor irrational.”
Matter of Affiliated Brookhaven Civic Orgs., Inc. v Planning Bd. of the City of Brookhaven, 2022 NY Slip Op 05847 (NY App Div second Dept 10/19/22).