All right, it is Tuesday, November 12th, 2024. It is 1103 and I'm calling the Park County Board of County Commissioner Meeting to Order. If you are so inclined, please, oh, we're muted. Whoops. Yeah. Well, we're also muted. Yeah, we're also muted. We'll start over. I think that's better. We are on the record. Right. There you go. Doesn't pay to rush. Does it? Good morning. It is Tuesday, November 12, 2024. It is 11 o'clock, 3 a.m. and I'm calling the Park County Board of County Commissioner Meeting to order. For all who are inclined, please stand for the invocation and the pledge. Dear Heavenly Father, our higher power. We thank you for this amazing place we call Park County and we thank you for the opportunity to serve and take care of this great place. We are grateful for the moisture that you delivered over the last five days and for the sunshine to melt it into the ground. We ask, we lift up all those who are hurting and need your help, anyone who is suffering challenges. We just ask you to guide them to a great resolution. We ask that you deliver us from evil and we pray in your name, amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay. The agenda. I would move we approve the agenda as written. I would second that. All in favor. Aye. Aye. All right. We have two items. Actually, we needed to amend the agenda. So let's go back up. No, no, no. We can leave the agenda as is. Not a problem. We can just take on the consent no, we can leave the agenda as is not a weekend We can we can just take on the consent items that we can drop item three from the consent Okay, so we have three items on the consent We are talking about approval of minutes approval of vouchers and an award bid for Hayne on County property Move that we Madam chair, I would move that we approve on county property. Move that we- Madam Chair, I would move that we approve the consent items one and two. Remove consent item three for a future date. Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Consideration and or decision on the following items. Approver Deni State Historic Fund Contract Completion Form related to form works and design group. We Kate gave us with historical, Parkenius history gave us a rundown. These are projects complete. We have checked all the boxes to make sure that we are in compliance with the agreement and with the signature of these we get paid the grant money. Commissioner Whistle. Madam Chair, I would move approval of the State Historic Fund Contract,ion Forum related to the Form Works Design Group. All in favor? Hi. Hi. Next item is Approver Deny State Historic Fund Contract Completion Forum related to A&M renovations. We also did the same. We got to run down on the completion of that project and need to approve this. Madam Chair. Mr. Whistle. We move to approve the State Historical Fund Contract. Completion form is related to A&M renovations. Madam Chair. I'll end favor. Hi. Hi. All right. Next item, approve and deny State Historic Fund Conditions and Covenant Property Protection for Grant Award for Terriol Klein Ranch Project. We also got a rundown on this. This just keeps us in alignment with the historical preservation work being done and that any, that all of the work done is for the preservation of this historical piece and that it would not be used and any future date for any other purpose. How's that? I don't think that's actually what it was. I thought this one was more along the lines of that any work done to the building has to be approved by the state historical society to make sure it is In compliance with the Historical aspects of the building right so say I think we did the same thing with Jefferson Community Civic Association building, the schoolhouse there. And it's just basically telling the state, it's not as much a use as it is, we have to preserve it to look the same. To historical standards, right. Right, okay, thank you. Mr. Whistle. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would move to approve the state historic fund conditions and covenant, I think that's the key word covenant property protection for grant award for the Terri O'Clean Ranch project. This is Commissioner Ellsman's favorite project. This simply has the mother may I clause that before you do anything, you have to get mother's permission. And that's the state historical society. Yes. Very, very well put on the mother may I clause. Great explanation. Thank you. All right. all in favor. Hi. Hi. Next item, approver Denai, state of Colorado contract amendment for JBBS program. And this is part county jail behavior, behavioral health assistance grant. And we also were appraised of this at our work session this morning. Yeah, this is, it provides money for our jail to do behavior or health with the inmates, which is a requirement of the state. So it's always nice when the state gives us a requirement and they actually pay for part of that requirement. So I would move to approve it. Second. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Hi. All right. Next is approver. Did I resolution approving Memorandum of understanding with the city of Aurora? Madam Chair, this is one that it was on our agenda. It's not quite ready yet because we have some more information so I would move to move to move this to a date in the future when we can get all of the information. I would second that. Yes, I agree. Thank you. All in favor. All right. Aye. Aye. Next item is approved in I resolution, continuing appointment of the position of interim county manager. Yeah, this is the we had a discussion of this. The the one that was posted, I believe, online did not have an item three. And you had drafted an item three, which our attorney then drafted an item. Well, she moved. Wow. She's over that way. Our attorney then made some changes and I think during our discussion, basically, all that you say what item three is because I haven't seen it yet other than just our discussion of it. Really, I'll ask, I'll ask Aaron to just read item three, which is in addition to the resolution that was posted for review. And if you made the change, I'm going to do that. Okay. Madam Chair and commissioners, item three reads, in addition to all of the duties and authority delegated pursuant to resolution 2012-23, Section 5D, the county manager is hereby authorized to publish a county manager's update and other public announcements in his capacity as county manager or interim county manager as the case may be provided that all content is first approved by the Board of County Commissioners. Thank you Aaron. I will move that we approve the resolution making Mike our County Manager until such time as we find another county manager or for some other reason. But this way we don't have to do this every few weeks. I would second that. All in favor. Hi. I. Okay. Resolution number. Thank you very much. All right. Next we are going into a public hearing and let me get my, my blurb to read and Ginny I have made you a co-host so you are good. The Board of County commissioners will now conduct a hearing on the application of RWE Solar Development LLC for conditional use permit for a battery energy storage system facility located at 33705 Highway 9. This statement I am reading shall be incorporated into and made a part of the record of these proceedings. Notice that this hearing has been given as required by the Park County Land Use Regulations, and copy of such notice and of the publishers, Affodavid, are here by made a part of the record of this proceeding. The Board of County Commissioners has jurisdiction to conduct a public hearing on a conditional use permit application under Section 5-502 CE of the Park County Land Use Regulations. The purpose of this hearing is to consider whether the application should be approved in considering that matter. The Board will address the approval standards, set forth in Section 5-503 of the Park County Land Use Regulations. The procedure to be followed in this hearing will be as follows. The county staff will make an initial presentation. Commissioners may then ask questions. Two, the applicant may then make their presentation. Third, following the applicant's presentation, any other person supporting the application may present any evidence supporting the application. Then any person's opposing the application may present evidence. I will then ask for a motion to close public comment. Then the applicant may present any rebuttal evidence commissioners may then ask any questions. The board asked that the parties and witnesses not redundant, irrelevant, or cumulative evidence. If someone has already made the point that you wish to make, simply say so. The chair will also require that all comments be made to the board and that there be no dialogue between the applicant and members of the audience. At the conclusion of the hearing, the board may take the matter under advisement or give direction to staff to prepare a resolution. If any event, the board decision will be in the form of a resolution to be considered at a subsequent meeting. Are there any objections to the jurisdiction of the board or to the form or substance of these hearings? Here a none. Jenny, county staff, you've got the floor. Thank you. Okay, except I can't, it's not letting me share. Hold on. Okay, technology is our friend usually. Are you getting in? See. There. Yes. Thank you. Excellent. Sure. You mean a minute to find everything? Let's see. Okay. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the Okay. Jenny Ganon, Planning Department. The specific request on this is request for conditional use permit for a battery energy storage system, which falls under major utility facility in the residential zone district. The property we're looking at is like 26,000 peak ranches, addressed as 33705 highway nine in heart cell. And this is a 36 acre lot. Here's a vicinity map showing where so the property and questions labeled subject property in red. You can see just south of it the core electric substation. And let's see what else. Oh, and there is a house up there, a little north. That's the closest residence to this proposed facility. And this is all about six miles north of Hartzell and about 12 miles south of Fair Play. This is a zoning and use map showing the area, the adjacent area to the property. As you can see, it is all residential close by. There's some agricultural and BLM land kind of a way. And then I looked at what each of these properties are taxed as. So you can see that most of the adjacent ones to this property are mostly agricultural. There's one vacant and there's one taxed as ag and res so that's the property where the house is. But they're also using it agriculturally. In a current conditions map just to bring it up a little closer, I can see a couple of blue drainages and ditches and across the highway are the wet rooms for that exist in the Tomahawk Wildlife Area. I kind of color-coded a site plan for my sake as well as yours just to show I want to highlight the important areas. So you can see where the substation is on the lower right hand corner and where the proposed best area is, battery electric storage system area. So and they wanted to show where the easements are. The yellow one is the easement that is going to be granted by CORE, CORE owns Lot 33, from the highway into Thousand Peaks Ranch and to the road, Formile Creek Road. Then they cross Formile Creek Road, which is either dirt or basically unbuilt, and onto lot 20s property to the south and the green, and that is an existing recorded easement, exit easement. Then I highlighted in blue a 30,000 gallon water tank that our WE has agreed to place on the property. It's fairly new development and I wanted to show that on here. Okay. Okay, some pictures to kind of orient you. So we're standing at the southeast corner of the subject property and looking towards the substation. So that's the substation. And then looking back west from the same place, just kind of down the existing line, what to climb. And then looking northwest, back into thousand peaks ranch. So there's another lot. It's two lots over with the house and some buildings there. But that's about half a mile away. Okay, so we gave notice for the Planning Commission hearing and this one posted a sign at the, well, not at the property. This is at the intersection of Highway 9 and County Road 24, or I thought more people would see it. And we mailed letters to the adjacent property owners and published it in the flu. And just to let you know with the planning commission hearing because that was, we had to delay it a couple times. When we finally had a set date and we knew we were gonna do it, I did email everybody who had emailed me about this case. So a whole bunch of property owners, not necessarily adjacent. I let them know that we were hearing it. Got some referral responses back from the advisory board on the environment. One, they wanted to ensure that heartless fire is trained and equipped to address any emergency at the facility, e.g. battery, fire, and electrical contact, to ensure that if the ditches were full that it would not compromise the operation of the best, three ensure that dust mitigation measures are used during construction and four perp-stieflectors should be installed on the transmission towers to prevent harm to raptors in the area. This has all been well addressed in the application, taken care of basically, or it will be. The second one from the assessor. At first, we got a letter back saying she didn't believe that the projected tax payments to Park County are accurate. The market will dictate the value of property of sales occur, but believes that parcels with residential improvements adjacent to the Phyllis facility could be affected for a period of time. I just got a letter, quick response from her in this morning, saying the information available at the time did not provide enough data to verify the accuracy of the projected number, which was $402,254 per year. And she said, I reviewed additional information with projections from the Department of Property Taxation. And if the annual factors are reached, the estimate of projected tax payment would be accurate. And I think, Mike, are you going to go over that? So you don't have to right now, I was just wondering. Either Mike or the applicants will go over those protections, if you want. Core said Core is the electric service provider in the area, and the applicant will need to reach out to Core for the station service, as Excel does not provide service in the area and the applicant will need to reach out to CORE for the station service as Excel does not provide service in the area. Applicant and CORE are working on an access agreement across the North boundary of the substation property and CORE is requesting that because of the time this is taking, this needs to be a condition of approval of the project prior to construction of the facility. Hartzel Fire said proposal does comply with this organization's concerns and there are no conflicts with our interests. There's no threat to the community from the fire perspective and will not impact the department resources. Historical preservation and public works had no conflicts. Thousand-piece ranches had many concerns and questions. All the communication is in the application packet and the referrals. And you can see that the applicant got right on it and answered a lot of those questions. We've been working till now to get everything really in place so that they're comfortable. We also just got a letter from 1000 Peex ranches. President, and he's now in support of this project. So as for public comment, staff received 45 comments written against this proposed facility and 15 in favor. And the petition has been presented with 38 signatures of Park County residents in favor. And I just wanted to say that those 45 came in before we had a chance to do a hearing and before a lot of information was really disseminated. So there were a lot of questions and just a lot of assumptions kind of. But the questions were all answered in one way or another. I feel like really everything, RWE took everything into account that the public came up with and tried to come up with conditions or answers or whatever. So since the last planning commission hearing, which is a couple weeks ago, we haven't gotten any new comments, any negative comments. Okay, I'm going to go over the standards of approval for conditional use directly from the staff report, but I'll go over it now. Okay, so standard approval A, The use proposed is an authorized conditional use for the zone district in which the property described in the application is located. Yes, major utility facilities are listed as a conditional use in the residential zone district. Standard B, the property described in the application for conditional use permit possesses geological, physical and other environmental conditions that are compatible with the proposed conditional use. So this slide does meet all the conditions for the proposed use as outlined in the SWCA alternatives analysis. It includes over 22 acres of buildable area, which is these are the metrics in this analysis. No soaps exceeding 5% and no aquatic features as confirmed in SWCA's aquatic resources inventory report. And the lot is an open field free of trees or bushes and that ensures no vegetation removal or impact from the development. See, the condition used will conform to all applicable requirements of the zone district in these land use regulations and does not create a substantial safety concern for anticipated visitors to the property. So this project will comply with all the relevant zoning requirements and the land use regulations. While site won't have actual visitors, there were safety concerns for neighboring properties and they've been addressed. According to the draft emergency response plan included in the application with the mRNA batteries are generally safe but under certain conditions they can catch fire, release toxic gases or explode. So RWA is currently collaborating with heart's will fire protection districts to develop the emergency response plan and they provided the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control Regulations along with Tesla MegaPak Safety Overview and Emergency Guides, which will be integrated into construction and operation procedures. And last week they turned in a new emergency plan, which is in your packet under, it was in the updated documents. So this was a concern for the planning commission. So we wanted to make sure that you saw that they really are doing their due diligence on this. And then the heart-sulfire chief Brian Cook stated in his referral that the odds of a major event happening at a facility like this are very, very slim. And from his perspective, there's no threat to the community. RWA also informs staff that no fires or dangerous incidents have occurred at any of their existing best facilities. Standard D, the property has a reasonably certain right of permanent legal access permitting the particular access from the property to the public federal fair. So because there's no direct access to highway nine from four mile creek road, access will be gained via easements. There's recorded easement already from the owners of Lot 20 to the east of Lot 26 granting access along their southern boundary line. RW is currently working with core to complete an access easement to highway nine through the substation property. And core states and their referral response that they approve this project and are working on an access easement agreement. So we saw the site plan for illustrations. The applicant's attorney has provided a memorandum regarding the access rights and 1000 peaks of ranch to use their roads. The staff consulted with county attorney Julie Westendorf and were in agreement that the applicant has the same rights to use the HOA roads in the same manner as all other owners of lots within the ranch. So thus there is a reasonably certain right of permanently gal access. Standard E. Access to the property from the public thoroughfare reasonably meets County Street Road or driveway standards or if the properties are developed, such access will be established prior to issuance of building permit. So access from Highway 9 must be built prior to the issuance of building permit for the proposed facility and shall meet part county driveway standards. The applicant must obtain an access permit from C.Dot prior to obtaining the county driveway permit and this process has been initiated. And this will all go through our environmental health department and they won't issue a driveway permit until C.Dot has granted their access and there is a legal access permit across Coors lot. F the proposed conditional use is compatible with the uses and zoning for other properties within the neighborhood or immediately surrounding area and this is the hardest compatibility. Okay so a facility like this would most likely be considered incompatible in a residential-izoned area with smaller and more developed lots. But in this proposed area, the incompatibility is lessened by the following considerations. One, all lots in the subdivision are 35 acres or more, giving quite a bit of room between structures and uses between lots. The closest house on a lot directly across Rhino Corrobe from the subject property is still a quarter of a mile away from the East property line of the proposed site. Two, only one out of the A to J. St. Parsley's developed. Three, the rest of the adjacent lots are being used and taxed as agricultural properties for which there is little potential impact for seen from the proposed facility. I have a major utility facility is not actually a new use in the area, but it's sort of an extension of the already existing substation that was approved in 2008. RWE is aware of the neighbors and HOLA concerns and been in discussions with them to address some of those issues. Many of these concerns can be mitigated through conditions placed on approval of this case. And then the last standard of approval, G, in making this determination, conflicts with any enforceable covenants, conditions and restrictions of record will be considered. So a copy of the thousand piz ranches, covenants, conditions, and restrictions of record will be considered. So a copy of the 1,000 PEEX Ranch's covenants, conditions, and restrictions is included in the application. 1,000 PEEX Ranch HOA has provided a referral response, and the applicant's attorneys have provided comments and answers to the concerns indicated. There's also been direct communication between the HOA and RWA. The county does not actually enforce CCNRs, but let's consider the HOA's position and concerns over compatibility with the residentialies own neighborhood. To address the Strategic Master Plan, this proposal is consistent with the Strategic Master Plan's goal number nine, county core services infrastructure and assets, which states that investments in infrastructure that improve quality of life and support commerce will positively affect local residents and provide a significant economic impact by increasing the overall appeal of part county. The county will work to provide financial sustainable infrastructure and core services that serve the needs of the community. So supporting this proposal which would strengthen electric grid and decrease the probability of power outages from any park county residents is a step towards providing sustainable infrastructure that serves the needs of the community. The proposal sort of fails to meet the following strategic master plan goals. The first, which is per the visual priority map, which was included in the current strategic master plan. This best facility is in a high to moderate visibility high scenic quality road carder. Goal number four is protect and enhance scenery and visual quality. The mitigation is in goal 4.1, which gives some latitude with new developments, suggesting implement design standards and new development that minimize impacts on the scenic quality of the rural agricultural and mountain landscape. And this facility would sit below and a third of a mile away from Highway 9, which everybody's looking at the mountains. I feel like they'll look above it. And the applicant has proposed screaming the site to try to minimize the visual impact. And the second one in the Strategic Master Plan is the proposed site is within the South Park Part or Subarea. And strategy A in this subsection, The strategic master plan is the proposed site is within the South Park Carter sub area and Strategy A in this in this subsection, which is a South Park Carter sub area, which is To sustain the agriculture open lands and low density estate residential character of this sub area Staff doesn't deny that this is a very important goal for the county, but the mitigating circumstances pointed out an item F should be considered as well. So, staff is recommending approval of this application with the following conditions. And I think I forgot. Okay, well, the applicant will develop and submit an emergency response plan that has been reviewed and approved by the Hartzle Fire Department, the South Park Ambulance District, and Park County Emergency Management to the building department for review prior to the issuance of any permits. Number two, as expected that the BESS will have a 20 year lifespan, a decommissioning agreement must be signed by the applicant in Park County prior to issuance of any building permits. Three, a drainage erosion and sedimentation control plan, stormwater management plan, dust control plan, and an oxygen-sweed plan must all be provided to the planning department prior to issuance of any building permits. Four, a noise analysis, demonstrating design compliance with these regulations must be provided prior to the issuance of any building permit and the best facility once an operation must comply with the Park County noise ordinance. Five, any vegetation planted must be native throughout resistance species. Six, other than the security fencing around the proposed structures, which is not required to comply with CPW recommendations. Any other fencing that the applicant might want to put up has to be wildlife friendly and completed in accordance with CPW recommended standards as outlined in the document provided by CPW fencing with wildlife in mind. Seven, any lighting on site must be compliant with the park county land use regulations and must be downloaded and shielded. Eight, a performance bond in the estimated amount of the cost of decommissioning and removing the best facility shall be required prior to issuance of any building permits. Number nine, the conditional use authorized by this permit cannot be expanded in scope area use or in any manner inconsistent with the permit. Are there any questions? I'm sure there are. And I'm sure the applicant will be more than happy to answer. Who wants to go first? You want questions for staff? No, I don't have any questions for staff. Make sure, whistle. I have lots of questions but not yet. OK, so we reserve the right to ask you to come back up if we have questions for you, Jenny. All right, thank you. All right, the applicant may come up and give us your presentation. Yeah. Okay. That's so sure. Sure. Thank you. I'm going to go to the next one. Thank you. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go out for you guys. These are going to be much, everything that the applicant is going to say to you now. Um, so some of Okay. Sorry, commissioners. Just giving a second here. Can this is can you hear me? Okay. Great. Thank you. We're on. Okay. Great. great. Oh, ticket to the next lateral I'm going to try to enter. And instead of the arrows. to So now I'll put these as blank. So where's your pull-it sign? I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go can't screw it up from here. So, let me start off by saying good morning, Commissioner, staff and residents. Thank you so much for your time today. We've been met with such a welcome in the community. We appreciate it. We know that this is a topic that not everyone agrees on, but we appreciate the time today and letting us walk through our presentation and hopefully answer any questions you may have. a topic that not everyone agrees on, but we appreciate the time today and let us walk through our presentation and hopefully answer any questions you may have. So quickly my name is Michael Savoria and I'm here alongside a panel of my RWD colleagues and consultants all of whom were experts in their relevant fields to walk you through why you should grant a conditional use permit for the South Park Battery Storage Project. Here's a list of my colleagues that we'll be speaking today. Just to note, they will reserve their introductions until they come to the podium, so hopefully we can save a little bit of time that way. A little bit of background on myself. Again, Michael Savore, I'm a Senior Director of Development, FARWA. Worked for the company for nearly a decade. So we're close to the decade, Mark. Not gonna know what would. In that time, I've had the opportunity to develop over three gigawatts of energy facilities across the United States. I am truly grateful to have had the opportunity to sit in on many discussions like the one we're having today. And I'm excited that myself and our team can provide you with the information you need to make an informed decision. Okay, so here is just a high level overview of the agenda, the top of us we're gonna talk about today. So we'll start out with why are we here? Basically it will be our ask for the commission. Then we'll pivot to a little bit about RWE, a little bit about battery storage systems. Next we'll pivot to a little bit about RWE, a little bit about battery storage systems. Next we'll get a little more granular and we'll start talking about South Park as a project itself. Once we have that context, I think it'd be an appropriate time to move into Section 553 and walk through the standards, each of which we feel we've met with clear increments in evidence for approval. The part that we all enjoy are the partnerships that we've developed over the last few years in the community. We have a community benefit section that will walk you through some of the unique partnerships we've developed. It's been a pleasure, like I said, to be a part of this community for the time that we've been here. After the community benefits, we'll go ahead and do a quick closing statement and open it up to questions. And I'm aware that there are a lot of there's going to be a lot of time of people talking. We're going to move through this as quickly as we can so we can open up to questions and address any of the concerns the commission has. All right. Okay so why are we here today? Well, as recommended by the planning staff, RWE Solar Development LLC is requesting an approval for a conditional use permit from Park County for the construction and operation of a battery energy storage system. Let's talk a little bit about RWE. So who is RWE? Well, RWE has over 125 years of history operating energy assets globally. The last 15 spent growing our pipeline here in the United States. We've grown it to the extent of over 9 gigawatts as far as an operating fleet. 200 projects across the United States were the third largest renewables developer in the US and just to give you an understanding of scale that nine gigawatts could basically beat the power generation in Colorado's roughly seven gigawatts of the entire operating fleet could provide power to the entire state of Colorado. Myself and my employees here are a few of the 2000 folks that work for RWE. We're all committed to our company's goal of investing $20 billion into the US market by 2030. And believe it or not, we're well on our way to meeting that goal. All right, so where is that $20 billion going? Everybody wants to know. Well, a lot of it's being invested in rural communities. With more than 15 years in the renewable space, RWA has an outstanding track record in developing, constructing, and operating assets, energy facilities in rural communities, 170 to date. The point of today's meeting would be adding Park County as 171. There are tremendous amount of benefits that come with these projects. A lot of it are jobs created over the lifetime of the project and in construction. One that I think most are familiar with is the generation of government revenue from the taxation of the project to date we have over a half million dollars paid out and generated revenue From go to the government and over four hundred million dollars and land on our payments to date what this With these statistics don't take into consideration is the natural circle down effect that has from this capital being Poked into a local economy and the way that it makes itself down to local businesses and to the community at large. So it's not just a benefit for a select few, it really trickles out into the rest of the community as well. All right, I'm sure some of you are wondering what on God's Green Earth is a battery storage project. Well, I'll high level it for everyone. A battery energy storage system is a technology that stores electrical energy in large scale battery units, enabling energy to be saved and discharged to the grid when most needed. So what is the purpose of a battery project? Well, it'll store access energy generated during times of low demand or high production and then release that energy during peak demand or when the grid faces instability. Basically creating a more reliable power supply. What are the key functions and benefits? Well, one just mentioned grid stabilization. It helps balance supply and demand in real time, reducing the overall risk of blackouts. Which is an issue. Also peak shaving, it discharges stored energy during peak times to relieve grid stress. And I have the next slide, there's a graph that will kind of explain all of those put together. Alright, so this is a graph of demand over the course of a day, power demand over the course of the day. And then you can see the curve as the curve makes its way north, which means an increase in demand. You get to a stage, the yellow dot in line, which is the reliable power supply. When demand increases above the reliable power supply, you have stability issues and blackouts. What's the one thing that can help with this is add in a battery project that during those times of grid stress and we're above the reliable power supply. We can dispatch energy into the grid to stabilize and avoid blackouts. That's just that simple. Okay, let's get a little more granular and look at the project itself. I know some of this is repetitive from the staff report and I apologize ahead of time. But basically to get everyone up to speed on where the project is, it'll be located off State Highway 9. You can see that running north south on the eastern side of the project area. The yellow square denotes the 230 KV Hartzel substation. And then our project in the rectangular reddish shape is our 36 acre track that mind you the total impact on the 36 acre track will be less than 10 acres. It will be a 200 megawatt battery project and the operational lifetime is set for 20 years. Some key dates, tentative construction starts Q3 of 26, and target commercial operations date will be Q4 of 27. Here's another high-level timeline from development all the way through operations. So where are we now in the process? We're still in the development bucket, right? This is typically the phase where developers are diligently in the project to get their ducks in the row. This is so that they can move into the construction phase. The reason why we're here before you today is the land use permit portion of it. Our goal is to obtain the conditional use permit, move to the building permit, obtain the building permit, and then mobilize for construction in the summer of 2026. We'll work through construction, then commercial operations state in December of 2026. We'll work through construction then commercial operations state in December of 2027. Again, we'll run the project for its 20 year lifetime. In that timeframe, we'll have 24-7 monitoring of the facility. Regular site visits with a huge focus on safety. And David, we'll talk about that when he comes up. When we're addressing standard C of 5503, but wanted to mention again, safety is at the utmost importance for this project. Okay, so I'm sure a lot of folks are wondering why this location, right? Well, RWB and PSCUS selected this site based off of some key metrics, including strategic siding, transmission suitability, and reliability needs. The strategic setting component is RWE looking across the state of Colorado and trying to understand future needs for PSGO, demand, reliability, et cetera. It initially led us to the 230 KV substation. Once we located the project area, we started to name transmission suitability studies, which by definition, it's meets substation of all the voltage and capacity needs. But, you know, high level, if you're in the business of injecting energy into the grid, right, you're gonna look for infrastructure that can support the injection at any hour of the day. The easiest way I can put this is if you're a water company and you're looking for the right pipe to inject water in, you don't want to pick the one that's full. In this instance, the Harshal Substation combined with the PSCO infrastructure was a predominant reason why we moved forward with the development of the project area. Lastly and probably most important or reliability needs. So we're looking for project areas that enhance grid stability due to lack of local generation. Again, case in point this particular project there is not any local generation within a reasonable distance. And this stability that's being added by a battery project would fit well within the umbrella of what PSCO would be looking for as far as infrastructure upgrades. So based off of those three key metrics, RWB moved forward with the development of the project. The great news is that in the PSCO requests for proposal in 2023, they selected this project to move forward and become our partner and building and operating over the next 20 years. And we have a letter of support that states that exactly. All right, now we're getting into section 5503, the standards for approval. I don't mean to be too repetitive. I know the staff have for covered a lot of this, but I will be quick and concise. There are seven different standards. We'll address each one individually and more importantly, why we meet by clear and convincing evidence that necessary standards for approval of a conditional use permit. So let's start with land use regulation standard A. The use proposed as an authorized conditional use for the zone district in which the property described in the application is located. This is a twofold analysis, right? Let's look at table LUR, table 5304. All right, so this is a table that's established for residential-izoned areas. And if you look in the far right column, far right column, it says for parcels greater than 35 acres. If you go down to major and minor utility facilities, you can see that based off of the 35-acre requirement, these can be granted in the residential-izoned area. All right. So we meet the 35 plus acre portion of the equation. Now let's look at what the definition is of a major utility facility. Based off Yols code, it's an underground surface or overhead structure or facility or an area of land used to generate store, transmit, distribute, or regulate electricity. Well, South Park battery storage will be a facility used to store electricity, right? So fully meets the definition set forth in the code. For a major utility facility, we're greater than 35 acres. Therefore, the use proposed is an authorized condition used for the zone district residential in which the properties are described. All right, that's it for A. We're going to move on to B, but Stephanie from SWCA. We'll talk about B. Okay. Hello, Park Gowney commissioners. Thank you for having us today. We're pretty excited about reaching this milestone in the project development process. My name is Stephanie Blahoviak and I am with SWCA Environmental Consultants. We're a nationwide consulting firm. We support natural resource, cultural resource, tribal consultation and land use planning and permitting for major infrastructure projects across the US. And I am, my background is Natural Resources and Land Use Planning and Permitting, as well as Environmental Planning. I've been working in land use planning and permitting for a decade now in supporting major infrastructure projects across Colorado and the US. And I'm a certified AICP land use planner. I am going to speak to the Park County Land Use Regulations standards of approval for conditional use permit, standard B to start off. The property described in the application for conditional use permit possesses geological, physical and other environmental conditions that are compatible with the proposed conditional use. As Michael mentioned in this case, the proposed conditional use is a major utility facility and it's proposed in the residential zone district, which is an allowed use to be proposed in the residential zone district. The site location is ideal for the land use perspective because it has access, public ingress and ingress and is located close to State Highway 9. It has the physical features that are compatible, it's relatively flat. Most of the site is on average less than 5% slope and it does not create any additional above and beyond grading or disturbance that would be needed from an engineering perspective to develop the site. We completed due diligence studies and filled sites that resulted in no environmental sensitive resources impacted, no historical resources, no resources were found that are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. There are no state or federally protected wildlife resources on site or critical habitats on site. The preliminary geotechnical studies have indicated it is suitable for from a geotechnical perspective for engineering and again the site access is a key component as well for developing the site. SWCA has been supporting this project since 2022 when the desktop review initial studies started, and then continued throughout 2023 and 2024, we've completed a lot of onsite field assessments to ground truth the preliminary analyses. Some of the natural resource surveys include Raptor Nests surveys, an aquatic resources inventory, and Wildlife Habitat assessment. No Raptor Nest are on site or adjacent to the site. There are no aquatic resources on the parcel. And again, no sensitive wildlife habitat assessment on or adjacent to the site and resources on or adjacent. The project applicant has gone above and beyond and completed a field study of cultural resources, which is a class three cultural resource inventory and no on-site resources were discovered on site at that time. In response to community input and park county requests and input, the applicant commissioned consultants to also complete a visual impact assessment and simulations, a traffic impact study and a noise analysis. Agency coordination has been often and frequent and for example we've met several times in person and on virtual calls with the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Department, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the Colorado Department of Transportation or C. and Hartzel Fire Protection District, Colorado Parks and Wildlife provided recommendations that the applicant is following, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service had no concerns with the project. This brings us to Standard C for standards for approval for conditional use permit. The conditional use will conform to all applicable requirements of the zone district and these land use regulations and does not create a substantial safety concern for anticipated visitors to the property. The proposed South Park Best Project is a proposed major utility facility and as we mentioned it is allowed in the Park County land use regulations and the residential zone district. The site has the site design has evolved over time and has responded to community input and park county questions and concerns. It meets all of the regulations in the residential zone district, including all of the setbacks. And for safety, it is not open to public access. It's restricted to maintenance personnel, there are least safety measures in place for that. And the safety of the neighboring property has been addressed as well, which we'll talk a little bit more later in the presentation. There is also an updated emergency response plan that has been provided to the commission. And this has been in the works for months. The applicant has been working very closely with the Hartzel Fire Protection District over the last three months to update the emergency response plan that you have before you today. And has only added additional measures to make sure that this is safe and then going above and beyond with the voluntary addition of two 30,000 gallon underground water tanks, a fire hydrant and fire access road for emergency responders. Now, for additional details, I'm going to bring up David with RWE to speak to safety and more detail. Good afternoon, I see we're just past noon now. Good afternoon, commission. I'm excited to be up here. I've been in and out of your community the last year or so, and I've got a follow-up on my level at, coming from New York, it's such a beautiful place. I got spent some time with our first responders. My name is David Reins. I'm the senior director of Fire Protection and Prior Prevention for R WWE. I've been in the news about 12 years. Prior to that I headed up safety for IBM research across the United States. My other current role in life, I'm currently the chief of special operations in Putnam County, New York, which is about 40 miles north in New York City, which puts me in charge of teams of folks that respond to special emergencies such as hazmat and entrapment, wildfires, things like that. So I've been in that role for several years. But a fire marshal for about 27 years and a court official. The pleasure of sitting on our county planning board, planning and zoning board, which so I can appreciate those that sit on these boards and make these decisions. I just want to take a few minutes to talk about the system itself. Which hour are we using? I want to mess this up. Sorry. Sorry. I want to mess it up. Okay. Thanks. On the screen, just a few highlights. I'm going to go a little bit deeper and we'll make sure we touch on all the highlights of the safety. I just want to take a few minutes to talk about why I feel as a first responder the Tesla 2XL system is the right system for this project and why it's the right system for first responders and ensure safety in the community. Again, civil safety systems are highlighted there but we share a common goal. My goal here is to ensure the safety of the community and the first responders as I know yours as the Board of County Commissioners. Tessles got about 2,500 of these identical systems deployed throughout the US since about two years now. The 2XL system which is a lithium iron phosphate battery storage system. And of the 2500, there's been zero systems that have gone to thermal runaway or had a catastrophic failure. And I'll talk about why. How did they do this? So first of all, it's got an integrated battery management system. Which what does that mean? That means it's got a brain. This is not just a battery that you're plugging in and unplugging and unplugging and unplugging, which is a lot of what we see in the industry. There's a management system, it looks at, in this case 14 points across the battery. It looks at the charge in the discharge state, it looks at temperature, it looks at the delta in that temperature. Where's that temperature going? And then it reacts to that with multiple cooling systems. So it's looking at the temperature within the container. It's also looking at the temperature within the jacket of the battery housing. So we're adding a whole bunch of different levels. What's most important to me is what I saw on the Tesla 2 XL is that the recipe or the makeup of the battery is very different than we've seen over the last couple generations of batteries. We've reduced the recipe so it's more stable so that all the batteries reacted at 2 or 300 degrees Fahrenheit where they reached the point where they felt. These batteries can run up to 800 or 1200 degrees without showing any signs of failure which is huge from a perspective of management of the system and also Response to it and order to get a battery up to that temperature it would have to be a really catastrophic event that would generate that much energy to heat those batteries up And that's that's really one of the main reasons why I like this system Close cooling loop this battery system has a closed cooling loop as a secondary cooling system, and it has containment. So in any event, there's any kind of a leak at all in the cooling, which is an ethylene glycol, antitrease medium, is all be contained within the container. So nothing is going to extrude or run out of the box. And the batteries are dry. These are dry cells. So there's no liquid being generated that could create an issue. The container itself is yellow listed. So it's a fireproof, tested, rated container. So if there is any kind of a heat events or fire, it's maintained within the container itself. Some of the additional safety sparkers. So Elon Musk and his engineering team have come up with some really innovative stuff. So inside these boxes, they're sparkers. So in the event, a battery does fail or a self-fails and it generates any hydrogen. The sparkers are internal fitness system and they basically go off like you're later on your gas grill, where you hear that tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, and there are nights any kind of hydrogen that's built up in the container. Sorry, why is that important? It's important because we don't want the kind of gas built up under the container. There's top mounted panels, so it's a seal container and there's panels on the roof that they call explosion protection or explosion prevention. So in the event there was ever any kind of a gas build up, these panels open up and release any pressure build up. Again, we've never seen that, but it's a great feature just in case there is a catastrophic failure. All the systems I've talked about are monitored or 24-7. So Tesla monitors all their batteries, 24-7 through their network, as does the utility monitors at 24-7. So we see this in our operations center, we see all the components, all the points that are being monitored, as well as I've talked about with Chief Cook, there's gonna be a be a fire alarm panel. So in the event, there's any kind of fire alarm that goes off, it'll go through the ULSD system, it'll go to a central station, the central station, and then dispatch the fire department with a call saying on battery number one, we have a detector went off, and they respond accordingly, and we'll get into what they do when they get there. So we've developed, as some of the other folks have spoken to, we've developed a very deep site-specific emergency response plan with the chiefs and he's also spoken to the Mutually Departments to ensure that we have all the resources we need and the training. So the plan doesn't stand on its own. The plan comes with training from our WWE. So prior to any batteries arriving in Park County, we will provide with a certified training team, we will provide training to the Hartzle Fire Department and the Mutual Aid Departments as well as the South, Park County and Bullen's Group. So everyone's can, everybody has been brought up this speed and is comfortable with responding to any potential emergency or alarm in or around. So it's not just about responding to the batteries, which is highly unlikely, unlikely. It's responding to a grass fire in the area, a fire up on the highway, somebody camping out in the field or a fire in one of the ag areas. We want to make sure we cover all of that so there's a comfort level in operating in around that battery storage. And we're going to continue to build on that as we get further into the process here. We talked a little bit about a 30,000 gallon water tank. I want to make sure you understand the water is not there to put on the batteries. We don't put water on electrical enclosures. The water is there because in discussion with the chief, he said, you know what? I really don't have water anywhere out in the district. So what we looked at is putting an underground tank there with a fire hydrant that's accessible 24-7. So this is accessible to his department and the Mutually Department, any other state agency that would come in in the sistering and emergency like that. And that would be outside of the battery storage area shown on the site plan. And again, accessible 24-7. And with that, we talked about a second tank, which has nothing to do with this site plan, but on a piece of property that the hearts of fire district owns on the opposite end of the district, where the chief indicated he doesn't have the only as seasonal fire protection water. So we talked about in our partnership that we've been building, hey, let's do this. Let's give you that water on the other side of the county as well. Or I'm sorry, I need to say the fire district as well. So you have that now there's 60,000 gallons of fire fighting water available 24, 7. And I think that that's big. So on all, we've developed this battery storage system. We've looked at what is the best technology for this installation. We looked at what's the safest technology. And I've highlighted that the key elements, I feel very comfortable as a firefighter, as someone who's really responsible for others, and responsible for training firefighters. This system overall is definitely best in class for what we're looking to do here in Park County. We'll turn it over to Jordan. Good afternoon commissioners. My name is Jordan Bunch. I'm with Holland and Hart outside council for the applicant. And I'm here to talk to you this morning about Standard D, which is the criteria that the property have a reasonably certain right of permanent legal access permitting vehicular access to the property. And I'm pleased report that we do have that here. The property has legal access by virtue of the road, the private roads within the Thousand Peaks Ranch HOA. I provided a legal memorandum to the county which was reviewed by Julie Westendorf, one of the county attorneys, and she agreed with the analysis that those roads provide legal access from the property to Colorado Highway 9. And in addition to just the very existence of those roads, the applicant is also entered into a road use agreement with the HOA, and that agreement confirms the right of the project to use those roads and also provides important assurances to the HOA about the use of those roads and our WEs contributions to the maintenance of those roads for the next 20 years. The applicant is also exploring additional easements that they may also use for access. However, those would just be additional access points that they may use. Legal access is already established by virtue of those roads. These private easements are with Piesco, Core and John W. Meyer Jr., who's one of the neighboring property owners. Those are either finalized or currently being finalized. And all of these, both the HUA roads, as well as the private access roads, would provide an access route that goes from the southeast corner of the parcel, crossing Rannaker Road and four mile Creek Road to reach Colorado Highway 9. And then the applicant would be responsible for securing all permits to connect those roads to Colorado Highway 9 prior to construction. And through those permits, of course, they would be required to meet both Park County and C.A.S. Access Standards. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Stephanie. Thank you, Jordan. Okay. We are getting to the last few standards here. Thank you for your patience and attention. Standard E for the standards of approval for the conditionally as permits says that access to the property from the public thoroughfare reasonably meets county street road or driveway standards or if the property is undeveloped such access will be established prior to the issuance of a building permit. As we mentioned we have coordinated with C dot and C.DOT in April of this year. At that time, C.DOT provided comments to the applicant team, and we took those comments and responded in one way in completing a traffic impact study or TIS. And this is also in preparation for the C.DOT access permit. This TIS was completed and provided to C.DOT in November, early this month, and there were no concerns expressed from C.DOT. The TIS is completed by engineering engineers who are experts in traffic studies, and they use the C.DOT access code and methodology to complete that as well as C.A.T. data for the level of service for state highway 9 and level of trips. And we have shown in that TIS that the major or the main impact is temporary in nature. It's during construction activities. And given that during construction activities, it's still not enough to warrant any auxiliary lanes. And so there's not a safety concern or any addition of auxiliary lanes that are needed from a seed-up perspective. And then during operations, the number of trips is very, very low. It's a couple of times a month. The project will apply and secure the C.DOT access permit before construction and the project meets is going to meet all of those street standards prior to the building permit and meets all of the standards in E right now in the preliminary the site plan design. This takes us to standard F. The proposed conditional use is compatible with the uses and zoning for other properties within the neighborhood or immediately surrounding area. Again the proposed conditional use is the major utility facility and the South Park Best Project is compatible with the surrounding area in a number of important ways that I'm going to go into. Before that I want to zoom out just a little bit and go back to a 10,000 foot level view of land use and zoning. The Park County Planning Staff mentioned the Strategic Master Plan and this project is aligned with that Park County Strategic Master Plan document, which is a policy and guidance document with aspirational goals for the county. And then today what we're deciding though is a site-specific development plan that is meeting the regulations. So when counties establish zone districts, they are the purpose of that is to ensure compatibility of uses with the distinct zone districts. And then for each zone district in the regulations that implement guidance and policy documents, the actual rules that development needs to comply to, within that zone district, for example, a residential zone district. The regulations are outlined and to ensure uniformity and compatibility among uses within that zone. In this case, it's a residential zone district and this site is compatible for a number of reasons. One is that it is adjacent to the existing public or major utility facility, the heart cell substation. And the site parcel is sufficient size. It's 36 acres. It's plenty of room for this type of use. The area is sparsely developed. most of the adjacent lots are undeveloped. Only one of them is developed, seven remain undeveloped, and there are no applications in front of the county at this time or within the foreseeable future. So the existing conditions today is that it is mostly undeveloped and open space. The park county zoning regulations have allowed for the possibility of a major utility facility in the residential zone district and park county has approved past major utility facilities in the residential zone district. Within a residential zone district there's a variety of uses that are allowable, that are not residential, and this ensures a robust residential zone as a whole for a community, and grid reliability and stability is certainly helpful to a residential zone district. And this project would support that. The impact on the surrounding residential uses will will be minimal and it is compatible. The site design has been revised several times in response to community input and comments from agency stakeholders in Park County and the project has a letter of support now from the Thousand Peaks Ranch Homeowners Association board and This is a lot that's in that homeowners association. It's part of that group for public health safety and welfare Again a best project such as the South Park Best Enhances local grid Reliability and that benefits public health and safety. In addition, we've mentioned the two 30,000 gallon water tanks that the applicant has agreed to provide and going above and beyond to not only meet the regulations but exceed them and provide added safety for the neighborhood and surrounding area so that emergency responders can respond and have shorter response times in the worst case scenario event of some sort of fire event in the area should that occur. And the emergency response plan that has been in the works, the updated plan has been developed in close partnership with Chief Cook. We've mentioned a few times that we are using a community-focused design approach and the site plan has gone through a few different iterations to become the site plan you're seeing today and making a decision on today. One major change that has occurred is that the infrastructure is primarily centrally located in the parcel. So this is a parcel that's 36 acres. The proposed footprint or actual impact from the project is about 10 acres only. And it is meeting all of the regulations in the zone district, all of the design standards in all of the park county land use regulations and park county ordinances, including the noise ordinance. So that's no ordinance 20-03. You can see here on the figure the battery energy storage system yard is in the center. And then you can see that the dashed line is 25 feet from the parcel line. This is where the noise ordinance says you need to measure the decibels, the a-weighted decibels from a-weighted is adjusted for human hearing. And the project would meet the noise ordinance 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So 55 DBA during the daytime, you can see that is kind of the lighter blue line and then the 50 decibels at nighttime. The project is maintaining that the entire time with this revised layout with the centrally located battery yard. In addition to ensure that it is compatible with all of the regulations and it goes above and beyond, there was interest in visual impacts. Park County does not have a visual impact methodology or metrics for standards. So SWCA used one of the industry standards, which is frequently cited as a very robust methodology. It's required by the United States Bureau of Land Management or BLM. It's the Visual Resource Assessment, BLM methodology, and mitigation strategies. And we use that to take some key observation points or KOPs and take photos, use existing conditions. You can see on the left here, we've got an image of existing conditions and then on the right is the simulation using the BLM methodology and this particular KOP is looking from State Highway 9 and on the right you can see that there's minimal estimated visual change to the landscape and The proposed transmission towers would be equal to or less than and height to existing infrastructure towers that are out there. And the BLM has designed national standards for color pallets. And the applicant has agreed to use those colors. These are colors that have been designed to minimize visual contrast with the background landscape. The applicant has agreed to use that. And in addition, for visual mitigation is screening the site. So using visual screening and the security fence that's needed and using that color palette that helps screen the infrastructure that's inside of that security fence. The lighting plan will comply with the park County lighting ordinance. This ordinance, the regulations are the to be down directional and shielded. compatibility so continuing for the case that this is absolutely compatible in this area and in this residential zone district. Again, it's mostly not developed. The existing development that is there is an existing substation and it's a major utility facility by placing infrastructure such as this next to that substation. We are limiting the need for additional disruption and infrastructure through linear features in particular, for example, access roads and transmission lines. It's immediately adjacent, so it's an ideal site. Again, it's a 36-acre parcel. The actual disturbance is expected to be only 10 acres of that site. The traffic is going to be minimal. With the highest impact being temporary in nature during construction activities. And the trips for during operations will be very minimal. It will be every few weeks and maybe one or two people that are going to that site. The C.Axis is going to follow all C.Axis code requirements and again that permit requirement will be provided before construction. That's a very standard typical workflow in project development for projects like this. The land approval stage comes much earlier than the building permits and construction level permit design stage. With that, that's all of the reasons that we believe that this is compatible with the surrounding area and could be a great addition to this area and help promote the grid stability for Park County. With that, I will hand it back over to Jordan for standard G. Great. Thank you, again, commissioners. I'm here to talk about the final criteria, which is whether the project conflicts with any enforceable covenants, conditions or restrictions of record. And this project does not conflict with any existing covenants, conditions, or restrictions. And it is also, in fact, compatible with the existing CUP for the substation. Turning first to the 1000-PEEKS branch HOA, the applicant, as you've heard, has been in close contact with the HOA for months, discussing this project. And as a result of all of those fruitful conversations, the applicant and the HOA have entered into a road use agreement that provides assurances about this project's use of the HOA roads, a commitment to helping maintain those roads for 20 years, and confirms that the project and the uses are subject to the HOA's Covments, Conditions, Restrictions, BILA's, Articles of Incorporation, all of those HOA documents. And a copy of those declarations was included in the application for your ease of reference. And if you look at those, you will see that this project does not conflict with anything in the declaration. This isn't allowed use. Those declarations allow any use use which is permitted under the zoning code, which is what we're here for today. So those are compatible and the HOA does not object to the issuance of the CUP and believes that the project is both beneficial and compatible and that set forth in the letter from the HOA, which I believe you have in front of you. In addition to the HOA, we also looked at whether this is compatible with the existing CUP that was approved for the substation in 2008. And it does. That CUP allows the sort of interconnection that will be needed in this case to hook up the battery storage to the substation and some of the easements across the core property where the CUP was granted for the substation that the applicant may utilize here are depicted on the site plan that was approved as a part of that CUP. So there's no change to the underlying substation approval or documents or site plan. Those are all reflective of what will be used here. So for all of those reasons, this project is in fact compatible with all existing declarations, restrictions, covenants, and existing CUPs. And with that, I will hand it over to Brian to walk through the community benefits. Thank you, Jordan. Pardon me. Board, I'm getting over some allergies here. So a little bit of a rast your voice. Thank you commissioners for your time of day. My name is Brian Kerr and I'm a development manager in the South Park Best Project and I've had the honor of working on this project for the past year. Looking back, I think I've been here 10 times now and been able to meet many new people and form some friendships, honestly, as we've worked on community engagement. So our focus on community engagement began early as a nod to the importance of safety. Our very first meeting back in March was with Chief Cook to introduce the project to him and immediately start collaborating on effective design and safety standards. In April, I introduced myself to Kevin Spencer, the president of 1,000 Pikes Ranch HOA, to also begin educating him on the project and engaging with that community since it's obviously right there in the area. On May 10th of this year, we published a notice in the flume for public open houses and we sent certified mail to the also the key stakeholders. We held a virtual open house on May 16th, followed by an in-person open house here in this room back in May. We continued throughout the summer to have regular conversations about the project with the Thousand Peaks Ranch Association discussing road views and ideas for mitigating impact and just listening to the concerns of the HUA. Additionally, we shared updates through multiple articles in the flume. We held a presentation with the Park County Chamber of Commerce and we also maintained a project website where we could collect feedback from the communities. As a committed partner in every community where we develop projects, we actively seek opportunities to build meaningful relationships with local organizations and invest in their success. This commitment resonates with me on a personal because I live in a small rural community myself. Like many here, I volunteer with organizations that rely on the commitment of willing and able partners who believe in their work. RWB believes in this type of community engagement very strongly, and I'd like to share how our project aligns with this vision and how we can work together to bring real positive impact to the community. Here's some examples of wide ranging community benefits provided are created by the South Park best project totaling more than $9 million over 20 years. It's been discussed multiple times but to enhance the fire safety for the South Park area, we are installing 230,000 gallon water tanks, each in separate locations, one in a thousand peaks ranch area, and the second one in the South Park Ranches area. This idea came from conversations with Chief Cook when we learned that their water storage is on trucks limited to basic 3000 gallons. And these two water tanks can directly improve the fire safety for local residents and reduce response times for fire emergencies. We partner with the Career and Technical Education Program on a 20-year agreement totaling $400,000. The CTE program teaches critical skills such as welding, agriculture, and building trades that allow park county students to obtain jobs available right here within the county. The park county fair will benefit from $10,000 each year giving them the ability to grow, attract more visitors and create a bigger impact. RWU sponsored the fair this past July and we had a blast attending the Friday night festivities. Park County fair is a staple of the community drawing families and visitors together. Show casing local talent and boosting the local economy. Likewise, the Park County Extension 4H program is a critical program for the youth working often with the Park County fair, with the benefit of a $10,000 annual. For 20 years they can develop new educational programs, grow the enrollment and continue shepherding the youth of Park County. For many families in Park County, the food bank is a lifeline, providing essentials during tough times. RDBs can limit to $200,000 of the next 20 years, can help secure the South Park food banks operating expenses, allowing them to focus serving the needs within the community. Art AV brings part of me and you've already talked a little bit about the property taxes. This is the distribution based on the mill levy rates, based on the state assessment. That Jane again mentioned, it's through the Department of Taxation, but you know, this facility would generate more than 8 million dollars in the next 20 years to all these tax districts within the county. We bring extensive experience and road development improvement making us well equipped to contribute meaningfully to the infrastructure needs of the community we join. We saw this as an opportunity to be a responsible steward and member of the Thousand Peaks Rants Association to formalize this commitment we did enter into a long-term agreement to ensure ongoing road access and maintenance that benefits all residents. Just in summary, you know, this product creates a lot of impact in a very small footprint. It's a critical, dispatchable power facility that can really enhance grid or libel in the area. We have lots of letters of support from agencies in the area, including local citizens. The 230,000 gallon water tanks would greatly enhance fire safety within the area in response times. We sponsored the park County Fair, the Burrow Days. We partnered with the Career and Technical Education Program, the Threadbank extension, as well as the HUA. And lastly, just safety. It's very, very important in the diligence that we've conducted with the emergency response is key. So I want to show some of these letters. This is a letter from Fire Chief Brian Cook. Our ongoing engagement with RWA has allowed us to rigorously assess the safety standards and protocols associated with the South Park Vest Project. The Arts will fire stands in support of the South Park Vest Project. From Chief Kevin Boren's at the ambulance district, the plan is robust meets industry safety standards and reflects a strong commitment to public safety which I fully support. I look forward to continuing this partnership, and they helping uphold the high safety standards our residents expect and deserve. I support the South Park Best Project and appreciate RWB's dedication to ensuring its safe implementation in our community. This is a letter from the Thousand Peaks Ranch Association President Kevin Spencer. RDB is committed to supporting 1000 Peaks Ranch road improvements and maintenance for the next 20 years, directly alleviating when it's perhaps our association's greatest ongoing burden. This level of partnership along with other efforts to mitigate impacts on our landscape FARC seeds, what we received from prior utility companies. It has made a meaningful impact to our local community. Actually, I was asked, would you all like me to read the whole entire letter since it wasn't in the public record before? Yes, please. As the HWA President for Thousand Peaks Ranch Association, I'm writing to express our association support for the condition of use permit for the RW batter energy storage system project. We believe this project will benefit our HWA in the county in several significant ways and we respectfully urge the board to approve the CUP. Unlike our past experiences with other projects, RWB has turned a strong commitment to addressing our community's needs and concerns. Most notably, RWA has committed to supporting TPRA road improvements and maintenance for the next 20 years, directly alleviating what is perhaps our association's greatest ongoing burden. The level of partnership along with other efforts to mitigate impacts on our landscape, far exceeds what we received from prior utility companies and has made a meaningful impact to our local community. Our HMO values the proactive collaboration between RWA and Chief Cook on a comprehensive emergency response plan that directly addresses our community's unique needs and concerns. Additionally, RWA's installation of a 30,000 gallon water tank provides a substantial improvement to fire safety for our homeowners. This tank, which is accessible 24-7 to heart so far, and any other mutual aid will be available for any emergency in the area, far beyond the scope of the best project itself. This resource not only enhances safety for the best facility but also stands as a permanent benefit to our community's emergency preparedness. Pardon me. Finally, we encourage the BOCC to approve the project to send a positive message to businesses considering investment in our county. And companies like RWEE meet county standards in respect to local concerns. They should be able to expect fair and timely permitting treatment and predictable processes. Our essential of park county wants to continue attracting responsible businesses. Thank you for considering our support for this project. We hope you will vote to approve the CUP for RW's best project and recognize its value for both 1000 peaks range and the entire county. This is also a letter from Public Service Company of Colorado, would you like me to read this letter? I don't think this was included in your original packet. And this is from Excel? Yes, go public service company. Yes, that's Excel, right? So, do you guys want to read, do you want to hear it? Yes, please put it in the record since it's not available to the public. To whom it may concern, the South Park Battery Storage Product is a 200 megawatt storage resource selected by public service company of Colorado as part of the 2022 all resource solicitation and is being advanced for consideration as part of the company's clean energy plan. Public service company of Colorado is an Excel Energy Company. The Colorado Public Utility Commission approved Piasco's Phase 1 Colorado Clean Energy Plan in 2022. As one of the nation's leading Clean Energy Plan, it will reduce carbon emissions 80 to 85% compared to 2005 levels. Add unprecedented amounts of renewable energy to the grid, and our use of coal by 2030, drive investment and economic development across the state, and provide a just transition for communities with retiring coal plants. To help deliver on our clean energy plan, Piesco launched a competitive bid process in late 2022 soliciting new generation resources and receive more than 1000 energy project proposals from developers. After working with a third-party independent evaluator to validate findings and review bids, we submitted several project portfolios to the Commission for consideration in September, 2023 in what is known as the 120-day report. In January, 2024, the Commission approved phase two of our Clean Energy Plan. The approved portfolio will add approximately 6,100 megawatts of new generation making it the largest clean energy portfolio in state history by significantly increasing the amount of renewable energy on our system and we'll also invest 12 to 13 billion dollars across Colorado. Implementing this plan is an important step towards achieving a carbon-free future and brings forward new projects that will help achieve our carbon emission reduction. Further 120-day report, the benefits of the preferred plan include. Third plan is clean. The preferred plan selects a number of clean energy resources to replace the retirement of over 1,800 megawatts of despatchable capacity and does it in a way that capitalizes on the new federal support for renewable generation for the benefit of our customers. The preferred plan is reliable. The preferred plan satisfies the company's modeled capacity needs over the resource acquisition period called RIP, which is through the end of 2028. The preferred plan solves the capacity needs and emission reductions at the same time. The preferred plan is affordable. Driven in part by the benefits from the Inflation Reduction Act, the preferred plan is projected to deliver reliable clean energy to our customers while maintaining affordability. In fact, inclusive of the estimated transmission investment, the average bill impact for the preferred plan is expected to grow less than the historical rate of inflation. The preferred plan is competitive now and for the future. Comparisons of the preferred plan to other portfolios, robust, independent power producer participation in the plan is to ensure a continued and strong Colorado energy market and an extensive set of backup bids make the preferred plan competitive today and going forward. The preferred plan executes on just transition. Section 10 of the 120-day report outlines the efforts of the the efforts the company has and will undertake to provide a just transition for the communities and workforce impacted by the preferred plan and changing energy landscape. The discussion here focuses on the preferred plan which serves as a significant economic catalyst for the communities where projects are located and also has a broader positive impact for the jobs and supportive services created by the construction and ongoing operation of the facilities. A South Park battery storage was evaluated through a multi-step process, including interconnection assessment and economic evaluation as well as the non-price factor analysis, including the following. Respond at qualifications, including financial strength, financial plan, pardon me, financing plan, including ability to utilize tax advantages as well as development, construction and operation experience. Generator technology, availability and warranties, environmental permitting and compliance, land use, permitting, and zoning, other permitting, real property acquisition, site control progress, and plan. Project operational characteristics scale of the project and whether it meets the commission definition of an eligible energy resource, community support for the project, transmission access plan, feasibility and arrangements, transmission upgrade schedule assessment, construction and equipment supply, plans and arrangements, best value employment metrics, information, and project execution planning. Lastly, South Park Battery Storage presented an opportunity for geographic diversity as one of the only bids receiving Colorado's high country. As a committed partner in the transition to clean, reliable, affordable energy public service company of Colorado looks forward to working with RWA in Park County to advance the South Park Battery Storage Project. Sincerely, John Blair's. This is a letter of support from the Park County Extension, with Barbie Garnet. A quote, Reliable Energy Access is essential for a range of rural activities including livestock management, crop production, and the operation of vital community programs such as those offered through 4H. I support the South Park Best Project and recognize the meaningful impact it will have on our community. This is from Erin Ventura with the Park County Career and Technical Education. She's the Director there. I strongly support the South Park Best Project. This project brings critical energy, infrastructure, and aligns with our mission to equip students with the skills necessary for local meaningful careers. And Michael, in the back to you. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, team. Appreciate it. And, Commissioner, thank you for staying with us. I know this was a long presentation. I'll be brief and final remarks. I just want to reiterate that we appreciate the time that's been given to us today. And over the last four to six month process, we know that there are strong opinions on this project. We hope today that we've provided you with the reasons why we believe the project should move forward with the conditional use permit. So our formal ask is RWEsolar Development LLC respectfully requests a conditional use permit from Kepark County for the construction and operation of a 200 megawatt battery energy storage system. And we're happy to move to the next phase whether it's questions or public comment however you want to proceed, ma'am. At this point we have the ability to ask questions. So who wants to start? Michelle Whistle, are you prepared? I'm sure. Give the gentleman a chance to. Thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate you're appearing here. I'm deaf in one ear, can hardly hear out of the other. So I have a hearing aid. So I already went through one battery today, so I've gotten on number two. So that's what I'm doing and one ear can hardly out of the other so I have a hearing aid. So I already went through one battery today so I've gotten on number two so that's what I'm doing with it along with my ear. I look at this, this main transmission line is basically Excel or Piesco. Location location is everything and it's really hard to put a battery storage plant where you don't have a power source. Yes, sir Core owns that Utility and investment right now and apparently you've got an agreement with core to share that With the access easements and all those things available. Yes, sir And if you notice on the areas you'll look and see that there was an old road virtually almost in the same spot, 1000 peaks ranch was developed out of the Augustine Ranch. The Augustine Ranch was one of the first water transfers out of Park County in 1966. That water is removed in September. So what happened with that is a gentleman by the name of OWCobar and bought that land. And OWCobar ended up selling it to the gentleman who developed a thousand peaks. A thousand peaks is simply a compilation by survey of all those parcels in the 35-plus track. So with that as a background, the implementation of this storage facility will really generally benefit Excel while not or PSCO. Is there any benefit for core? Yeah, absolutely. So when you're talking about grid stability, and especially when there is no local nearby generation, the stability extends to other components outside of just the direct line that PSCO has, right? So in instances where high demands occurring were injected into that PSCO line, electrons flow. They're kind of like kids, the patholese resistance, right? They're just going to go to here, here and here. So the local grid benefits tremendously despite who ownership is. When you look at some of these power purchase agreements from large companies, you know what you're seeing is, Anisor Bush and St. Louis Missouri is buying, you know, of energy from wind project in Oklahoma. And eventually they get credits for getting it to them. But what's really happening is the citizens of Oklahoma are benefiting from that. Because it's a generation that's locally that's being dispatched to. Does that make sense, sir? Yeah, and in the thing, the demographics and the distribution of power providers in Park County is implemented to. Okay. Core, which is probably 95% of the county, and Excel, the mothership of PSCO. There was a little strip right through Fair Play here on Highway 9, beginning at the end of Fair Play and the core substation, yes sir. All the way up to the county line. This little sliver is the only thing serviced in park county by Excel or Biasco or whoever named me when I use. So my concern is representing this particular district area as well as the county is a whole, is to benefit to all of our electrical customers with this installation of this particular facility. So that was one of my main points. Yes, sir. And again, I think to just reiterate the answer is based off of the fact that we'll include something that will put something on the grid that is taking from the grid rather than traditional or renewable generation, which is what you typically hear. You know, by the fact of it, improving the reliability of the PSCO line there, it expands out to all of the other, the other, ancillary, different routes of electricity being thrown out, also to Park County too. So, the answer to questions, yes, there will be additional benefit outside of the small sliver we were talking about where PSCO runs their line. Christianer. Mr. Ellsner. Yes, thank you. Ben, if you look at it, Comanche is a power plant that provides energy to both core and excel. You know, power plants produce power and they may have three or four partners in that because one company can't afford the well I worked on it was a close to a billion dollars in 1977 money So the power just goes out on the grid correct and people take from that when they need it, but when you look at it, core has no generating capacity, as I recall, other than agreements with public service company of Colorado. So anything the public service company of Colorado does impacts core as far as if the energy is going out on the grid. Thank you. Mr. Whistle, more questions? I'll ask a question next. We'll rotate. I read everything in the packets, all of them. I came across something that was interesting. If you looked at this when you picked this site, and it's the term doing, and it says in mountains it is not recommended to use a mountain site because of the broad temperature changes. And driving through, I drive that intersection every time I come to Fair Play, it was five degrees this morning. It's going to be 50 degrees this afternoon there. And so I didn't know if you guys looked at doing and that thing because it said that it destabilizes the batteries. Yeah, and David, would you like to come up and answer that question? We have a good response. And I'll just say this is probably one of the greatest, the areas that have the biggest temperature swings you'd see in Park County. Madam Chair, it's a great question. And I didn't touch on it specifically. I touched on the heating and cooling ventilation system. So as a system or as a container, we're maintaining regardless of ambient outside temperature. So the temperature range of the ability for the system to operate is very, very wide. I have it in my notes like it and I can pull it up but it's well above and below any swing we're going to see in the valley. So we can ensure that we're maintaining that delta, that temperature across the batteries within the container itself. So I'm sorry, go. So the swing of, I'm always looking at my temperature gauge right there because when you go up that valley, the cold air sinks. Minus 10 minus 15 to daytime 40, 40 or so. I mean, it can be that big of difference in one day. So the numbers are about minus 30 to 125 F is the swing that these so we have these operating Nevada in the desert. We have these operating in Maine and in Canada. You know, we're there seeing sustained temperatures of minus 20 plus for months. And we're not seeing any degradation of the battery. And this is really one of the reasons why we chose this system over others, because it allows for that greater temperature span knowing that working with our partners with SWCA and looking at that data, we saw what the extremes are. That was a great question. Okay, I have another great question then. You talk about self-containment and there's multiple ditches running through here and the ditches are there because water goes in those ditches and you use two refrigerants and what is it? Ethylene glycol tetraflorine, ethane, 233 tetraflorine ethane, and one, what is it? 1112 tetrafloral ethane. So what happens if there is a fault and that gets into the ground? Because that is groundwater right there. It's pretty low. My guess is you can hit water, drill in a well pretty quickly. And I just wanted to know about those chemicals that are in these units. So it sounds a little worse than it is. So that's the friendly antifreeze. And you can look that out, but that's... So the system is designed to handle 125% of that 70 leaders that's in the cooling loops. With a two tier container system, there's a gutter system around the lines and that gutter system brings them into the containment with the sum. And the containers themselves go through a QAQI process. Prior to delivery and then once we deliver it, we commissioned it to make sure it's gonna hold any kind of liquid. And again, the only liquid within the whole battery compartment or container is that 70 liters of, of a flame liqueur of antifreeze. I'm not evading your question. It would be no different than any other vehicle leaking antifreeze anywhere in that valley. Whether it's a camper, whether it's a truck that doesn't make the hill and blows their clothes, their cooler line. It's in that we've discussed that with the chief to ensure that he has the supplies and the event we have to manage a leak that would get outside. But the probability with the two tier containment systems is very, very low, but it would be handled no different than any other kind of antifreeze leak that would be sustained by a vehicle. So what about the two refrigerants that are in there? The tetrafluorin at the top. The refrigerant's not that familiar with the refrigerant system in the roof of the, it's a liquid to gas system. So I'm sorry I'm going to have one of our engineers to speak that. I'm not really an expert in the HVC system. That's fine. I just, you know, when we're putting those in an area that is very prized for its natural beauty and, you know, whatever the the wildlife there is wildlife there I mean I I have to break for deer all the time right there so just wanted to just answer get answers please please speak into the microphone so everyone on zoom can hear yeah the concern was about the refrigerant used in the HVAC system and any potential release of that. Yeah, so, yeah, I'm in it. My name is Pongfei Wang. Will you please speak close to the microphone? Hi, Commissioner. My name is Pongfei Wang. I'm a project design engineer. What is project? Yeah, so they test the, like you mentioned, the coolant and the H-back, the H-back liquid. So we have both the safety data sheet for both equipment. Tesla has done, they are sealed in the container, so there are very small chance for them to get out of the container. And they pre-installed before the container is shaped to side. And Tesla will do the maintenance to make sure there's no equate. I need to... we have the high-level safety community safety engagement documents from Tesla. So there's no environment hazard of those equipment and like David mentioned in the emergency response plan, we have the proper action recommended to handle those coolant and actual liquid. The previous question you ask about the temperature to test like an operator from minus 30C, a degree C, which is minus 22 to 50 D-RAC, which is 122. So the temperature range is huge. Another thing is this study is about 9000 feet. We select the product based on the operation temperature and also the elevation. So that's why I can operate the elevation perfectly. Thank you. I don't know if you're going to be able to see the information. I don't know if you're going to see the information. I don't know if you're going to see the information. I don't know if you're going to see the information. I don't know if you're going to see the information. I don't know if you're going to see the information. I don't know if you're going to see the information. I don't know if you. So it's the same. It's not a proprietary, you know, different type of medium. It's the same thing that we would see in any of the houses, a thousand-peaker enter, any of the businesses along the corridor here. And I think in discussion with the chief that we're very comfortable in managing that in the event. There is a failure of it. And I'm not a chemist, but I know the dispersal rate, you would see nothing very quickly. It would disperse into the atmosphere. It's not whether we be a puddle on the ground, because we're turned to gas once it leaves the pressurized container. Mr. Ellsman, you have a question? No, I was just going to say, I think he said 70 leaders, you know, automobiles take anywhere from 5 to 10 leaders. So you aren't looking at anything big and you don't have containment on any automobiles. So you said you had containment around this. So if there was a leak, it wouldn't reach the ground. And it would be contained. Is that correct? Yes, sir. So the box is the container itself is designed to me, the CFR standard, the federal standard for containment, at 125% of the operating capacity. Okay, thank you. Just part of the you want a listing of it. Okay, I have more questions. Yes, ma'am. Talking about the change in the footprint. I mean, it started off as a square and now it's a longer rectangle. But in the first drawing it said it would be 20 acres of the 36. And now you're down to 10 acres. Did you reduce the number of batteries? Well, Stephanie, do you want to take this? So the original submittal was earlier this year in May. And then as part of a land use approval process and site design, it's pretty iterative and it's typical for revisions to occur over time as we hear comments back from the decision making agency and the community. When we submit for impact footprint, we as SWCA recommend our applicants, we want the biggest number, worst case scenario, all the options for permanent and temporary impacts because we want to be forthright and transparent with what the maximum footprint would be and then over time that can be reduced based on how the design changes over time. That is the case here and that is where we have arrived from 20 acres down to the 10. Okay, so another question about the footprint. So I see that it's going to be on concrete slab. So is it each unit on concrete? It looked like half of the units might be on a concrete slab. It's just that we can get really big gullywashers. And that translation is heavy rains with big thunder clouds. And there's lots of ditches around there and I want to know how you guys are mitigating that new footprint with a ditch running exactly through where those units are going to be. Yes. Thank you Commissioner Mitchell. The it is a concrete slab and any one with RWE who has more specifics on the thickness and dimensions of that feel free to chime in. However, I can say that on the site plan one reason that we're showing the engineers are showing the low did low water crossing on there is to accommodate for that ditch. So that everyone remembers there is a conveyance there. That is a very small feature that is not going to be a challenge to cross and provide for conveyance in the engineering process and environmental due diligence process. Part of that is assessing the conveyances on site and drainage on the site and what happens when you get closer to that construction level design and building permit stage, you get those numbers in place so you know exact elevations or culvert pipes or what be it, you know, what have you for those types of features to ensure conveyance. It's a very, very, very small feature that is there and it is dry for the majority of the year. And there is not a concern from an engineering perspective that that conveyance can be maintained. And the setback will be maintained as well. And the residential zone district, there's 50 feet from water courses as the standard set back there and that's shown on the site plan as well. Right because if you look at the map right here that line going straight down that's a ditch and then goes over to the left that's it. That's that is the yes that's the ditch that you're gonna mitigate around it because it is a it it is from time to time a course way. It just dries up after our reigns. Understood. Yes, yes. And that is, you know, there is a name to ditch out there that is not going to be touched at all whatsoever. There's complete and entire avoidance of the named ditch. The feature that I'm speaking to that the battery energy storage yard is proposed to cross and maintain the setback is not a named ditch, it's very shallow. The ditch that is on the western side of the property, the larger ditch and the named ditch, there's no, this project is not touching that. It's over 50 feet away. I think it's actually 100 to 150 feet away. There's no temporary or permanent proposed impacts. All right. Thank you. One more question then I'll let the commissioners. So 20 years battery life, okay? Describe what happens in 21 years? Sure. So we have an agreement and I believe that we've talked extensively with the planning and zoning group that we're going to institute a decommissioning bond to have on hand. But come year 20, we'll start having a conversation with the utility and landowners to understand. There's two courses of action where this could go forward. We could either come back to the commission and ask for an extension if this has been a fruitful relationship and there haven't been any issues and y'all are still comfortable with this idea. It would probably be in, you know, in the company's best interest to try to continue because there's $200 million of infrastructure that's already been laid. In the event that we don't believe or the commission feels like this is not the right path forward, we'd like to move away from it. We'll start instituting decommissioning and the decommissioning that's stated in our lease agreement or our purchase agreement with landowners is always restore the condition into the exact condition in which we found it. That's the standard. Okay, good answer. Thank you, ma'am. All right, Commissioner Wistle. I had one more question for you. What was the total installed cost of this particular project? Well, we're still finalizing design, so fluctuation of cost in general. I think I'd be comfortable saying in the neighborhood of a couple hundred million dollars. All right, one more question. In the, in where you've located the 30,000 gallon water tank. If there is a fire, it would be, I would claim probably 90% chance or higher that it would be downwind of the fire of the smoke, which is toxic and you're not allowed to be close to it. So I read that they recommend you put water on the other containers to try to keep them cool. So there isn't a heat triggering other things. But the water tank would be I would bet money on any day the wind blows out of the west to the east. And so it would probably render that water tank not usable in an event. Yeah, just. We're open to the idea of location. I think we've discussed this at length with Chief Cook. If that's a discussion, you'd like to have further about a better place. I think Chief Cook can address why he selected it to be there. And again, we're open and amenable to suggestions, especially for that. Because, you know, it's an attempt to be a good business partner. And we're happy to listen to what's needed. And then I'll have one more. Sorry. I really care about this county. The Tomahawk State Wildlife Area is directly crossed nine. And that is a, I mean, it is a do not touch the wildlife get to live there. And in advent of a fire, the toxic gas, which is, red some pretty don't get near it, don't breathe it, you have to have a respirator all this stuff, it would blow right to the wildlife area. And I just, you know, you guys think about the animals because I get to take care of people, but we also take care of the animals that live here because they're actually here before us. Great, great point, Manning Commissioner. So we do plume studies when we look at where we're selecting battery systems. And you know, we have a lot through in downtown LA, county, and other places, Orange County, California, where they're downtown. So with these batteries and I've witnessed the failure testing at UL, where we forced the battery to fail, we put up monitors. So at 100 feet, we're seeing zero volatile organic compounds. So we're not seeing it 100 feet whether the wind's blowing out of the North out of these, whether it's at 40 miles an hour, 10 miles an hour. Of course, it is stronger when you get a more dissipation, but at 100 feet we're seeing no volatile organic compounds or anything immediately dangerous to, ideally, dangerous to life or health in any kind of smoke now what with the test was they don't they don't burn like you've seen things on tech talk these things melt they melt down and they self-consume and again that's why we leave them alone we don't throw water on it we don't want to put that water into that water course we don't want to we're very careful in our training we use specific hand line specific monitors. You are correct. If I as a firefighter had to go right up to one of these things and make a rescue or for another reason whether it was a life hazard, I would have that CBA. I would have self-contained breathing apparatus going right up to it. Our setbacks for response are 100 feet. Our setback to the tank is much greater than that. We felt that putting that tank there again. We can move that tank. That was kind of a drop. We wanted it close enough. We also wanted it where again the tank's really designed for firefighting, wildfire support. Other fires in the valley there are long nine. The chief and his mutually could getick had given their hook up, get out of there safely and not be going down a 3000 foot access road or whatnot. So a few factors went into that. But I'm confident in saying that 100 feet and we've done these studies over and over, we're not seeing a chlorine plume like, you know, if God forbid, you had a train car, there was leaking, you know, if God forbid you had a train car, there was leaking, you know, a noxious gas. The dissipation of this gas, and the fact that it's so light, it dissipates very, very quickly. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Mitchell, I would like to add that one of the reasons that SWCA often proactively reaches out to agencies is to address all the potential concerns and whether a local government requires it or not, we always recommend that we applicants do that as to for due diligence. We also are an army of environmental professionals who win to the field because we care about the environment and wildlife. And to Mr. Reigns Point, the worst case scenario in the unlikely event, very unlikely event that that should happen, it is kind of like a drop in a giant, you know, Pacific ocean size atmosphere. And then Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the experts at Colorado Parks and Wildlife had no concerns and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service had no concerns about the wildlife area or this proposed project in proximity to that wildlife area. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? All right, thank you very much. Appreciate that at this point anyone who would like to speak in favor of this application please either raise your hand in Zoom or come up to the podium and Genie, I'm gonna stop your sharing so I can see all the people on zoom unless you think you'll need it. No, I can't stop. You know, we'd have stopped sharing on this. That's all but I don't crash the entire system. There we go. All good. Thank you. So anyone in the room would like to speak in favor? Please come up anyone online. And I'm please sign in and then give us your name. So everyone on Zoom world can know who's speaking also. Good afternoon. My name is Gus Lincolis and I live in Red Hill Forest a few miles north of the proposed battery storage site. I'm here before you today to give my support of this project. I'm not only in nearby resident, part of the elected leadership of Red Hill community, but I'm also in the energy industry having worked over the last 16 years and over 9,000 megawatts of Utilease scale generation and storage projects just like this one. I lead a consulting team that currently has about a dozen of these battery projects in development across the central and western US, including here in Colorado, but none with RWE as I work with their competition. So I speak with you today as a professional, knowledgeable in the space just like the presenters here, but as a citizen of our community. I think it's important to emphasize that, as mentioned, this proposed battery facilities and response to an RFP that PSCO Energy put out based on their mandate by the state. The statewide infrastructure upgrade need is felt here locally. It wasn't quite a year ago when our only local grocer, Prather's, had to toss everything perishable due to an extended outage. And from the numerous outages we've had over the summer, some planned and some not, if you live here full time like I do, I hope you agree that our community could use some grid updates. I have elk in my freezer from archery season and I'd like it to keep them. So I believe sitting, citing the battery facility close to an existing substation is a best case scenario for us. As a limits the amount of transmission, poles needed to connect to the grid and limits the overall impact of U-shed since this is already so much energy and infrastructure over there. Having done visual simulations for substations and transmission facilities myself, I do not believe this proposed 10 acre facility will be substantial additional visual impact to the highway 9 view shed. As the existing substation and several transmission lines stand taller than the one story battery packs. I believe the existing substation and transmission will still hold one's eye after the battery site is constructed. From a fire safety concern I understand that RWA plants to use Tesla bit mega pack batteries and from my professional experience these batteries are industry leaders for safety. That's someone that knows these systems I'm far more concerned that a nearby residence would create an expansive fire than a Tesla mega pack. For RWA to be the developer proposing this facility is in my opinion a blessing for our community Is there what we in the industry refer to as a tier one developer? These sorts of firms go the extra distance to make sure their investment the invest in local communities in this instance in addition to the impressive tax base Though that this project will create for our community RWA has worked closely with heartssel Fire District to strategically locate two systems specifically for firefighting in our community. Like I said, I live in Red Hill, and it's a community of nearly 600 lots. We have our own water system with a 60,000 gallon tank for domestic water as well as firefighting. That system is far from perfect. And over the summer, I was the board member that called Hartsel and Northwest Fire Districts who informed them that our water system was out for over a month. As someone that lives close to this proposed site and one of those 30,000 gallon systems RWE has agreed to install that is a very tangible benefit to me in my community. In closing I think this is the best case scenario for such a facility to be proposed in Park County and I support this project. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. All right. Anyone else in the room or online that would like to speak in favor? Please either come up to the podium or raise your hand on Zoom. I'm chief of the Catholic Heartsel Fire and R.D.W.E. came to me almost a year ago with the proposal of this project and the safety of it. I've been in fire service now for 23 years, not just in Park County, 20 of that in Denver. I've seen a lot of different things over the years. And to me, this is one of the least concerning things we have in our community. Closer. Oh wow, okay. When we were talking about the Kool-Alan there, a typical semi-gone down our highways carries 60 liters of Kool-Aid in there. A typical semi-going down our highways carries 60 leaders of Kool-Aid. We deal with that on a daily basis up here when these MI's crash. The products that are being carried in these things, the cars that are not Tesla's, that are crashing up here, causing fires, are way more of a concern. I put that in the letter I originally sent to the Planning Commission. We have way bigger concerns than this from a safety perspective in Park County, mainly of what's going down our highways that we have no control over. As far as the support, they have been very open-minded with these water storages. We are very limited in most of our rural areas on water. We get a fire in the middle of winter and heartless district and the rivers are frozen, lakes are frozen. We are running up to 40 miles to get water. This will put one system right off highway 24 in South Park Ranches and another one right off highway nine. And like we stated, that phone call came to me when Red Hills water system was down. And we were gonna be hot on water in there. So this is a huge benefit to our communities I feel with very little impact. Thank you for your comment. Anyone else in the room like to make a comment in favor? I'm going to use the chair. I'm going to use the chair. I'm going to use the chair. I'm going to use the chair. I'm going to use the chair. I'm going to use the chair. I'm going to use the chair. I'm going to use the chair. I'm going to use the chair. I'm going to use the chair. I'm going to use the chair. I'm going to of 1000 Peaks Ranch Association. So I believe you have my initial letter there. I believe you also have my referral response and you may even have my Planning Commission presentation. So our position is kind of morphed over the duration for which we've been going through this project. And you heard Brian read into the minutes, our current position. But just to give you a brief history, I was eight years in the military, I was on submarines, I was nuclear trained, after I got out of the military, I spent 32 years in the civilian nuclear power industry. So I've got licensed as a senior reactor operator on five different reactor plants. And when I retired in 2018, I was the maintenance manager for Surrey Power Station in Virginia, which was owned by the old Virginia Power Dominion Resources. And when I left, I was in charge of 250 nuclear professionals that worked on the plant day in and day out. And then when we went into outages, I was the backshift manager, senior station management during the outages. And I had anywhere from 900 to 1100 people. I had anywhere from 900, sorry about that. Let me pull this down here. I had anywhere from 900 to 1100 nuclear professionals working for me. And so anytime they got in trouble, I got in trouble. And anytime they got in trouble, I had to go ahead and find out why and I had to come up with solutions to make sure that those events wouldn't happen again. So I've got about 40 years in nuclear and nuclear. It's a pretty difficult industry to work in and you learn how to filter through the B.S. to find out what's good and what actually works. I think Park County has got an issue right here. It's got the need for electrical generation, but you're not going to get a base load unit in here. The easy fix for something like this is a base load unit. What you guys have here is you've got two long power feeds that come in here, one over Wilkerson Pass and one comes down 285 and the one that comes down 285 is 69 KV line and that's not even supported by supply chain management. So I'm sure Pesco has to have a warehouse where they put all the old antiquated stuff in there so they can save it for when they have a problem with that line. And you could see in the package that RWE had for you, they had four or five site locations along that 69 KV line, but you know there's not a utility here in the United States, it's going to go ahead and put in a new facility next to an Antiquated line because you're still gonna have the same problems because you lose power here because you got long feeds and it comes through mountainous areas and you got all kinds of conditions Environmental conditions that that that cause it to Power to go out so You're really stuck between a rock and a hard place because we're a national historical site and it's like, hey, what do we do to help these folks out here? And then you got RWE came in and they want to go ahead and put a put a best in here, which is about the best thing. I feel it's about the best thing you're going to get because they're talking between six to 10 acres. If you had a gas-fired plant put in here, it'd be 40 plus acres. If you had a coal-fired plant put in here, but you're not going to get that in Colorado, that's about 640 acres. And then if you talk about a dedicated cooling system or a once-through cooling loop, then you're talking about a lot more land area. So here in Park County we take our national historic site into consideration with any decision that we make, right? Because every economic stream that comes in here, all businesses are impacted, every resident is impacted by what comes in. So this is a small facility and I believe it can meet some of the needs. It's a potential solution. That's how I'll state this because you're not gonna get a full fledged base load solution in here. From the HOA perspective, I've been yacking been yacking at RWE every time I think about something, I'll call somebody or out text, Brian or whatever, because I had a lot of concerns when we first started here. And they've addressed all the concerns. There was a question here, how come it went from 20 acres, you know, down to down to 10 and That you know and how did it migrate to the center and that's because we were talking back and forth because I wanted I wanted to I wanted to limit the impact that we've got on on our membership, you know and and because there's a visual concern Obviously, there's a light concern. Obviously. There's a noise a noise concern obviously but as you can see everything's been taken care of and you got nine conditions on this thing and they're all for they all benefit the almost all benefit the association so I'm okay with that. My biggest concern was safety and environmental impact and low and behold, there's a guy named Donald Turner that owns a ranch out there in Thousand Peaks Ranch. And he just happens to be the NASA battery storage system, general manager, and the two programs that he's got under him is he's got the man return flight to the moon. He's in charge of batteries. It's going to be on those rockets that go to the moon and he's also in charge of the unmanned rocket ships to Mars followed by the man rocket ship to Mars. So NASA works with SpaceX, you know, and he has a lot of data that's available from these Tesla MegaPack batteries. And so I talked to him for a couple of times, two hours. I said, hey, look at this, look at this. Tell me about this. And so he was able to answer a lot of questions. And he did mention 2,500 Tesla MegaP battery storage facilities in the US and there hasn't been an issue. And Elon Musk, he's the king of third party reviews. He works with NASA, so he's always got somebody checking out his Tesla products, he's always got somebody checking out his battery storage products, he's always got somebody checking out his SpaceX products to include the government. So he's about the, he's about, he's got about more third party reviews on his equipment than you can shake a stick at. And so the final thing I would say would be the facility builder. I mean, you know, you've got a window of opportunity here. You're lucky you've got a quality company coming in here that wants to use a quality product to provide you with a potential solution to a problem that's been existing for a while and there aren't a whole lot of solutions out there for you. And they came in, they were willing to listen to it, you know, you can see the letters, I acted you guys, I acted them, I acted about everybody. But at the end of the day, everything's been answered. So I'm not going to go over a whole lot more stuff because you've seen the presentation. I've worked with RWE, I'm impressed with their professionalism and their knowledge and their willingness to go ahead and help us out. They want to come in here. They want to build this, but they want to do it as a friend. They don't want to come in here and try to steam over anybody. And I really appreciate that. So as far as the conclusion goes, there know, there exists a need to improve electrical grid reliability in Park County, you know, and solutions are limited, okay. This is a potential solution. TPRAs work with RWE and evaluated a net positive benefit to the association's membership with the best installation. You know, we're going to have a chance to go ahead and not only fix our transgressions as far as how we neglected the roads over decades, but we're going to be able to go ahead and take care of the initial developers issues that he left the association with. We have about four or five creek crossings that they never made. This is going to give us an opportunity to go ahead and return the plotted roads to the plotted status. Okay? And then you know, Park County is going to benefit from this investment. You hear about the two 30,000 gallon water storage tanks and in a thousand peaks, we're going to have better fire support, we're going to have better emergency medical support. So I mean, everybody's going to benefit out there with the things that rural counties typically hurt because they don't have enough support for those items. There's potential for we can get support for those items here. And then like I said, you got the facility builder, RWE, I mean, it's a quality project, you know, and they've got a team that's willing to work with us and go ahead. So, and we talked about conformity, you know, and compatibility, you know, however you want to put it. My biggest problem was they were going to want to put it in a homeowners association and with what they've done For us and what they've adjusted for us and the conditions that you've put on it The homeowners association doesn't have any problem with The compatibility issue and I would think that that would be the biggest Item that you would have to discuss. Now, this will be the fourth utility CUP here for 1000 Pikes Ranch. We got the substation and could get this battery storage product project and we've got two transmission lines. So we're hoping this is going to be the last time you come to the well because 95% of the people who live on the ranch are they're off grid. So we didn't receive benefit from the substation or the transmission lines. We probably won't even receive well we will receive benefit from this mess. I should bite my tongue, so. But anyway, I hope you go ahead and evaluate all that and come up with a good possible solution for the residents of Park County as far as grid reliability and stability. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you for your comment. All right. Is it mine? You guys are gonna be happy. I'm going to go to the next one. Good afternoon, Kevin Boren's Chief Self-Park Amiens District. I started speaking with RWE back in August and that was only because I think there was a little bit of delay because there was some confusion on their part that South Park and Hearts of Fire were not all one. But immediately they started talking with me answering my questions, had us directly involved with the emergency response plan. I was really happy with all the work they did on that and how thorough they were. As far as South Park Amulance, it doesn't really affect us too much since this is not a man facility So it's not going to take a lot of our Resources unless there was a fire or something like that and then that would be our support for the fire department So I really don't have too much more to say to that other than they were a great group to work with I'm impressed by their professionalism and that's why we support them. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. All right, anyone else in the room like to speak in favor, please come on up or online, raise your hand. All right, it looks like we are moving to anyone who would like to speak in opposition to this application. Please either come up to the podium and sign in and then give us your name or online. Raise your hand. All right. While you're signing in, we've got somebody online. I am going to ask Tracy Edström to unmute and we will let you speak. Thank you commissioners for allowing me the opportunity to speak on this. I have a couple of red flags about the discussion that I've been listening to. I heard the terminology friendly anaphrase and I know that if my dog were to consume anaphrase, it would be toxic to him and potentially lethal. So I'm not sure how the term friendly anithbreeze can be used with regard to this discussion. I also have concern about residential areas allowing for the operation of big global business, what have you want to call them, businesses that are potentially hazardous and dangerous to our community and our wildlife areas and why would a residential area even be considered for something along these lines. What I also heard was that we, that the business is willing to provide all of these extras for protection and fire and ambulance and safety in order to minimize our perception of the risk. But not necessarily minimizing the actual risk that the risk is still there, the risk is still present, but we're going to give you all of these other things in order to make this not seem so big and bad. That's what I'm hearing. And let's see. So offering the illusion of safety is what was a concern to me. And then the fire department was talking about making allowances, basically making allowances for potential tragedy. So we can handle this, if this occurs. So again, implying that the risk is there, but we can handle it if something really bad happens. I think this is a really dangerous proposition. I think it's also a violation of residential rights to the person's living in the community. And I feel like people really need to consider that they may be being bought out to sacrifice the things and the values that make part county unique and special as far as our wildlife and The community that we have available. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak Thank you for your comment All right, please you've got the floor. Give us your name. Hi, I'm Danny Anderson and I live on Reynaker Road. And all the friendliness is really nice and these are really nice people. I've gotten to talk to a couple throughout this process. My wife and I, she's not here today, but we've been at all these meetings prepared for the meetings that all got canceled as well. And all the proponents of this, I'm not sure that any of them can see it out their kitchen window like we can. And I am all for growth and forward movement for our county when it helps everyone. The power station that's obviously already there is on highway nine. This is not on highway nine. It is interior of highway 9 is actually on the west side of Rhineker Road. So it's far less than a highway structure. It was interesting, you know, planning had denied this or had ruled or, you know or voted for a no, a recommendation to you guys. And, you know, Jenny had mentioned that there's 45 opposed letters that were sent in opposition of this. And she made a sound like those should be yeses now because they've addressed questions. Well, none of those 45 people have redacted their letters or written in a letter in approval. The only one I know of so far is our HOA, which is not a representation of the members, or at least not all of them. So I feel that was a little irresponsible on Ginny's behalf to say that. You know, this is a 20-year money-making investment for a company whose largest shareholder at 9% is the country of Qatar or Qatar, where their second largest shareholder at 6% is BlackRock. None of them live in our neighborhood. As my property values decrease, their revenue is going to increase. You certainly don't become a multi-billion dollar company, given away water tanks if you can afford it. I really like that. The offering and their part of wanting to be the community is a great initial introduction. So I'm all for those things. The water tank should be something part county maybe should think about on our own. The 55 decibel consistent hum is a problem to me as I live in that field when the winds occasionally do come out of the south and the east rarely you can hear the cars driving by pretty loud. And then on other days, it is like deafening silence when a truck goes down the street when the winds are normally out of the west. So that 55 decibel is going to be a constant. You know, and essentially it's just going to look like a large storage facility or an impound yard with chain link fencing around a bunch of conic boxes. There's been no talk of berms or vegetative berms or even put in the facility in buildings that made it look like a ranch property where there might be cow barns or different things like that to make it look a little more in tune to the neighborhood. So there's really been no talk of that either other than, you know, they're great people. You know, we all are and we got to be better neighbors. I respectfully oppose this and I request the commission. Our commissioners do the same. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. We'll alternate. I have someone online, so we'll let them go next. Tim's phone, iPhone. If you'll please give us your full name. I'll ask you to unmute. Tim Taylor. Thank you. Go ahead. I'm going to go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and So if something does occur, the only assets will be those assets that are sitting there, particularly, bringing down. This is, you know, their council at the other meeting, you know, said that this, you know, is normal, yes, is normal. I happen to be a family of family, uh, Land developers are ourselves and we do it to limit liability and things. We build nursing homes and stuff so nothing that's to be toxic potential to neighborhoods or anything, but we do do it to limit liability so that not all of our assets are accessible. So I'm very, very familiar with the methods they're doing, but in this type of situation, it massively limits their huge company from any potential that these batteries catch on fire and destroy the wildlife, people, places, whatever. Nobody has actually mapped what will occur in this site if there is a fire in one of these. And if you look at the record, it's when there will be a fire, not if there are fires consistently in these even Teslas. Maybe not the newest version, but they haven't tested the newest version long enough to know if there will be or not. I'm having what I mean is, you know, we live in the building valleys, the extreme wind conditions and things. So just because they did test fires under perfect conditions, doesn't say what will happen to us. The same exact thing happened with the CO2 lines that they have running through some states. When one exploded, it happened to be in a place with hills and valleys. It settled in those valleys and caused a lot more destruction than what they thought it was two people's lives And like I said nobody our fire chief which I'm a full-time resident of heart still our party He hasn't looked into it and the company surely hasn't done any mapping for this actual site I also think it will be an I store to what we need to be bringing in which is tourist, fishers and stuff are one of the biggest things in Hartsel. It's not pretty. It's down the road for some of our streams that they fish in and definitely some of the reservoirs and stuff we fish in. It's not going to bring any local jobs. These are not man facilities once they're constructed. You know, someone will cruise by every once in a while, check on them so no one will even know if, sadly, you know, if technology doesn't work perfectly, then someone may not even know that something's happening right off the bat on these. So I'm, you know, against it, I don't think it's a good thing for heart to the area. I think, you know, they're bribing a lot of places, which if the chief needs water tanks and stuff come to us, we just approved, you know, some different tax things to help out the heart to fire districts. I personally would prove personal money and if they need something. So I think there's other ways to get what part county needs without the risk that this will bring and the I sort of that over my two cents. Thank you for your comment. All right go ahead. My name is Lynn LaFlor and I am an owner in Thousand Peaks Ranch Association and I'm a full time resident. My property is at the intersection of County Road 24 and Rhynaker Road. So I am above this proposed best. I look down on the current power plant. It is ugly. There is a glow of light all night long from that. So it's just going to increase the light pollution in my area. Several factors played into my decision to buy property in thousand peaks. One was the spectacular views. You cannot beat them. The HOA covenants also do not allow for commercial buildings, businesses. There's a very low probability of high density, which would make the valley really ugly. And all the areas are zoned residential or agricultural. So when I purchased back in 2004, I kind of expected it to be that way. But since that time, we have new transmission lines in this substation and now we're going to add best. So even though you look at all of the individual things of what the land use allows, nothing is looking at the cumulative effect of all of these. So after the battery storage goes in, I'm looking at an 800 pound gorilla and me a 35-acre landowner. I'm on the losing end of that. You are my only line of defense, and I don't feel like the cumulative effect is really being taken into account. I find it laughable when somebody says, well, the coolant in your air conditioner, there aren't air conditioners out in thousand peaks. There's no electricity in most of thousand peaks. So while I wholeheartedly appreciate that they're trying to do nice things for our community, whereas the other CUPs have not, it's still an impact on us. And at some point, the county commissioners have to say enough is enough. There's only so much we can pile on into one concentrated area. So if you go ahead and do this, you have to say no more. This is the limit. You cannot ask this community one more time. And one more point, you know, in the last meeting, it was stated that there was very little impact to property values due to power lines and substations. And I did some research on that, and they are correct except. And this is from the National Association of Realtors. There is very little detriment to property values except in an area where there is pristine ocean lake or mountain views. Well, I have a mountain view. So I expect this to impact me and I'm maybe a mile and a half. Zillow says that when people drive up to a property where you can see power lines and substation and stuff like that, the first thing they say is thank you but no thank you and drive away. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you for your comment. All right. I come on sign up, I'll have somebody online. James, I'm gonna ask you to unmute, and if you'll give us your full name, we're happy to hear from you. Hi, my name is James Delay. Can you hear me? Yes, we can from you. Hi, my name is James Delay. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, perfect. So first of all, I want to say that the developers give a beautiful sound sales pitch where the sounds like rainbows and unicorns and sunny skies. Unfortunately, there's a lot of conflicting evidence. One of the first things that I want to talk about is noise levels. They said it was going to be in the 50 dB range. It'd be interesting to see, as I haven't had time to look at it, it'd be interesting to see if that was them running their HVAC units, eating units at 40%, which is what a lot of these, I've learned through the studies about these developers will do because the number one cause for lithium fires is they overheat. Obviously, there's other things that can you know cooling systems might fail, other things can trigger and start to cause the batteries overheat, but generally it's the batteries overheating. The cooling is absolutely most important to things. So when they're saying they're going to be running their cooling systems at 40% or anything or the 80%, which makes it sound like and they can put on paper that it won't be as loud. I've seen DB testing for Tesla Megapax where they show 106 decibels. And there's even reports where they show that, oh, here's the Tesla MegaPak noise levels at 40 percent, and here it is at 100 percent because realistically it's going to be somewhere in between there. So this facility is going to be a lot louder. In the research that I've done it shows the average best is between 96 decibels and 106 decibels. To give you a reference point, 96 decibels is equivalent to a train horn blasting and everybody says oh you won't be able to hear it beyond our walls. The smoke won't go beyond our walls. But 96 decibels in the valley, it echoes and travels, and it's extremely loud. And this won't be the nice low hum that they're talking about that you'll barely notice. This will be something that will impact everybody within hearing range. Another point that I wanted to make is I didn't catch the guy's name, but he says that no Tesla Megapack, Megapacks have caught fire. If you look at the largest best in the United States at the time in Moss Landing in California, they had three different best developers build on an old closed down our generation facility. Each one of those different developers had a best fire. So they had three separate best fires, the most recent one being a Tesla Mega Packfire that required evacuations of Moss Landing. Shedding down, I believe it was, and I apologize for not remembering off the top of my head, but I believe it was Highway 101. That was shut down, where I think it was about 16 hours. And then of course, people were impacted by the smoke, even though this was on an old power plant. That was shut down. It was, you know, like the other junk inside, it was probably like a 40, 50 acre, 100 acre site. People down, downwind from there were suffering the regular exposure symptoms such as burning throat, burning eyes, burning lungs, burning nose, and then many people were coughing up dark colored flamm, even though they said that, hey, just shelter in place, you're okay, you don't have to evacuate because they didn't actually evacuate people, but people were impacted. Another issue on our raise is that they're water, I believe they said that they're gonna do 230, 3000 gallon, what do you call it, it's systems. If you do some research and you look up the Ote Mesa vest fire, they use almost 20 million gallons of water during that fire. All that water then ran off sites and when else we're on average, a Tesla EV fire or any EV fire usually uses about 35 to 80,000 gallons. A best is shipping container that's 40 feet wide or sorry long and about 8 feet wide 10 feet wide or something like that and it's packed full of lithium batteries so if you compare the size of battery in a Tesla vehicle or any EV vehicle and the fire that it does, it usually takes about 8 to 12 hours to extinguish. That's just one little battery pack to a whole entire container. The fires on average last between five days or average about five days, although the Ote Mesa to be a fair, that fire lasted for two weeks, which required evacuations and shelter in place orders miles away. Speaking of evacuations generally, at least a quarter mile to half a mile is evacuated, depending on the wind flowing. If you look at the recent Vacaville best fire in California, this particular best has had two different fires. It's three years old. Or it's almost three years old now and they've had two best fires at the site. The first one they hid most of the stuff and I think they bear that they didn't even issue a evacuation order but you can find comments if you do some research of people that were impacted by the toxins that lived as far away as six or seven miles, the second fire, the more a reset. One, now that people are more familiar with it, people were complaining about the toxins impacting their health, their breathing. People had to go to the ERR for exposure as far as 13 miles away, downwind, obviously. The evacuation and shelter in place orders went out for I think it was half a mile. For evacuations the shelter in place was out to five miles but the people 13 miles away and we're talking like multiple communities in California where a lot of people were impacted deep because they didn't get the warning to shelter in place because they're outside the realm. Another thing that I want to say is we need power, we need energy storage. Lithium is probably the absolute deadliest. Many people say this is a new technology. Lithium batteries, if you don't know if you remember, back in the day when Nokia and Motorola phones could come, cell phones could come with lithium batteries and people were getting burned and there were fires back in the 90s. So let the embatteries have been catching fires since the 90s. And up until this point, there is no way to extinguish them. There's no way to prevent them from catching fire. And as others said, it's basically like, okay, well, we can just, you know, we can manage the fire. And if you look into Tesla's emergency response packets that they tell emergency responders how to respond, they say both with their vehicles and both with their best to let them burn. If a Tesla catches fire, fire fires are supposed to go out there spray water to make the public feel safe like there's something being done and you know make sure that sparks don't and rocketing batteries so they don't shoot off and hit other people so they're on site but they're really just going to be babysitting the fire waiting for it to self-exinglish because lithium batteries are impossible to extinguish. You can pour them in under cement. They tried that in Morris, a town called Morris, something Morrisville, I think, in Illinois a couple of years ago where they had a illegal lithium battery storage warehouse that somehow ignited. They say it was probably because water got in to the batteries. And basically they're like, okay, we can't do anything so they brought in concrete trucks. And word, I think it was like 30,000 tons of concrete to try to prevent them from burning, but the batteries still continue to burn up. So they're concrete and created cracks and fissures and bubbles and stuff and kept burning. So they're unexdinguishable. And the good news is there's a whole bunch of alternatives that I haven't done a lot of research, but there's something called long duration energy storage, which basically gives days, weeks, months, worth of battery storage, whereas lithium due to its risk of fire and overheating, they have to limit everything to a 4-to-8 hour maximum for charging and discharging, which brings up another concern. So we already have an issue with our power. This facility doesn't generate its own power, so it's going to be absorbing 200 megawatts a day. Now, is this going to be sitting a question I'd like you to find an answer to? Is this going to be sitting idle waiting for there to be a power outage locally, a power need? Or are they going to be exporting the power outside? Because most of these facilities and developers don't come out and tell you that they're going to build it in your location, give you all the risk, all the dangers, and then they're going to charge up the batteries, and then they're going to say, oh, San Diego is willing to pay us $0.50 a kill a lot for our 800 megawatt hour bass. So we're going to make $370,000 or something like that, you can check my math to correct me, in for it with a four hour discharge cycle. So they can make $370,000 every four hours. But they have to recharge it up and they can't charge it any faster than four hours because it might overheat the lithium battery. So they can do full three charge and discharge cycles per day. So one of the concerns we really need to focus on on their sales pitches is this power going to say locally if they export it, is there going to be a benefit to us financially? Because they're going to be benefiting financially by exporting the power. So it's like, why are we taking all the risks? If this really isn't going to be used for us exclusively, they should put it in California, you know. Another thing that I like to bring up is, I don't know if you're familiar with the horrible, horrible fire that just happened in Fredrickson in Missouri. It was an lithium battery recycling plant. While yes, it is recycling, it is still a lithium battery fire. The fire, I haven't seen an update yet, but it was last, for the last EPA update, it had been burning for five days, or sorry eight days, and I don't know if you've heard about the fish kill. The fire, the water that was used to minimize the spread of the toxins in the air, so it was a defensive water spray, because you can't extinguish the lifting batteries. Ran off and got into a stream and then killed fish as far as three miles away. The EPA is on site. They're going to be doing up top, up top seas on the fish. They're doing water sampling. The air was so bad that they brought in two teams of the EPA did, the air was so bad that they brought in two teams of the EPA did, brought in two separate teams to basically monitor the air with fixed monitoring sensors and also with mobile ones so they could go to various schools. All their Halloween, town Halloween activities were cancelled, schools were cancelled, basically everything was shut down when this fire started, and we're waiting for results. As in terms of toxins, I only heard mention of cyanide. If there was a cyanide, or a chlorine leak, I think somebody mentioned the toxins that they talk about that these release. One of the ones that the developers kind of all acquiesce on and admit is hydrogen fluoride, which turns into hydrofluoric acid when it's mixed with water. So they talk about all this gases later than air, but if they're spraying water on it, which per Tesla you're not supposed to say it, spray water on it because you're just supposed to let them burn. So it will most likely be the things so the fire department won't have an issue with this except for possibly you know going door-to-door to evacuate people because they just They're told not to do anything But you also have other things like side hydrogen cyanide Nitrogen dioxide sulfur dioxide And then they they were talking about VOCs as well. So you have all of these things and they're just several of the substances that get released during a lithium battery fire were literally used as in World War I as chemical warfare. And they're banned at a global level for any military to be used. And yet we want to put these in a residential zone area. These lithium-bass, while it is the cheapest solution and most, therefore the most profitable for our energy storage needs, they need to be located in heavy industrial places, nowhere near anybody's residence, nowhere near any schools, hospitals, they shouldn't be by anybody's bodies of water. They basically shouldn't be anywhere where people will be impacted. So put them in a heavy industrial plant, put them in an old power plant that's been shut down, you know put them in a heavy industrial plant, put them in an old power plant that's been shut down. You know, put them in, I forget what it's called, but like places that are already natural disaster areas where nothing can be built. You know, they can pay for cleanup and put them there. But don't put them next to people's homes. Let's see here. I'm just checking my notes. Okay. James. Right.. James. Yeah. Please keep it pertinent to this specific application. Okay. When you wrap up. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So basically, let's see. So I talked about the, I'm saying there were no, oh, the 20 year battery life. So they say 20 years. I bet every single one of us that has a cell phone or an electronic device has a lithium battery. We all know that lithium batteries don't last for 20 years. And as they get older, they become more dangerous. You may have even experienced like a swollen battery on your laptop or on your cell phone after a couple years. Basically, what I would request is that we deny this conditional use permit and not believe all the sales pitch that the developers are saying nor are there other people. And yes, they're making a lot of promises, taxes. They're saying, oh, this is going to increase the value of the land from, you know, I'm just guessing here, let's say $100,000 up to $250 million, but what they don't tell you is there's depreciation that they're going to be doing, and they also don't tell you about the tax credits they're getting. Basically right now, the whole entire facility should be paid for tax credits which they can sell per the recent IRS guidance. All in all this will destroy the value when there's an incident and it's not. And if it's a when they can't stop, they can't prevent it. It's just like are you asking to have a natural disaster that could potentially, let's just say they only use 5 million gallons of water to extinguish this. That water will go off into the ditches or go wherever gravity takes it and it will contaminate everything with all those toxins. Granted, it's Tesla megapack so they say let it burn so that means that all the oxen won't be captured. They'll get the refoot to the whole entire surrounding area, get trapped in the valley and there could be some very bad consequences. Yeah, I mean there's just, if you really dig in and do research, there's so many better options. This is just a horrible location. I mean, I understand that there's power issues. We need battery storage, but like utility and main what they're doing is they're actually with the people. James, you're getting off topic again. Okay, sorry. So, I think that do you have any other conclusion you want to make? I think that that's about it. Just look at all the evidence that's out there for all the lithium-bass fires. Look at any lithium fires and see what the impacts have been and ask do we want that here in our town because that's basically what you're doing. So thank you. Follow the board and deny this. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. All right, go ahead. Hello, thank you, burner. Let me speak. My name is Bob Dragonfly. I live in 1000 peaks. I overlook this or will overlook this site. My concerns with this are exactly what's been being also brought up. I don't want to reiterate too much about the visual impact and the time I've built there in my 39.45 acres. Now it was a close-team view, beautiful. Now I have power lines that have been ran, the new power lines that I can see, the substation, and then also the impact of the value, devaluation of this property, as it was explained earlier, that it will devalue our property. I don't care. I'm glad to pay less taxes. I'm not in a position. I would never be in a position where the value of my house mattered to me to for my wealth. But I do care about my neighbors and most Americans, the value of their house is about the only wealth they have anymore. And now you're again asking us to continue the Commission and the Park County Government to continue adding lines of power, facilities, industries, whatever to devalue our land. Yes, people support this, but then the people, a lot of these people, somebody from Red Hill, have you seen Red Hill? They're building on top of each other. They're the city. They didn't even come to the mountains. They're looking in their neighbor's houses. They hear their neighbor's TV during the summer when the windows are open. They're toilets slushing. So they're city people. We in thousand peaks went there to have space around us. And we don't mind helping out the community, but we continually are asked to add more and do more. And because we're small or because we have large pieces of land around us, everybody thinks you can just dump everything on us and it's okay. While everybody else benefits and we devalue everything. Everything we see, everything we are around is now getting less and less. It's a beautiful area. The sites are beautiful. But now we're starting to have all these issues. The new lines that went in, when they put in the lines, they put a poll right in one of our plated roads in 1,000 peaks that now we have to deal with. They just put a poll. They don't even care. They're right in one of our roads. So these are the things that are concerning us who actually live in the area, not the adjacent neighbors, who are just going to benefit with no problems, but we continually are asked to sacrifice sacrifice sacrifice. When does that end? Are we going to turn us into Commerce City? Where all the industries can just be planted or thrown into a thousand peaks because we got lots of space, that is my concern. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. All right. Anyone else online or in the room would like to speak in opposition of this application. Seeing no raised hands and no one rushing to the microphone I would like to close make a motion to close public comment on this application. I would second. All in favor. Hi. Hi. All right. Now the applicant can have an opportunity to re-bute any comments made? Thank you again, commissioners for the HMS respond and appreciate the comments from the residents whichever side. We also too have developed a good relationship for a lot of the folks whether pro or against the project and certainly understand that there are different opinions here. So high level, a lot of what was talked about with regards to the fires that they were talking about are not in relation to the newest Tesla MAGA PAC system. The fire that the gentleman mentioned on the MAGA PAC system was actually a 2016 technology. It's been updated since then to address the concerns that, you know, where that occurred. Again, I would ask the commission to look at the things that you put in place to protect your community, right? You have a set of ordinances that we absolutely have to adhere to. You have, you're the folks that you've entrusted with your safety, speaking on behalf of the project. We'd ask you to look to those folks and the ordinances that are set forth knowing that we have to abide by them to ensure you that there's no malintent here. We do believe this project is safe. Your folks believe this project is safe from the ambulance perspective and the fire perspective. I wrote down some bullets just high level and I want to spend too much time talking about every point in general, but there's some bullets high level overview of the project. The battery system is going to be self-contained. There are no additional county resources that will be needed to operate this project or to respond in general to any issues. There will be enhanced response times from our fire team and the ambulance team, because every year there will be a breakdown of improvements in the system and will rework the emergency response plan. We plan on having a decommissioning study done to make sure that at the end of the project's lifetime we're meeting, putting the property back into the condition in which we found it. I hate to say this and I mean this with the utmost respect. I understand their individuals who are concerned, but I'd ask the commission to look not just at one or two individuals that are concerned, but look at the greater good for the community. Again, we based off of the conditional use permit standards that are set forth. We believe we've met each one by clearing convincing evidence. We have every intent on abiding by your ordinances as placed at the current time. A lot of the ordinance requirements require us to give you a study that shows that we're gonna meet. Like we talked about noise for a little bit, right? Well, we did a DUDEC study that you were shown and it should be part of the record where you can see the DUDEC study that you were shown and it should be part of the record. We can see the DUDEC study is not in there. Do we? Just a figure. Well, happy to furnish. What being is that we've done the studies that show that we will meet the requirements. And at the building permit phase, we have to prove this. So there are checks that have been put in the balance system, which should make you feel comfortable that we will meet the ordinance as you set forth. You know, we've proposed the visual impact portion of it. The gentleman mentioned it, and we're happy to entertain that. In fact, we've proposed the visual impact analysis and talked about ways that we could blend in the project itself with the surroundings. We're not opposed with those and they can be conditions added into the approval. We want to make sure that we're doing our best job to listen to what citizens have, but also keep in mind that this is going to benefit a greater good. On the fires, most of the issues noted if not all are related to water and not the emergency response plan. The emergency response plan was carefully put together with Chief Cook to address any of the concerns some of the gentleman on the telephone were mentioning. We believe we have a very safe product here. We believe it's a very beneficial product to your community. We hope you see that in the same light as far as the conditions for the permanent concern. We do believe we've met it by clear and convincing evidence. I appreciate the time today and you know God willing we'll be able to move forward with this project and we hope you all appreciate us too we're trying to do our best about being transparent and answer as many questions as possible so thank you so much. Thank you very much. All right at this point we are we're done hearing public comment, we get to deliver right now. So this is our chance to have a conversation because we haven't talked to each other about this. So I will, I'll let the elder statesmen go first, Commissioner Ellsner. up to the old guy. You know some of the concerns I understand you know everybody moves to Park County to get away from everything and have the pristine views problem is it all cost stuff. So I just want to address a couple of them. One it's a surge unit or peaking unit, I guess it's called. I was familiar with those in our previous lifetime. Public Service Company had one that's out on I-70 at Rand Natural Gas and it did basically the same thing that this will do. It was a couple of jet engines. So when you get into noise levels and that type of thing, this is a very quiet way to provide power to people when we lose it. I don't know how many of you have computers and how many of you look at your computer and say I need a battery. Back up on that computer, because when the power goes out, we're in trouble. Computer crashes and sometimes, you know, with Microsoft and their wisdom, it doesn't come back to it, should. That's what this is. It's something that it hits that peak level. You take a look at other things that public service company has done for peak levels. There's one in Georgetown. It's called a big reservoir where they let the water out, generate electricity, and then pump the water back up the hill. Not really very efficient as far as an overall wave looking at it, but very efficient if you have to meet that peak time. Views always going to be there. You can put a pig farm out there, make it just as big, and it's going to look about the same as these. So that is, you know, I wish everybody could have everything they wanted all the time. I do worry about light pollution, how many lights are on, but I think they address that in some of their documents that they'll comply with all of our light ordinances, which means it's not going to be like a few storage facilities we have around the county that light up everything. Noise, it's 56, I think is what they said at the edge, 56 decibels. If you look that up, it's kind of a quiet conversation. So there's a quiet conversation, and that's going to be at the edge of the facility. The further you go, the less noise it will be. I can't remember, and I looked really quick, but Public Service Company, I believe, is the one that is a partner in this. They don't provide power to California. If the whole idea that old sandy egg was going to call and say, hey, we need your power, that's not the way the grid works. It just doesn't work that way. And you know, we had a couple of people that have experienced my experience a long time ago was building two power plants or two units of the Craig station and Craig Colorado. I worked for Stern's Roger Engineering. I got to know a lot of people in the power industry. Wasn't my thing. I was a contract manager, so I was more in trying to keep track of the money and the contractors to make sure they didn't mess things up too badly. But you get to know a lot of people and you start understanding what the grid is and how it works. And to give you a couple of one interesting thing that happened is when they were trying to bring up the, I think it was the first unit in Craig, they accidentally brought it up out of phase which made that generator an engine. So instead of generating power, it took power off the grid. At the time, Sir's Roger had a power plant we were building up in Bula, North Dakota. And I was talking to my counterpart up there a couple of days later and I said, yeah, we had a real mess. It'll lot of damage. And his comment was, oh, so that's what hit the grid. We are all connected. It's not a case that this power is just going to go here. It's on the grid. Anything that we can do to stabilize that and provide power is great. If we lose transmission here and we have batteries that are local, when electricity goes out, it's going to go to the first place. You can't put, you know, F will be San Diego on the electron. It's going to stay here because that's where it's needed. I understand the view part because yes, that's why we all moved up here. But you know, you get around to the point where you've got a lot of great views and every once in a while something is going to disrupt it. You can't have everything all the time. This is a very low facility. It doesn't stick up in the air very much. You can do things with paint to make it blend in. There's a lot of things they can do. So, you know, I really understand all of your concerns, but you know, Park County can't produce anything that Park County needs unless you want elk, beef, anilope, deer, or water. We need electricity. We need all of these other things. And I just, I think when the fire chief tells me that he is looked at it, he has studied it, and it makes sense to him and he can handle it. And when residents close say, yep, this is pretty good. And Southpeak, Southpeak, South Park, ambulance says it doesn't have a big impact with us. These are the people that I rely on. And the lithium battery fire is a bad thing when they're in cars and most of the ones that happen in cars are because of an accident. The idea that you've got 70 liters of anaphyries when semi's you heard I know a car can go between 5 and 10 liters and a semi is going to have a heck of a lot more. So one accident of a semi is just about as bad as one of these and that semi doesn't have a containment facility that's going to keep it in there. So I think everything in these things provides the safety we were looking at. You know I'm not going to get into the financial side of it because everybody will say well you're just doing this because you're greedy. And, you know, I kind of keep thinking that, well, I'm doing this because I'm greedy. I don't get any money out of this. But the county needs these type of facilities. I think this is a really good way to do this. I think it's probably one of the most environmentally sound things that we can have happen up here. So, you know, that's my 10 cents. Or nickel or a quarter, depending upon whether you value it. All right, Commissioner Whistle. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just for the record. This has to be one of the coldest rooms of every set in my life. I know. I almost want to get my- You're just setting here like an iceberg. Where's the power when you need it? Right? Editorial comment. Notwithstanding. Well, I can see both sides of this. This is land use applications are generally the ones that give us consternation long after the meeting. This is one of those. This comment is having been here for some 45 years and watched the evolution of thousand peaks from Augustine Ranch to where it is today. I have a great affinity for the people in the private property rights, you hold. We don't own any property, we own the rights to them. We own the right to, within the bundle of rights, it's five of them. Four of them are for the landowner and the fifth one is government action or police powers. And that's where the government has the opportunity to impose development standards, land use regulations, building codes, and those kinds of things for health safety and minimum safety standards. We are in need of electricity, no question. There are areas of our vast county that will never, ever see traditional utilities. They just want to, it's just economically infeasible. The reason those power generation lines cross us is to get to someplace else. Now our power, as we talked about, mostly comes from core. And core, formerly IRA, it's hard to change your institutional initials. Core IRA, cover is probably 95% of this county. And they will benefit to a degree from this in the fact that if indeed electricity is fungible, which I believe it is, then that additional storage capacity will have a benefit. Some place may be not park, but somewhere in our general area. Further compounding that is the federal legislation that I'm going to ask the attorney to speak about this when I'm done. We ran into with another land use case for South Park Telephone, one of the providers what we don't have is land lines. Traditional telephone service is few and far between. And in today's world kind of like satellite, that's not such a bad thing because of the infrastructure. It requires to put that together. So with all of that we have this opportunity and I believe this came through federal legislation either the Infrastructure Act or whatever it was to help facilitate some of the monies for these kinds of alternative energies, because the current administration is definitely crazy about alternative energy. I think we would support an all of energy concept, not any exclusive or any specific prohibition on, but all of the above. And with that, I find myself really torn between individual property rights and the ability of the community in a larger sense to be serviced. When I was around when IRA added that extension that created the Hartzell substation, it was because that demand was greater than they could perform. The growth in South Park alone requires additional electricity and core is responsible to provide that. So when you look at all of the alternatives and all of the benefits versus the negatives, it's very difficult to say no. But on the other hand I also want to ask the attorney because of the federal legislation if we were to say no could is there an avenue around us in that I think there's a 90 day or 120 day review period. I saw something about the 120 days. I don't remember exactly when our South Park telephone case because it was a couple months ago but that's one of my questions. Even though we would say no can they go around us? I think your question is what is there right to appeal? And the right to appeal is under 106 the rules of the Colorado rules as a overseager. They have 28 days to bring their appeal. That's what their appeal right is. So if you were to go through the the criteria and find that those were not met then and deny them that is their appeal right. I may not have been so clear of that. Probably was the crux of my question. I know when we talked about this before in the event that utility has a benefit in the county or the local entity says no we don't see that benefit. And we say no, then there's appeal rights and so forth from that point to have someone else review that. This is in our court right now, so I'll stop right there. Okay, my turn. Ginny, I just have a couple questions and they're not hard. Please, I told you we reserved the right. First of all, I don't have a copy of the most current site that was put up here when it started of this plan where it's now longer and skinnier in the middle instead of a square Don't have a copy of that anywhere in any of the documents so it You know that's okay, but can I tell you where I think it is? Yeah, where is it because I've got them open and I've looked you should be there was a whole file that was updated documents Or something like that updates. Okay. And I've gone through there and I don't know site plans in there. There are, but they don't have, it doesn't have the newest layout hold on. Let me look at this one. We've got, there it is. Yes. Okay. Because we've had lots of documents that were all provided developed at different times and trying to get the most recent one has been a challenge. So on this it has a future approximate substation yard. Explain that. That would be the total footprint of the yard, of the facility. What they started with, the beginning was showing us exactly where all the little storage containers would be, but then realized that could change, you know, easily within a couple of years, with what they technology and where they end up wanting to place it. So they wanted to say this is going to be the biggest possible footprint and impact and we'll stay within there no matter what. Well, I'm not sure if that's right because on the first set of documents or second set of documents, this is the third set, it said future substation, future proposed substation. And this says proposed substation yard. And so, and it's a square to the east of the proposed best yard. And so we did not see a rendering of any of this potential, this substation. And so I just, oh the little substation? Well it doesn't have dimensions with it. It's 0.6 acres to the east of the yard and then the, it's got two storage containers and then the temporary office trailer. So here, you want to come look at my computer? No, I think I can picture it. And I think that's been there the whole time. Yeah, but what is it? Because we haven't seen, it wasn't on the rendering, we haven't heard any information about it. We've heard about the battery packs, but not... Well, it's not this stuff. So looking at this is lengthwise rather than widthwise, that is in our file. I'm looking at this condition. Well, what I'm looking at is what we had to look at and it is included. The new plan with it running not across. I think. I just want to know what is it and what is it going to look like. It's not been described anywhere. It doesn't. It's described somewhere. I mean, can I have one of these guys come up and explain? You'd have to talk to the attorney about that part. One of the things when we do a PUD, we get into a lot of, this is what it has to look like. This is where you're going to put things. A conditional use can be, this is where we're going to have the battery storage. You've got a lot more design work to do before you say this is what it's actually going to look like. Because right now they're looking at this as a size of the battery when they'll start designing it and then maybe testable come up and say, hey, we got a new one that's a little different configuration. It's smaller, it'll work better, or this. It's an iterative process up until you finally get to the point where you're saying, okay, now we're going to buy it, we're going to put it in, or we're going to buy it so we know exactly what we want to setback and then we'll get down and do a final design when we have approval and we actually figure out the exact model number we're going to buy. So Madam Chair and members of the board, I think you're asking a fair question. You're asking where in the record is the document that answers your question? Yes. And that's something that you can get back, but you know, you've closed the period for public comment. So, you're not taking any more testimony. Right. And so, I think it's just to clarify the record, all you're asking for is where in the record is the document? Your visit does where does it explain the proposed substation yard? Because I did not see it explained anywhere and I spent hours and hours and hours going through these documents. Well, and this is so I have a question for the attorney. Okay. And a question for staff generally. We have a folder under our land use section for the Board of County Commissioners. And in that folder is the heartsel substation file. And when you go into that, it's got sight plans. It's got the staff report, it's got referrals, it's got everything that has been presented, but part of that folder is sight plans. And in that folder of sight plans is the sight plan that they showed us today when he had it up on his presentation. So, you know, I'm not too sure. I mean, it's there because I just found it not really. It took me just a minute or two to come up with. Site plans. You've got three of them. Those were from, that was from the 2008 correct Mike. Substation. The heart of the substation file is from the 2008 correct mic substation. Heartthulestubstation file is from the 2008. OK. Right. Because I had asked for them, but mic couldn't get them to me until today. And I haven't even had a chance to look at them because I didn't have them before we started our meeting this morning. Substation. OK. Yeah. So. It's another heartthulestubstation. So I just want you guys have confused me. The project substation is mentioned in, the big substation and the source facility. Correct. So in the 371 page application. Okay. All right. I'm just they mentioned they showed it on they mentioned it on their slide in the slide presentation as well. Part of the whole project is this the substation yard to the east. And I'm trying to open it but it's such a big file won't open. Do you want to see? Yeah, I just want to know what the question is, did they submit what they were supposed to in accordance with the code? And if they submitted what they were supposed to in accordance with the code, then there isn't anything else that they were supposed to have submitted. So if the application was compliant with the code requirements, which I see Jenny nodding her head yes, and that is what the board is making its decision on that and the standards for approval. Right, because it says it has the footprint, but it doesn't have the height. It's a 300 foot by 200 foot. And it shows what the voltage was, but it doesn't have any other description about what this thing looks like. And, you know, the rendering we received we just saw today, we didn't have that available for us to look at until today. And so I find that some of this information, it's, I can't make a decision until I know exactly how the neighbors, the people who live there, the property owners who have bought land and have decided to build when they're at the point where they can retire, that's a big deal to me. Because that is their private property right and our land use regulations exist to ensure that people understand what their quality of life is going to be where they've purchased their land. And so thank you for showing that, Jenny. It was one little paragraph. And so, but it looks... So I do want to make a point for the board that the land use regulations apply to every property owner. If a property owner owns land in a certain zone district and our code says that they can come to you and apply for conditional use for something that is in the code they have a right to do that. So no one who lives next to them has a vested right and not ever having that happen by one of their neighbors. So I just want to make sure that we're clear on how the law is to be interpreted. Yeah, and because our staff accepted the application as a complete application, And when you get down to little modifications within side, inside where they want to put it, those things don't really matter because it was a complete application in accordance with what we would want and they have the ability to do this. And again, you're looking at something that you don't have a final design on many things. I mean, how many people build a house? And oh, I got my house done and the guy calls me, okay, what color do you want your carpet? Where do you want your cabinets? How do you want your cabinets? It's the final part. You know the outline of the house, you know the size of your house. So now you're going to put things in it. They've told us the batteries, the size of the batteries, where they're going to put the batteries, how they're going to arrange the batteries. If they arrange the batteries a little different because a final design says it would make more sense, well I would hate to say well you can't do that because we approved the batteries this way where your final design makes more sense and it is still within the area that you are going to put your batteries. Commissioner Whistle. Thank you, Madam Chair. No, I think this is a CUP. This is not a PUD. A PUD would be very specific, but in a CUP, you're simply looking at the general idea, the general location, and the site is of where that will be. I looked at all of the maps. I found the site maps I should say, a little confusing at the beginning, but there are different iterations as I understand it now. And with that, I don't have that particular concern because there's gonna be additional equipment that we don't even know about likely in the installation of something like this in this kind of installation protocol. So with that, I think it's really the bigger picture of on a 20-year life is this an appropriate change to the community. So any other comments? Let me just look at my notes here real quick. So another thing I think we should discuss is, okay, these mega packs have been out for two years. Is that long enough to get good data on their safety? I don't know, but, and I've heard all of you. I mean, I've heard what all of you guys have said. But if this went bad, it would be bad. I mean, it would be bad. That toxic smoke would kill animals. I have no doubt. And it could harm people. So these have been out for two years. How long do you need data to know if they fail or not? Antero, reservoir, what our record low was minus 65? It was a really cold low. That's not that far away from here. And this low spot in this valley gets really cold. I mean, it's always the coldest drive up nine. So I just, and when it says minus 30 to 125, it's just, I have real concerns about the environment there and the potential risk. I think they talked about the fact that they have heaters and they have coolers. And yes, a battery you can't subject to those extremes, which is why they, inside these packs, they do that. Yes, they've been out for two years. You know, I don't know of any company in the world that says, hey, we just came up with this idea. Here it is. We're going to let users test it. I mean, you buy a new model car, a new model here and well was it tested for very long and it could be catastrophic. I think if you look at the history and you know the one in Missouri that was brought up in testimony, I think that was pretty well responded to that you know that is a battery they were trying to recycle the batteries and it was big. And yes, they did do evacuations, but I think if you look into it because I remember reading about it, that for three days they had a very small area. These are small units compared to what they had there in the problem they've had. And if one of these would have a problem, I think their testimony was that the fire, everything would dissipate pretty quickly. I hate to say this, but back when I was in college, I took a course on pollution control. And back then, the way you controlled pollution was you dispersed it. They didn't try to fix it. You just spread it over a much bigger area. And that's kind of where this is. If you would have a fire, it would disperse it. You wouldn't have the issue on the wildlife because it's not big enough to cause that type of a problem. And I think that was in their testimony. And I think in was in their testimony and I think some of the other things in the fact that they went to CPW and said, hey, we're going to do this. What do you think? And CPW did not have a problem. You cannot engineer everything for the absolute worst case scenario. That's totally impossible because there's always going to be a worst case. A meteor hit it and caused a bigger problem. These things are well designed. I mean, how many people go out and buy an iPhone when it first comes out? You know, Apple just said, hey, we just released a new iPhone and you got people, and it hasn't been out for very long. And that's, you rely on companies to constantly improve their equipment. Tesla is one of them that does that. I've, when I was looking several years ago, it may be putting solar on my house. I looked at Tesla and said, well, that's kind of big and bulky and ugly. And I don't think I want it. Well, what they offer now is a whole lot better and a whole lot safer. That's what these are. This is a condition we use permit. It's not a move. No, it's not a pad. It's not a pad. We don't have the ability under our regulations to tell them how to build this thing. We do have the ability to say, hey, you've said this is where you're going to build it and you're going to build it in this side. But I would prefer to leave all of the design and how the best way to do it up to a company that knows how to design it in the best way to do it rather than having three county commissioners second guess, gee, maybe you should have done it this way. I'm not second guessing anything. I have the right to understand completely in my mind how it will impact the people who live there. That's my comment. And if I don't have the answer, like it's a concern to me also that we didn't have the noise study, because when the wind blows where I live, when the wind blows one way, it's wonderfully quiet. When it blows the other way, and a lot of times we get wind out of the south in the spring, we get upslope, comes out of the east, and usually it's from the west. But when it blows from the south or out of the east, its noisy as can be and it's very disturbing. And that's the reality I live with. So not having the noise study at all is a concern because I didn't get a chance to even look at it and get that set in my mind. And the greater good, we're here because they're decommissioning a coal plant in El Paso County that works just fine. And so it's the decision the state made about carbon and renewables and this will benefit, course the greater good of the state of Colorado but it's not tagged just to help park county. It's going to help the whole state, especially who's on the Excel grid. And so I find that statement a bit of a stretch. So. Manchip Power Plant is being decommissioned for more than OG. It's a coal fire plant. If you take a look at the history of the plant, it has never worked properly. You go back through IRAA at the time, has sued the public service company of Colorado, because public service company in Colorado did not meet the obligations that they had for supplying reliable energy out of that power plant. So don't say that, oh, decommissioning this power plant is nothing for us. What you have to understand is that electricity goes to where it's needed and we're up in the mountains, they're down in Denver, you know, power plants just put it out there. Anything that helps the grid helps Park County. If you want to remove the grid, fine Park County won't have any power. But all of our power, every bit of our power in Park County comes from somewhere else. So to say that hey having something maybe in Park County that stores that power that's coming from somewhere else so when we have a problem in Park County maybe we have the ability to have electricity. If you look at it in their documents, they talk about if we have an issue and we would need to rely on that, that plant provides 60 days worth, I think it was, or 60 hours worth, 60 hours worth of power to all of Park County. That's how much power it could do. So, you know, you're looking at a couple of days that we could have a critical problem with power coming into park county and if we have a facility here that is connected to a grid, the can't get power from anywhere else because otherwise we wouldn't be having that power and that problem in park county and distributed to park county, that is a benefit for park county. You've got to look at this as it's not, it's a grid, it's not hey we can take this water and it's ours and we can put it here and it's ours. It's a power grid, it's totally different and to argue that this doesn't benefit the people of park county having this here I think is putting your head in this hand. It will benefit the people of Park County. Having battery backup does help. Col fire plants are being decommissioned. The one in Craig is being decommissioned about the time they said it was going to expire anyway. Someone said well in in 20 years, you know, batteries don't last 20 years, or that's why you do maintenance. You know, these things may only last 10 years, but during that time you bring in new ones. You replace the parts to keep it up and running. I just, your arguments on something like this just don't make a lot of sense commissioner because it will benefit the people of Park County in providing reliable electricity, which is one of the things that like, you know, we sat here and argued when public service wanted to cut power so they could fix some poles that they thought might have a problem. And you said, well, they can't do that. They have to wait and they have to, you know, that's fine. OK, you're running that risk. But things are going to happen. And we're going to have probably a catastrophic event on a power line and having the power available because being without power for more than 12 hours impacts people a lot more than the remote chance that one of these things might catch on fire and I say remote chance. If you look and you know I did a quick G how many hours are there out there? There are not very many incidents of problems with battery storage in battery units like this period. Most of the incidents are with trying to figure out how to recycle it or how to figure out how to transport things, not actual running. Okay, Commissioner Whistle. This has been a fascinating discussion, but the clock says it's three. Okay. You want to tackle this today or do we want to do the rest of our day and push it down the road? Well, we don't have anything really except public comment, I think, on the rest of our day. And I would like to make a motion that staff prepare a resolution approving this with the conditions that were in the staff report that were read, because I don't want to have to read those to be brought back at a later date. And under condition seven it says as it is expected that the best will have a 20-year lifespan a decommissioned agreement must be signed by the applicant and part county prior to issuance of any building permits does that mean that the Conditional Digital Use Purbit expires in 20 years from the date construction starts. That's a good question. It does not mean that, but your code says that you can condition the life of a conditional use permit. So if that's a condition you want to consider, you can do that. Would you say that again? I just want to make sure I heard it. So as I understand the question, it was, what is the life of the conditional use permit? And without stating a explicit end date for the term of the permit, then it's assumed that the permit runs perpetually. So, but the code does allow the county commissioners to consider imposing an end date on the life of the permit. Mr. Wissel. So with that, I put my paperbook. This is expected in the RWE paperwork. That the construction will begin some time, second half of 2026 with the target date of completion by December of 27. So in that case, we could impose a condition hypothetically of December of 47 could be the potential in date of a conditional use permit. Hypothetically, Madam Legal. Yes, I think hypothetically you can do that. I'm not exactly sure what purpose that serves, but yes. Yeah, well, you could do it also by stating that it would be 20 years after commissioning of the plant rather than a hard date because that way if they end up with a construction delay we have a bad winner or something like that. Well, and it gives it, right now, conditional uses for this battery thing. Well, who knows how, you know, it's stated there's a lifespan to it. And so I just thought that it would be appropriate to make sure that that lifespan is understood, and that it would be cleaned and scoured to the ground when that lifespan is over. So I just brought it up for conversation. I think that's the purpose of a decommissioning agreement. I mean, I think that the terms of a decommissioning agreement are it will be decommissioned upon, you know, such day and time. And it will be returned to its condition as it was prior to the start of any construction work. Thank you. Mike, you wanted to say something. I just had a couple comments going to the decommissioning of this unit. My understanding from the testimony that I've heard from both the applicant And as we've discussed this through the staff level is, the decommissioning may occur before 20 years happens. And that's the reason that we're looking for the bond, for the 20 year bond. The decommissioning may happen or may be allowed to occur after the 20 years if conditions are such that through technological advances and things of that nature, this particular use could continue in a positive manner going forward. There's really good 20 years down the road. One of them is just that this is the condition of use for that location today. If this technology goes away, then it would go away. If this technology improves and the safety improves and the efficiency improves and the use of that facility would improve, I could foresee this coming in at 20 year period for a review to see if it's still viable. But that just might. Yeah, that would mean, you know, my thought and Aaron, it'd have to tell me if you could actually do this, would be that the CUP would expire 180 days after decommissioning and no longer, you know, decommissioning of the power plant, which then makes it very clear that, okay, there's nothing someone could tag on later and make a change without coming back. And that way it's tied to how long the thing lasts. So if it goes 30 to 40 years because new technology and everything's doing really well, then the conditional use permit would still be in place. That seems prudent and consistent with what you heard from the applicant and from Mike. Right. Okay, Commissioner Whistle. Yeah, I think the point is valid that it could last less than 20 years, better English. Boy, it's three o'clock. Nothing wrong with me today. I think the brain needs a little bit of... But anyhow, with that, I think it gives us a parameter of which to look at. With technology, it could definitely be leveraged into way beyond anything we could imagine today. So with that, we're set this parameter in today's world and that's that 20-year figure. So I would add that to the motion to amend it to include that the CUP would expire upon decommissioning of the facility and that the restoration would continue after that, but they would no longer be able to run this as a power facility upon decommissioning. That way future commissioners can figure out what they want to do with it. So just want to clear 180 days after the bond. No, I would just say it the CUP expires upon decommissioning and then the bond that we have to reclaim the site would continue on until it was done. And I think that's an important part because bonds are for that purpose. They're to make sure with some limited experience with bonds when a person or an entity doesn't perform that bond is set there so you can finish that work in ensuring that that project is completed to that agreement that we had at that time. How many mines do we have in Park County that we wish we would have had? What I would suggest for the Board in condition 10 would be that the CUP will expire upon decommissioning of the facility and the terms of decommission and the terms of the decommission agreement shall provide or and the decommissioning agreement shall provide for the terms governing remediation, life of the remediation bond and such other necessary terms as the county shall determine. So that's added into your motion as condition 10. Yeah, yeah, it's 10. I've got it up. I would second that. Okay, all in favor. Aye. Aye. Nay. All right. Hi. Hi. Nay. All right. Okay. Let's see. Let's get this. Let me find my agenda because it's very easy. Yeah. We now are accepting public comments. If anyone would like to raise their hand on Zoom or come up to the podium. We will accept your public comment. Please talk to it quickly. Yeah, blood sugar is getting low to brain starting to fade a little bit. I am seeing no one in the room and no one on zoom. I would make a motion. We close public comment. Gladly second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. At this point, we don't have an executive session, so I'd make a motion to adjourn. Gladly second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Thank you, everybody. We are adjourned. It looks like there's some snow out there, so travel safe.