Truro Select Board Puts Solar Project on Hold

TRURO — A town meeting-approved plan to install solar panels at the transfer station has been put on hold after select board member John Dundas raised concerns about PFAS, even though the proposed contract would protect Truro from receiving PFAS-contaminated panels.

Town meeting voters in May appropriated $5 million to build the solar array. Officials had hoped to begin construction by Dec. 31 to be eligible for tax credits created under the Biden administration. Those credits, which could pay up to half the cost of the project, are expiring at the end of the year.

Dundas expressed doubts about the plan at the Oct. 28 select board meeting, when the board considered entering a contract with Solect, a solar project developer in Hopkinton founded in 2009.

‘Rushing’ a Decision

“I’m going to be in complete opposition to this,” Dundas said, “and I’m going to recommend that this board postpone this decision and send it back to town meeting in the spring. I don’t feel that we should be rushing this decision simply because of the tax credits.”

Dundas said he worried that Solect’s solar panels could emit PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances also known as “forever chemicals,” which may be harmful to human health. But the town’s draft contract with Solect requires the company to provide solar panels free of PFAS and lets the town test the panels and refuse delivery if the chemicals are detected.

Dundas offered no evidence to support his PFAS concerns, which have been debunked by researchers.

“PFAS is not customarily used in solar panels because safer, effective alternatives have already been developed and commercialized,” according to Annick Anctil of Michigan State University, who studies the environmental impact of solar technology. “Moreover,” she wrote, “no studies have shown the presence or leaching of PFAS from [solar] panels.”

Dundas also expressed concern that installing solar panels at the transfer station could affect groundwater even if the panels themselves do not contain PFAS, because the chemicals were found at the transfer station in May 2023. He said he feared that building on the site could expose residents to polluted water.

“I’ve been looking to find out if you’ve ever put a solar farm on a PFAS-contaminated site,” Dundas asked at the meeting.

“It’s low-risk that it would have any negative effect on the PFAS we have there now,” said DPW Director Jarrod Cabral, adding that the state Dept. of Environmental Protection would need to approve the project. “I don’t think [the DEP] would allow us to move forward if they had any hesitation.”

Select board member Nancy Medoff said she wanted to see Dundas’s concerns addressed. “I, too, am concerned at the speed and the rushing of this contract,” she said.

“I don’t see the point of bringing it back to town meeting,” said select board member Stephanie Rein. “The voters voted. I don’t see how in a few months we’re going to have a different set of facts in front of us.”

Board member Susan Girard-Irwin, the liaison to the energy committee, agreed with Rein.

But the board agreed to delay a vote on the Solect contract so that Dundas could seek answers to his questions, which will be discussed on Nov. 12.

Owning the Power

Almost every town on Cape Cod has a solar array at its transfer station. Unlike many other towns, though, Truro would own the electricity from its panels. This means a high up-front cost with a high potential for profits.

Assuming the town receives a substantial tax credit, “it will end up costing less than $3 million, but it will make, like, $500,000 a year” for 25 to 30 years, said Chris Palmer, Truro’s climate action coordinator. “So, we’ll have all this extra income that can then fund future solar projects, decarbonization — all that kind of stuff.”

Palmer added that “we as a town get to choose what happens with the electricity we generate. We’re curious about the community solar option, where people in Truro can subscribe to their local solar array and they will get a discount of 10 to 20 percent off” their electric bills.

The solar energy investment tax credit was terminated by the Big Beautiful Bill signed by President Trump in July. Still, if Truro works fast enough, it can claim the credit before it disappears. It could be worth as much as 50 percent of the cost of installing the solar panels, said Truro Finance Director Alex Lessin. Construction of the array would have to begin by Dec. 31, 2025, Lessin wrote in an email.

Other solar panel arrays are already up and running at transfer stations across the Outer Cape.

The solar array at the Wellfleet Transfer Station includes “2,358 solar panels that produce an average of 80,000 [kilowatt-hours] per month,” wrote Jay Norton, the director of Wellfleet’s DPW, in an email to the Independent.

The Eastham Transfer Station solar array has 2,500 solar panels, according to the Cape Cod Times. It produces about 600,000 kilowatt-hours per year, Eastham’s energy and climate action committee chair, Tom McNellis, told the Independent.

During fiscal 2025, the Provincetown Transfer Station array, which takes up .64 acre, produced a total of 208,583 kilowatt-hours, according to Melyssa Nickerson, the town’s director of sustainability and resilience.