REVIEW OF THE HECATE ENERGY GREENE COUNTY SOLAR FACILITY AVIAN IMPACT ASSESSMENTS AND PRELIMINARY NET CONSERVATION BENEFIT PLAN, COXSACKIE FLATS, NEW YORK REPORT PREPARED FOR: One Civic Center Plaza, Suite 200 P. O. Box 387 Poughkeepsie, New York 12601 Coxsackie, New York 12051 PREPARED BY: RIVEREDGE ENVIRONMENTAL, INC. 58 OLD RIVER RD. MASSENA, NEW YORK 13662 December 2020 Hecate Greene NCBP Review TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.................................................................................................2 1.0 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 3 2.0 T&E RAPTORS OF THE COXSACKIE FLATS.................................................. 5 2.1 Northern Harrier and Short-eared Owl........................................................... 5 2.2 Coxsackie Flats in the Regional Landscape ................................................... 5 3.0 POTENTIAL EFFECTS ON T&E SPECIES......................................................... 9 3.1 Habitat Use ..................................................................................................... 9 3.2 Potential for Avian Mortality ....................................................................... 11 3.3 Site Occupancy and Impact Assessment ...................................................... 11 3.4 Potential Impacts of Hecate Greene on Wintering Raptors ......................... 13 4.0 NET CONSERVATION BENEFIT PLAN (NCBP) ............................................ 14 4.1 Overview ...................................................................................................... 14 4.2 Proposed Impact Mitigation Measures ......................................................... 15 4.2.1 Calculation of Adverse Impact and Mitigation Acreages ......................... 15 4.2.2 Specific Recommendations for Mitigation ............................................... 17 4.2.3 Specific Practices ...................................................................................... 18 4.3 Post-Construction Monitoring ...................................................................... 19 4.4 Land Conservation and Commitment to Habitat Management .................... 20 5.0 CUMULATIVE IMPACTS .................................................................................. 21 6.0 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................... 23 2 LH-DT-2 Riveredge Environmental Inc. Hecate Greene NCBP Review EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Hecate Energy Greene County Solar Facility (Case No. 17-F-0619) (hereafter Hecate or Hecate Greene) Preliminary Net Conservation Benefit Plan (PNCBP or Preliminary NCBP) does not meet the requirements of state law to avoid, minimize, or mitigate the adverse modification of habitat for threatened and endangered species. does not make a clear case that the avoidance and minimization of adverse modification of threatened and endangered species habitat was adequately considered. Indeed, the Hecate Greene solar project is placed entirely within occupied threatened and endangered species habitat. does not provide a net conservation benefit. The NCBP must provide for increased acreage of useful mitigation area with a goal of a 1:1 mitigation ratio, as well as a clear commitment to habitat management and monitoring. must provide more specificity and commitment to funding a land protection structure and mitigation activities and practices in order to guarantee implementation of the NCBP as required. needs to be revised to remove the sections that minimize and distort the anticipated impacts to rare species, and provide more support for the claim that panels are better for prey populations than farming. must demonstrate that the take will not reduce the likelihood of the survival or recovery of Northern Harrier and Short-eared Owl in New York. The Hecate Greene PNCBP is currently deficient in these regards. The PCNBP does not demonstrate a net conservation benefit to the Short-eared Owls and Northern Harriers that are known to occupy the lands of proposed Facility. 3 LH-DT-2 Riveredge Environmental Inc. Hecate Greene NCBP Review 1.0 INTRODUCTION Hecate Energy Greene 1 LLC, Hecate Energy Greene 2 LLC, and Hecate Energy Greene 3 LLC (hereafter "Hecate" or "Hecate Greene") is proposing to construct the Greene County Solar Facility, a 50-megawatt photovoltaic (PV) solar generation facility located within approximately 827 acres of privately-owned land in the Town of Coxsackie along Farm to Market Road between United States Route 9W and New York State Route 385 (the “Facility”). The Facility would have a nameplate capacity of approximately 50 MW (AC) and would consist of solar arrays and associated infrastructure with a footprint of approximately 368 acres of the total 827-acre Facility Area. Hecate prepared several documents included in Exhibit 22 (Terrestrial Ecology and Wetlands) of the application, including a Habitat Assessment and Preliminary Impact Determination Report (Appendix 22-C (Tetra Tech 2019a, 2020a)), and an Avian Cumulative Impact Assessment Report (Appendix 22-E (Tetra Tech 2019b, 2020b)).1 These impact assessments evaluated rare, threatened, and endangered (RTE) avian species requirements and the potential impacts of the construction, operation, and maintenance of the Greene County Solar Facility on these species. A determination by the NYS Department of Conservation (“NYSDEC”) that construction and operation of the facility will result in adverse impacts to species and occupied habitat, and that a take will occur, triggered the stipulated requirement for an avoidance, minimization and mitigation plan that results in a net conservation benefit to the affected species. In July, Hecate filed a Preliminary Net Conservation Benefit Plan (PNCBP; Tetra Tech 2020c). The PNCBP described Hecate's efforts to avoid, minimize, or mitigate the adverse take of threatened and endangered (T&E) species habitat during the siting, construction, operation, and maintenance of the facility. The Habitat Assessment and Preliminary Impact Determination Report (Tetra Tech 2020a) clearly states (page 4, section 2.5, paragraph 3) that NYS Environmental Conservation 1 Original versions of these documents were filed with the application on December 27, 2019. Revised versions of these documents were filed in the record as an application supplement on March 20, 2020. Since the revised version referred to figures in the original reports, both versions of the documents were reviewed for this report. 3 LH-DT-2 Riveredge Environmental Inc. Hecate Greene NCBP Review Law regulates "all activities that will result in direct harm to listed species or the adverse modification of the occupied habitat of endangered or threatened species" and that 16 NYCRR Part 182 defines adverse modification of habitat as "any alteration of the occupied habitat of any species listed as endangered or threatened ... that ... is likely to negatively affect one of more essential behaviors of such species." The PNCBP (Tetra Tech 2020c, Section 3.3 p. 13) clearly states that "all lands within the Facility Area was considered occupied habitat." The impact assessments and the PNCBP describe the impacts that this project will have through the direct take of occupied habitat for the T&E species and the mitigation measures proposed to provide an overall net conservation benefit for these species. The purpose of this review is to assess the adequacy of the impact assessments and to determine if the proposed PNCBP actually provides a net conservation benefit to the threatened Northern Harrier and the endangered Short-eared Owl at the Facility site in the Coxsackie Flats. 4 Riveredge Environmental Inc. Hecate Greene NCBP Review 2.0 T&E RAPTORS OF THE COXSACKIE FLATS 2.1 Northern Harrier and Short-eared Owl Hecate Greene discusses the natural history and habitat requirements of the two threatened or endangered species in the Habitat Assessment and Preliminary Impact Determination Report (Tetra Tech 2020a, 2020b). The treatment of these species in these impact assessments is inadequate and appears to leave out important aspects of the species’ natural history and behavior. Although Tetra Tech cites Smith et al. (2011) in their report, they failed to include the most important information on habitat use and behavior from this reference that would assist the Siting Board in understanding the rare, threatened and endangered (“RTE”) species issues at hand. For example, the winter habits of Northern Harrier, a threatened species that annually occupies the habitat in and surrounding the proposed Greene County Solar Facility, is described by in a single sentence: "Winter months are spent roosting in communal flocks in open habitats with high rodent populations, such as abandoned fields and salt marshes" (Tetra Tech 2020a Section 3.2.4). Clearly, the birds do more than simply roost during winter. They also actively fly and forage, and do so in a variety of habitats. Importantly, Northern Harriers initiate courtship and formation of the breeding pair bond on the wintering grounds. The habitats used by Northern Harriers during winter are more fully described by Smith et al. (2011, 2020) and clearly indicate that Northern Harriers use a variety of habitats for foraging, including the habitats found at the proposed Greene County Solar Facility site. Furthermore, within these occupied habitats, these wintering raptors forage at flight heights where solar panels would