Town of Clarkstown Breaks Ground on Solar Field on Closed West Nyack Landfill

New York's first solar landfill project broke ground Wednesday, June 25. According to Business Wire, OnForce Solar announced they started construction on a large-scale, 2.316 MW solar array to be built on 13 acres of a capped landfill in West Nyack for the Town of Clarkstown. This will be the first of its kind to be built on a landfill in the State of New York.

From the Town of Clarkstown--

Clarkstown Supervisor Alex Gromack, Councilman George Hoehmann and the Town Board were joined by OnForce Solar and H2M architects and engineers in a ground breaking ceremony for the first solar field on a capped landfill in the state of New York.  

OnForce Solar, a leading provider of solar energy systems, started construction on a large scale, 2.316 MW solar array to be built on 13 acres of the Town’s decommissioned, capped landfill in West Nyack.  The Town’s landfill was capped in 1997 and subsequently the operation of the transfer station was sold to the Rockland County Solid Waste Management Authority in 2009. 

Clarkstown Supervisor Alex Gromack said, “We are very proud to be the first municipality in New York to install a solar field on a capped landfill.  Councilman Hoehmann, who first proposed this idea in 2009, town officials, our consultants H2M architects and engineers, and I have been working on this project for the last five years and we are excited to see it finally come to fruition.”

The solar project is a public/private partnership with OnForce Solar, who is investing $6 million to install, operate, and maintain the solar installation pursuant to a 20 year Power Purchase Agreement.  There is no cost to the Town for this project.  In addition, OnForce Solar received a multi-million dollar grant from NYSERDA through Governor Cuomo’s NY-Sun initiative.  When complete the solar field is expected to save taxpayers as much as $4 million over the next 30 years by producing electricity to be sold back to the utility grid. 

“There is not a day that goes by that the Town Board and I don’t try to cut costs and increase revenues for the Town,” said Supervisor Gromack.  “This project was an ideal public/private partnership with OnForce Solar.  We had the concept and the land and they had the expertise and the financing.”

Councilman George Hoehmann said, “Changes in state law including the net metering law and enhanced incentives made it possible to seek a public private partnership to create the first in the state large scale solar field on a landfill.  The benefits are many and go far beyond environmental, to include predictability and long-term prolonged savings to one of the most volatile areas of our operational budget, namely energy costs.” 

“I look forward to expanding our commitment to renewable energy and seeking additional opportunities for solar in the Town of Clarkstown,” concluded Councilman Hoehmann. 

The solar system integrates Orange and Rockland Utilities’ SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquistion) monitoring system that allows the utility to remotely monitor and control the solar system.  The SCADA monitoring system, part of the Smart Grid Pilot Program, adds an enhanced level of resiliency to Orange and Rockland Utilities’ grid, helping to protect the utility’s customers from catastrophic power outages. 

Charles Feit, CEO of OnForce Solar, commented, “We are gratified the Town selected OnForce Solar to execute this project from a very strong list of competitors through a rigorous vendor selection process.  Repurposing the closed West Nyack landfill to create clean energy is a precedent setting project for the State of New York and we expect will act as a catalyst for further development of landfills across the state.”

The Town had the assistance of the following agencies for this project: H2M architects + engineers, the Rockland County Solid Waste Management Authority, NYSERDA, the NYS DEC, Orange and Rockland Utilities, Rockland County Trade Unions, and the New York Power Authority (NYPA).  The NYPA is working on a white paper which should become a blueprint for municipalities to follow on how to implement a large scale solar field and find savings in municipal budgets.

Construction of the solar field is expected to be complete by the fall.

“Congratulations to Clarkstown for its investment in an innovative solar project that will utilize renewable energy to assist the town in reducing its costs,” said Peter Savio, Program Manager, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. “This project demonstrates the benefits that public private partnerships are providing in the deployment of solar power under Governor Cuomo’s NY-Sun initiative.  We hope other municipalities will look at the Clarkstown project as a model for how solar power can benefit communities across the state.” 

“The New York Power Authority, through its Solar Market Acceleration Program, seeks to help make solar energy more affordable and by helping to document the success of the Town of Clarkstown’s ambitious project, we will be able to share this knowledge with municipalities statewide,” said John Markowitz, lead research & technology development engineer, New York Power Authority.  “This is exactly the type of project envisioned under Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s NY-Sun initiative to widen the use of solar power in New York while keeping an eye on cost.”