Questions on Quail Hill Barn

The Peconic Land Trust will likely get approval from the East Hampton Town Planning Board for a 2,800-square-foot equipment barn at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett. However, it may not get the access to the barn it had hoped for.

John Jilnicki, the board’s attorney, informed members that covenants and restrictions written into the subdivision that created the 11-acre farm property between Old Stone Highway, Deep Lane, and Side Hill Road preclude access from Side Hill Road or Deep Lane. Instead, tractors and other farm equipment may have to get to the barn via Old Stone Highway.

The barn is to be used for equipment that serves the whole of Quail Hill, a community supported farm with fields on the east and west side of Deep Lane and off Town Lane to the north. But at the board’s Jan. 25 meeting, the extent to which the barn could be used for equipment from another farm property was also called into question.

Ian Calder-Piedmonte, a member of the board and a farmer, himself, told the board that the practice of using equipment over several different properties is common on East Hampton farms. The discussion will continue at a future meeting.

In other matters, the board also had a prolonged discussion with Gordian Raacke of Renewable Energy Long Island, a member of the town’s energy sustainability committee, about the use of lithium ion battery facilities to store power during off-peak hours, then release that power back into the grid at peak hours. The board has two such facilities before it in site plan review, one on Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton, the other in Montauk south of the train tracks and Navy Road. The proposed facilities would be run by NextEra Energy Resources, a company partnering with National Grid and PSEG.

Mr. Raacke explained that PSEG’s updated power usage for East Hampton shows a critical gap between what is available and what is demanded during peak summer hours. Since the battery facilities cannot be put in place this year, PSEG plans to bring in two generators on flatbed trucks, one for the Montauk substation, the other to be located near the substation on Buell Lane Extension, to make up for the shortfall this summer.

While the proposal is not truly “green,” since it is not actually producing power but only storing it, Mr. Raacke said that the battery facilities would be far preferable to the generators in the future. He told the board that the generators being used this year will be run on compressed natural gas, which is cleaner than oil, but less preferable than the battery concept.