Historic Radburn Community Discussing Solar Panels With PSE&G

Fair Lawn's community has been speaking with the Public Service Electric and Gas Company about the placement of solar panels within its borders, in light of historic and aesthetic concerns about the panels.

Currently installing a solar unit on 200,000 utility poles in its service territory—which includes roughly 300 rural and suburban communities—PSE&G received regulatory approval in July 2009 for the project, which it calls "the largest pole-attached solar installation in the world."

David Bostock, manager of the Radburn Association, said that he thinks the panels can teach students about clean energy and advances in technology, but that there is concern that the "character of our community" may be compromised. Radburn, founded in 1929 as one of the first planned communities in the U.S., is on both the New Jersey and National registers of historic places.

Bostock said Tuesday that he has been in contact with David Hollenbeck, PSE&G's regional public affairs manager for Bergen and Hudson counties, who forwarded Radburn's concerns to the solar project's manager. Bostock, who has not yet heard back from the project manager, said Hollenbeck indicated that PSE&G is taking Radburn's historic landmark status into account while marking its map for the solar project.

Francis Sullivan, a spokesman for PSE&G, told Patch on Tuesday that "Typically, we avoid installing [solar panels] in historic areas." If there are areas of concern for certain towns, Sullivan said "we would try to work with that." At the same time, he said that PSE&G also needs to find "as many poles as possible" that are suitable for the panels.

"It's not like they can go on every pole," Sullivan said.

There are currently seven solar panels in the area of , and Bostock said his discussions with PSE&G haven't yet revealed if there will be more panels in the planned community. Longtime Radburn resident Cornell Christianson said that "I'm all for solar energy," but called the panels "ugly and obtrusive."

"Why do we need small panels on poles when we can have large panels in non-residential areas?" Christianson asked.

Mayor Lisa Swain, on the other hand, said that while the panels "might be a little bit large, I think that the benefits outweigh what some people are calling the aesthetics." Among the benefits, Swain said, are moving away from dependence on oil and moving toward a more sustainable society.

"I can live with solar panels above my line of sight if it offsets my energy bills," Swain, founder of the borough's Green Team, said.

"This is the wave of the future," she said.