Clear skies. Scattered frost possible. Low around 35F. NNW winds shifting to SSE at 10 to 15 mph..
Clear skies. Scattered frost possible. Low around 35F. NNW winds shifting to SSE at 10 to 15 mph.
Updated: October 6, 2026 @ 4:10 pm
Judge Maureen Leary was one of the administrative law judges who recommended denying a permit for the Shepherd’s Run solar farm.
The site of the originally proposed Shepherd’s Run Solar Project in Copake.
Judge Maureen Leary was one of the administrative law judges who recommended denying a permit for the Shepherd’s Run solar farm.
The site of the originally proposed Shepherd’s Run Solar Project in Copake.
COPAKE — State judges recommended denying a permit for the construction of a 215-acre solar farm, known as Shepherd’s Run, in the town.
The solar farm’s developer Hecate Energy did not prove it is following a state law designed to protect wetlands and a town law requiring flood impact mitigation at a 10-hour hearing in Copake on Sept. 14, two administrative law judges from the state Department of Public Service ruled Monday.
Hecate must follow both the wetlands and flood impact laws if it wants a permit to build.
While the judges were tasked with evaluating Hecate’s compliance with the two laws during the hearing, the state Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) will get the final say on whether the project goes forward and has until Oct. 19 to make that decision.
The judges recommended the renewable energy office deny Hecate’s permit because they found the company “failed to demonstrate compliance” with both laws.
After the renewable energy office’s executive director ordered a hearing in August on Hecate’s compliance with the two laws, a recommendation from the two administrative law judges was expected, but the hearing and the denial recommendation are unprecedented, attorney Benjamin Wisniewski, who represented Copake at the hearing and argued against the solar farm, said Tuesday.
“The hearing itself was unexpected. Typically, ORES doesn’t hold hearings of this nature,” Wisniewski said. “But you could also say it is unusual, and really probably unprecedented, for there to ever be a recommended denial of a permit in front of ORES.”
After an almost decade-long fight, the ruling was cause for cautious optimism, Copake Town Supervisor Richard Wolf said.
“We see this as an interim victory only,” Wolf said. “The judges’ decision was very well reasoned and thought out, but the final say goes to the executive director (of ORES). We hope he denies the project with prejudice, so that Hecate is unable to get another crack at this.”
Not only did Hecate fail to prove it was following the laws, it also worked to hinder the hearing process, the judges wrote in the ruling.
Despite the judges’ Sept. 8 ruling that Copake was required gain full access to the project site to gather evidence before the hearing, Hecate denied town expert, biologist Johanna Duffy, access to the site until the day before the Sept. 14 hearing, did not give access to the full site, did not allow Duffy to bring equipment and blocked Duffy from one part of the site because it would impact cows.
“Hecate’s actions during the adjudicatory phase were not in good faith,” the judges wrote. “Hecate imposed unreasonable conditions on the Town’s access.”
Those conditions and Hecate’s refusal to provide timely and complete answers to Copake’s discovery requests means ORES’ executive director, Jason Zehr, will have less information at his disposal when making a final decision on the permit, the judges added.
The judges were hardly more favorable to Hecate when they covered the substance of the wetland and flood mitigation issues.
They found Hecate substantially understates the precipitation depth associated with 100-year rainfalls in its modeling of how a flood would impact the solar farm. Even with those understated numbers, Hecate’s own model shows flooding as high as 7 feet in some parts of the project site in the event of a 100-year flood.
Hecate’s wetland data was collected in 2020, which Copake alleged made the data stale and inaccurate. During the hearing, Zoladz testified that ORES never required the office to update its data, but ORES Siting Specialist Tim DePriest testified it was Hecate’s responsibility to bring those changes to the renewable energy office’s attention. The judges agreed with Duffy, who argued that neither ORES nor Hecate fulfilled their responsibilities.
“We agree with Town expert Duffy’s criticism that their testimony is simply one pointing the finger at the other,” the judges wrote of Zoladz’s and DePriest’s testimonies.
A proposed solar array is completely within a class one wetland, a violation of ORES’s regulations, Hecate’s witness, biologist Justin Zoladz, conceded during the hearing. This led the judges to question in their ruling how Hecate and ORES staff members, who review renewable energy proposals separate from the office’s executive director, could accurately claim the project follows state wetland rules.
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