Thirty Feet From the Building: Babylon Drafts Its Charging Station Rules

Somewhere in the Town of Babylon there is a shopping center owner with a quote from a charging company and a plan to put four ports at the far end of the lot. That plan is about to meet a code. The Town Board voted on September 9 to hold a public hearing on October 7 at 3 p.m. on a local law that would write a full set of rules for electric vehicle charging into Chapter 213 of the town code, and the rules are considerably more specific than anything a site plan has had to answer to before.

The draft, attached to Resolution No. 642, adds definitions to Section 213-575 and a new Section 213-577 governing electric vehicle charging. The town's stated intent is to provide more specific criteria for charging within its borders. What it actually does is decide where a charger can go, how far it has to sit from your building, what it has to be surrounded by, and who takes it out when it stops earning.

Level three only goes in business and industrial zones

The draft sorts charging into three levels by voltage. Level 1 runs off a standard 120 volt circuit and takes 8 to 24 hours. Level 2 uses 240 volts and takes 4 to 10. Level 3, the fast charging most commercial operators actually want, needs a 60 amp or larger breaker on a 480 volt three phase circuit with special grounding.

Each level gets its own list of permitted zones. Level 1 is confined to the residential districts. Level 2 opens up to the residential districts plus multiple residence, motel hotel, the E, EA and EB business districts, the G, GA and GB light industrial districts, H industrial, both planned industrial park districts, downtown Copiague and the Wyandanch form based code area. Level 3 is narrower: the business districts, the light industrial and industrial districts, and the two planned industrial park districts. Nothing else.

Several places a charger might logically go are prohibited outright. Not in an on street right of way. Not in an above ground or underground parking garage. Not in a parking area beneath an occupied building or under a parking deck carrying a structure above it. Not wall mounted on a multi residential or commercial building, with an exception for legally permitted public garages, auto repair facilities, dealerships and other businesses that service electric vehicles.

Thirty feet, and the parking space you lose

Two provisions in the draft will decide whether a given project fits on a given lot, and neither is about electricity.

The first is separation. Any charging station not located inside a building would have to sit at least 30 feet from the nearest building or structure on the subject lot or on adjacent lots, on top of minimum 10 foot front, side and rear yard setbacks. On a typical strip center where parking wraps up against the storefronts, and on an industrial lot where the yard is tight against the neighbor, that requirement can eliminate most of the pavement before a single conduit is priced.

The second is what happens when equipment intrudes into a stall. Under the draft, chargers may only be placed within a curbed or striped island at the head of a space, or at the head of a space, never in the middle of one. If the unit encroaches more than two feet into a parking space, that space is deemed lost. The same rule applies to the raised concrete base a charger needs in a flood zone or wetland, which must be built to base flood elevation plus three and a half feet. Lost spaces come out of the parking count the site was approved on, which can put an existing use into a shortfall it did not have the week before.

The rest of the design standards are a construction budget in list form. Steel bollards filled with concrete, at least four feet high and four feet on center, wherever the equipment abuts a stall, a travel aisle or a right of way. A landscaped screen around any transformer. A five foot planted strip along the front yard and a five foot buffer along the side and rear yards, planted with at least two evergreen species standing six feet at installation, plus a six foot fence built to town specification. Plans signed and stamped by a professional engineer. A fire department power disconnect within 50 feet of the equipment but no closer than 10, and a Knox Box on the main feed. The Planning Department keeps discretion to waive or adjust the landscaping.

Level 2 and Level 3 installations outside the residential districts would go through departmental review by the Planning Department rather than straight to a building permit, with a site plan showing every unit and its specifications, bollards, landscaping, transformers and screening. The Commissioner of Planning and Development may escalate any of it to full site plan review.

Two more clauses deserve attention. Battery energy storage systems appear in the list of design standards with a single word attached to them, prohibited, which matters to anyone who assumed a battery would smooth the demand charge on a fast charger. And a charger with no activity for 12 consecutive months would be deemed abandoned, with all above and below ground equipment, structures and foundations removed at the owner or operator's expense within 90 days. A decommissioning plan naming the anticipated life, the removal costs, the removal methods and the restoration methods, signed by the owner or operator, would have to be filed before the building permit issues.

What it means for members

If you have a charging project in Babylon at any stage past a conversation, take a site plan and a tape measure this week and check two things: whether there is anywhere on the lot that sits 30 feet from every building on your property and your neighbors', and how many parking spaces you lose to the equipment and its base. Those two answers determine whether the project survives, and they are cheaper to learn now than after a departmental review.

If the answer is no, October 7 at 3 p.m. is when a member gets to say so on the record, with a specific lot and a specific number of feet, which is the kind of comment that actually changes a draft.