Rochester’s Conservation Commission Tuesday took further action on the much-debated, 241-acre, regional Conservation Restriction that includes 13 acres at Red Brick Farm East but gives Rochester no rights to the water there. The commission decided to take its appeal to keep the town’s rights to that water local directly to the Select Board.
When they first heard of the CR plan months ago, commission members complained that Rochester has lost the right to use its own water resources too many times over the decades. The regional CR agreement that nonetheless became reality proposed giving Mattapoisett the water rights to the Rochester parcel, including possibly digging up to four new wells under a co-ownership agreement with the Mattapoisett Water and Sewer Authority. However, the authority also agreed in writing it would “make every effort” to transfer the conservation land in Rochester to the town for $1.
On Tuesday, Commissioner Ben Bailey said Town Counsel has told the panel that this plan cannot happen because the statement “will make every effort” is not legally enforceable.
But Bailey said he has learned from researching state law and contacting other attorneys that the correspondence from the Mattapoisett Water and Sewer Authority stating the “make every effort” promise is a legally enforceable one.
“Saying you will make every effort means you are not allowed to do nothing. It requires putting full muscle and energy” into the effort, he said.
Bailey motioned to have a letter written to the Select Board to ask for its help in pressing the issue. The commission unanimously agreed to have that correspondence sent. “Ask the selectmen to do something about this,” he said. “Look at our correspondence and act on it.”
The commission began its meeting by coming close to endorsing the first piece of a plan for a 15-acre, self-storage facility off of Cranberry Highway at Route 28 and Kings Highway.
Under a request for an Abbreviated Notice of Resource Area Delineation (ANRAD) approval, the petitioner’s engineering consultant, Bob Rogers, told the commission that the developer needs to re-flag the parcel’s 2,700 linear feet of bordering vegetated wetlands. He noted that the ConCom approved the site’s wetlands delineation in 2015. Then a commercial development plan that did not survive for long was approved in 2017. Now, eight years later, Rogers said, the flags marking the wetlands are hard to find and just plain missing.
“There’s a lot of growth. It’s thick out there,” Rogers said. “Our wetlands scientists will go out and nail down the Southern line.”
The commission, as a result, granted Rogers’ request for a continuance until its next meeting on October 17 to give the scientists time to complete the work.
Petitioner engineer Bill Madden recently told the Rochester Planning Board that the parcel will house a self-storage facility on a combination of four large lots, with 180 small, self-storage units and 64 smaller ones.
In other action, the commission signed the latest Enforcement Order for 532 Snipatuit Road. The property was recently the site of a fire that damaged a houseboat in the pond. Conservation Agent Merilee Kelly has reported to the commission in past meetings that she has observed work being done there without a formal Notice of Intent that would signal the property owner’s intentions with that environmentally sensitive area of the pond.
Now the work has stopped, Kelly said. But she has hesitated in the past to approach the workers there when visiting the site because she was alone. The commissioners need to know the property owner’s intent behind cleaning up near wetlands, hence the need for the new Enforcement Order. The commissioners instructed Kelly to bring another person with her, preferably a police officer, on her next visit.
The Rochester Conservation Commission will meet next on Tuesday, October 17, at 7:00 pm at Town Hall, 1 Constitution Way.
Rochester Conservation Commission
By Michael J. DeCicco