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Date: 9/12/2023
PELHAM — On Sept. 5 the Select Board, meeting to discuss a wide range of topics, heard about two instances of dumping town officials may find difficult to deal with.
Select Board Chair Robert Agoglia apprised the board of a situation involving an employee of the Highway Department, Stephen O’Brien, a resident of West Pelham Road in Shutesbury. O’Brien often cleans out culverts for the Highway Deptartment Agoglia said O’Brien asked Highway Department Supervisor Rick Adamcek if material remaining after culverts were cleaned out, which Pelham has no use for, be trucked over to his property.
The material, Agoglia said, “was brought up to his property in Shutesbury and was dumped into a wetlands, which the employee should’ve known better” than to do.
Agoglia was already working to control the damage. He said Pelham must accept responsibility and do whatever it takes to remedy the situation. He requested Dana McDonald, chair of Pelham’s Conservation Commission, appear at the scheduled Sept. 18 Select Board meeting to offer input on how the town should address the problem. He said the Pelham and Shutesbury conservation commissions were communicating.
“A Pelham employee…made this violation, so we have to take responsibility here and determine what action we have to take too, with that employee,” Agoglia said. “I’ll be talking with Rick [Adamcek] about that, as well. We’ll wait to hear from Dana, what we should be doing.”
Mark Conrad, an abutter on West Pelham Road, noticed the Pelham Highway Department dump trucks frequenting the O’Brien property. Other neighbors noticed Pelham’s trucks stopping on the O’Brien property as much as two years ago. Conrad contacted town officials.
O’Brien, reached a number of days ago, raises meat cows for personal consumption, chickens, pigs and other animals at the property on West Pelham Road. The property has a house and barn and a large open area visible beyond. O’Brien did not deny using fill from Pelham on his property. He did not specify any particular use.
O’Brien said Conrad complained unreasonably to him about other issues, suggesting the problem was antagonism between neighbors. He said Conrad complained when a hunter followed a wounded deer onto his property, where it was dispatched. O’Brien said Conrad complained about the smell of his barn, the noise of his animals and the logging O’Brien does for firewood and to clear land.
Conrad contacted Rebecca Torres, Shutesbury’s town administrator, about a year ago, but did not get a response. Miriam DeFant, chair of Shutesbury’s Conservation Commission, also commented that she recalled hearing mention of a complaint about dumping.
Pelham resident Rusty Rowell monitored the Shutesbury Conservation Commission’s Aug. 30 meeting where the circumstances on W. Pelham Road were briefly discussed. He reported the Shutesbury ConCom was shooed off the property. He also reported the state Department of Environmental Protection was contacted.
“The state’s looking at it now, not the Shutesbury [Conservation Commission],” Rowell said.
Miriam DeFant, chair of the Shutesbury Conservation Commission, confirmed the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will be pursuing a remedy to the situation.
“At this stage, DEP has said they are interested in taking over enforcement on this matter because it’s a big complicated messy situation,” DeFant told her committee. “Obviously, they have resources at their disposal that we do not have, staff attorneys and things. It’s going to be complicated.”
The Wetlands Protection Act, the governing regulations for the DEP’s enforcement response, are different from Shutesbury bylaws, further complicating any enforcement action the state agency may take. Scott Kahan, a member of the Shutesbury Conservation Commission, questioned whether the buffer zones will be restored, since state and local law differ in that respect.
“We don’t even know what was altered,” DeFant said. “Nobody’s been on the site. It’s all very conjectural right now. The abutters think there are some culverts and stream crossings that were added, and that the BVW [bordering vegetated wetland] was filled. When we were out there, we could see a large flat gravel parking driveway area went right up to a dip in the ground where you could see cattails. [It] certainly looked like this fill went all the way up to the edge of, bank of a BVW, or is in a BVW.”
DeFant said neighbors also think vernal pools were filled in. The timeline and extent of suspected violations suggests the remediation will be significant and involve a large area.
Judy Eiseman, chair of Pelham’s Planning Board, also attended the Selectboard meeting. She spoke about a dumping issue on North Valley Road that also may be a headache for the town. She said it had similarities to the West Pelham Road issue and the Selectboard was going to hear about it.
“Eversource is taking some dirt from Amherst, up through Pelham, to put up in North Valley Road, in their rights of way,” Eiseman said. “Stacey McCullough wondered about it, and I have asked the ConCom to look at it, and to see what else might be going on there.”
Eiseman sounded an indignant note.
“I don’t care who Eversource is,” Eiseman said. “They’re not supposed to be dumping dirt in Pelham without anyone knowing. I just thought you should be aware of that too.”