Posted on 12/20/2001 3:20:36 AM PST by brityank
[MA] Landowners Take On State
Boston Globe 12.06.01GRAFTON - Tom Casale hasn't actually seen a ringed boghaunter dragonfly lately. But if he did, he'd probably swat it dead.
"My mother always used to say they'd sew your lips closed if you let them get too close," Casale said, standing on the porch of his A-frame house in the woods off Old Upton Road.
The dragonfly is one of five rare species whose preservation led the state to designate 8,700 acres in Grafton, Upton, and Hopkinton, including Casale's land, as the state's 26th Area of Critical Environmental Concern, part of a program to protect ecologically sensitive land.
The program has been in place in Massachusetts since 1975, but Casale and several other landowners in Grafton and Upton say that environmental-concern designations are being used with more vigor as a tool to control growth. In a lawsuit currently in the appeals process, they contend the designation diminishes the value of their land by imposing broader regulations on development.
"It's not right," Casale said. "Why should one half of the town be under this jurisdiction while the other side of town is not? It's a land-taking, and the thing that has us really up in arms is, they tried to push it through in a covert manner."
The clash in this land of thick woods, rolling hills, and dairy farms has become another flashpoint in the war on sprawl, as environmentalists seek to protect undeveloped land and landowners raise constitutional objections based on property rights.
The issue reached the US Supreme Court recently, in the case of a Rhode Island man prevented from building on his land because of wetlands regulations, and another case set to be heard this term of a Lake Tahoe, Calif., woman who says the government should compensate her for imposing a moratorium on development.
In the ACEC program, in which 100,000 acres have been protected thus far, there is no ban on development but, rather, an increased level of regulatory scrutiny on the designated land. Any 10 people can nominate an area for ACEC designation by showing the land has four of 11 characteristics that make it environmentally sensitive - a habitat for rare species, for example, or a wetlands ecosystem.
Massachusetts officials say the program is mostly about educating people about precious resources in the state, not slowing development. A Worcester Superior Court judge agreed, saying there was no evidence that any landowner had been economically harmed by the Grafton-Upton-Hopkinton designation.
But landowners say the designation makes it more cumbersome for farmers to clear land for hayfields, and has put a chill on development and potential land sales in an area outside the Interstate-495 loop and north of Worcester.
"They blatantly lied to us, saying it wouldn't affect development. It will, financially," said Lee Robinson, who owns about 400 acres in Grafton. "We have land planners who estimated there would be $10,000 more in permitting costs per lot under the ACEC. For a 50-lot project, that's half a million dollars. And we were told it wouldn't affect us at all."
Donna Williams, who as chairwoman of the Grafton Conservation Commission spearheaded the ACEC effort, said in an interview that the designation "has no regulatory impact except for existing regulations."
But even a small project in an ACEC must go through the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act, or MEPA, review process, which is normally reserved for large projects.
Having a lower threshold at which MEPA kicks in "adds cost, for going through the environmental review; but, more importantly, it adds uncertainty by adding another step in the development process," said R.J. Lyman, former head of the MEPA office and now an attorney at Goodwin, Proctor & Hoar.
"Any time there is uncertainty and cost, developers will tend to look elsewhere," Lyman said.
Williams defends the process that led to the ACEC, saying "there was nothing secretive about it." She accuses Casale and a handful of others of "spreading a lot of misinformation, and putting a lot of fear into people that was totally unjustified."
Grafton state Representative George Peterson, a Republican who initially supported the designation and then turned against it, said the notification process for the ACEC program is flawed. He has proposed a bill requiring a public meeting with all affected landowners present, at the very beginning of the process.
"Once that nomination is in, the train has left the station and it's difficult to turn it around," he said. "I was not happy with the process."
The Grafton-Upton-Hopkinton ACEC, slightly downsized from the original proposal, was signed by Environmental Affairs Secretary Robert Durand, over the objections of local legislators, selectmen, and planning board members. State officials make no apologies for identifying sensitive areas in a fast-growing state.
"It does not prohibit development. It's not designed to prohibit development. What it does is educate people about what they have in their backyards and what they share with other communities," said Leslie Luchonok, director of the ACEC program. "This is a very public process," he added.
The Grafton-Upton-Hopkinton ACEC was the first case in which an ACEC challenge reached the courts in 26 years of the program, Luchonok said. Two more designations are in the pipeline, in the Nashua River watershed.
The controversy has left a bad taste in an area known for its rural conventions, though only roughly 50 miles from Boston.
"Some of these Yankee farmers are pretty stubborn. And they have good reason," Casale said. "They say we've been good stewards of the land, but then they come in and say, `We'll take it from here."'
Williams, the Conservation Commission chairwoman, said that "the landowners have been good stewards of the land. No one is arguing that." But, she said, "can they continue to be good stewards? Not with the development pressures you have in this region. We can't be certain of the future. It's necessary to have this kind of review to protect these resources."
The 8,700 acres that were designated represent an ecological system "that works, and there aren't a whole lot left in the state that haven't been impacted. So why not protect it and celebrate it?" Williams views the ACEC showdown with some bitterness as well. In an article for Sanctuary magazine, a publication of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, for which she works, Williams castigates "property rights zealots."
On the subject of seeking ACEC designations, she advises against bringing elected officials into the nomination process, because they will "fold up like paper parasols on grapefruits when buffeted by a political breeze. You need only 10 nominators. Use committed environmentalists with strong spines."
To Casale, her advice is proof that the ACEC program is in the hands of environmentalists opposed to development.
The nomination process needs to be beyond reproach, he said, and elected officials representing the views of constituents should not be so readily dismissed.
"Of course they want to put the brakes on growth. But not this way. This is back-door," he said.
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True, true. Of course, these developments often impose significant costs -- monetary and otherwise -- on others. As a result, those affected have every right to seek whatever encumbrances are necessary to minimize those costs.
one more home gets put up next to me and i lose my view of mt. rainier!
now that effing sucks!
Maybe you (Af) ought to visit the county records and do a little digging.
There is more truth than you think to the eco-terrorists position. I recall seeing a story about a luxury retreat built in one of the western preserves that had been made off-limits to Citizens; seems you could only get there by helicopter, and they used it as a 'premium' to award their backers.
Sounds like it's very easy to get the designation. Did someone see a lynx?
All development is on a tight buget, and the staff you imagine cannot exist because they cannot justify their own existance. - No developer has uncommitted expendable funds.
Out here, the developers building the multimillion-dollar personal baronies on select plots next to "open space" purchased on the public dollar do quite well thank you. Those developers who take care of the politicians can get land purchased at a discount from a former owner distressed by selective regulatory pressure or can obtain selective regulatory dispensation after the buy.
The tight margins are more common to the lower middle class housing sector. It is the middle class who is getting screwed for selling out their own interests in order to prevent "sprawl." In terms of new housing, they get a choice of either buying cardboard tract houses on some island patch and then drive forever to work OR pay a fortune for Sustained Development Tenements next to public transit that usually involve some government subsidy, complete with HUD beneficiaries for neighbors.
The more this crap happens, the greater the number of everyday Americans that will be galvanized to roll back this kind of tyranny.
Thanks for the ping.
Merry Christmas my friend in case I don't see you before Christmas Day! Thank you for the pings and information.
I bought a copy and it's been well worth the money for the brilliant insights it contains. It's going to be a classic someday.
Ah, but now you are talking about the Enviro-NAZI themselves! - That's different; they get an automatic 'bye' from the regulations that their own organizations promulgated.
"The tight margins are more common to the lower middle class housing sector"
And those are the ones that r9etb is talking about. - The "lobbyist" he imagines turns out in reality to be the engineer who designs the subdivision, and he ends up working for free because of the nature of the contracts. - I've spent many a night at a planning commission or board of supervisors meeting, waiting to speak on an agenda item that's last on the calendar, and can't ever remember getting reimbursed for one.
These marxist NIMBYs like r9etb who think that a subdivision is 'costing' them something because the view of someone else's land that they had been enjoying for free is going to be changed need a lesson in real world economics.
Will you kindly enumerate those "costs" so that all here can understand your agenda?
You warm up the thread just by being here ;-)
How right you are, we have been fighting "Smart Growth," for 4 years.
Thanks
I know Carry-Okie is incorrect... It's Carry_Okie and I bet he didn't get your ping.
The reason it's important to me is that I used to troll for replies by sneaking messages into the "To:" line.
"CAN YOU STILL TROLL FOR REPLIES IN THIS SPACE? TESTING!!!"
(see, I tried to put this in the "To:" box and it wouldn't take it... pshaw!)
Then, by golly, yew bedder giddy up an buy them there lots and plots you're enjoyin fer free, RIGHT NOW!!!
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