GEORGETOWN – The residents of this town are likely to get a large new business, collecting and transferring trash from around the region.
Harry LaCortiglia, chair of the town’s Planning Board, said last week that his board, which has approved the 500-ton transfer station on Carlton Road, near Interstate 95, will meet for “an on-site Pre-Construction meeting later this month.”
The Board of Health and the Conservation Commission also approved the transfer station. It is unclear if G. Mello Disposal Corp. has applied to the building inspector for a construction permit. And the SelectBoard is still considering negotiating a host agreement with Mello for the station.
A host agreement, if approved, could require Mello to pay fees, as it does now, to the town for having the station in town.
Several of the most outspoken residents of the station have expressed despair that the town cannot stop construction of the station. “All legal cases are now closed,” emailed Mike Birmingham, a leader of the opposition to the station. “The final conditions are on the Mass. website. Good chuckle of a read. Construction probably will start this month.”
Theodora Capaldo, another opponent of the town approving the station, wrote: “Absolutely disgusting.” She believes that the station is not just Georgetown’s problem. “Can’t wait until Boxford, for example, wakes up and all those rich houses on Rte. 133 can’t get out of their driveways because of the caravan of 18 wheelers. But both Rowley and Boxford seem to have thought this was only a Georgetown problem.”
In the final negotiations before the Planning Board, both the town and Mello won some concessions.
The town won a fight over whether Mello can be issued an occupancy permit for the station if Mello has not reimbursed the town for the cost of rebuilding the narrow, deteriorating Carlton Drive.
Mello, who has pledged to pay for the road work, agreed the building inspector can stop operation of the transfer station if the town has not been fully reimbursed.
In the revised conditions, the required police detail to manage traffic at the intersection of Main Street and Carlton Drive was reduced from four months to 50 days — 30 consecutive days during the first month of operations, followed by four, five-day weeks if Police Chief David Sedgewick says it is needed.
The challenge is the narrow entrance to Carlton Drive for large commercial trucks turning on and off of Rte. 133. Birmingham pointed out that the Board of Health had requested that the entrance to Carlton Drive be widen, if feasible.
