GEORGETOWN – A frustrated Planning Board last week postponed for a third week deciding whether to grant a permit for the export of sand and the import of undisclosed material at the 100-year-old Zibell Farm.
Planning Board Chair Harry LaCortiglia asked the farm operators to stop voluntarily removing the sand. “I don’t want to see a truck tomorrow morning,” he said.
Neighbors of the farm at 214 North St. reported that the trucks operated all week removing sand, “There was activity all week including yesterday. Same level of noise,” one neighbor said on Sunday.
The attorney for the farm, who was hired about a week before the hearing, had asked the board to postpone until August to give him time to learn about the farm’s sand mining and replacement operation.
On a Zoom call with at least a dozen neighbors opposed to the mining operations, the board, which toured the mining operations the previous week, voted three to two to continue the hearing until 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 31.
But it was touch and go whether LaCortiglia, who wanted to give the attorney Peter Durning, “a fair shake,” could persuade his board to continue the hearings.
Some board members seemed inclined to deny the permit or approve one with conditions that would stifle the mining activities and likely result in a court challenge.
Todd Champlain, who represented Kathy Potter, the current farm owner, has said the farm is screening and selling the sand and plans to replace it with high quality soil to create an organic farm.
Neighbors like Steve Ratcliff has said, “This is not an organic farm operation.”
Champlain said the farm’s attorney has advised that the town does not have the right to regulate its farming activities. His claim was based on an attorney’s opinion of the town’s “Right to Farm” bylaw plus state and federal laws protecting agriculture, he said.
The Planning Board disagreed.
When Durning questioned the Planning Board’s authority to enforce a stop order on the sand mining operations, LaCortiglia told him, “I am putting you on notice that you do not have a permit to import and export” soil. He said the farm is in violation of (state law) Chapter 47.
He also told Durning and the farm owners not to “call his hand. I don’t bluff. I am a terrible poker player.”
An attorney for neighbors at the Parker River Landing condominiums has filed a lawsuit to stop the farm’s mining and soil replacement operations. But it was unclear who would enforce a cease-and-desist order.
Neighbors, Peter and Beth Gramolini, have hired Ron Borenstein, an attorney, to represent them. She said the trucks are bringing in asphalt millings and other construction debris to replace the sand.
“We are spending our own money to save our sanity,” she has said. ♦
