Although certainly well intentioned, I believe it would be a mistake for Town Meeting to enact a moratorium (for 11 ½ months) on the issuance of zoning permits and special permits for earth removal. I believe that the moratorium would be both (1) ineffective and (2) injurious.
- The proposed moratorium would be ineffective, because it would not affect earth removal operations previously approved, since their zoning permits and special permits would be “grandfathered” from this proposed zoning amendment. Therefore, earth removal at the two most notorious earth removal sites, both visible from Route 3 (Hedges Pond Road in Cedarville and Collins Avenue in the Industrial Park) would be unaffected. Furthermore, proposed earth removal operations on other sites could be easily grandfathered by taking widely known legal steps prior to the date of Town Meeting. In any event, the moratorium would only be in effect for only 11 ½ months, because all moratoriums must be strictly time limited.
- The proposed moratorium would also be injurious, because its only exemptions would be the existing ones, which are extremely narrow in scope. For example, the removal of over 200 yards necessary and incidental to the construction of a single family or two-family dwelling would be precluded. This would, as a practical matter, prevent the construction of such dwellings on small “infill” residential lots, something that the town encourages.
I was a member of the committee that drafted the earth removal section of our current zoning bylaw. We purposely made the list of exemptions very narrow, because we wanted to require most earth removal operations to get municipal scrutiny in the form of a zoning permit from the Building Commissioner and/or a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals. The proposed moratorium would preclude all earth removal in excess of those exemptions. Experience has now taught us that municipal scrutiny needs to be substantially tightened. To do that we need to hire a professional consultant to help us draft a bylaw that is so scientifically based that it will not be able to be avoided or evaded. That is what needs to be done. Anything short of that would be a needless distraction.
– Richard M. Serkey