Claremont and Lake Nippenicket; Plymouth Town Meeting Nip Ban and Referendum Petition; 18th c. Pembroke Preserves Its Commons

The Plymouth County Observer, No. 122

Claremont Tries Again For Development On Bridgewater’s Lake Nippenicket

(BRIDGEWATER) — Real estate developers Claremont Companies, LLC, are back for another bite at the apple in Bridgewater, having filed on September 15th a Supplementary Draft Environmental Impact Report (SDEIR) for their proposed Lakeshore Center Phase 4 development on Lake Nippenicket with the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) Office.

Public comments on the proposal — which would cover 58.1 acres, and would include a 5-story, 110 room hotel, a 4-story, 225 unit, 55 and older residential structure, a drive-through cafe, and a 179-seat restaurant located directly on Lake Nippenicket, a Great Pond of the Commonwealth — are due to MEPA by Monday, November 6th, 2023; comments may be sent via email to purvi.patel@mass.gov. 

The project would also include 547 parking spaces, would disturb 18.4 acres and create 7.31 acres of new, impervious surface, and would impact archaeological sites, as laid out here by the Lake Nippenicket Action Focus Team, a grassroots citizens coalition devoted to preserving the lake. 

(Lake Nippenicket, in Bridgewater; photo credit — John Phelan via Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY-3.0.)

Lake Nippenicket is a 354-acre Great Pond in Bridgewater that serves as a source for both the Town River and the Taunton River, supports a productive fishery, and sits in the heart of the vast Hockomock Swamp, the largest freshwater wetland in Massachusetts. It is also supposed to be guarded by multiple layers of environmental protection — it is in both a MassDEP Zone II Wellhead Protection Zone, as well as the Hockomock Swamp Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC). 

Indeed, Claremont’s proposed development squarely contradicts the language of Massachusetts regulations governing Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, specifically the language at 301 CMR 12.11 (1)(b) and (c), which state that “all EOEEA agencies shall take action, administer programs, and revise regulations in order to,” inter alia, “preserve, restore, or enhance the resources of the ACEC,” and “ensure that activities in or impacting on the area are carried out so as to minimize adverse effects on: 1. marine and aquatic productivity; 2. surface and groundwater quality or quantity; 3. habitat values and biodiversity; 4. storm damage prevention or flood control; 5. historic and archeological resources; 6. scenic and recreational resources; and 7. other natural resource values of the area.”

(The Hockomock Swamp ACEC and Lake Nippenicket; credit — USGS.)

(The site of Lakeshore Center Phase 4 — squarely within the Hockomock Swamp ACEC. Credit — Claremont Companies, LLC.)

Claremont’s September 15th SDEIR filing comes after a January 30th, 2023, decision issued by MEPA finding that Claremont’s project required a Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

“Specifically, I find that further analysis is required to satisfy the MEPA requirement that the project’s environmental impacts and mitigation measures have been adequately analyzed prior to the close of MEPA review,” stated the decision, issued under the name of Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper.

“In particular, the Proponent should provide additional discussion and analysis to evaluate the project’s impacts with regard to traffic, land alteration and impervious area, greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation and resiliency, and cultural resources. The SDEIR should provide further alternatives to avoid or minimize impacts to the Hockomock Swamp Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC),” the decision stated.

Nor is this the first attempt to develop this parcel. According to the January 30th MEPA decision, and including projects that were abandoned or never constructed, at least 13 applications or notices were made to the EOEEA or its predecessor agencies prior to the December, 2022 draft environmental impact report on behalf of Claremont. Starting nearly four decades ago, documents were filed by development interests, according to the MEPA decision, in October, 1983; May, 1989; January, 1990; December 1990; August, 1997; June, 1998; January, 1999; January, 2000; January, 2001; May, 2007; August, 2013; December, 2017; and in June, 2018.

At the municipal level, according to LNAFT, the Bridgewater Planning Board agreed to Claremont’s request to withdraw its application for a Special Permit, and have proceeded to site plan review for the hotel portion of the project. Nevertheless, the Planning Board public hearing was continued to tomorrow, Wednesday, November 1st, at 6:30 pm, and the hearing is still open.

The Lake Nippenicket Action Focus Team (LNAFT) argues against the project on a number of grounds. 

“Lake Nippenicket, a Great Pond[,] serves as the headwaters of the Town River which flows into the Taunton River. The wetlands of Lakeshore Center are hydrologically connected to Lake Nippenicket,” said LNAFT in an October 30th email, adding that “over 14 acres of forest will be cleared and 116,000 cubic yards of fill will be brought to the site.”

“Work, including buildings, parking, stormwater drainage is proposed within the 100-foot buffer zone of wetland resource areas and construction of projects is pushed out to the 25-foot ‘no touch’ Town Bylaw wetland buffer. No work should be permitted within the 100-foot buffer zone of this environmentally sensitive area,” said LNAFT.

In my view, consideration should be given to the ways in which this project would impact the Commonwealth’s climate resilience. Trees are a public good, cleaning and cooling our air while serving as a critical carbon sink, and the sensitive watershed of the Hockomock Swamp serves as a critical wetland buffer that helps mitigate extreme flooding and drought events alike — which both climate science and our own experience tell us are increasing over time, as the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses increases.

A further consideration, in my view, is that Claremont’s Lakeshore Center Phase 4 is emphatically not the kind of development that produces much-needed affordable housing for working people in the region. There is no indication that the housing contemplated is actually affordable by working people, and the restriction of 225 units to those 55 and over places it out of reach of younger households. Merely producing more unaffordable housing is not a real solution to the housing crisis (beneficial though it may be to certain members of the Development Industrial Complex). Nor is the solution to simply empower private economic interests to do as they will, regardless of other considerations; rather, the production of socially and economically necessary housing ought to be under democratic control, rather than allowing unaccountable market forces that show little appetite for affordable housing production to determine our common destiny.

More information can be found at lnaft.org, and comments must be submitted to MEPA via email to purvi.patel@mass.gov by Monday, November 6th, 2023.

Plymouth Town Meeting Passes Ban On Nips; Liquor Stores Promote Petition For Special Referendum Election to Repeal Ban.

(PLYMOUTH) — The Town of Plymouth held its Fall Town Meeting on Saturday, October 21st, passing a number of articles, including one banning the sale of nips¹ in the Town, prompting an effort to reverse the bylaw via referendum.

The nip ban was hotly debated over the course of its journey through Town Government to the floor of Town Meeting. The Advisory & Finance Committee voted not to recommend the article, by a vote of 6-8-0, while the Town Meeting ultimately approved the article by a vote of 72 to 67 (Unlike her near neighbors, Plymouth has a Representative Town Meeting form of government).

In the afternoon session of the Fall Town Meeting, Deborah Iaquinto, of the Open Space Committee, which sponsored Article 15, presented the measure to Town Meeting. 

“Nips are a significant source of litter in our community. The preferred method of disposal among nip users appears to be tossing them out the car window to avoid detection. As a result, during a four-day town cleanup, volunteers picked up more than 14,000 nips from our streets — and remember that these cleanups have happened twice a year for over a decade, so to have this many accumulate within such a short window of time is staggering,” said Ms. Iaquinto.

She noted that while nips are technically recyclable, “they’re too small to go through the sorting machines, so recycling facilities will not accept them.” And while the plastics in nips require decades to fully degrade, the Commonwealth appears unlikely to take any action against nips at the state level, primarily, said Ms. Iaquinto, because of the power of the alcohol industry’s lobby.

Because of the state’s inaction, municipalities have been forced to institute nip bans on their own, she said. “Nip bans have become a grassroots effort by necessity, and we in Plymouth are learning from the experiences of the many Towns around us that have passed bans, including Falmouth, Wareham, Mashpee, Fairhaven, Brewster, Nantucket, Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, and, further north of us, Chelsea, Newton, and Brookline. Littering has been significantly reduced in these towns, and not one liquor store has closed,” said Ms. Iaquinto.

Kenneth Stone, a Precinct 16 Town Meeting member and advocate of the nip ban, told the Town Meeting as part of the presentation in favor of the article that “first and foremost, [Article] 15 is about litter; this is why Sustainable Plymouth is helping to promote it,” noting that he is a member of that group’s advisory board.

Mr. Stone, a retired psychologist specializing in alcoholism, acknowledged that while a nip ban would not stop alcoholism as a whole, that based upon data from Chelsea, which instituted a ban, that alcohol-related problems decreased in that community.

(Kenneth Stone, Precinct 16 Town Meeting Member and nip ban advocate, takes part in debate on Article 15, after his presentation to Town Meeting. Credit — PACTV.)

Steve Nearman, the chair of the Advisory & Finance Committee, said that “the Advisory and Finance Committee recommends that Town Meeting does not approve Article 15. This was a very passionate discussion, to say the least, on both sides, for and against, and in the end, it was a matter of personal liberties versus greater good, [and] impact on the liquor, or package store, industry. We all agree that litter is a problem, but the opposition definitely carried the day.”

Precinct 15 Town Meeting Member Arthur Desloges said that while balancing environmental and business concerns is a difficult task for policymakers, ultimately, he came down in favor of the article.

 “Climate Change and the challenge of environmental sustainability are upon us.  I believe we all have a role to play. That means we need to change what we buy, what we sell, and how we use it. This includes how we heat our homes and power our cars. It also includes a reduction of single use plastics and the avoidance of non-biodegradable litter on our roadsides that contaminates the environment,” said Mr. Desloges.

[NOTE: The emailed version of this story misspelled Mr. Desloges’ last name; my sincere apologies to Mr. Desloges and to readers for the error. — Ben Cronin.]

Karen Petrarca, Town Meeting Member for Precinct 12, noted that while she was deeply concerned with the environment and is an ardent recycler, “I do not believe this bill will eliminate litter. I go for walks daily, and on my walks I’m very conscious of all the litter around me, but we have a bottle bill in place, and I find just as many bottles and cans on the streets as I do nip bottles, as well as plastic cups from whichever — McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, any number of places; if we’re not going to ban all these, then I do not should be banning the nips. There’s got to be another solution.”

James Grillo, Precinct 8 Town Meeting Member, noted that while he was not and will not be a consumer of nips, and that while he was deeply concerned with the environment, he was opposed to Article 15.

 “All signs point to me supporting banning this — I’m incredibly environmentally conscious, but I’m also going to tell you right now, it’s not nearly as creative as I would have hoped. It’s not levying a single tax to put in an environmental fund to support the cleanup of Plymouth, it is doing nothing but targeting a single product, and it’s one of the cheapest alcoholic options you have, so it is targeting a socioeconomic class. I would sit here today and vote to ban all single-use plastics in the entire Town of Plymouth if it was a possibility; I would propose that to Town Meeting. But that is not what we are voting on today, it’s instead at targeting ban that does little to justify why it’s trying to undermine a single product when there are a lot of other problems out there,” said Mr. Grillo.

“I can tell you right now this ban will not keep my community cleaner, and it will not stop people from buying nips in other Towns,” Mr. Grillo continued. “I sit here today as probably one of the most environmentally liberal people you’re going to find on this Town Meeting, and I tell you right now that this ban, with 162 minds in the room, is not creative enough to warrant me voting for it, nor does it justify why you would target a single product.”

In the end, the Town Meeting passed Article 15, by a vote of 72-67-2.

The article proved contentious upon its passage, however, sparking a petition to repeal it via a special referendum election.

Section 6 of Chapter 5 of the Plymouth Town Charter governs referendum elections. At Chapter 5, Section 6(2), the Charter states that “If within ten (10) days of an affirmative vote of final passage by the Town Meeting, a referendum petition is filed with the Town Clerk signed by not less than three (3) percent of the registered voters in the Town as of the date of the most recent annual Town election asking that any question involved in such a vote be submitted to the voters of the Town at an election, then the Town shall hold a referendum election for such purposes. Within 5 days after receipt of the petition the Town Clerk shall determine whether the petition contains a sufficient number of signatures and provide notice to the Select Board. of such determination. If there are sufficient number of signatures, the Select Board shall provide for a referendum election to be held no less than 35 days from its vote and provision of written notice to the Town Clerk and no more than 90 days after the Town Clerk’s determination, provided, however, that if there is another election already scheduled within 100 days of the Clerk’s determination, the referendum question may appear on the ballot at such election.” 

Three percent of the 48,604 registered voters in Plymouth at the May Town Election is 1,459; this is the number of signatures the petitioners will require to trigger a referendum, and they must be obtained by today, October 31st, 2023, ten days after the nip ban passed Town Meeting. (I requested confirmation of this figure of 1459 from Lisa McElreath, the Town Clerk of Plymouth, but received no reply before press time; I also requested confirmation of the cost of the election, but received no reply before press time.)

Bobbi Clark of WATD reports that Peter Balboni, proprietor of Pioppi’s Liquors on Court Street in Plymouth, is a major supporter of the referendum petition, and the effort to reverse the Town Meeting’s decision has been undertaken with significant support from the alcohol industry and members of the local business community, with sixteen liquor stores across Plymouth hosting the petition, according to promotional material distributed online by proponents. In addition, the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce has come out in favor of the referendum petition.

In an October 26th post to the Plymouth MA Political Forum Facebook group, Dawn M. Dillon, of Plymouth, argued in favor of the referendum petition, and against the nip ban.

“The [nip] ban not only impacts your freedom of choice but is also going to hurt our local retailers who rely on the sale of these minis to keep their businesses going,” said Ms. Dillon.

“I know we want to solve the problem of litter, but there is a better way. I also want to live in a town that doesn’t force us to buy larger sizes of alcohol. Freedom of choice here is critical,” she said. 

“We can help stop the ban. We are gathering signatures from registered Plymouth voters for a petition to overturn the ban, to bring back choice to Plymouth,” said Ms. Dillon, before noting that petitions could be signed at sixteen liquor stores across Plymouth.

In the comments on her post, Ms. Dillon stated that “my husband sells alcohol, and banning the sale of nips directly impacts his income. But my main motivation is to share information. This is a vote that should have gone to the ballot, vs Town Meeting, imo” [i.e., in my opinion. —Editor.] Her husband does not own a liquor store, she clarified, but works in sales for a distributor.

Proponents of a ban on the sale of nips have argued against a special election to repeal the ban. 

 Ken Stone, Precinct 16 Town Meeting Member and proponent of Article 15, in a statement posted to the All Things Plymouth Facebook group by Mark Snyder on October 27th, urged Plymouth voters not to sign the petition for a referendum.
     

“If the liquor stores' referendum to overturn the ‘nip ban’ gets enough signatures, the vote will cost the town's taxpayers $57,000.00,” said Mr. Stone.

“By the Town charter, if the referendum does occur, it will have to be voted upon at the latest by February 12, 2024. It cannot wait until the May election when it might be included on that ballot.  It will need to be its own ballot for that one item,” he said.  

“I asked the Town Clerk in an email what this was going to cost the town.  She replied that the ‘May 2023 local election cost about $57,000.  I would estimate this referendum would be around the same costs’.   The referendum would require everything that goes into a town election including printing of ballots, mailings to the over 48,000 registered voters, voting stations and staff at all precincts, police details, so forth and so on,” continued Mr. Stone.

 “So again, tell everyone you know not to sign the petition.  If it gets enough signatures to force a referendum, we will need every vote. Many people don't vote during an off election referendum like this. However, the liquor stores have very deep pockets and will pull out all the stops to get their people out.  So hopefully it will be all hands on deck if it comes to that,” he said.

Another important consideration is that per the warrant article, the ban on the sale of nips would not take effect until July 1st, 2024, which raises the question of why any potential repeal could not simply be included, by the signature of any ten voters, as an article on the warrant for Plymouth’s Annual Town Meeting in the spring of 2024 — which would be well before the start date of the ban on the 1st of July, 2024 — rather than expending money, time, and effort on a special election in mid-January.

Similar concerns were expressed by Peter McMahon in a comment on an October 30th All Things Plymouth post by Precinct 6 Town Meeting Member Betty Cavacco, urging support for the referendum petition. Mr. McMahon noted that while he often agreed with Mrs. Cavacco, he did not in this instance.

“The town meeting members represent the town. If you don’t like the way they voted, let them know and vote them out if still not happy. What if ever[y] thing they voted on gets second guessed by disgruntled townspeople? Have a petition for a special vote to revisit the issue?” asked Mr. McMahon. “Waste of time and resources.”

The Tasks of Town Meetings Past: 18th Century Pembroke Preserves Its Commons — An Excerpt Adapted From My Doctoral Dissertation

[Readers, here is a glimpse at Pembroke’s Town Meeting in the mid-18th century; then as now, preservation and maintenance of common natural resources formed a significant concern of New England’s directly democratic municipal governments. — Ben Cronin.]