Controversy Swirls As Plymouth Conservation Commission Votes To Rescind Wetlands Regulations
New Commission Appointed Friendly to Development Interests; Opposition from Citizens, Environmentalists; Public Statements of the Chair; And a Rejoinder
(PLYMOUTH) — In a move that has raised serious concerns in Plymouth environmental and conservation circles, the recently-appointed Conservation Commission voted at its August 16th meeting to entirely rescind the April, 2022, wetland regulations that had been promulgated by the prior Commission, effective 30 days from the meeting (September 16th). The previous body of Town wetlands regulations will go back into effect at that date.
The vote was 5 to 2, with new Chairman of the Commission Randy Parker, along with Commissioners Jamie Carpenter, Lucas Nichols, Paul Churchill, and Sean Andersen voting to rescind the April, 26, 2022 regulations.
Vice Chair Ann Burnham and Commissioner Karen Edwards voted against rescinding the previously promulgated regulations. The regulations (both the April, 2022, iteration, and prior ones) are promulgated pursuant to the Plymouth Wetlands Bylaw.
( The August 16th, 2022, meeting of the Plymouth Conservation Commission; photo credit — J. Benjamin Cronin. )
Chairman Parker, along with Commissioners Carpenter, Churchill, and Andersen, were appointed to the Conservation Commission by the Plymouth Select Board at an occasionally acrimonious June 28th Meeting. The former Chair, Bruce Howard, was not reappointed.
Chairman Parker and Commissioner Carpenter currently work directly in the building/construction industry, while Commissioner Lucas, who ran a custom construction company, is no longer directly employed in the industry. Commissioner Churchill owns a local oil and gas company, while Commissioner Andersen’s field of employment could not be determined as of press time.
Vice Chair Burnham is retired, and Commissioner Edwards teaches Computer Science at Tufts University.
Background: Plymouth Wetlands Bylaw and Recent Legislative Attempts to Weaken It
The Conservation Commission is primarily responsible for the application and enforcement of the Town of Plymouth’s Wetlands Bylaw. The Wetlands Bylaw, first passed in 1973 in Plymouth and amended over the years, states “The purposes of this chapter is to protect and preserve the shores, rivers, ponds, wetlands, other water bodies and related water resources in the Town of Plymouth by controlling activities deemed by the Conservation Commission to have significant or cumulative impact upon the wetland functions and values” (Plymouth General Bylaws, Ch. 196 § 1).
Parker, who owns a land surveying company, previously unsuccessfully attempted to bring two Town Meeting Articles to the June 21st Special Town Meeting that would have, respectively, required Town Meeting — the legislative branch of the Town – to approve any regulatory changes promulgated by the Commission, as well as to exempt any house built before 1973 from the Plymouth Wetlands Bylaw, the year it was passed.
Neither the Finance and Advisory Committee nor the Select Board supported either of the Articles, and they did not pass the Special Town Meeting.
In a statement to the Old Colony Memorial in its July 5th edition (see David R. Smith, “Town committee appointments offer a few surprises,” July 5th, 2022), Mr. Parker was open about the fact that the changes he could not achieve through legislative action, i.e., via Town Meeting articles, he hoped to enact now that he occupied the levers of regulatory power.
“I think Town Meeting made it clear that it wants nothing to do with wetlands and regulations, having declined to engage in checks and balances at this time,” Mr. Parker told the Old Colony Memorial’s David R. Smith. “If we cannot bring change externally – and we have tried – we need to try an internal approach, and I remain willing. What this commission needs is someone with a different perspective that knows what they’re doing, and I hope that’s me.”
Mr. Parker laid out thirteen specific changes he hoped to see, including a less stringent buffer around wetlands, a lifting of regulations relating to docks/floating objects, and an exemption from the bylaw for septic repairs in wetland buffer zones, among others.
Nevertheless, the vote on Aug. 16th did not make these changes individually, but voted to throw out the April, 2022 regulations in their entirety.
Opposition and Open Letter From the Citizens Conservation Coalition
Mr. Parker’s intent to weaken environmental regulations around wetlands, unsurprisingly, drew opposition. In fact, a wide array of prominent Plymoutheans, including a former Selectman, a former Town Clerk, a member of the Planning Board, current Town Meeting Members, former members of the Conservation Commission, including the two former Chairs, leaders of local environmental organizations, and other concerned citizens, banded together to form the Citizens Conservation Coalition. That group published an open letter on August 5th to Mr. Parker and the Conservation Commission, laying out its concerns.
“Let’s be blunt: the dramatic change in the composition of the Commission and the suggestion that regulations that took four years to develop, review and ratify might be jettisoned wholesale concern us, and appear to be at odds with the growing awareness of the critical part our natural resources play in the long-term health and vitality of the Community,” the letter states.
While noting that progress has been made locally on ecological matters — which, ultimately, I would argue are economic matters, since we certainly cannot produce goods and services if there is no water to safely drink, water crops, or use for commercial and industrial purposes — the letter warns that threats to our region remain:
“As those forward steps have been taken however, development pressures have only increased, cyanobacteria blooms are becoming commonplace, our coastal banks and beaches are threatened by increasingly destructive storms and even the availability of water from our ancient aquifer has come into question, making it even more important that there are regulations to protect these resources and that they are enforced,” the concerned citizens wrote.
The signatories noted that they hoped to proceed in a spirit of cooperation and amity, and requested that the Commissioners agree to a three-month review process (for regulations that had taken approximately four years to develop).
Justifying The Vote To Rescind: Parker’s Public Statements
As it happened, the three month review process proposed by the concerned citizens’ letter was not agreed to by the Commission; indeed, it was over the course of a single meeting – arguably two – that these significant regulations were thrown out, not individually and particularly edited, but rescinded as a whole.
Mr. Parker, via a document posted on his personal Facebook page on August 22nd (to which press inquiries were directed), said “I really like the CCC letter. Know most of the signatories very well and happy to welcome their involvement. I think it’s gonna’ be great, but not on their schedule! Three months? Trying to kill me~?~ (don’t answer that),” followed by a smiling emoji.
Mr. Parker posted the letter from the CCC on his Facebook page as well, writing that “I like it. But they aren’t the boss of us.”
Striking a tone that veered between jocular and abrasive in his posts, Parker by turns declared his affection for his opposition, and then appeared to taunt them and their interests by name. I am printing Chairman Parker’s statements quite fully because I believe they are important to see as a whole (I have reproduced them as they appeared).
He described his decision to serve as Chair of the Conservation Commission:
“I got to be chair. First I thought not, then yielded to the suggestion that with my agenda one should not be a puppet master, not fair to the puppet. Changed my mind, voted for myself to break a tie, and we’re off and running through controversy toward changes that need to happen,” said Chairman Parker.
Chairman Parker likewise discussed the letter from the Citizens Conservation Coalition:
“I get this beautifully written letter from a coalition of conservationists, signed by many good friends made over the years and willing to help. Fantastic. But the tone of the letter was such that it felt like the commission was being commanded by at least implication to become a part of their newly constructed coalition, under their umbrella. And solve all of this in like three months, their schedule? So pleased with all the offers to help. But I reckon while I have the chair there will no subordination of the Plymouth Conservation Commission,” he said.
Chairman Parker, in his after-the-fact discussion of the August 16th meeting, declared that “I thought the hearing went pretty well. I heard speakers talk about most all of my outline. And I know the first thing, high road or low road to go is that oppressive 50-100’ discretionary buffer makes me and most others nuts. And I hear this and that should go, and reason what’s the sense deleting more when all those things are already gone if we just use the former regs? The vote was 4 to 3 in favor of rescinding the regs adopted in April. I didn’t need to vote but I did. I listened to it all and reasoned the easiest, fastest, simplest way to do this is by the low road. It works much better. All things I do not like, gone in one fell swoop, and taking responsibility for doing so,” he said.
Describing reaction to the Commission’s vote to rescind, Chairman Parker wrote:
“Whooeeeeeee ~ didn’t that piss some people off. Got a follow up from a friend, also below maybe. He thought I wanted far less than the coalition’s apparently required three months to review the regulations that took four years for the last chair and conservation agent to concoct, with multiple reviews, independent professional review and of course, the town’s attorney. My issue is the past whines about its four year effort, but I’ve spent like thirty-two damn years arguing my perspective at my cost in time and effort, other work delayed. Wetlands and politics have mattered to me; petitioning town meeting and hoping for a return to sanity some way, somehow. Didna’ happen. So I go to town meeting, get beat up again. But it’s the select board get the calls and complaints on commissioners, not town meeting. Amazing to me that I’m realizing for sure from the last regs hearing that members of like mind as mine constitute a majority. Thanks to the select board for recognizing a problem and dealing with it, and thanks to my fellow commissioners for having the balls to do what has to be done,” he said.
Chairman Parker described a citizen’s dismay at the vote to rescind the April, 2022, wetland regulations:
“One nice lady had this to say: ‘Randy, I am so incredibly disappointed in tonight's vote after you claimed that the citizen's letter was "beautiful" and that you would be happy to work together with the many concerned citizens of this town. Were those initial comments disingenuous and purposefully misleading?’ Answer is of course not. Lovely letter. Also happy to work with our many concerned citizens but not on their terms. We lead. You work with us, little at a time, and we’ll get things right again,” he said. [emphasis added – Cronin]
A Rejoinder And Counter-Argument In Defense of The Commons
Though I am no longer a Plymouth resident and voter, I did speak at the August 16th meeting of the Conservation Commission opposing the vote to rescind the April, 2022, regulations, and I believe a few points ought to be made counter to Chairman Parker’s arguments.
The first is that the Conservation Commission, as an appointed agent of the Select Board, is ultimately responsible to the People of Plymouth via the Select Board. The Conservation Commission’s purview is to execute and enforce the Plymouth Wetlands Bylaw.
Yet this premise seems almost absent from Chairman Parker’s reasoning, and the reasoning of the Commissioners who voted to rescind the regulations. Instead, Mr. Parker appears to operate from the premise that making life easier for the building and construction industry, and for those who wish to build, is the Commission’s primary concern, and protection of wetlands – the explicit protection of which is called for in the plain language of the Plymouth Wetlands Bylaw – appears, at best, ancillary to these concerns.
The second point would be that it is inherently improper, an inherent conflict of interest, for a member of an industry which is to be regulated to sit on the government board that regulates that industry. Yet that is precisely what certain Commissioners explicitly defend here.
They provide various forms of special pleading in response to these objections that are frankly unconvincing: that they only, since 2007, engage in small projects, or, as one Commissioner took pains to emphasize, that he is a decent person whom we should get to know, and that therefore his — incredibly controversial — public conduct should not be subject to scrutiny.
But again, these fail to overcome our objections. If one wishes to serve as a regulator, one’s economic interests in the industry and matters that are subject to regulation will necessarily be a subject of public inquiry and concern. It does not matter if you work with smaller members of the building industry or larger ones; nor is it material whether or not the Commissioner is a generally nice person.
What matters is public conduct, not in the sense of “public” as in a restaurant or sidewalk, but “public” in these of res publicae, public things. And wetlands, as I stated on the 16th, have been acknowledged as public at common law since Magna Carta.
We would rightly view it as absurd if a Town’s Cable Advisory Committee was occupied in significant part by people with jobs, now or in the past (or in the future), with Comcast or Verizon. So it is here. Members of an industry ought not to sit on those Boards and Commissions which regulate that industry.
Nor, it should be added, were any suspicions of undue developer influence allayed when large amounts of time were ceded to a developer, Stephen Bjorklund, of Scituate, to decry the former regulations. (Records indicate Mr. Bjorklund, despite not being a Plymouth resident, applied for a position on the Conservation Commission; the only other out-of-town applicant was David Holton, who resides in Florida and works developing resorts for the Marriott hotel chain; neither candidate was approved, and I am not sure on the legal status of a non-resident serving on a Town Board or Commission).
Third, the recent conduct of the current Chairman raises serious questions of separation of powers. Recall that the Conservation Commission, appointed by the Select Board, is a part of the Town’s executive branch. The executive’s job is to see that the law is carried out.
The Town Meeting, on the other hand, the primary branch of Town Government, is the legislative branch: it drafts, debates, and writes articles that become Town bylaws upon passage by a duly warned Town Meeting.
Mr. Parker, before he was Chairman, attempted to weaken the regulatory corpus of the Town through bringing two articles to the Special Town Meeting on June 21st. Those articles were rejected by the Town Meeting.
Yet, for whatever reason, Mr. Parker, and that faction which wishes to weaken environmental regulation, were not content to heed the clear intent of the Town Meeting. Rather, the current Chairman openly expressed his intent to the local paper of record to achieve via regulatory action what he could not achieve via legislative action.
This raises obvious questions about the separation of powers: while it is obviously within the Conservation Commission’s legal powers to promulgate or rescind legislation, this is not a question of what the Commission can do; it is a question of what it ought to do. Given that it is tasked with carrying out the law, and given that the most recent expression of the legislative branch was expressly contrary to weaker wetlands regulations, how democratic is it, how accountable is it, for these serious decisions to be made, as Mr. Parker put it, via an “inside approach,” or, as it ought to be called, via regulatory capture?
I think the answer to that is clear: interests which wish to see weaker wetlands regulations in Plymouth, having failed to convince Town Meeting, are now getting their way through control of the regulatory apparatus of the Town relating to wetlands. And that should concern not only environmentalists and those of us who drink water, but to anyone who is concerned about transparency, local government, and democracy.
The Conservation Commission meets on Tuesday evenings at 7p.m. via Zoom. The Zoom link is here:
https://zoom.us/j/94236029476?pwd=aVllWHRUQVZzd04rYkJWLzBpdWFnZz09.
The agenda for this week’s meeting is here:
https://www.plymouth-ma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif3691/f/agendas/1._08_23_2022_agenda.pdf
Thanks so much for helping to bring these outrageous actions to the public’s attention.
Such politics around water will sink everyone’s boat. Once the contamination occurs it will be too late to fix it. The wrong people are making the rules to suit their own unenlightened self-interest.