The Planning Board voted 4-0 on October 14 to recommend that Town Meeting adopt amendments to the town’s Groundwater Protection District bylaw, with three revisions. Board member Jason Santos was absent. The board closed the public hearing first, then voted on the recommendation. The board’s role is advisory: Town Meeting, which takes up the amendments on October 19, makes the final decision, and the board’s report goes to it with these comments.
The bylaw, adopted in 1983 and amended since, restricts how certain materials are handled in the groundwater protection district around the five wells that supply the town’s public water. Amelia Landau, the town’s sustainability manager, who staffs the subcommittee that drafted the amendments, said the district covers about a quarter of the town’s land area and that the aim is to improve water quality and protect the town’s water for future generations.
The board recommended three changes. It would strike the proposed definition and prohibition of animal feedlots, which the draft defines as commercial operations keeping 25 or more livestock per acre to prepare them for slaughter. It would remove the words “landscape refuse” from the definition of solid waste. And the six uses the amendment would newly prohibit in Zone 2, listed as Q through V in the draft (dry cleaning establishments, commercial chemical and bacteriological labs, automotive businesses, storage of 250 pounds or more of pesticides or herbicides, metal plating and finishing, and painting, wood preserving and paint stripping), would be allowed where suitable technology addresses groundwater concerns. Barbara Peatie, who ran the meeting, said a tight tank, a sealed holding tank, would be one such technology, and the board left the exact wording to be checked with Town Counsel.
Steve Proia spoke for Authentic Auto Body at 7 Jeffrey Avenue and said he had learned of the hearing from a friend because the town had not notified him. His concern was that buyers of his business, whose special permit does not transfer, might be scared off or pay less for it. He said his shop collects rainwater from its gutters, and everything from inside the shop, into holding tanks that were installed in 2021, so nothing can run off toward a well. Asked whether allowing those uses where such tanks are in place would solve his problem, he called it “a very happy medium for everybody.”
Landau said a mailer sent July 27, inviting businesses to a public question-and-answer session in August, went to every affected business the group could find, that Proia’s shop was among them, and that some mailers came back marked return to sender. She said the group had tried email early on but got immediate bounce-backs from some addresses on file and did not use it for outreach. She said she had also tabled at the farmers market for 12 weeks, reaching more than 150 people, and reached about 150 more at Celebrate Holliston, and she offered to work case by case with business owners, though she said she cannot give legal advice on selling a business.
Board member Jim Read said he had asked officials at Town Hall, including the building commissioner, how the bylaw would affect a business sale, and was read the town’s non-conforming use bylaw, which says the Planning Board “may” transfer a special permit at a sale. “What caught my ear was may. Not will, not must, but may,” he said. Peatie, citing what town counsel told the board the week before, said that whether an existing permit can be transferred depends on the conditions of approval set when it was issued, that nothing in the amendments changes that, and that existing businesses remain grandfathered.
Santos sent an email that Sarah Scott, the town’s director of planning and community development, read aloud. He supported prohibiting automotive businesses, dry cleaners and metal plating or coating in groundwater protection areas but opposed any restrictions on landscape debris, residential or commercial, or on agricultural activities such as feedlots, noting that the town’s own landscape dump on Marshall Street appears to sit close to or within a protection area, and he said he would support the bylaw without those two items. Landau replied that landscape debris is not part of the proposed amendment and that he may have meant fertilizer or manure, both of which are in the original bylaw and come from the state’s model language.
Resident Ellen Troland of Maryland Street asked who would monitor any technology installed to meet the standard, given that the town does not have enough staff to do it. She said that if the water supply fails, residents will not be able to sell their homes either, and she urged residents who value the water to attend the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting the following night.
Earlier in the meeting the board voted 4-0 to approve an Approval Not Required plan dividing one lot on Prentice Street into two. The plan brought to the board the week before had listed the wrong minimum lot frontage and depth for the district, which made the lot look non-conforming, and the applicant corrected the plan and resubmitted it.
Scott said she would write the board’s report to Town Meeting the next day, share it with board members for corrections, and expected a quick turnaround.