SOUTHWEST HARBOR — The town’s planning board on Tuesday said it would approve a plan for a subdivision next to a waste site conditioned on the results of a soil pollution test, which will be presented by the developer, Ben “Lee” Worcester, at a future date.
The property is owned by Worcester, who is also the Planning Board’s vice chair. The Planning Board’s decision came after a previous split vote about evaluating the soil on the property.
Worcester’s family owns the nearby Eastern Maine Recycling transfer station and a six-acre landfill that abuts Worcester’s proposed 12-lot Trundy Farm subdivision on the Long Pond Road.
The nearly 100-year-old landfill was last used in the 1990s. Pollution from it has been found in groundwater east and south of the site. It is being monitored by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.
The motion on Tuesday was “that the applicant has met all the performance standards, pending bringing us a pollution study that is acceptable to the Planning Board.”
One of the divisions of the board members focused on if the subdivision would add pollution to the area. Some said it would not because the pollution potentially already existed in the area. Others worried that the activity of building home foundations and so forth would disturb potentially polluted soil.
Another point of discussion was whether or not the board could put conditions on its approval if they determined that the project was compliant with the town’s land use ordinance as written.
“I think our charge is to administer the ordinance not to set up what we think is a good standard for environmental criteria,” one board member said, stressing that it is up to the Department of Environmental Protection to do so.
Others disagreed.
“Isn’t the point there to make sure that we’re protecting the public, and we’re talking about pollution?” board member Charlotte Gill asked.
Board member Priscilla Ksionzyk said, “We need to protect our town.”
“I just think that it’s common sense to proceed with caution,” Gill said. “I feel there are too many questions surrounding the subdivision, none of which are trivial at all. I don’t feel comfortable moving forward until more questions are answered.”
No soil testing from the site has been submitted to show if the soil is polluted or not. That is not normally required of subdivision applications. However, this site’s location next to the Worcester landfill has sparked concerns. Worcester has said that any homes would be served by town water, not drilled wells.
As a condition of the approval, a soil test will be done by a state-certified soil scientist picked and paid for by Worcester.
Both Planning Board members Michael Levesque and Worcester declared a conflict of interest on the EMR final plan for that 12-lot subdivision. Levesque’s home is near to the site.
This story was originally published by The Bar Harbor Story. To receive regular coverage from the Bar Harbor Story, sign up for a free subscription here.
