Town board faces lawsuit over plant
As published in the Oct. 24, 2011 edition of The Keene Sentinel, and online.
WINCHESTER -- The town's planning board faces a legal challenge to its handling of a new asphalt plant operating on Route 10 near the Winchester-Swanzey border.
A group of four residents, three from Swanzey and one from Winchester, filed an appeal of the planning board's decision in Cheshire County Superior Court last week.
In the appeal the residents allege the Winchester Planning Board failed to enforce some of the 23 conditions it put in place when it granted permission in January for Mitchell Sand and Gravel to operate a hot mix gravel plant in an agricultural district.
At a Sept. 19 compliance hearing, however, the appeal charges the board overlooked many of its own conditions -- starting with one that required the compliance hearing take place before the plant started operating. The plant started making small batches of asphalt on Aug. 26.
Other allegations in the appeal claim that the planning board failed to enforce the standards it had set for water quality monitoring, and that the plant has been working at night without notifying the town of Swanzey or other abutters, as required in the conditions the board laid out in January.
According to the appeal, the town's building inspector has stated that enforcing 12 of the 23 conditions is the "responsibility of others."
"It is unlawful and unreasonable ... for the Planning Board to impose conditions on the approval of a site plan application, as it did on 3 January 2011, and to decide, thereafter, not to enforce the conditions or to decide that determining compliance was the 'responsibility of others,' " Joseph S. Hoppock, attorney for the petitioners, wrote in the appeal.
The petitioners are F. Michael Towne of Winchester, and Arthur Beckman Jr., Rodney Plummer and Mary Ryan, all of Swanzey.
The town of Winchester must file a written appearance form in court by Dec. 6 and has until Jan. 6, 2012, to respond to the appeal.
tagged with: land use, Mitchell Sand and Gravel, Winchester N.H.
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