(Editors note: This version incorporates corrections made on November 7 to the DEP conference date and Angela Kearney’s title.)
By Alice Waugh
The Jet Aviation expansion proposed for Hanscom Field was OK’d by the state earlier this month, but a group of residents immediately asked for a hearing in a further attempt to block the project.
After multiple public hearings, the Lincoln Conservation Commission approved the project by a 5-2 vote with conditions under the state Wetlands Protection Act in May. However, some commission members and residents felt that, while the project may have met state wetlands standards, it should have been subject to the more stringent regulations in the Lincoln wetlands bylaw.
Jet Aviation, a commercial firm that leases land at Hanscom owned by Massport, applied to the Lincoln Conservation Commission under the state Wetlands Protection Act for permission to encroach on a wetlands buffer zone for its project. The company declined to apply under the local Lincoln wetlands bylaw, saying that Massport as a state agency is exempt from non-zoning local regulations and that this exemption extends to anyone who leases land from Massport.
In a June appeal to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), a group of 12 residents filed an appeal that was underwritten by Save Our Heritage and ShhAir (Safeguarding the Historic Hanscom Area’s Irreplaceable Resources), local nonprofit citizens’ groups focused on the protection and preservation of natural and historic resources in the Hanscom-area communities.
On October 1, the DEP issued a superseding order of conditions that affirmed the Conservation Commission approval, saying that the commission acted correctly in making its ruling in loight of the state Wetlands Protection Act rather than local wetlands bylaws. The DEP also affirmed the conditions attached by the commission to its approval. “Essentially the DEP is taking it out of our hands, but it kept our conditions, which is a good thing,” said Conservation Planner Angela Kearney. Nevertheless, the net result was a go-ahead for Jet Aviation.
The approval’s conditions set standards for making sure the construction plan is followed and impacts to the environment are minimized, as well as some post-construction conditions of operation and maintenance to protect the nearby wetlands, such as guidelines on snow removal.
In the latest turn, the original appellants (minus one resident who has moved away) challenged the DEP’s superseding order of conditions by filing a claim for an adjudicatory hearing with the DEP on October 16.
“The petitioners are in settlement talks with the applicant, but no agreement has been reached before the deadline for filing of an appeal, so petitioners are filing to preserve their rights,” says the request filed by McGregor and Associates, the law firm retained by the appellants. The specific nature of those settlement talks are confidential, said Kati Winchell, program director for Save Our Heritage and spokesperson for the appellants.
The residents involved in the appeal in addition to Winchell are Jim Hutchinson, Henry Francis, Lauren Herbert, Jean Palmer, Judith Stein, Lynne Smith, Ellen Kennelly, Lynn Gargill, Cynthia Ritsher and Elizabeth Cherniack.
The DEP has scheduled a pre-hearing conference for December 10. The purpose of that conference is to determine the appeal’s potential amenability to settlement through alternative dispute resolution or other means, to identify the issues to be adjudicated, and to establish a schedule for resolution of the appeal, according to the DEP’s October 23 conference scheduling order.
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