Board OKs trail easement; hears about Air Force Base study, more on trees

The Select Board earlier this month accepted a new trail easement near the transfer station and heard about a plan to study alternative uses for some of the Hanscom Air Force Base property, as well as more information on how and why the list of trees to be removed by Eversource was compiled.

Trail easement

The Select Board voted on June 8 to accept the trail easement plan proposed by the Rural Land Foundation and the Conservation Commission for the Farrington Memorial property. This plan grants two conservation restrictions and two trail easements to the town on land currently owned by Farrington Memorial Inc., which will be temporarily conveyed to Rural Land Foundation and then permanently deeded to City of Cambridge for water supply purposes. 

The easements (which are costing the town $850,000) and conservation restrictions will prevent future development on the land, including by a religious or educational organization. The measure was approved at a Special Town Meeting in June 2025 as part of Civico’s Farrington Nature Link project to build housing on land owned by the Panetta family just south of Route 2 and east of Page Road.

The trail will be open to hikers, and dogs may be walked on leash from September through June, as reported in the Select Board’s June SelectConnect e-newsletter.

Hanscom Air Force Base

The Secretary of the Air Force and the Gov. Maura Healey’s office are partnering to evaluate opportunities to save money by repurposing some of Hanscom Air Force Base’s for other uses that would benefit the surrounding community and the state. The Strategic Real Estate Opportunity (SREO) pilot study will “examine the ideal operational footprint for Hanscom AFB and explore opportunities to reduce recurring costs for the Air Force and unlock economic development opportunities for the Commonwealth,” according to an Air Force release.

Base housing, the Hanscom schools, MIT Lincoln Labs, and current military construction projects are not being reviewed as part of the scope of the study. 

“We’re looking at efficiencies… and the art of the possible,” Adam Freudberg, Executive Director of MassDevelopment’s Massachusetts Military Asset & Security Strategy Task Force, told the Select Board. For example, the federal government transferred ownership of Joint Base Cape Cod’s water and wastewater system to a private company in 2024, potentially making some of its capacity available to surrounding towns.

Hanscom is one of six military installations in the state and the only active-duty Air Force Base. There are no plans to close the base right now, according to Town Administrator Tim Higgins. “The stronger the mission is at the base and the better regarded it is within the military community, the better it can sustain a critical review,” he said.

Tree removal

DPW Superintendent Steve Olson and Eversource arborist Matt Mitchell explained the impetus and process by which they and Lincoln Tree Warden Ken Bassett settled on the final list of trees to be removed or pruned by the utility.

“By far this is the largest list we’ve proposed for Lincoln,” Mitchell acknowledged. The extensive list was drawn up because of Department of Public Utilities mandates for residential electricity reliability. Since 2023, one of two Eversource circuits in Lincoln has been “consistently performing poorly” in terms of how long power outages last, and tree damage is responsible for 83% of outages on that circuit, he said. 

The circuit covers almost half of Lincoln geographically around Trapelo Road, Lexington Road, Lincoln Road, South Great Road and nearby smaller roads. The average length of outages due to trees on that circuit is about 6.5 hours, compared to the Eversource state average of 3.5 hours, Mitchell said.

Faced with public protest over plans to remove some of the 271 trees on the original list, Bassett and a second arborist looked at every tree and eventually reduced the number of removals to 152, as well as 18 trees targeted for pruning. The work will take place over the summer.