land use

At the December 7 State of the Town meeting, the Dark Skies Committee will give an update on its work to update rules on outdoor lighting to reflect changes in technology since they were last amended in 2016.

Artificial light at night keeps away wildlife (thus reducing their habitat), kills insects, and interferes with nocturnal breeding cycles and bird migration, said Louise Bergeron, head of the Planning Board subcommittee, in a presentation at the November 18 Select Board meeting.

Current zoning rules require permanent lighting to be installed or shielded to “prevent direct light or glare from the light source from interfering with the vision of motorists or pedestrians” or illuminating neighboring properties, and exterior lamps to have a color temperature of 3,000K or below. Lights must also be no more than 900& lumens, (a measure of brightness). Color temperature refers to the color of the light— the higher the number, the more orange it appears, whereas cooler temperatures are bluer).

Outdoor lighting was the topic of heated debate at Town Meeting in 2015, when voters rejected some rule changes.

In recent years, LED lights — which tend to have a cooler color temperature than incandescent lights — have become commonplace, and people are often tempted to buy the brightest outdoor lights they can, Bergeron said. Her group is also studying ideas such as allowing only activated lights in certain circumstances, and asking or requiring owners of larger buildings to turn off outdoor lights that currently shine all night, such as those in parking lots, schools, churches, and the Water Department.

Town officials can grant exceptions if warranted, and the public safety will continue to be exempt.

“This is a lot about education,” Select Board member Jennifer Glass said. “You’re going to get the best result when you educate people, because we don’t have the capacity to go around policing everyone.”

The owners of The Commons in Lincoln won approval for their planned expansion earlier this month, though the exact construction schedule is still unclear.

The Planning Board gave its thumbs-up on November 12 after the close of public hearings, concluding a process that began in February 2023. Residents of the senior living community objected to the original plan for 47 new independent living units, so The Commons returned with scaled-down plan for 23 units, and voters approved a zoning amendment to allows the project in December 2023. More recently, owners updated the plans for landscaping and the location of new parking spaces.

At the hearing in September, representatives for The Commons said that construction would begin with the additions to the main building. Cottages will be on their own timeframe and isolated with fencing as separate construction sites. sites

“We are excited to get started in Q1 of 2025 and will be happy to share more phasing details after our financing on the project has closed,” Rey LeBlanc, executive director of The Commons, told the Squirrel last week.

The state recently relaxed some of its rules on building accessory dwelling units (ADUs, or accessory apartments), and Lincoln residents will be asked at Town Meeting in March to amend the town’s zoning bylaw to match.

The state law, which was enacted in August and goes into effect on Feb. 2, 2025, allows ADUs smaller than 900 square feet to be built as of right in single family residential districts. Updating Lincoln’s rules “is technically not necessary as state law trumps our bylaw, but it removes potential confusion,” Planning Board Chair Margaret Olson said.

Lincoln allows ADUs of up to 1,200 square feet. For ADUs to which the new state law doesn’t apply (those measuring 900–1,200 square feet), the town will still require owner occupancy and also a special permit if the unit is in a separate building.

Previous changes to the town’s ADU rules in town were made in 2023, when ADUs were permitted in a home’s main dwelling by right (as long as applicants followed the rest of the bylaw’s rules), and in 2021, when Town Meeting approved language on ADU leases and the total number of ADUs allowed.

Olson didn’t immediately know how many ADUs currently exist in town but said most of them are family-related — usually occupied by older residents whose adult children move into the main house.

3A South Commons — Brian Hurley to Roberto Mercado Jr. and Kalsey Mercado for $590,000 (September 30)

133 Bedford Rd. — Dorothy Taylor Trust to Kelsey Flynn and Justin Saglio for $1,130,000 (September 30)

41 Todd Pond Rd. — Susan Peacock to Greg Salomon for $604,500 (September 26)

16A North Commons — Marissa Lisec to Rezarta Memelli for $270,000 (September 24)

36 Old Sudbury Rd. — Karl Zuelke to Karl L. Zuelke Trust and Marichu Zuekle Trust for $600,000 (September 20)

41 Stony Brook Rd. — Lochiel Crafter to Rastislav Vazny for $3,750,000 (September 10)

24 Sandy Pond Rd. — Douglas A. Melton Trust to Timothy P. von Hermann Trust and Susan M. von Hermann Trust for $2,050,000 (September 4)

15 Greenridge Lane — Lisa Patterson to Apurv Gupta and Celia Chang for $705,000 (August 29)

15 Orchard Lane — Augustine Lin Trust to Marchese Development LLC for $775,000 (August 29)

43 Deerhaven Rd. — Chauncy C. Chu Trust to the Fatmata Osesina Trust and the Olukayode Isaac Osesina Trust for $1,150,000 (August 28)

90 Winter St. — Elisa Soykan to Evan and Christy Cull for $2,290,000 (August 27)

22 Juniper Ridge Rd. — Jinquan Liu to Douglas and Shahinaz Carson for $45,000 (sic) (August 15)

17 Bedford Lane — Deborah Dorsey to HSBC Bank USA c/o Nationstar Mortgage LLC for $890,514 (August 8)

95 Tower Rd.— Sherine Freeth to David and Sarah DeBlasio for $1,387,000 (August 8)

105 Tower Rd. — Shawn Lyons to Sian and Philip McGurk for $1,750,000 (August 1)

Lincoln is one of 33 towns that are now eligible for a new state grant program by virtue of having its rezoning approved by the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

The rezoning measure to allow more multifamily housing was required to comply with the Housing Choice Act. It was mired in controversy last winter in Lincoln but ultimately passed in March. More than 70 cities and towns have passed HCA zoning, with many more expected at Town Meetings this fall.

Earlier this year, the Healey-Driscoll Administration created the $15 million MBTA Communities Catalyst Fund, a capital grant program that recognizes that promoting housing growth in communities requires additional resources and makes available funding to support activities related to housing creation, infrastructure projects associated with housing, and acquisition of property to promote housing.

Funding for the Catalyst program is available for fiscal 2025, fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2027.  Awards will typically fund projects with grant requests between $250,000 and $1 million, according to the EOHLC. Conversely, the state has said that cities and towns that don’t approve HCA-friendly doing by their given deadline will become ineligible for several existing grant programs.

The Catalyst program allows towns to partner with private companies in enabling multifamily housing projects, Tim Higgins noted at the October 7 Select Board meeting. Upgrading the South Lincoln wastewater treatment plant, among other Lincoln-specific ideas, would seem to qualify.

“That gets my wheels spinning,” Select Board member Jim Hutchinson said.

113 Tower Rd. — David K. Bruenner Trust to Boris Nicolas and Elisha Saad for $1,923,750 (June 27)

8 Upland Field Rd. — Britta Das to David and Phyllis Clark for $1,735,000 (June 27)

30 Beaver Pond Rd. — Petticoat Pastures Realty Trust to Samuel Newell Trust and Teresa Victoria Trust for $4,530,000 (June 25)

3 South Brook Rd. — David Levy to Paul and Karen Neurath for $2,131,000 (June 20)

8 Todd Pond Rd. — John Robinson to Benjamin Schrieheim and Emma Nathanson for $1,715,000 (June 18)

169 Lexington Rd. — Yunfei Cao to Andrew and Karina Collins for $1,275,000 (June 14)

58 Todd Pond Rd. — Jane L. Barter Trust to Naila Karamally for $653,300 (June 14)

64 Trapelo Rd. — Mark Hewitt to Vijay Gadepally and Shruthi Bharadwaj for $1,075,000 (June 14)

4 Deerhaven Rd. — Joseph Fiscale to Devin Morris and Anna Baglan for $975,000 (June 7)

311 Hemlock Circle — Michael Trembicki to Phoebe Haberkorn for $750,000 (May 31)

24 Greenridge Lane #7 — Zhou Jiang to Glenn Camilien for $685,000 (May 30)

13R South Commons — Susan Wolff to Matthew and Valerie Finnemeyer for $778,000 (May 30)

176 Bedford Rd. — Geoffrey P. Moore Trust to Erica Zheng and James Stropoli for $1,302,000 (May 22)

127 Bedford Rd. — William Sahlein to Srinivas Anantha and Bolla Saritha for $850,000 (May 18)

2 Huckleberry Hill — Kevin J. Maroni Trust to Dean Elwell for $1,927,500 (May 16)

72 Winter St. — Harrison Shulman to William Settel for $2,106,000 (May 3)

12 Old Winter St. — George Thomas Jr. to Maura Kelly for $1,050,000 (May 1)

Protests against tree-cutting to allow a gas pipeline equipment next to Route 2 in Lincoln have resulted in at least four arrests.

On Tuesday, July at 11:16 a.m., Lincoln police arrested two people (a 57-year-old from Newton and a 17-year-old from Somerville) for trespassing on the site. Their names were not released because their arraignment has been delayed until January 2025, and the charges will probably be dropped if they aren’t arrested again. The following day, Massachusetts State Police arrested two other people whose names were also not immediately available, but who are not from Lincoln.

A number of environmental activists gathered off Route 2 just east of Bedford Road to protest the tree-cutting that is necessary for a crane to access the site. The crane will be needed for work there to upgrade Algonquin Gas Transmission Pipeline equipment owned by Enbridge. The work is related to a larger project to expand the capacity of the entire pipeline called Project Maple.

The land is owned by the City of Cambridge, which rejected Enbridge’s original plan to pay the city $10,000 in compensation for clear-cutting about 50 mature trees. Enbridge sued, threatening to take the land by temporary eminent domain as permitted by federal law, but later settled on a scaled-back proposal for removing half as many trees. Because the parcel is in Lincoln and has a conservation restriction, Lincoln officials were also involved in the discussions.

The activists on site included a “tree-sitter” who hauled himself high into a tree and lived on a platform there for several days. Videos taken by hum and others in a group called Protect the Lincoln Forest were posted on X on a page called Protect the Lincoln Forest. The tree was not among those slated to be cut down, but in adjacent area of trees in a designated “effort to save” area. The two groups of trees together cover about 9,000 square feet.

Once word got out that the project was about to start, Lincoln’s Conservation Department was flooded with calls and emails protesting the move and the fact that a routine pre-construction site walk before work began was not open to the public. “Most of the calls I’ve received have not been from Lincoln residents,” said Conservation Director Michele Grzenda.

The site walk was undertaken to ensure that proper erosion controls were installed and that the approved limit of work was demarcated correctly in the field, Grzenda said, adding that such walks are not public meetings.

Lincoln police offices on private detail as well as state police have been on site during the protest and tree-cutting activities. Officers working regular shifts have responded when needed, including two well-being checks on the tree-sitter during the week.

Enbridge says that piping more natural gas into the region will help stabilize energy prices, make the electric grid more reliable, and help states meet their climate goals by burning less oil on cold days, according to a January 25 WBUR article. But groups opposing the project including the Sierra Club and the Conservation Law Foundation disagree. The issue has also been covered by Universal Hub (see stories on May 8, May 27, and June 13).

The work in Lincoln is “a maintenance project through which we’re rebuilding an existing meter station to help support the ongoing safe operation of Algonquin gas transmission to continue meeting everyday energy needs in Massachusetts. The Lincoln Meter Station rebuild project will not increase the certificated capacity of the Algonquin gas transmission system,” Enbridge spokesman Max Bergeron said in an email to the Lincoln Squirrel. “As part of this project, we’re installing newer technology at the Lincoln Meter Station that will bolster safety and efficiency to continue to reliably meet local energy needs.”

Under terms of the settlement, Enbridge must plant replacement trees when its work is done. Lincoln officials will be notified when the restoration work and a mandatory three-year monitoring period is about to begin, Grzenda said.

Lincoln residents Alex Chatfield and his wife Trish O’Hagan were among those on site during the protests. “It’s concerning to us because it is an example of scenarios that play put all across the country routinely between Enbridge (and other pipeline companies) and local communities,” Chatfield told the Lincoln Squirrel. “Enbridge has a long and disturbing track record of overriding the concerns and priorities of cities, towns, and tribal authorities by using federal laws such as the Gas Act to build, rebuild, and expand pipelines. When it meets with opposition, as was the case with this project on the part of Cambridge, it goes to court and threatens to take what it wants through eminent domain and usually wins.”

Chatfield added that he and O’Hagan have been part of “peaceful resistance” at other Enbridge sites, including the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline in 2015 and 2016 and Line Three in Minnesota in 2021.

This isn’t the first time that tree-cutting by outside agencies has caused angst in Lincoln. Residents near Route 2 were upset about the removal of dozens of trees in 2013 at the start of the project to build new service roads and a flyover at Crosby’s Corner. More recently, smaller trees and brush were removed from land over the Kinder Morgan gas pipeline that crosses Bedford Road, though there were no known public protests.