SCT&W is reaching a critical point
Please Attend Zoning Board of Appeals Hearing
May 1, 7pm
As many of you know, Save Chebacco Trails and Watershed (SCT&W) is fighting a large-scale housing development project on a cherished 67-acre forest/farmland site (133 Essex Street) bordering the Chebacco Woods in Hamilton. The project will destroy acres of pristine woodland and blast as much as 40 feet off the top and sides of its supporting hilltop granite construction core. It will disrupt the neighborhood for years to come with blasting and construction noise and traffic, and send massive diesel trucks containing tens of thousands of tons of crushed rock through local neighborhoods. The project will pose a significant risk to vital regional water supplies and possibly pose health and safety risks to its intended “senior” residents. Given that we’ve just celebrated Earth Day which asks us to “Think Globally, Act Locally,” it is very fitting that we pull together now to stop this disastrous development.
The Hamilton Planning Board soundly and unanimously rejected the developer’s “first try” at ravaging this site. And on Monday night the Hamilton Select Board tabled a motion on the table to discuss a draft agreement with Chebacco Realty Trust for a Friendly 40B and support at the Hamilton Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA). This was thanks to all of you who wrote emails to the board and showed up at the Zoom meeting. Your voices were heard and made a difference!
The developer is back at it again and will present essentially the same project to the ZBA at its first hearing on May 1 along with a four-page list of requested waivers of local regulations. The recent and minor changes to the original project design enable the developer to seek far less rigorous permitting requirements pursuant to Massachusetts’s so-called 40B statute. You may have heard last night that it is a foregone conclusion that this project will be approved because it’s a “friendly 40B project.” This is not the case. There are ways that this development can still be stopped and we will present and support these arguments in front of the ZBA at the May 1 meeting
The meeting will take place in the Hamilton Wenham Library, on May 1 at 7 PM. You can participate on-site or via ZOOM.
The meeting agenda and background information on the project and its stormy permitting history can be found here and here.
We will email more detail on this topic in the next day or two.
Access the meeting via Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81667305099
Webinar ID 816 6730 5099
Please attend in person or remotely participate in the hearing to support our effort to stop this misplaced and destructive project. Help us encourage the ZBA to reject this unwanted and destructive project. And, in so doing, help us preserve the environmental benefits of 133 Essex Street and set the stage for future public recreational use.
Thank you on behalf of Save Chebacco Trials and Watershed (SCT&W)
