Contractors, business owners raise alarm over city's new wetlands ordinance
WESTFIELD — A group of area contractors, developers and business owners, alerted by Rob Levesque, owner of R. Levesque Associates, urged the Westfield City Council to revisit the changes made recently to the city's wetlands ordinance by the Conservation Commission that they claim will take thousands of acres of developable land off the map.
The requests were made during public participation at the June 5 City Council meeting when Levesque and several other business owners came to the podium to ask for the review.
'As a land consultant and owner of property and as a business that represents properties, we are very concerned with the new wetlands protection ordinance,' said Levesque. He said more than 125 people signed a petition, and several others wrote letters to the mayor and City Council on the issue.
John Raymaakers, a local business owner of J.L. Raymaakers & Sons, said as a taxpayer, the new ordinance would stop one of the larger projects that is in the final stages that would bring hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue into the city. 'The problem for our city, for all of you, has been tax income and deficit. Our schools are being hurt. This is just another step to hurt us as a town. I'm all for protecting the environment, all for that. I don't see how this change affects anything but hurting our town,' he said.
'As a contractor, this hurts my business tremendously, and stops projects that I've spent countless hours of time on with Rob, with the owner, with clients. I just fully disagree with this and I'd like you to take that into consideration,' Raymaakers added.
Also speaking was Robert Goyette, owner of Heritage Homes and Charles Pignatare, owner of Liberty Manor.
Goyette said he was there about the overreach of the wetlands protection ordinance. 'We as a company own a significant amount of land in town. As stakeholders, we had zero say in this — I was made aware of it by Rob — it impacts us significantly, to the millions. Thank you for hearing us, and I appreciate you revisiting it,' he said.
'I'm definitely begging you guys to review this. I'm in the construction business with the Scarfo family for 54 years. This is one of the worst,' said Pignatare. 'This is one of the worst situations I've seen us getting into, but hopefully we're able to do it correctly.'
Councilor Dan Allie asked a question of Levesque through the chair of which specific portion of the ordinance they would like to see changed.
Levesque said there are a number of items that have changed, some of major concern. 'I believe a list of the items that have changed would be very eye opening for the City Council. I know it's hard when you get a document and frankly, if you're not reading wetlands protections documents every day like we do, you don't realize what it necessarily impacts or doesn't impact. We all want to protect the wetlands in a proper way and there's science based performance standards that are in place to do that under the Wetlands Protection Act and under the previous ordinance, which we've never had a problem with,' he said.
'We understand this is a very significant overreach and it's not just what we spoke about in the petition, but there are other aspects related to enforcement and control that this gives to the Conservation Commission that are pretty aggressive,' Levesque added.
Councilor Rick Sullivan raised a point of order saying since the item was not on the agenda, he would make a motion to add it to the agenda at the next meeting and refer it to the proper committees.
After the meeting, Levesque explained what he considers the problems with the new ordinance. He said the biggest thing is jurisdictional overreach. He said the council drastically increased the jurisdiction of the Conservation Commission by thousands of acres in the city by passing the ordinance, which gives the power to the commission to create regulations that the City Council won't have a vote on.
'The ordinance gives Conservation a blank check so essentially they can write whatever they want for regulations,' Levesque said.
He referred to the last paragraph of the petition signed by more than 125 business owners which reads, 'Our community deserves thoughtful, science-based environmental protections that do not come at the cost of property rights, due process, and fairness. The current course of action by the Conservation Commission and specifically the Director of Conservation threatens to undermine all three.'
Levesque also referred to a letter given to the City Council from Green Miles Lipton Attorney Michael Pill, which he said claims the ordinance was done erroneously.
'This new ordinance, which amends the City's Code of Ordinances related to the protection of wetlands, imposes extensive new jurisdictional and procedural requirements that raise serious questions about its legality, practicality, and equity. Ordinance No. 1773 exposes the Conservation Commission and the city to potential litigation that would be a waste of time and money for everyone,' according to the letter.
Another letter from Ryan Ratledge, CEO of the Pioneer Valley Railroad Company, an 18-mile short-line railroad, headquartered in the city of Westfield, referred to their significant concerns about the expanded authority now being applied to intermittent streams.
Ratledge said the PVRR provides a real service for several Westfield customers, such as Lowe's, James Hardie, ProAmpac and A. Duie Pyle, among others; and owns property slated for industrial development projects that he said will bring jobs and grow the local tax base.
Ratledge requested a balanced review of the recent amendments to the Westfield wetlands protection ordinance, and said the current course of action by the Conservation Commission would impact their ability to recruit industry and have adverse effects for their business and the community as a whole.
After the meeting, Levesque said he normally doesn't get involved in this way. 'You've never really seen me get involved, but this is so egregious — thousands of acres and millions of dollars in future revenue. The last ten projects that I've done, if those regulations were in place, they probably would have killed them,' he said.
'All of our projects in Westfield are on hold until this gets resolved,' Levesque added.
Read the original article on MassLive.
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