Residents encouraged members of the Planning Board last week to change the town’s land use ordinances to bar large utility facilities in two residential zones.
David McDermott of Bennett Lot Road and Paul Steinhauer of Hill Drive asked the board to consider changing these ordinances to prohibit production, treatment, transmission and relay facilities for public utilities in the two downtown residential districts.
Steinhauer and McDermott proposed restricting public utilities in those zones to the “provision of services to residences and structures in those districts; excepting lines necessary to serve surrounding districts,” language suggested in a letter sent in early March to DeCarlo Brown, former town planner.
A section of the town zoning code says that one of the purposes of zoning is “to prevent inappropriate juxtaposition of industrial uses and residential uses,” according to the letter from Steinhauer and McDermott. Allowing larger facilities in more dense residential zones is inconsistent with this intent, they said.
Six letters to the board from other residents support the suggested changes to local land use ordinances.
The current town regulations require a major site plan review for public utilities of all kinds in every district except R5, the rural zone with the strictest conservation designation. Public utilities include gas, steam, electricity, waste disposal, communication facilities, transportation or water, according to town code.
Planning Board member Tony Palazzetti brought up possible legal challenges by utilities to such an ordinance change.
Locating all large utility facilities in one place in town was impractical, Palazzetti suggested, and he proposed looking at alternatives.
Board Chair Hershey Hirschkop was hesitant to carve out specific areas of town, noting that no one wants such a structure in their neighborhood. She offered the idea of adding to the ordinances a 300-foot buffer zone between residences and large utility equipment to give neighborhoods throughout town some kind of protection.
Steinhauer said their intent is to steer large utility facilities to the industrial zones as they are out of scale for residential neighborhoods.
“I’m not on the board and if you want to use some kind of different mechanism, it needs to have some teeth to protect the residents,” Steinhauer said.
Central Maine Power presented a proposal for a transmission relay facility on land they own near Wadleigh Lane at the Aug. 27 Planning Board meeting. The proposal met with immediate resistance from people in neighborhoods near Powderhouse Hill.
McDermott and Steinhauer said repeatedly that their proposal was not about the project Central Maine Power proposed.
CMP did not get back to the Reporter by publication time Monday.
Planning Board member Aaron Rouse suggested the board needs more information about the ramifications of limiting specific components of utility service. Board members and residents agreed to keep the item on the agenda and find a neutral party who would be able to answer their questions about utility infrastructure.
Alan Plummer, the new code enforcement officer, and Kimberly DesRochers, deputy town clerk, are attending Planning Board meetings until a new town planner is hired. In the meantime, DeCarlo Brown, town planner and economic development director until last week, continues to work remotely as a consultant to South Berwick.
