‘Dump’ petition on ballot in March
HOLLIS – Voters at Town Meeting in March will be asked to decide whether landscaping-materials businesses will be allowed on certain properties comprising more than 20 acres along state roads, thanks to a successful drive to get a petition warrant article on the ballot.
Douglas Orde, owner and operator of Hollis Construction, initiated the petition drive.
For years, Orde operated a gravel pit on Depot Road, an operation officials agreed was “grandfathered” from the town’s zoning ordinance. But more than a year ago, after the town building inspector determined that expanded activities at the site violated zoning rules, a cease and desist order was issued.
The order barred Orde from taking in and selling back mulch, loam, gravel, compost and other landscaping materials.
Orde appealed the cease and desist order to the Zoning Board of Adjustment in December 2008 and requested a rehearing the following month. After his request for a rehearing was denied, he appealed the decision to Hillsborough County Superior Court.
He went before the board a third time to apply for a variance, which was denied and not appealed.
His trial was scheduled for later this month, but the court granted the parties’ motions to put the case on hold until after the Town Meeting vote.
Orde’s attorney, Jed Callen, said that if the petition warrant article fails, Orde plans to “go forward” with the court appeal.
The zoning amendment would allow Orde’s business and similar ones on about 10 town properties that are zoned residential agricultural, but only by a special exception from the Zoning Board of Adjustment and with site plan approval from the Planning Board.
This means that neither Orde’s nor anyone else’s landscaping materials business would have carte blanche permission to operate.
The Board of Selectmen recently approved the petition warrant article, and the Planning Board on Dec. 15 voted 3-2 to support the zoning amendment.
Members of the public who attended the meeting the night Orde’s application was denied were divided over the issue: four experts, including a real estate appraiser and a soil scientist supported Orde’s application, as did several neighbors.
But others said the business, started as a gravel pit operation more than two decades ago, had changed and grown busier in the past six years – around the same time neighbors had begun to complain about the operation.
“We call it ‘Doug’s Dump,’ ” Rideout Road resident Stephen Banks told the board. “There’s construction, debris, asphalt, noise at all hours.”
But resident Tom Enright, an Orde supporter, told the board it would be hypocritical to shut down the landscaping business when the town’s stump dump does the same thing, just down the road.
Critics countered that in addition to noise and odors coming from the operation, activity in the yard could pollute a nearby aquifer.
Now, the issue is in the hands of town voters, at least until the votes are counted at Town Meeting.
“This isn’t a free pass,” said Orde’s attorney, Callen. “The use is allowed if it’s not intruding unfairly on neighbors.”
Hattie Bernstein can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 24, or hbernstein@cabinet.com.
