Coalition to Protect Natural Plymouth asks Plymouth officials to stop Kingstown Trucking’s destruction of the Wood Lot

Group asks Plymouth Board of Selectmen for help in protecting the County Wood Lot from mining operation

Letter to says Kingstown/Cushing’s mining operation violates the 2015 Special Permit issued by the Zoning Board of Appeals 

At the Plymouth Selectmen’s meeting on Tuesday July 17, 2018, a group of 65 residents who are members of the Coalition to Protect Natural Plymouth asked the Board of Selectmen for helping in stopping the ongoing destruction of the County Wood Lot.

The group’s representative, Sharl Heller, gave the Board a copy of a letter it was planning to send to the Zoning Board of Appeals asserting that Kingstown Trucking Co.’s mining operation on the County Wood Lot violates the ZBA’s Special Permit.  The letter cites two violations:

1. No performance bond submitted to the Town by Kingstown Trucking
2. No “permitted end use” for the mining operation — which means that because neither Kingstown nor the landowner, the County, have approval to put anything on the mined land after the sand and gravel mining is done, this is a stand alone sand and gravel operation – prohibited by the Zoning Bylaw, Section 205-18.

The group asked the Board of Selectmen for a natural resource inventory of the site, enforcement of the Special Permit conditions, and to get evidence of the alleged end use of a solar field on the site.

On July 18, 2018, the group formally asked the Building Department to enforce the special permit.  Here is the request:

Request_Enforcement_SpecialPermit3751R

This is the second time residents have asked the Town to enforce the Bylaw and to stop the illegal mining operation on the County Wood Lot site.  In March, 2018, over 60 residents also asked for enforcement of the Bylaw, but the Building Inspector denied the request.

Here is concerned residents’ March 2018 request to the Building Department for enforcement of the Special Permit:

2018.03.09_RequestforEnforcement_FINAL-1

The Building Department denied the residents’ request but never addressed the fundamental, most basic requirement of the Town’s sand and gravel mining Bylaw requirement: there can be no “stand alone” mining operations: the developer has to have an “approved” use for the site after the mining is done.  Here, Kingstown and the County have no end use approved, and this is an illegal stand alone mining operation.  The Building Inspector fails to address this fundamental question — shirking his duty to enforce the Bylaw.

4.10.18_DIS_DenialReqEnf_Sheehan ltr 18