Reviving its intention of running a public water main 7,100 feet from Warrens Landing Road to the Madaket Fire Station and ending it at a fire hydrant for roughly $600,000, the Board of Health, the Wannacomet Water Company and the Planning Department presented an overview of the project at a meeting on April 16 to mostly Madaket residents. Despite assurances that the town would hold several more public hearings for residents to air their concerns and get their questions answered, the watering of Madaket also met resistance.
Opponents, including Clark Whitcomb of 19 Starbuck Road, said it seemed the proposal was being rushed along without his being able to review it. Whitcomb worried aloud over town water equaling the potential of increased build-out of Madaket's vacant and underdeveloped lots, but also commended town officials for holding the meeting and promising future public information sessions.
"I'm very comforted, personally, that there will be hearings and that this will be thrashed out, and you beat the bushes to get people here and that some of the hearings will be held during the summer because we're probably 90 percent seasonal out there, and I've heard from a lot of seasonal people and they're concerned and they think that something is being stuffed down their throats," said Whitcomb.
It is the general fear-of-growth feeling of Madaket, with the Madaket Area Plan recommending against a public water main, that bringing town water out to this westernmost island village would eliminate the mandatory septic system-water well separation distance of 150 feet as property owners abandoned their wells and maxed out the development of their lots. Attempting to assuage maximum build-out anxieties, Planning Director Andrew Vorce said that the additional 483 bedrooms allowed by zoning in Madaket could be capped at that number and that given town water, there are only 28 vacant lots with limited development potential.
"What we found is that basically the existing zoning fairly well matches the majority of the districts for lot size," said Vorce. "Where the mismatch comes is in the existing ground cover ratios."
In answer to that, Vorce and the town are proposing zoning changes to further limit ground cover ratios to strictly limit growth in Madaket as a result of town water that could be adopted at a special Town Meeting in the fall.
"Even though structures would be allowed to connect to municipal water service, they would still be limited to one bedroom per 10,000 square feet," said Health Inspector Richard Ray. "I believe if we go within this nitrogen-sensitive area, which is already documented, you will see very little over-nutrification of these water bodies. I'm not going to say you're not going to see any build-out, but it's going to be an extremely marginal build-out."
Yet another build-out control the town is anxiously awaiting is the long overdue estuaries report for Madaket Harbor and Hither Creek that contains a total maximum daily load number. This TMDL number is the amount a given body of water can absorb while conforming to public health codes. I |
