Please give Berkley, MA residents your support and call, write, or email the Attorney General’s Office and ask that Article 23 be approved. The email is ago@state.ma.us. The person in the Attorney General’s office to contact is Kelli E. Gunagan, Esq., Assistant Attorney General, By-law Coordinator, Municipal Law Unit, Office of the Attorney General, 1350 Main Street, 4th Floor, Springfield, MA 01103. The phone number is 617-727-2200 ask for Kelli Gunagan.
I am a Berkley resident who supports Article 23. Article 23 passed by a landslide majority at Town Meeting in Berkley, MA this June. Article 23 states that excavation will not be allowed below the mean annual high groundwater elevation, established by a MA Soil Evaluator with expemtions for residential, general business, muncipal construction, septic, drinking and environmental/geophysical monitoring wells, roads and agriculture. This Citizen’s petition bylaw had the support of town residents, the local town government and raised no objections from the town attorney’s office when asked at Town Meeting. This bylaw was created to protect the town’s aquifers as residents depend on ground water wells as our only source of drinking water.
Now a company called Cape Cod Aggregates is writting to the Attorney General’s office asking the Attorney General not to approve the bylaw. CCA owns residentially zoned land in Berkley and wants to use that land to start one of the state’s largest quarries just 100-200 feet from family homes,blasting near those homes on a regular baises and pumping out the aquifer that provides drinking water to the private wells of homeowners in ordewr to mine the quarry. The land was residentially zoned when CCA pruchased it and CCA knew that. They did it because buying residentially zoned land is cheaper then buying industrially zoned land. Berkley has 3 business districtis where CCA could have bought property for a mine. No CCA officials live in Berkley or drink the water here. Quarrying that close to homes could cause wells to do dry, become filled with silt, become contaminated with Benezene that causes cancer and more.Please protect the residents of Berkley and save their drinking water. Please protect the vote of residents and keep the democratic process working properly – don’t let their votes be thrown away in favor of a company with it’s own agenda and interests. Thank you.
At my town meetings, the Town Counsel tells us ahead of time if there is an issue with state law, and often prefaces his comments with “According to the Attorney General…” I always got the impression the AG got to take a look at proposed warrant articles BEFORE the voters were allowed to act. I know occasionally articles are dismissed based on Counsel telling us that the AG says we can’t do it. Aren’t towns pretty much sovereign when it comes to zoning ordainances and use regulation?
Noted for the speed traps. Finances are secret, the town not publishing annual reports (in violation of Massachusetts law).
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p>My guess is that their Article is out of whack and they want the AG to ignore problems with the document.