Commission members completed some old projects such as groundwater protection and we added new focus areas including the open space bond warrant. We responded to several new environmental threats and we brought in experts to our numerous workshops as we improved our mastery of important issues like weighing public vs. individual wellhead development. The RI Land and Water Summit and the annual conference of RI Conservation Commissions both provided excellent volunteer training. We ended 2004 with a full complement of seven commissioners.

We implemented a very tight schedule of workshops and hearings that led to Town Council adoption of the groundwater and wellhead protection changes to the zoning ordinance on March 22, just days before the expiration of the Exit 1 development moratorium. This concluded 13 years of effort dating back to the 1991 Comprehensive Plan. Hopkinton Golf Park, the first applicant for an Aquifer Protection Permit, came before the Zoning Board in November. At the board’s request we successfully worked with the applicant to develop a Best Management Practice (BMP) plan that provides meaningful protection of our groundwater.

Exit 1 Development debates came to a head in March when the Town Council voted to leave the existing 30 year old zoning in place. One effect of the Town Council decision will be to concentrate all significant future commercial development directly in the aquifer or the nearest parts of the aquifer recharge area. The Planning Board, following the Exit 1 decision, adopted a set of Commercial Design Standards which included Conservation Commission recommendations. Several important protective standards such as maximum percentage of impervious surfaces and on-site groundwater recharge still need to be addressed. We held a public workshop in April to identify issues and options to expand our tax base with responsible development at the exit. We summarized our findings in a letter dated November 21 to the new Town Council recommending a dozen issues and concerns they should consider at Exit 1. We presented four of these recommendations at a Town Council meeting: setting a goal for a specific dollar amount of new taxes from development, endorsing a rezone of the exit to allow more development, providing public water and sewers, and advocating non-single family residential development. Town Councilors said they would like to see these issues studied and agreed with the Commission pursuing assistance in developing public water and sewers. We are currently working with The Trust for Public Land and the EDC on water supply. The year ended with W/S Development announcing a renewed plan to develop the only commercial land at Exit 1 with 50 Big Box and specialty stores.

Our budget of Technical Resources $1600 and Supplies $250 was brought back up from the previous year’s cuts. This has allowed us to expand our stream water monitoring, now in its fifth year, and bring in consultants such as the landscape architect advising us on the scenic inventory mapping. Our water testing partners at Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association and URI Watershed Watch have in turn funded new testing of the Ashaway River and Canonchet Brook. We continued our volunteer collections at four stream locations in the Locustville Pond watershed.

Expert representatives from RIDOH and RIDEM participated in our Groundwater Threats workshop that grew out of disclosure of the Edward’s Garage gasoline spill lawsuit and the Townsend illegal junk yard investigation. We are now much better positioned to recommend for or against public water supply vs. private wells at future developments as it relates to health and safety. The DEM Environmental Roundtable addressed our concerns about a lack of notification of significant investigations and prosecutions in Hopkinton. We implemented a DEM Website Watch to follow these activities. This lead to our discovery of other enforcement actions: the prosecution of Charlie’s Mobil, located in the aquifer recharge area, for a history of failure to monitor and report in accordance with state and federal law and Perry Motors automobile junkyard, also in the recharge area, signed a Consent Agreement to rectify significant solid waste and waste oil violations. We are drafting recommendations for the Gravel Bank Ordinance that will lessen the major groundwater threat from fuel and petroleum product spills during and after extraction operations.

The Commission actively represented the town in the On-Site Wastewater Management Targeted Assistance three-town grant program funded by RIDEM. Our letter to the Town Council dated September 18 summarized this along with the need to update the Waste Water Management District ordinance, appoint the five member board and target septic inspections, pumpings and improvements. We co-sponsored a public workshop on well water protection with URI Cooperative Extension and would like to tie well testing to the waste water issue in areas with numerous septic failures such as Locustville Pond.

Scenic inventory road and canoe trips followed on the heels of our May workshop with a landscape architect familiar with the inventory process. We developed rating criteria during several workshops and are accumulating ratings, comments and photographs that will be made available as clickable links on a GIS map available on CD. The inventory will be used both in our Town-wide Map of Potential Conservation Lands and as one of the elements of the Hopkinton Land Trust’s scoring criteria for land acquisition. While we have noted some great view sheds from our local roads we have already found that the crème de la crème is available only by water and protecting these shoreline view sheds such as the Pawcatuck and Wood Rivers should become a priority.

We cleared the length of Tomaquag Trail along with Land Trust members so that it is drivable and cleared the driftway on the adjacent property on Collins Road that was used for truck access for the wetlands crossing construction. The trail should be fully in use by summer 2005. We supported the Town Council’s adoption of an ordinance empowering the Land Trust to establish town enforceable rules for use of trails and town lands.

The Commission was part of a two-year study titled the Cost of Residential Development that garnered statewide attention for its quality and conclusions. Successfully competing with large scale residential developers to preserve prime open space is the most cost effective way to limit property tax increases. One example, the new 36 house Beechwoods subdivision, will produce an annual tax shortfall of $250,000 which is all the developer paid for the property. The average taxpayer will see a $70 tax increase (about $2/ new house) from Beechwoods. A new Super Wal-Mart would not be enough to offset this increase. We were thus disappointed when voters at the FTM, faced with a 17.8% tax increase driven mostly by residential development, did not support the $5,000,000 Open Space Bond warrant that would have brought future tax stability.

Conservation Design changes to the Comprehensive Plan, Zoning Ordinance and Subdivision Regulations had to be squeezed into a busy Planning Board schedule. The Commission in our letter to the Planning Board dated August 15 requested a workshop to develop a guiding strategy for the preservation of open space at residential developments and several other issues such as updating stormwater and groundwater protection measures related to conservation design and commercial design standards. The letter was a follow up to our disappointment in the approval of the Beechwoods subdivision without consideration of how the open space there could have connected with large adjacent open spaces as nearby development occurs. We believe a wonderful opportunity was lost.

Our focus areas for 2005 include:

· Support FTM funding for the Land Trust and coordinate on projects
· Encourage adoption of Exit 1 tax base development per our letter of November 21
· continue volunteers and funding for base line data from stream water monitoring
· finalize groundwater protection recommendations in the gravel bank ordinance
· monitor and publicize known and new groundwater threats
· advocate Wastewater Management District changes per our letter of September 18
· complete the scenic inventory and publish the maps and data
· push for completion of conservation design changes per our letter of August 15
· provide constructive reviews of all development projects with a triaged system
· work for access to trails, open space and water bodies along with scouting help
· implement a tree and forestry plan along with Tree Warden, students and scouts

Current membership contact information is as follows:

Harvey Buford, 932-1383 cell 377-2623 home 36B Oak St, Ashaway, RI 02804
Chairman 732-9898 work 732-3150 fax harvey@arrowbuilding.com
Sharon Dragon, 539-0185 home 124Highview Av, Hope Valley, RI 02832
Secretary shdrag@cox.net
Pat Fontes 377-3092 home 57 Lawton Foster Rd S, Hopk., RI 02832
patfontes@netscape.com
Alexis Heitman, 364-4075 home 29 Crowther’s Place, Hope Valley, RI 02832
Vice Chair david.heitman@verizon.net
Susan Mills 364-7173 home 36 Crowther’s Place, PO Box 1205, HV, RI
smills4114@aol.com
Eric Schieldrop 539-3062 home __ News St, Rockville, RI 02873
486-6151 cell lugalg@yahoo.com
Tara Welinsky 539-3062 home __News St, Rockville, RI 02873