Three weeks before a Town Meeting vote to amend zoning laws to exclude businesses of its type from town, Competitive Power Ventures moved to secure its power plant proposal under the current zoning regulations.
Competitive Power will appear next Thursday, Oct. 2, before the Planning Board to make a case for its so-called ANR (Approval Not Required) Plan, which it filed last week.
Competitive Power will ask to declare a small piece of land on the southerly side of the Industrial Road “unbuildable,” to protect the wetlands that border that side of the property. The remaining land on the currently 14-acre parcel would be “buildable.”
The five-member local Planning Board must approve this action.
While the formal purpose of the ANR request is to protect the wetlands, company Vice President Braith Kelly said it would have another effect.
“As you know, an ANR Plan preserves the current permitted uses allowed in the local zoning bylaws,” Kelly wrote in a Sept. 23 letter to Board of Selectmen Chairman Cathie Winston, citing state law Ch. 40A.
Reached for comment this week, Winston said, to her understanding, if the Planning Board approves the ANR plan, the Industrial Road site would be “grandfathered in” under the current zoning bylaws.
Kelly and Winston were referring to the chance that Town Meeting will vote to amend the use table in the town’s zoning bylaws at Fall Town Meeting, which starts Oct. 20.
The amendment would delete from the use table the phrase, governing “wholesale, industrial” properties, that allows “any other lawful industrial or wholesale business, service, storage or light manufacturing use.”
A similar article narrowly failed passing at spring Town Meeting. It fell nine votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority required.
This “any other lawful use” language has been blamed by some residents and town officials for drawing businesses like the 500-megawatt power plant proposed for South Walpole.
The “any other lawful use” language, “keeps Walpole at the center of the bull’s-eye” for unappealing industrial projects, Selectman Vice Chairman Cliff Snuffer has said in the past.
Over the summer, the Zoning Bylaw Use Table Rewrite Committee – a 15-member, Selectmen-appointed body – voted 9-2 to attach the article that, if approved by the necessary two-thirds of Town Meeting, will remove the phrase from the use table.
The ANR plan would “keep the door open to a local process,” Kelly said.
The passage of the zoning amendment, Kelly said, meanwhile, would “essentially close the door to our going through a process in the town. There’s no venue except the siting council at that point.”
Kelly was referring to the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board – the group that decides the fate of all power plant projects throughout the state.
If the Competitive Power doesn’t get approved by Walpole’s boards, CPV could conceivably go to the siting board to reverse the town’s decision and bypass local control, said Tim Shevlin, executive director of the Department of Public Utilities.
“And frankly, that just not where we want to be,” he added. Though he stressed the company wasn’t “entertaining” that move right now, he said, “we’re not going away.”
Jeb Bobseine can be reached at jeb@walpoletimes.com or 508-668-0243, ext. 13.
