5-5-07

Walpole Voters Reject Conservation Easement

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Ballam Farm Preservation in Doubt

By Chuck Bingaman, Contributing Writer

            Walpole voters Saturday rejected a proposal put forward by its Conservation Commission and Selectmen to finance a conservation easement on 52 acres of land off Rt. 12 and to purchase outright 8 acres of wellhead protection land in an adjourned session of the March town meeting.

            While the proposal attracted 205 votes in favor against 166 opposed, it failed to get the two-thirds affirmative vote needed under state law when towns are seeking to borrow money.  “It’s a shame,” said Selectman Sheldon Sawyer, “because so many people have worked so long and hard in putting together the proposal over the last year.”

            One hundred and six North Walpole voters registered for ballots at Saturday’s meeting (as compared to about 30 at its Village Meeting in March), and it appeared that the great majority of them opposed to the proposal.  But clearly some voters from other areas of Walpole opposed the proposal as well as showed by the final tally.

            Conservation Commission chairman Gary Speed had explained the purposes of the proposed purchase as twofold: to buy for the town a little more protective land around one of the town’s main drinking water wells and to protect in perpetuity a piece of high quality farm land from any possible use other than farming.  He quoted the Commission’s 2006 Walpole resident survey that found that 86% of respondents favored taking steps to protect the town’s drinking water aquifers and 88% favored protecting existing farmland from development. 

Speed said that Commission members and Selectmen had, in fact, changed the proposal in recent weeks to respond to concerns raised in the public bond hearing in April.   First, in response to objections from North Walpole voters that it would tax them for protecting a well that they do not use, the Selectmen had withdrawn from the proposal the purchase of the wellhead land by arranging, instead, for the Walpole Water Department to buy it out of existing surplus. Second, Speed said that Marques Lovell-Smith, who had a right of first refusal on any future sale of the land to a farmer, had relinquished that right so that the future auction of the land would be guaranteed to go to the highest qualified public bidder.  This responded to an objection voiced by some in the agricultural community that they really would have no realistic opportunity to acquire the land with the easement limiting it to farming.

            Despite those concessions, a heatedly vocal minority spoke against the proposal and, at times, tried to shout down the moderator, Ernie Vose.  Proponents of the plan urged passage to provide long-term protection of valuable food-growing area and to protect the water supply.  Passionate opponents objected to raising the necessary taxes, even the estimated “worse case” of $18 per year per hundred thousand of assessed valuation over ten years.  Other objectors argued that the town should save the money and rely on its Zoning and Planning Boards to prevent unwelcome development in the area.

            Jackie Caserta, proprietor of  The Inn at Valley Farms in Walpole, argued “we’re being hit more and more often with development proposals that are harder and harder to avoid.  This is beautiful and important farmland.  For only $18 per year per thousand dollars of valuation for ten years at the most, we can protect this land forever.  Come on, people,” she urged, “don’t be short-sighted!”

            In other town business, voters rejected by voice vote a proposal to “throw up” a section of Cochran Rd., a Class 6 road currently owned by the town.  Landowners had complained that four-wheel driver vehicles had damaged the road and that it should be given back to abutting owners so they could control it more effectively.

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