The smell of pine pitch is heavy on the breeze as logging proceeds across 34 acres off Hedges Pond Road to clear land and cut in an access road for a new Cedarville business park.
But opponents of the project aren’t giving up. They have appealed building and earth removal permits issued for the project, asking for construction to stop and to require the town to seek an independent archeological study to assess the site.
“You talk about economic development, but in reality it is just widespread destruction of ecosystems,” Miciah Stasis, a member of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe who grew up in Plymouth, told the Select Board last month. Stasis was seeking members’ support to stop the project, which they did not offer.
“I am here not only to represent those in my family who are buried beneath the land, but also to speak for the voices that are often ignored. The four-legged, the winged, and our tree relatives whose homes are being destroyed,” Stasis said.
Stasis is one of 13 people who filed the appeal. They include members of the Herring Pond, Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag tribes and other residents of the area. The group is represented by attorney and environmental activist Margaret Sheehan.
At several public meetings on the project, residents have voiced opposition on grounds the earth removal and clear-cutting of much of the site would degrade the environment and threaten the region’s water supply. Those concerns are restated in the appeal, along with the assertion that state law requires an archeological study before land can be disturbed.
“The petitioners are aggrieved because they will suffer harm including destruction of historic resources and the unceded ancestral lands of the Wampanoag people and historic resources of the town and region,” Sheehan wrote in the appeal.
The first building permit approved for the park allows for a 176,000-square-foot warehouse with multiple loading docks. The rest of the park will include a 75,000-square-foot recreational facility with two ice hockey rinks, and two 20,000-square-foot buildings suitable for wholesale operations, potentially a lumber yard. Building the park also involves removing 270,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel.
Attorney Robb D’Ambruoso, who represents the developer, Standish Investment Group, said the project has been fully vetted by the Plymouth Planning Board and Department of Inspectional Services, and that all permits needed for construction are in hand, so there is no reason to pause the site work.
Soon after the logging work began, Plymouth Police received several complaints that work was continuing past the approved time frame of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. Jason Silva, the town’s director of inspectional services, told the Independent by email that the 3 p.m. end time is for the earth removal activity, which has not started yet. Logging and stump grinding are not subject to that restriction and are allowed from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Silva wrote.
While opponents of the project want the town to halt site work until their appeal is heard, that is not likely to happen.
“The hearing will happen in front of the ZBA and we will take next steps from there,” Casey Kennedy, Plymouth’s communications coordinator, wrote in an email to the Independent when asked about shutting the work down before the hearing.
The case is scheduled to be heard by the Zoning Board of Appeals at Town Hall on March 17.
Michael Cohen can be reached at michael@plymouthindependent.org.