Pepperell Planning Board endorses ANR plan to protect land between the rivers

PEPPERELL — April 27, 2017 — Pepperell Planning Board unanimously endorses ANR plan dividing town-owned land between the Nissitissit and Nashua Rivers. The board held a special meeting April 27, called at the request of the town administrator to accelerate a closing the town is targeting before year's end. Engineer Stan Dillis of Dushan and Dillis presented the plan, which separates a senior center envelope, active farmland, and roughly 35 acres of forested floodplain; Ann Gannon of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service attended as the prospective buyer of the forested acreage. The agricultural land will be permanently restricted under the state's Agricultural Preservation Restriction program, while the Fish and Wildlife parcel will carry Article 97 constitutional protection. The transaction also satisfies a long-standing mitigation obligation created when the town built the Nissitissit Middle School on displaced farmland, a debt one speaker described as having gone unresolved for years.