Pepperell Planning Board Endorses National Road Subdivision Over Public Objections

PEPPERELL — October 29, 2018 — Pepperell Planning Board endorses a contested National Road subdivision as joint noise ordinance session ends without action. Meeting jointly with the Board of Health on October 29, the Planning Board voted 2-0 with one abstention to endorse an approval-not-required plan submitted by Mass Composting Group Incorporated, splitting 141 to 163 National Road into a 42-acre Lot 1 and a 7-acre Lot 2 in the Industrial High district; engineer Matt Waterman of Land Tech Consultants presented the plan, and the board corrected a minor abutter-address error — belonging to a board member — directly on the plan before voting. The bulk of the evening was consumed by a joint session on a resident-drafted noise ordinance that drew written objections from Police Chief Scott, Health Agent Kaylee Magendran, Building Inspector Robert Kelly, and Planning Board member Al Patnaud, all of whom called the draft too complex and too restrictive to enforce, with Patnaud noting the draft's own appendices show common construction tools exceeding its proposed limits. Planning adviser Lisa Davis said the state standard under 310 CMR 7.0 — no more than 10 decibels above ambient — is already stricter than what most comparable communities adopt, while the draft proposes a 5-decibel-over-ambient ceiling, and that perhaps only 20 to 30 Massachusetts communities have any noise ordinance at all. Resident drafters and neighbors of the National Road reclamation project urged the boards to treat the document as a starting point rather than reject it outright, with Renee D'Argento of 18 Prospect Street arguing that "the world is getting noisier" and existing state rules are insufficient.