Amherst Solar Farm meets Jerry Springer show!

The only thing missing among the crowd who jammed the town's solar farm public forum Wednesday night was bullhorns, pitchforks and torches. Perhaps a better headline would be: "When NIMBYs attack."

Yes amazingly enough these restless natives who purchases expensive homes next to an old unlined landfill are worried a commercial solar array will ruin their property values. After all, real estate agents promised them the landfill would remain open space for 99 years. And if you can't trust real estate agents who can you trust? Used car salesmen perhaps?

The complaints aired ran the typical gambit: noise, visual pollution, losing open space to walk the dog and go sledding, turning the neighborhood into another "Love Canal" and--my favorite--Russia dealing with Chernobyl compared to the way Amherst town government is now going about the process. Yikes!

Kind of far fetched to claim the solar array will cause damage to the landfill cap when DEP will have to approved it after exhaustive study and the expert the town is partnering with, John DeVillars is a former New England Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

A couple years ago Town Meeting was going to award Guilford Mooring "Mr. Congeniality" for his patient, good natured, humorous way of presenting DPW issues to that legislative body. So for him going Postal, says a lot...

Voter poll on Localocracy (looking like a landslide)

The Daily Collegian reports

And so it goes...

High noon


Yes, venerable Amherst Town Hall is closed. But the DPW is going great guns (if I dare use that metaphor these days) as is the Police and Fire Departments. Interesting how it's those on the lower end of the payscale who are considered "essential personnel."

Lemons to lemonade

The old landfill (capped and lined)

DPW chief Guilford Mooring opened up sealed Request For Proposal bids this morning at 11:00 for reuse of the Old Landfill on Old Farms Road. All four bids concerned solar panel farms which take advantage of the large open space and do not require employees on site, who may be put off but the whiff of methane.

Two years ago the town rejected the only bidder proposing a 2.5 megawatt solar energy farm due to low annual lease payments (under $20,000). Today's proposals are potentially far better because of state and federal incentives private companies can now utilize.

Benefits to the town include annual lease payments, hefty property tax payments since the landfill operation would be taxable, and a source of potentially cheap energy.

Although neighbors on Larkspur Drive will not doubt complain about anything getting approved near their exclusive enclave.

Free at last, free at last

So the Spring Street reconstruction, started last June by our DPW, is almost complete as vehicles can now freely pass to and fro. Private contractors are still busy on the Lord Jeff Inn renovation project and a sidewalk (paid for by Amherst College) is still to go in along the south side of Spring street nearest to the historic inn, scheduled for reopening this spring.
Engineering wing collecting final survey information for the reconstruction of the upper parking lot, where the Farmers Market will be displaced for, gasp, six weeks this spring.

Failsafe

So as I pointed out on Saturday when I was the only reporter to show up at the Amherst Police Station turned War Room to observe the coordination of officials from various fiefdoms handling what could have been a major health alert, Princess Stephanie reaffirmed on Monday night that indeed public officials were on edge. As well they should have been.

Twice now in the past 13 months--both events at most inopportune times--the town has undergone this public health scare. If I were a terrorist trying to maximize damage from sabotaging the public water supply in Amherst, I would probably choose Labor Day weekend when the students return in waves (last year) or the first ever Phish concert at the Mullins Center (this year) which brought an extra 20,000 people to the town.

Unfortunately the Town Manager reported to the Select Board that we may "never know" the cause of the false coliform and E. coli positives (but then, how do we know they were false?)


The Springfield Republican reports

Feed me

Out with the old (right), in with the new (center)

Amherst took one giant leap into the space age of trash removal by installing solar powered trash collectors in the downtown. The $4,000 units, purchased with a state energy grant, hold about 5 times the amount of normal trash. A built in sensor detects when full and then engages the compacting phase. And it's powered by solar cells located on the top of the unit. Thus saving labor and space at the landfill.

Downside is you can't practice basketball with crumpled paper like you can with the basic $100 receptacles because you have to grab the handle and open the unit, which some germphobes may find a bit disconcerting.

Amherst dodges another bullet

Epilogue: So here it is 9:15 PM and my friends at the Springfield Republican still have not covered this rather important piece of news. Umass sent out perhaps 15,000 emails to staff and students yesterday and posted the potentially catastrophic news on their main website as did the town of Amherst at about 3:30 PM and it took both the Gazette and Republican till almost midnight to get it up on their websites. Inexcusable.

And only now at this late hour has the Gazette put up a "breaking" news story telling readers that boiling water is not necessary. It broke...a long time ago.

Town officials disappointed me a tad as well. They obviously knew I--the only reporter who took enough interest to show up-- was sitting out in the hallway waiting for the results, which they had around 1:15 PM.

I actually thought I heard clapping in the room about that time but it was muffled and a young college student who was waiting to report a stolen Mac laptop was distracting me. At 1:20 PM they send out the reverse 911 robocall from Town Manager John Musante saying the coast is clear. Info Tech Director Kris Pacunas had told me earlier that it only takes a few seconds to make that happen. Then at 1:31 PM the town website is updated with the news. SB Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe even emailed a few folks at 1:40 PM to give them the news. Meanwhile I'm pacing the hallway ten feet away worried I'll get a parking ticket. As Rodney Dangerfield would say, "I don't get no respect!"
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Liveblog: Arrived Police Station town center 11:45 AM

UPDATE: 1:47 PM Water tested safe. I'll drink to that!

12:04 We will know any minute now.

Town officials are hunkered down in the war room: new phones brought in, a couple hardwired computers (for Internet, since the anticipated results will be emailed). Stephanie O'Keeffe Select Board Chair and Town Manager John Musante just arrived. Guilford Mooring DPW Chief, has been here for a while. Fire and police officials of course (we are, after all, at the Police Station.) Kris Pacunas, Director of Technology.

12:17 PM Still waiting out in the lobby. Yeah, they threw me out of the war room.

12:24 PM Dave Ziomek, Conservation Chief, just left the room saying he was "the runner."

12:26 PM He just returned, and I asked if the "Results were in?". "No", he replied

12:47 PM Still nada. And my battery is running low. Wonder if they're serving coffee in there?

12:58 PM GRRrrrrrrr...

1:14 PM I just noticed the change the time on the town website to say after 1:00 PM for info up from 12:30 PM. Not sure what the hell is taking so long.

1:

Not to mention that other $275,000

So if you watch our illustrious town leaders, otherwise known as the Chair of the Select Board and the Town Manager you would think the only thing given Atkins Country Market (a perennial top-ten employer in town) for a little bit of land required to complete a huge, expensive infrastructure improvement project in their front yard was this modest property tax break: $79,000 over the next ten years.

Of course the Select Board just a few months back approved the last beer-and-wine license in town to Atkins (a somewhat low-cost license to mint money.) And the town is also currently in the process of giving them another $275,000: $258,000 worth of paving to their private parking lot courtesy of the DPW, plus $17,000 in cash.

Umm, must have just slipped their minds.

Cherry Hill Golf Course: Municipal bloodsucker

Bad enough the golf course produces more red ink than a Chinese flag factory, but now they're sucking the lifeblood from other departments.

Because the foundering LSSE Recreation Empire is down ten$ of thousand$ they can't afford to spruce up the golf course, so the Town Manager orders the DPW Parks and Recreation Department to drop everything, run out to North Amherst and get the business ready for its Grand Opening (in two days.)

Forget the town common, the ball fields, or the soccer fields; in the People's Republic of Amherst when a White Elephant bellows--you run!

On a losing course at the half way point

"Ich bin ein" NIMBY!

Okay, so as you tell from the photo taken from my private driveway the DPW fortress is within spitting distance of my abode. So anything I say should be taken with a truckload of salt. But I'll say it anyway.

Sure, the idea of having round-the-clock shifts (4 a.m. to noon, noon to 8 p.m. 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.) to create cost efficiencies makes perfect sense--on paper. Just like an engineer can demonstrate, on paper, that bees cannot fly.

Last year snow and ice removal was over $200-k and much of the work was done by workers garnering overtime. Under the new system, crews would be on duty anyway and thus only be receiving regular pay.

The union last week voted not to give up their negotiated COLAs next year. The 38 men and women are some of the lowest paid town workers and those raises would only amount to the salary of one employee. Besides, the Town Manager refused to guarantee no-layoffs even if they did give up their raises. Not much incentive there.

While police, fire, and emergency dispatch are 24/7 operations Public Safety employees knew that when they signed on. The DPW workers, some who have worked many, many years built their lives around a normal work schedule. So not only will morale plummet, but safety as well. As the sign once displayed in the garage area window said: "Warning: Every machine in this place can hurt you."

Digging ditches is hard enough during normal hours, I can't fathom doing it routinely in the middle of night.

The Bully reports:

Consonance and Dissonance

Amherst Cinema this morning
Amherst DPW this morning

Let the sun shine

So the Town Manager wants to experiment with two photovoltaic solar panels, one on the DPW and another at the transfer station at a cost of $24,000 but will produce twice that amount in savings over the five year buy-out period.

Almost sounds too good to be true.

But I can’t help but wonder if the Town Manager went before the Planning Board, Zoning Board, Design Review Board and Historical Commission to get approval for the placement on the roof of the DPW building, which was originally the turn-of-the-century main Trolley station.

The Springfield Republican reports