The Colorful History of Shutesbury’s Lot O-32

 

Garage on Lot O-32, Circa 2012 
Photo Credit: Larry Kelley, Only in the Republic of Amherst

There are two town-owned lots under consideration as locations for a proposed new Shutesbury library. One is the roughly 22-acre area behind the Town Hall, which voters at the 2021 Annual Town Meeting approved for use as community gardens. The second site, comprising about 21 acres, is located across the street from Shutesbury’s Public Works Department. Formerly street address 66 Leverett Road, lot O-32 is the favorite in the race to site a new town library.

Under the terms of the Small Library Pilot Program, a building site must be chosen by mid-October. Much activity has taken place on both these lots due to this timeline, such as targeted soil sampling, percolation tests, and water testing. 

For Lot O-32, environmental concerns are particularly important. Over the years, this land has been used as a vehicle repair shop and a landscaping business/gravel pit, as well as an unofficial dumping site. Acres of topsoil were removed and sold, and various items were buried on the property. Contamination issues have plagued this lot for years. The Town of Shutesbury inherited these problems when it bought the parcel in 2004.

The property has an interesting history, which I have put together from town documents, Registry of Deeds documents, a site feasibility study, and conversations with townsfolk familiar with the property.

2004: Shutesbury Gets to the Table a Bit Late

Lot O-32 was owned by the Kosuda family from the 1940s to the time of its sale to the Taylor family in 1972. The land stayed in the Taylor family until its sale to Amherst developer Barry Roberts on April 4, 2004, for $80,000.

On July 20, 2004, the Shutesbury Finance Committee and Select Board were discussing, in executive session, whether the town should buy the parcel. Emerging from this closed session, all members voted to purchase the lot “if it is proven affordable and feasible.”

By early August of 2004, FinCom discussed paying for testing of the soil surrounding a buried gasoline tank that Mr. Roberts had decided to unearth. While not yet knowing the extent of possible contamination on the site, the committee members discussed how to finance the $212,500 purchase price, which would include some borrowing and the use of some of the town’s reserve funds. 

The town proceeded with plans to ask taxpayers to fund this purchase, which would net Mr. Roberts a profit of $132,500 for merely owning this property for almost six months.

In the Autumn 2004 edition of Our Town, Shutesbury officials put their case to the voters, saying that the “parcel has recently changed hands” and inferring that only now is there an opportunity for the town to purchase this lot. Their reasoning was that the town was running out of storage space and, although there were no concrete plans for its use at the time, they were “certain that the land will be used to facilitate smart growth and enhanced services in the years ahead.”

As we now know, none of these things happened.

Contamination, Cleanup, and More Money

I wondered why Shutesbury did not purchase this parcel directly from the sellers in the spring of 2004, but I could find no documents on that subject. Nor could I find any evidence of a report on the results of the gas tank testing. One would expect that the tests were negative since the town proceeded to purchase the land.

This was not the case.

Within a few years of purchasing Lot O-32, the town was actively investigating contamination at the Fire Station. By mid-2009, the town had queried Cold Spring Environmental Consultants about evaluating the level of “Oil and Hazardous Materials” contamination at that site. A fresh leak from an underground tank had contaminated “neighboring wetlands”, prompting the town to consider a loan from the state to aid with cleanup costs.

By the spring of 2010, Shutesbury had met with the MA Department of Environmental Protection and hired a company called O’Reilly, Talbot & Okun Associates to do borings and other environmental tests. There is mention of a loan taken out by Shutesbury from the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Fund to finance cleanup work. Minutes from a November 2010 Finance Committee meeting identify the loan amount as $200,000.

The loan appears to be for the Fire Station cleanup only. Both the Fire Station and Lot O-32 had buried gas tanks, but I couldn’t find any information about the tank unearthed by Barry Roberts before the town purchased the land. There were actually two underground tanks, the other holding petroleum, as noted below. There was no mention of this tank at the aforementioned Fincom meeting, however.

By early 2012, problems at both properties were ongoing. Piles of debris, still present on Lot O-32, needed to be evaluated and soil testing was still needed where a “barrel” was unearthed. As for the Fire Station, the 2014 Shutesbury Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan noted that the cleanup was continuing on a “fifty-year timetable”.

Also in 2012, the town was apprised of the presence of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) on Lot O-32 in concentrations high enough to spark an Immediate Response Action due to the location within 500 feet of drinking water wells. The report speaks to work performed by Cold Spring Environmental Consultants from late 2011 to early 2012 as well as testing done by Oil Recovery, Inc. Also mentioned are “locations of one former underground fuel oil tank and one former underground gasoline tank that were removed from the property in 2004” as well as “a large debris pile to the south of the (garage) building which contained one 55 gallon drum partially filled with petroleum, metal, wood, tires, plastic and automotive parts.”

Photo Credit: Larry Kelley, Only in the Republic of Amherst

In 2019, the Town commissioned the Conway School of Landscape Design to perform a Site Feasibility Study to assess practical uses of Lot O-32, including a determination regarding which areas were developable. By then the issue of site contamination on Lot O-32 seemed to be resolved.

More testing has been done recently, for two reasons. One is the Small Library Pilot Program, to which Shutesbury has applied to be considered for a library construction grant. Town officials decided to do additional testing on Lot O-32 to convince Shutesbury residents that contamination problems were no longer a concern.

The other is due to the discovery of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in wells near and around the Fire Department on Leverett Road and a smaller number in the Wendell and Locks Pond Road area.

In addition to well testing, more cleanup work was done on Lot O-32 this summer. A 1,404 square foot garage building was demolished and the debris disposed of in anticipation of a site visit in August by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. At a Finance Committee meeting on July 20, the town was planning to use nearly $15,000 from the Waste Disposal account for this purpose--though our Town Administrator opined that the cost might be higher and she would likely have to draw money from “other accounts”.

Presently, there is lots of activity on Lot O-32. Two roll-offs are being filled with waste hitherto ignored, and there appears to be well-drilling apparatus on the property.

Were the wetlands on this parcel contaminated by the 2009 gasoline leak at the Fire Station? What will town officials find as they continue to load refuse into dumpsters to be hauled away? What is this activity costing us, the town’s taxpayers? And, the million-dollar question: Did anyone from the Town of Shutesbury walk this land and perform due diligence before closing on this property on September 28, 2004?

After spending $212,500 on the lot itself, plus known cleanup costs of at least $15,000 and unknown costs of years-long remediation efforts, we will be allowed by the Small Library Pilot Program to allocate an unknown portion of the lot’s assessed value of $99,000 “up to a defined maximum” toward the town’s 25% of eligible costs for a new library. Does this sound like a good deal for Shutesbury taxpayers? 

Weekly Factoids:

 

Number of new chemicals submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency’s New Chemical Review Program for review between fiscal years 1979 and 2016: 54,592

Source: United States Environmental Protection Agency

 

Number of known PFAS compounds: 9,000

Number used in the U.S.: 600