committee reports: land use, water, materials, energy

[Jim Snyder-Grant]

Land Use report May 2024

landuse...@greenacton.org

The Land Use Committee (LUC) of Green Acton will meet next on Wednesday May 29th from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. Please email us for the zoom link if you would like to attend. All are welcome.

The LUC is currently focusing its attention on advocating for strong new bylaws aimed at significantly limiting land clearing and tree clearing in Acton.  Since our advocacy began, the town has begun considering two zoning changes to be voted on at 2025 Town Meeting. They are:   

1) A Tree preservation bylaw that might include protection of trees of a certain size, land clearing limits within residential zoning setbacks, land clearing delays for commercial development and landing clearing limits for new residential development

2) Habitat for All - a zoning proposal that the town claims will, "pair zoning with sustaUseinability, provide approaches to achieve housing affordability and accessibility, address land protection, and support households of all incomes."

The LUC is communicating with Acton's Green Advisory Board to gain clarity on the town's intentions and goals regarding the proposed zoning, and to gain an understanding about what specific and enforceable mechanisms the town is open to employing to reach these goals. The Land Use Committee already has-- and plans to continue-- to provide input to the town to help ensure that these proposed bylaws, if passed, truly accomplish the goal of protecting Acton's fragile land and trees.

Water Committee May report
water-...@greenacton.org

from Kim Kastens

Water Committee met on Saturday May 11, in hybrid format, with 8 people in attendance, including two ABRHS volunteers.

We heard brief report outs on:  the Town Open Space & Recreation Plan, the 53 River Street Dam project, library publicity of the Soil Testing kit via video on their Facebook page, water-related articles at Acton and Concord Town Meetings, and upcoming public input opportunity for the Hazard Mitigation Plan. Kim read (with permission) several emails from Ron Parenti recalling the time in history when the Acton Water District had the most stringent requirements in the country for concentration of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in drinking water, in the aftermath of the WR Grace crisis.  

On the road salt / conductivity project, student volunteer Katarina Spasojevic presented the results of her analysis of the first two months of continuously recorded specific conductance from Nashoba Brook. She combined conductivity data from the sensor installed by Green Acton and OARS, with stream flow data recorded by the US Geological Survey, with a conductivity-chloride concentration calibration curve created by OARS to determine how much chloride is being carried by Nashoba Brook during each 15 minute interval of the data collection period.  Chloride is relevant because all the various types of road salt contain chloride.  Although the analysis is not complete, it seems that episodes of high streamflow (which can follow either rainfall or snowmelt events) are associated with peaks in chloride load.  During such events, the measured conductivity is diluted by freshwater, but the volume of water is so high that the load of salt carried goes up.  This is compatible with road salt as the pollution source.

Also on the road salt project, we began to brainstorm what the advocacy ask might be as this project matures.  We identified parking lot deicer application as a potential leverage point because, (a) vehicles move slowly in parking lots, so the safety issue is not so daunting, (b) the spatial distribution of high conductivity spots in Acton/Westford seems to be associated with large commercial parking lots, and (c) plowing contractors may have less incentive to calibrate their salt application process than cost-sensitive municipalities.  This problem needs to be tackled on a watershed-wide or state-wide scale rather than in Acton alone, so working with OARS is a strong strategy, with the Acton data as input into an evidence-informed advocacy approach. 

On the phosphate project, we brainstormed strategies for incentivizing fertilizer vendors and users to follow the state regulations regarding use of zero-phosphate fertilizer.  A missing piece of information was the relative cost of zero-P and P-containing fertilizer;  can we make the case to vendors that they will can make more money while staying on the right side of the law by encouraging use of zero-P fertilizer?  Our fertilizer team of Carolyn Kiely and Shakara Rao will research this.  Carolyn and Shankara will also seek input from landscapers for a large Acton condominium complex about how they make decisions about what kind of fertilizer to apply and in what quantity. 

Continuing with the phosphate project, we have scheduled our phosphate sampling campaign for June 19. Our 2024 budget includes funds for lab analysis of phosphate content in ten water samples.  June is prime fertilizer-using season. June 19 is the date of OARS watershed-wide sampling, and by taking our ten densely-spaced samples on that day, we’ll be able to contextualize our data into the bigger picture provided by the OARS data.  Two additional Water Committee members — Shankara Rao and Brewster Conant Jr — trained as OARS water quality monitors during OARS 2024 training session, so we have more flexibility than in previous years for forming our field party.  At our May meeting, we looked at maps and developed criteria for choosing sites for the ten samples.  We want samples from places that we think will be minimally polluted, sites downstream from agricultural areas, and sites downstream from potential areas of septic failure.  The phosphate team will finalize a suggested set of sampling locations in time for discussion at the June 9 Water Committee meeting.

Materials Committee

May Green Acton Materials Committee Report

material...@greenacton.org

Fifth Green Acton Fixit Clinic is coming up at the Acton Memorial Library this Saturday 5-18-24 from 10 AM - 1 PM. We are collaborating with the Sustainability Department and AML on applying for a Mass. DEP Reduce, Reuse, Repair Micro Grant. The grant for up to $10,000 would expand the AML “Library of Things.” The expansion would enable residents to use tools in the Library, probably housed at the Red House, and Fixit Clinic coaches to use the tools at our events. Six coaches made suggestions for tools and instruments that will make it easier for Actonians to repair and reuse their items instead of discarding them.

Green Acton Clean-up Week occurred 4-22-24 through 4-28-24.About 60 volunteers, including 11 High School Seniors, the Acton Chinese American Civic Association, and the Shine a Light youth organization. For our efforts, we cleared 7,000 sq ft of garlic mustard; removed 10 cubic yards of litter; and about 5 cubic yards of recyclable bottles, cans, scrap plastic and scrap metal. We are grateful to WasteZero for their donation of 1,000 bags. We have enough for next year too! Need to connect with Scouts, other civic groups, faith congregations, etc. In general, we found a low density of litter. Did we miss any? How to locate? Several questions we still have: Would a Google Form work better than Sign-up Genius? —How to keep track of where we found invasive garlic mustard plants (GMP’s), so we know where to go back next year? —What is the best protocol for letting residents know about GMP’s on their private property and offering to eradicate them? —Tracking: Worth submitting results to Garlic Mustard Challenge in NH? —Is it worth signing up with Keep Massachusetts Beautiful for the Great Mass Clean-up? Dues required. Also KMB “tainted” with money from soft drink & tobacco companies whose strategy is to blame the litter bug, not the producer. But they are experts on getting cheap letter pickers, safety vests, pocket cigarette butt holders and more. —How to make sources of the litter, i.e. Dunkin, Starbucks, liquor stores do a better job of getting their customers to recycle or responsibly dispose of their used materials, or instead to fund a bigger pick-up squad? —Hard to keep recyclables separate from litter and clean enough not to contaminate recycling. Need for on-going recycling volunteers, who would bring home recyclables from Acton Parks and Recreation areas and recycle them with their residential recyclables?

Cheers, Rob Gogan

Green Acton Materials Chair

Energy Committee

energy-...@greenacton.org

Here’s a brief update of Energy Committee topics:
1. APC promotion with Debra - 2 more lawn signs and possibly posting flyers at South Acton stores
2. GLB phaseout - now referred to Select Board
3. Encouraging more solar installations - met with David Kleinschmidt, and could be good partnership for commercial applications. Also want to push Historic District to be less restrictive
4. MA electric grid investigation - needs a driver to move it along
5. Anti-Idling - still chasing down old signs, Debra working on social media post, and Paul may be driver after GLB done
6. Hanscom expansion - Select Board sending letter stating opposition.
7. School Battery Issue -  need update on BOH vote
8. ABFM 6/23 & 9/15 - will provide APC and Anti-idling info

For more information, please contact me or see meeting minutes in google drive:

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1hcZTF6ks15ROHMG5MlmgH9IxtriiVLRN