Category: Cape Cod Coastal Resiliency

Barn­sta­ble Vil­lage Asso­ci­a­tion Newslet­ter:
I have been talk­ing with the Barn­sta­ble Vil­lage Asso­ci­a­tion and more specif­i­cal­ly Sue Eleft­her­akis, who has tak­en over their newslet­ter.  We have decid­ed that their newslet­ter will be focused on local vil­lage events and keep­ing every­one up to date on what dif­fer­ent groups are offer­ing.  I would like to focus more on issues that con­cern Barn­sta­ble Vil­lage, Cum­maquid and the wider town, along with town events and meet­ings that are of inter­est to res­i­dents.  Thanks to Sue for tak­ing this on.  If you have an event you would like to be in the BVA newslet­ter con­tact Sue in the next week for her Sep­tem­ber 1 newslet­ter. 
http://suekurz25@gmail.com

Office Hours:  I have restart­ed office hours at Stur­gis Library, the first Wednes­day of the month, 3:00–5:00.  Come by with you ques­tions and com­ments on any ideas or thoughts you’d like to dis­cuss.  The next day is: Sep­tem­ber 6th.  Five res­i­dents showed up to talk about issues includ­ing bury­ing elec­tric lines,  jet noise, water sup­ply and firetruck access.

Town Coun­cil Meet­ing:    The next Town Coun­cil Meet­ing is August 17th at 7:00.

Sur­vey­ing:  The two sur­vey crews work­ing on 6A west of the Vil­lage have fin­ished their work. I will set up a meet­ing with the Mass. Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion before they begin side­walk design, so we can learn what their guide­lines are for width, ramps and gran­ite curbing.….

Wilkens Lane Hous­ing:  The Fire Depart­ment has been doing inspec­tions and walk-throughs dur­ing con­struc­tion and the water has been turned on in build­ing #1.  As for oth­er build­ings on adja­cent land, there have been no offi­cial fil­ings or inquiries that I am aware of.

The Barn­sta­ble Fire Dis­trict Water Depart­ment 
I try to get to every Water Dis­trict meet­ing (the sec­ond Tues­day  the month at 2:30 at the water Dis­trict offices.)  The fire hydrant was replaced in front of the Cape Cod Organ­ic Farm. The plans for the new water treat­ment plant are being fin­ished and reviewed.  The con­tract for con­struc­tion should be award­ed by the end of Octo­ber.  With some major redesigns, Super­in­ten­dent, Sean Ander­son, has kept this process mov­ing quick­ly so we do not lose our place for low inter­est loans from the State.
One reminder is to keep an eye and ear on your toi­lets as leaks can run up your water bill. For some this has cost hun­dreds of dol­lars. Kim checks for meter read­ings that are anom­alies but the meters are only read every three months.

Indi­an Trail Road.
Work­ing with res­i­dents and the DPW, signs will be installed soon to lim­it park­ing to one side of the road down near the beach.  There are con­cerns with pub­lic safe­ty and the inabil­i­ty of emer­gency vehi­cles access­ing the end of the road.

Scud­der’s Lane Ramp
This plan is close to being fin­ished but it is present­ly at the state lev­el for review of the place­ment of the ADA ramp.  As soon as we can we will set up a pub­lic meet­ing to review the plans.

Oak Street Trans­former Sta­tion
Ever­source is in the mid­dle of a Mid-Cape Reli­a­bil­i­ty Project.  This includes the addi­tion of anoth­er high-ten­sion wire from the Cape Cod Canal to Oak Street.  The site on Oak Street will be devel­oped in the next few weeks to accom­mo­date this line.  Here is a way to link to the con­struc­tion time­line and the Project Web­site:
https://www.eversource.com/content/residential/about/transmission-distribution/projects/massachusetts-projects/mid-cape-reliability-project

One Cape Con­fer­ence: July 31 and August 1
This year­ly, two day, con­fer­ence spon­sored by the Cape Cod Com­mis­sion brings togeth­er town plan­ners, munic­i­pal lead­ers, State pol­i­cy mak­ers and those inter­est­ed on learn­ing more about the plan­ning efforts by dif­fer­ent towns.  The C. C. Com­mis­sion also brought in speak­ers from dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try to share their dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on hous­ing devel­op­ment, trans­porta­tion, water infra­struc­ture and cli­mate change. 

The Vine­yard Wind sub­sta­tion along with it’s con­struc­tion ship
Wind Farm Boat Tour
I was invit­ed, along with about 100 munic­i­pal lead­ers, State leg­is­la­tors, union work­ers and press to tour the progress of the Vine­yard Wind, wind farm, 14 miles south of the Vine­yard. This trip was spon­sored by the Envi­ron­men­tal League of Mass. and Avan­grid. The con­struc­tion project is now in full for­ward mode as most of the com­po­nents are ready at the dock in New Bed­ford.  We saw 6 wind­mill bases already con­struct­ed and the rest of the 62 in total will be done by the mid­dle of Sep­tem­ber.  We also saw the large sub­sta­tion, about 7 sto­ries high, that will be the con­duit for all of the cables as they con­nect to the main­land. Soon a spe­cial ship will begin installing the vanes, fin­ish­ing one wind­mill a day!  The plan is to have pow­er gen­er­at­ed by the end of Octo­ber.  This project is one of the inte­gral parts of the State’s goal of reduc­ing our use of green­house gas­es.
Com­mon­wealth Wind (Craigville Beach) and Park City Wind(Osterville), are the two remain­ing wind pro­pos­als,  There are many ques­tions and con­cerns still to be worked out with these two projects. Stay tuned.

New Police Offi­cers
I recent­ly got to join in a cel­e­bra­tion for three new Barn­sta­ble Police offi­cers as they were sworn in by Town Clerk, Ann Quirk at the Police Sta­tion.  I got to meet the three, expe­ri­enced, ded­i­cat­ed  and enthu­si­as­tic new recruits.  We should all thank them for being will­ing to serve and strength­en­ing our pub­lic safety.

Town Coun­cil: Strate­gic Plan Meet­ing, August 10.
I will men­tion a few impor­tant issues brought up, but it was not the best forum for revis­it­ing and rewrit­ing a strate­gic plan for the next two years.  I brought up a num­ber of items that will need more time and dis­cus­sion.  Hope­ful­ly the Town Coun­cil can hold some “work­shops”, i.e. sec­tions of a a reg­u­lar meet­ing to dis­cuss them in more depth. 

#  Since the Barn­sta­ble Town Coun­cil passed a pol­i­cy to “Reduce Net Green­house Gas Emis­sions” in Novem­ber of 2020,  adap­tion and mit­i­ga­tion should be the lens through which we make all deci­sions.
#  We need to have clear zon­ing reg­u­la­tions in place before we start hook­ing up to the sew­ers.  We also need to have spe­cif­ic num­bers as to how much efflu­ent can be put in to the ground and where.
#  I sug­gest­ed a Water Qual­i­ty Advi­so­ry  Com­mit­tee be devel­oped to include Town Coun­cilors and res­i­dents to learn about and get peri­od­ic updates on con­struc­tion and plan­ning. The Com­pre­hen­sive Waste­water Man­age­ment Plan (CWMP), was devel­oped to be and should be an iter­a­tive, evolv­ing process.
#  The Town should pri­or­i­tize the com­ple­tion of the Hous­ing Pro­duc­tion Plan.
#   The town Water Dis­tricts should meet reg­u­lar­ly and look for ways to plan togeth­er and share resources as water sup­ply and qual­i­ty are town-wide con­cerns.
#  Mod­ern build­ing codes should be adopt­ed now to assure that our future and exist­ing hous­ing stocks are ener­gy effi­cient long into the future. 

More?
I know this is long, but there is a lot going on.
I am liai­son to the Board of Health and they are work­ing to final­ize their reg­u­la­tions includ­ing: the  amount of time res­i­dents have to hook up to the sew­er when the pipe in front of their house is ready. Res­i­dents need to know this soon as res­i­dents may have to start hook­ing up in March of 2024.

Uni­ty Day, August 4th was a fun, friend­ly gath­er­ing on the Hyan­nis Vil­lage Green!
Cape Cod Gate­way Air­port spon­sored a meet­ing at Town Hall about their efforts to clean up PFOS.  The top­ic is fair­ly tech­ni­cal as there are a num­ber of under­ground plumes head­ed south­east toward the Maher wells in Hyan­nis.  Who has what respon­si­bil­i­ties is still to be worked out. Here is a link to this pre­sen­ta­tion.
https://streaming85.townofbarnstable.us/CablecastPublicSite/show/10669?channel=1

These flags are on the cour­t­house lawn i the Village.