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Home My WebLink About5055 - 1272, 1276, 1282 Route 28 Letter of Opposition 1Fallon, Dolores Subject: 5055 - 1272, 1276, 1282 Route 28 Attachments: ZBA Comments 10,25,23.pdf, Planning Board Objection Aug 15 2023.pdf From: Audrey Pitts Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2023 3:15 PM To: Fallon, Dolores <dfallon@yarmouth.ma.us> Subject: Comments ZBA meeting tonight Dear Ms, Fallon, RECEIVED OCT 2 6 2023 YARMOUTH BOARD OF APPEALS I hope I am not too late to submit comments for tonights ZBA meeting. I did check on the website, and also on the notice of the meeting I received, and did not see any deadline for commenting. am attaching my comments for tonight, which I kept focussed on one major issue. Rather than rewrite all of my objections, which I had already laid out in detail in comments made to the Planning Board last year on this same proposal, I have also attached a copy of that. If possible, could you see that this set of comments is distributed to the appropriate parties. Thank you very much. Audrey Pitts TO: FROM. DATE RE: RECEIVED Town of Yarmouth Zoning Board of Appeals OCT 2 6 2023 Audrey Pitts, home -owner and abuttor, of 15 Bryar Lane, S. Yarmouth YARMOUTH 10/26/2023 BOARD OF APPEALS Petition 5055: Ekaterina & Family LLCIJay Imad, for the property located at 1272, 1278 & 1282 Route 28, South Yarmouth, MA It is frustrating to bring the same issues up repeatedly, and to have NO response to them by any of the members on any of the Boards to which they've been addressed. In particular, I would like to emphasize here the following subsection of the Town of Yarmouth R.O.A.D. Bylaw, which states that if a proposal may cause any of a certain list of conditions, it is NOT eligible for a R.O.A.D. designation. Town of Yarmouth R.O.A.D. Bylaw 4.11.3.3.1 Footnote 9: "provided such use is not hazardous by reason of potential fire, explosion radiation, nor injurious or detrimental to the neighborhood by reason of dust, odor, fumes, noise, vibration, or other noxious features, nor harmful to the surface or ground water." The proposed complex will either cause or exacerbate the conditions that I have underlined above. This is known. Moreover, new information shows that the situation regarding ground water is even worse than what abutters had thought when we initially raised this point. Specifically, the existent gas station at this property has had several toxic spills since the 1990s, which were allowed by the Town to continue without remediation for quite some time. Eventually, the State DEP got involved and issued remediation orders, which were ignored for such a long time that the DEP had to issue further complaints. The latest spill, which has contaminated soil 20 feet down, is now being remediated, but that work is still on -going. What is newly alarming is that the DEP has confirmed that 1) all of the spills at this property have been above ground, the seriousness of which is indicated by the fact that one spill from the 1990s required 49.7 tons of soil to be removed; 2) that the latest spill is from regular use of the gas pumps, not the underground tanks, which indicates both that it's endemic and that the replacement of the underground tanks won't have any effect on such spills in the future; and 3) the area where the spills occur is a medium yield aquifer, i.e. an aquifer recharge area, which the DEP has designated as both a sole source well under the legal distance limit from abuttors, et al. Rather than re - enumerate them here, I am also enclosing a letter to the Town Planning Board from last year, which goes over these other objections in more detail. All of the points I raised in that letter still stand. urge the Zoning Board of Appeals to reject this project. Thank you. Planning Board Town of Yarmouth August 15, 2023 RE: ROAD application 2023-1 (Ekaterina LLCllmad) for 1272, 1276, and 1282 Route 28, S. Yarmouth MA My name is Audrey Pitts, an owner -occupant, homesteader, registered voter in the Town of Yarmouth, and an abuttor of the proposed project under discussion. I have stated at every meeting regarding the various versions of this proposal, and I reiterate, none by their very nature qualify for consideration as a ROAD project. The Town of Yarmouth wished to encourage the construction of buildings which comported architecturally with a traditional seaside village, and which would induce passers-by to stop, get out of their cars, and explore the area, to which end pedestrian and bicycle - friendly designs were also encouraged. The Town therefore offered land -owners and developers willing to adhere to this vision certain relaxations and streamlining of the standard zoning regulations, i,e the ROAD process. 1 An additional factor definitively disqualifying this particular proposal from consideration as a ROAD project is stipulated in the Town of Yarmouth's Zoning Bylaws, where one of the sections on ROAD (411.3.3 fn. 9) states that a Special Permit may be issued: "provided such use is not hazardous by reason of potential fire, explosion, radiation, nor injurious or detrimental to the neighborhood by reason of dust, odor, fumes, vibration, or other noxious objectionable features, nor harmful to surface or ground water." The inherently hazardous nature of gas stations, in particular relating to certain carcinogenic substances, has been confirmed by various scientific studies, which fact has been brought up at all previous meetings, with links to some such studies provided, so will not go into those details here again. I just urge the Planning Board members to take these potential hazards seriously, especially in view of the proximity of the proposed project to residences. This is even more critical given that the owners of the existing gas station on the site have been cited several times for gas spills, repeatedly, as they have been remiss about performing the necessary remediation/clean-up. Another dire condition on this site, revolving around the current cottage residences, concerns infestations of rats (!) inside one of the residences. Despite what 3 heavy traffic one might expect from three businesses and one residence make such placement here rather dubious. Certainly, it is likely due to trying to squeeze too much Into the available space, an issue we've seen with all previous iterations of the proposal. The car -centric nature of this project, and in particular of the drive- thru, will cause almost constant traffic, from very early in the morning well into the night. The current situation, where our neighborhood is buffered from the gas station by the cottages, will be transformed into one where cars will be moving and idling close to the rear lot line, in fact, closer than the standard required distance. This will introduce noxious fumes, including diesel, as well as noise levels that we simply have not experienced here before. And due to the proposed hours of operation, and the need to service the various businesses before, during and after normal operations, we will have no respite from these new obnoxious conditions. I understand that the current owner wishes to improve the property and increase its profitability, and that some members of the Town government consider this site to currently be an eyesore and would like to see something --- anything! really --- replace it. But these desires are not sufficient to make this conglomeration of car - centric businesses a ROAD project. Nothing prevents the owner from taking advantage of the normal zoning process to change his lot. 5