IRASBURG — In this town, people pull each other’s cars out of snowbanks. Neighbors feed chickens when their owners are away. The library doesn’t charge for overdue books, as described by the authors of Irasburg’s municipal plan.
But the Orleans County town is also home to an asphalt plant — and with it, an intricate regulatory battle that has driven divides in this idyllic community.
For years, residents have complained about smells, noise and emissions at the Route 58 asphalt facility owned by J. Hutchins Inc., a Richmond-based company run by Jeff Hutchins.
And they have ramped up concerns in recent months, after the developer replaced the plant with a larger one that could produce asphalt more efficiently and better control emissions and odors.
Hutchins asked the regional Act 250 coordinator to rule that the upgrade didn’t constitute any change to his existing land-use permit. But the coordinator said the opposite, leading Hutchins to appeal the decision to Vermont Superior Court. At the same time, he decided to seek an amendment to his existing permit from the regional Act 250 commission, which in his view would resolve the issue.
Now, as the upgraded facility faces a regulatory hurdle, opponents see an opportunity to halt its expansion.
“This is the point where the plant can be stopped because of this permit appeal process,” said resident Allison Piette. “This is kind of like the crucial moment, and if it slips through the cracks, then this plant can be here for the next 50 years.”
Hutchins said he’s been sympathetic to the concerns and has gone above and beyond to address them.
“I think as a neighbor to the town, I’ve done a good job trying to solve their concerns,” he said. “Maybe not well enough for them, but I haven’t given up, and I’m still spending money trying to solve the issues.”
‘It looms over the village’
The asphalt facility operates under the name Northeast Sand and Gravel. Along with his namesake company, Hutchins also does business through a firm called Boardwalk LLC, which appears in records related to his case.
From the town’s village center, it can be seen cresting over the trees up on Allen Hill, which is named for the town’s namesake, Ira Allen, one of the Green Mountain Boys. On a recent Thursday afternoon, a slight smell of asphalt wafted through the air.
Northeast Sand and Gravel received an Act 250 permit in June 2017 and opened its asphalt plant the following year.
Hutchins had owned the property since about 2000, operating a gravel pit that had been grandfathered in under Act 250. When his operation extended into stone excavation, and he was told he may need an Act 250 permit, he figured he would go for as many permits as possible.
“If I’m going to spend the money, I’m going to do it once,” he said.
He thought asphalt would be a good choice because of the opportunity in the field to create jobs locally.
The jobs came — about 50 right now, he said — but so did complaints from people living around the plant.
“We have spent two years smelling terrible fumes from the original plant,” residents Sean and Stephanie Harper wrote in an Act 250 party status petition in April. “That has drastically impacted our quality of life in a negative way.”
The Harpers wrote that they live about 4,000 feet from the plant.
Katharine Ellis Feuti, who lives about a mile from the plant, wrote in an April Act 250 document that Irasburg has been “scarred” by the operation.
“The existing air and noise pollution is untenable as is the dangerous increased tractor trailer traffic along through the Town Common and along Route 58 at all hours of the day & night,” Feuti wrote.
“As a resident the quiet enjoyment of my home and the scenic beauty of Allen Hill (has been) decimated,” the resident wrote, referring to the mountain in town on which the plant is situated.
Allison Piette spent time on and off in Irasburg over the last few years while she attended college in Burlington. Each time she returned, she said, she noticed more and more problems with the plant.
“It looms over the village — people who live there, a lot of them are trying to sell their houses,” she said. “But no one’s buying anything there because there’s an asphalt plant sitting above it. So it’s very, very quickly becoming a ghost town.”
When people visit Irasburg, said resident Justin Veysey, their most common reaction to seeing the plant is, “Oh, my God — what is that?”
“It resembles Gotham City,” Veysey said.
He spoke last October at an Irasburg Selectboard meeting, along with his school-age daughter, expressing a common concern about the plant’s location less than a mile from the Irasburg Village School.
“I know many people work with asphalt every day, but their lungs and brains are different from children’s,” Veysey said at the time, according to the Barton Chronicle. “I appreciate they have to make a living. But what do people think when there is a plant on top of the village school?”
Residents at that meeting and in Act 250 documents also worried about emissions from the plant impacting air quality.
Records show that October 2018 testing by the state Department of Environmental Conservation registered total particulate emissions about 1 ⅔ times higher than permit limits, measured in grains per dry standard cubic feet.
Testing in the summer of 2019 registered total particulates by the same metric 2 ¾ higher than the permitted limit, records show. Hutchins said emission problems with the plant were addressed after the early testing.
Piette — whose aunt and uncle, Mona and Louis, have been part of the vocal opposition — described another group of residents: Some, particularly those who live outside the village at the center of town, support the plant or aren’t outraged by its presence.
“There’s definitely been a divide, for sure, in the town,” said Piette, who explained that her relatives are considering moving because of the plant.
Some of that divide played out at the Selectboard meeting last October.
“A number of Irasburg residents noted the relative lack of jobs in the area and praised Mr. Hutchins for his willingness to employ people and to seek solutions for the problems his plant is causing for his neighbors,” reported the Barton Chronicle at the time.
Hutchins said he hadn’t seen concerns from locals about the plant when it was being planned back before 2017. But he understands why it’s become a problem to some now that it’s been operating.
“It’s a change,” he said. “So when … it finally comes to fruition, it affects people.”
Act 250, court battles take shape
Hutchins said he sought to replace the plant last year because the equipment he had originally bought didn’t run as efficiently as advertised and it struggled with dust control.
Because of community complaints, he said he specifically opted to buy a plant build that included a $300,000 “blue smoke” kit — which is meant to take fumes from asphalt processing out of the air.
He said the system is the type used in urban areas, so he believed it would address problems in a place like Irasburg, where only about 1,000 people live.
State records show that Kirsten Sultan, the Northeast Kingdom’s district coordinator for Act 250, heard about Hutchins’ plans for the replacement asphalt plant in November 2019.
Sultan asked Hutchins and his attorney to submit a request for a jurisdictional opinion on whether the replacement would be a material change requiring an amendment to Hutchins’ existing permit.
The attorney, Liam Murphy, wrote to Sultan in December that, in the company’s view, the only conditions imposed on the asphalt plant in Hutchins’ original permit were that:
- It would be sited in an outlined 175 foot by 250 foot area.
- Production would be limited to 100,000 tons each calendar year.
- Hours of operation would be limited to 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday, except for specific night paving jobs.
- The plant would comply with required air pollution permits.
Murphy said the permit did not require any particular type of asphalt equipment be used and that the new plant would fit within the approved building boundaries.
The original plant often operated for the full 12-hour day to produce enough asphalt, but the new one would produce the same amount of asphalt in eight hours, the lawyer wrote.
He said the new equipment, according to consultants, would not increase any of the operation’s allowable emissions. And when the new plant is built, Murphy wrote, the company would plant 10 new pine trees to shield it from view.
In January this year, Sultan wrote in a jurisdictional opinion that the replacement would require an amendment to the existing Act 250 permit.
Under the original permit, a site-specific air pollution permit was not required, but had later been obtained, Sultan said. That muddied the review of the initial application, she wrote, because officials and other parties weren’t able to consider the air permit as part of the application.
Sultan also wrote of several other factors that would trigger Act 250: No air pollution permits for the site had been reviewed by the district Act 250 commission; hourly traffic volumes would increase with the increased production rate; and the larger plant may have a significant change on visual impact because of its proximity to a state highway.
The replacement plant was planned to be about 127 feet by 206 feet, Sultan wrote, when the original plant had been listed as about 79 feet by 133 feet.
Hutchins said in an interview that he believes the state is looking for ways to open his permit status up so that opponents in town can voice their concerns.
“I did all my due diligence. I got my permit. I went to the town. I had public meetings. I put it all out there,” he said. “And to have this happen now is troubling. … It’s why I feel our state has no business, has nothing for our younger generations and why we’re in the situation we’re in.”
Neighbors try to maintain social balance
Hutchins appealed the decision in February to the Environmental Division of Vermont Superior Court. But the parties decided to pause the case in May to allow the regional Act 250 commission to decide on the permit amendment.
If the commission rules against Hutchins, he said he would look to resume the court case.
The old plant equipment has been taken down and stored, set to ship away in September, he said. If the court too ruled against him, Hutchins said he would not put the old plant back up. He wasn’t sure what that’d mean for his business.
“One way or the other, I guess I would go out of business,” he said.
That’s ultimately what opponents like Piette would prefer to see.
“Seeing it gone from the town, I think, would be the best thing,” Piette said. “We’re kind of at the point where we just say, ‘Get out.’”
For now, the Act 250 process is in limbo. Officials held a pre-hearing meeting May 29, but haven’t set a date for the hearing itself. Along with residents, the village school’s district board is seeking party status on the case.
In the meantime, residents of this small community are figuring out how to navigate the contentious debate.
“One thing we can control is the way we interact with each other in our town, (and) it turns out that that may be the single biggest factor in the success of our town,” said Judy Jackson, clerk of the Irasburg Planning Commission, which also applied for party status in the Act 250 hearing.
Townspeople are trying to maintain a social dynamic of neighborly understanding, she said.
“Even when difficult issues come along like this one.”
