As trees are felled to make way for a $16 million recreation center in the Bayside-Hazelett forest area in Colchester, a group of residents — long concerned about the project’s environmental impact — is making a last-ditch effort to halt construction.
Claiming that the town’s application skirted the Act 250 permitting process that governs land use and development in Vermont, the group sent a 10-page letter to the District 4 Environmental Commission on Monday, asking it to reexamine the project.
In particular, the opponents point to impacts to the roughly 14-acre Bayside-Hazelett woods, which state studies classify as a “rare and irreplaceable” pine-oak-heath sandplain forest.
“They are hopeful that if an Act 250 permit is required, it may be denied based on the undue adverse effect the project would have on the relatively small remaining portion of sandplain forest remaining in Vermont,” said Brice Simon, an attorney who filed the request on behalf of the group.
Kaitlin Hayes, the District 4 coordinator, confirmed that she has received the request and is considering it. She is awaiting information from the town and may have a decision next week, Hayes said.
The commission’s earlier opinion, in April, determined the town did not need an Act 250 permit for the rec center site because less than 10 acres would be disturbed. Residents contend that officials should also take into account two other town projects located nearby, which collectively would hit the 10-acre threshold to trigger an Act 250 review.
“Although the Recreation Center project as presently permitted by the Colchester (Development Review Board) individually purports to involve only 4.92 acres of disturbed land,” the letter stated, “the Town has acknowledged that the Project could not go forward without the sewer expansion project … which involves 6.3 acres of disturbed land.”
Town officials maintain that they are abiding by state law and do not plan to stop working on the site, located along Blakely Road and across from Laker Lane on East Lakeshore Drive. An environmental officer from the Agency of Natural Resources’ Department of Environmental Conservation inspected the site this week but has not yet completed a report. According to Town Manager Aaron Frank, the officer “found nothing of concern.”
On Town Meeting Day in March, residents voted 1,763-1,316 to approve a $6.9 million bond to help pay for the recreation center, to be built by spring 2025 in the centrally located town-owned woods.
The two-story building would have a 19,000 square-foot footprint and nearly 30,000 square feet of usable space, according to plans.
In an interview, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department ecologist Robert Zaino said the trees in question “support many plant species that are rare in Vermont, including several that are state-listed as threatened or endangered.” The forest, Zaino said, is “state-significant.”
But Frank, the town manager, said in an email that the intention has never been to conserve the land. The town bought the property with voter approval in 2004 to build a community center, he said.
“There has been a 20+ year effort to bring this project to fruition with over 90 different public meetings,” he noted.
He also said that Colchester has nearly 11,000 acres of state-owned “natural resource land and water”— which he said is 7.4 times more than the average for Vermont towns.
The letter has backing from about 20 people, 11 of whom are Colchester residents. They include ecologists, naturalists and biology professors who believe the recreation center project “is not consistent” with town or regional plans and “can only be adequately addressed with a proper analysis and finding of Act 250 Jurisdiction,” according to the letter.
Among them is Lori Barg, a consulting geologist who lives in Colchester. Barg said she walked into the forest Monday when she heard bulldozers and was concerned to see the heavy machinery tearing down and stumping large trees close to East Lakeshore Drive and Malletts Bay.
That prompted her to send a cease-and-desist letter to town officials, accusing the town of “violating its own permit by accessing the project via the unapproved access on East Lakeshore Drive.”
The area being logged from East Lakeshore Drive is the utility corridor to serve the rec center and does not require a permit, Frank said on Thursday.
Cathyann LaRose, the town’s planning and zoning director, said she received Barg’s email and went to visit the site and found no violations. The work “appears to align with what was approved by the Board,” she wrote in an email on Thursday.
The initial tree-clearing work is expected to wrap up by July 31 and “will not exceed the limits outlined in the (Colchester Development Review Board) permit,” Frank wrote.
Opponents to the plan suggest the nearby Bayside Park is a better spot for a new recreation center and would not involve cutting down trees.
“The town’s own planning department has more than once recommended that this rec center be built on the upper Bayside Park,” said Jack Scully, a former selectboard chair who signed the letter. “We are in favor of a rec center but not at the expense of cutting down a forest.”
In response to the rising concerns, Frank called the letter writers “a small group” and “not the majority of residents.”
“We did not ‘skirt’ anything,” he wrote. “There is a voluntary process for asking whether a project falls under jurisdiction of Act 250. We did not have to do this. But we did and Act 250 confirmed that the project did not fall under their jurisdiction.”
Residents also appealed the town’s permit for the project back in April, and the case remains in environmental court. The town filed a motion to dismiss on May 5, and the judge has not yet issued a decision, according to a court clerk. Town officials did not respond to questions about the legal challenge.
As they watch and wait, some residents fear that more than half the forest is already gone. Town officials did not respond to questions about exactly how much of the forest the bulldozers are clearing.
Phyllis Bryden, who lives three doors down on East Lakeshore Drive from where trucks have been driving into the forest since Friday, said the clearing is so big that “it’s like a big spaceship just landed there and blew up.”
Barg, who recently spotted a Cooper’s hawk in the forest, said she was “heartsick.”
“I can’t believe that the town has really worked hard to not protect a rare and endangered forest,” she said. “Because once you pave paradise, you can’t bring it back.”
