Town, Residents Concerned About Forest Service Plan to Use Williamstown Road
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| Residents of White Oaks and the DPW chief spoke to the roads narrowness and condition. |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A timber manager with the U.S. Forest Service told the Select Board on Monday that his office was willing to work with the town to address concerns raised by residents over a plan to haul timber out of the Green Mountain National Forest across the state line in Vermont.
An overflow crowd of residents from both Williamstown and Pownal, Vt., attended Monday's meeting at Town Hall, where Stacy Stratton and other officials from the Forest Service laid out plans to cut and remove 1 million board feet of wood — about 2,000 cords — from the woodland just north of town.
The sticking point is how officials expect that wood to be removed from the forest: down White Oaks Road, a narrow, twisting residential street that town's director of public works says is ill-suited for the operation.
DPW Director Craig Clough was joined at the microphone Monday by nearly a dozen residents of Williamstown and Pownal to question elements of what the Forest Service is calling the "South of Route 9 Integrated Resource Project."
Most of those concerns centered on White Oaks Road.
Stratton told the board that somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 log truck trips will be required to remove the wood that the service plans to remove from the forest, but that number does not include all the heavy equipment that will need to be taken to the cutting site or the daily traffic from loggers traveling to and from the site.
The project itself could take anywhere from one to five years, Stratton said. That number won't be known until the Forest Service puts the job out to bid.
The volume of traffic, the size of the logging trucks and the timing of the work all raised concerns for town officials and residents.
"Any large vehicle like that that's going to be coming down White Oaks Road is going to have difficulty turning onto Sand Springs Road," Clough told the board. "One of my concerns is every time a truck is going to try to turn right ... they're not going to make that turn. ... If they can't make that turn, they're going block off [Bridges], a two-point, three-point turn. I'd be concerned with damage that might happen at that point trying to take that corner.
"And I have a concern about a culvert that is up at the higher end of White Oaks near 629 [White Oaks Road]. I'd need to assess that culvert to make sure it can handle that much heavy traffic."
Clough also commented on the noise created by the compression-release engine brakes, commonly known as Jake brakes, used on logging trucks.
But as the person responsible for maintaining town roads like White Oaks, Clough emphasized the potential cost to Williamstown from wear and tear on its infrastructure.
"My concern is traffic and damage to roads, shortening the lifespan of those roads," Clough said. "They're not in the greatest of shape. Those roads don't have a great base to them. They're what we would call an oil and stone road, where there's no real base, and over the years it was just oil and stone, oil and stone, oil and stone for many, many years. There's not a real good base on a good portion of White Oaks Road either."
Residents emphasized both the safety issues and potential damage to their own property.
"There's not only no sidewalk, there's no shoulder in most places," Bill Jannen told the board. "There's a steep drop off or a guardrail that would prevent you from pulling off if a large truck is going by. Having negotiated that with a stroller, it is a tough trip every time.
"The problem with the blind corners and the guard rails just compounds."
Trish Gorman told the board that she has lived on White Oaks Road for nearly 40 years, and the street already has safety issues that only will be exacerbated by the logging traffic.
"I went from seeing White Oaks Road being a road where my golden retriever used to lay in the middle of the road for the rare car that would come down, she'd jump up and get petted," Gorman said. "And now I've had dogs that have been killed on that road because of the traffic and people speeding on that road.
"I hope it will be taken into consideration that the speeding on that road is out of control."
Gorman, like other residents who attended the meeting, said they support the intent of the Forest Service's project, which Stratton said will clear out pulp and help re-establish fire-resistant hardwoods in the forest.
But residents urged the Forest Service to consider other alternatives for removing the logs.
"Not to send our problem to Pownal, but I've never understood why Pownal doesn't build an access road," Gorman said. "They've got kids with bus stops. They've got people that need ambulance service. They've got the fire department. ... Maybe it is time to talk to Pownal about building an access road through Old Military Road as opposed to sending this down White Oaks."
White Oaks resident Carol Hurley raised concerns about damage the trucks will do to homes.
"I looked up what kind of effect this kind of traffic would have not on the road but on the houses," Hurley said. Many of the houses are 20 feet from the road, not very far at all. If you look online ... you will see there can be a lot of structural damage to homes. They talk about people who have plaster walls. It can be very damaging to them.
"I read online that structural damage happens to houses that are over 50 years old. Show me houses that are under 50 years old in that area. I don't know that they exist. My house is from the 1880s. That's a big concern to me."
Select Board Chair Peter Beck said it was "very potentially dangerous and disruptive" to route the truck traffic on White Oaks Road and challenged the Forest Service for not alerting Williamstown to the potential issues much sooner.
"I think the project has been around for a long time," Beck said, referencing a paper trail that went back at least to 2016. "It was noticed in Rutland. It was in collaboration with Southern Vermont municipalities. I don't think folks here heard about it until very recently.
"For such a long-standing and important project, there's been a lot of notice — but not to this town and not for these roads. And this could have been a conversation a long time ago."
Stratton told the board that he has not been working in the Manchester, Vt., office overseeing the project since its inception and acknowledged the Forest Service was "probably years late" raising the issue with Williamstown.
In answer to questions from the board, Stratton said the Forest Service cannot dictate where contracted haulers take downed trees after those haulers leave National Forest land.
"That's why I come out to say, 'Hey, here's all the roads we may need to use,'" Stratton told the board. "If a logger comes out and makes a left-hand turn instead of a right, I can't tell them not to. It's a public road."
Later, after hearing all the public comment, Stratton returned to the podium and said that feedback would be factored into the Forest Service's plan for the project he hopes to put out to bid as early as April 2027.
"Those are all things that should be considered, and that's why we're here as early as we can be," Stratton said. "Again, we're probably late to the show on that. But that's the feedback we want. I'm going to bring that back to Martina Barnes, the district ranger. We make compromises all the time. So your input, I wrote it all down.
"I appreciate everything. It will be taken into account as much as I can. But it may come down to us as the Forest Service sitting down with the town and coming up with a different transportation plan or coming up with a plan for it."
Beck, meanwhile, said residents can expect the town to continue pressing the Forest Service on the issue.
"This is starting a conversation," he told attendees. "I'm not expecting us to finish that today. But it's a really high concern to me."
In other business on Monday, the board voted 4-0 to appoint Anne Islan to the Community Preservation Committee.
Islan, who was out of town when the board heard from the other applicant for an open slot on the body, told the board about her experience in the business world helping organizations with budget priorities, a topic very much on the radar of the CPC.
She told the board that it could not go wrong with either her or Alice Bradley, the applicant who appeared before the panel on Oct. 26, and members of the board expressed regret that they could not put both applicants to work on a volunteer committee.
"We have two great candidates for one spot, and hopefully we end up having each of them on the committee at some point," Beck said.
Tags: logging, national forest,
