Webster enacts lake protection
By John Dignam
TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
 

WEBSTER— Residents this week voted to create a new Lake Watershed Protection District in the town bylaws to preserve and maintain Webster Lake and the town’s water resources.  

The article creating the district was approved on a 101-2 vote late during the annual town meeting Monday night.  

Richard Cazeault, president of the 500-member Webster Lake Association, said yesterday there was very little protection for the watershed before Monday’s vote.   

While environmental laws have led to the cleanup of many rivers and streams that once were open sewers, the laws “have overlooked lakes and ponds,” Mr. Cazeault said.  

“Whatever washes out of the watershed goes into the lake,” he said. “Everything that happens in the lake is a consequence of what happens upland. And a lake doesn’t have the ability to clean itself up like a river does.”  

Although Webster and Douglas residents fought for 10 years to keep a landfill out of the Douglas State Forest that would have also affected the lake’s watershed, “we left ourselves open,” Mr. Cazeault. “There was nothing in the bylaws preventing a landfill from going in on Webster property in the watershed.”  

Mr. Cazeault said the wells supplying town drinking water are close to the lake, and the association’s lake water-testing program “is the first line of defense” for the drinking water.  

“Everything is common sense, designed to protect the watershed,” he said of the regulations.  

Regulations of the new district restrict the kinds of businesses that can be located within the district. They also address the design and operation of sewers and drains, and establish safeguards concerning hazardous materials.  

Businesses prohibited from the district, which rings the lake, include car service, car repair or car washing businesses, as well as dry cleaners, laundromats, landfills and junkyards.  

Existing businesses can remain, but must comply with regulations, he said. He praised LKQ Used Auto Parts on Route 16, fined in 2004 for violating the Wetlands Act, for the installation of a state-of-the-art sediment control facility.  

Mr. Cazeault said the regulations would have little effect on homeowners and were aimed more at hazardous materials and at getting developers to plan better for such things as storm water runoff.  

Special permits will be required for, among other things, paving more than 40 percent of a lot and contractors’ yards.  

The new regulations designate the Planning Board, which sponsored the article, as special-permit granting authority for the district; as such, the board is required by the bylaw to notify the Board of Appeals, Conservation Commission, Board of Health and building inspector for recommendations when a special permit is sought.  

Voters late in Monday’s session of the annual town meeting also approved $40,000 for nursing services to parochial schools in town and $10,000 for codifying the town’s bylaws.  

The meeting was adjourned to 7 p.m. June 12, when residents will act on the proposed $28.6 million town budget for fiscal 2007.