HAWLEY — Town officials are urging Hawley’s largest landowner — the state of Massachusetts — to stop buying land in this 31-square-mile, rural hill town of only 340 residents.
After learning that the state Department of Conservation and Recreation is proposing to buy another 90-acre woodland along the closed, state-owned Middle Road, the Selectboard has sent a letter to Gov. Charlie Baker and other state officials asking them to “oppose this action and stop the purchase of this land and any other such purchases of land in Hawley by the Commonwealth.”
The state already owns more than 8,000 acres of Hawley land in the Dubuque and Mohawk Trail state forests, plus the town has hundreds of acres of privately owned land permanently restricted from development through conservation and agricultural preservation.
Still coping with unrepaired state forest roads dating back to Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, the Selectboard is also proposing legislation that would require the state to get town meeting approval for conservation land buys in towns where they state already owns at least 30 percent of the land. “This requirement has worked very effectively in the Adirondacks and Green Mountain National Forest areas to ensure that local concerns are considered before state or federal land purchases,” says the Selectboard’s letter.
Because the state doesn’t pay local taxes, this cash-strapped town does not get as much “payment in lieu of taxes” from the state as it would see in tax dollars on the same land, Selectboard Chairman John Sears pointed out in a telephone interview.
The 90 acres of land the state DCR is considering for purchase is on Middle Road, which has been closed since Irene. “Not even the (current) owners have access to it now,” Sears said.
In the Irene aftermath, the last of the town roads was restored in 2015, but Irene ripped out many poorly maintained roads in the Dubuque State Forest, say selectmen. Hawley officials asked the state to lock the road gates until the road was safe after an elderly man was stranded when he tried to go through the state forest after Irene and died before he could be found.
Five years later, some of the gates are still locked.
“We’ve continued to send letters (about Middle Road) to DCR and our state representatives,” Sears said. “They did do the engineering and I think they got almost all the permits. And then they did not appropriate the money to do it.”
The board estimates the road work will cost at least $1 million.
The letter says that “Middle Road is critical to providing access for emergency response to a large part of the state forest, without requiring detours of five to 10 miles,” says the letter. “It also is the designated emergency evacuation route for residents in the northern portion of West Hawley, should Route 8A again be severed by flooding as occurred during Irene.”
“The Middle Road fiasco is just the latest chapter in the 30-plus year saga of Hawley trying to get the state to adequately maintain its roads in order to provide safe access … Other than road work done as part of timber sales on state lands to help get the wood out, DCR has consistently neglected maintenance of the steep roads in the forest, leaving them vulnerable to damage from four-wheel drive vehicles in wet periods and to catastrophic erosion from severe weather.”
Sears said Middle Road is mostly used by those going into the state forest hiking, camping, with mountain bikes or snowmobiles. But Hawley’s Fire Department must provide emergency response, and the inaccessible road is a serious problem for rescues.
Also, the destruction during Irene of Hunt and Hallockville roads means that residents can’t get from one side of town to the other without detouring through Plainfield.
“They didn’t do engineering for Hunt Road, which was really more important to us,” Sears remarked. “We’ve brought these issues up even before Irene. These roads weren’t well maintained, or Irene would not have damaged them as badly.”
The letter says the state has been on a “land-buying spree” for the last 20 years, but that operating budgets to maintain the purchased property have been shrinking. “The Patrick administration found $400,000 to take another 245 acres in Hawley and Ashfield off the tax rolls but couldn’t spare any money to make the roads safe,” the Selectboard said. “Rather than buying more land it cannot afford to maintain, the state should concentrate on caring for the land it already owns.”
“We don’t need more conservation land in this town,” said Sears. “We’ve done our bit. The state forest is there not just to serve the people of Hawley. … Hawley shouldn’t bear the financial burden of having that much property removed (from tax roles) without better compensation.”
The Selectboard’s letter asks the state to stop the woodland purchase on Middle Road and to require the DCR to create a schedule on when the damaged Middle Road will be fixed. It also asks the governor to require each state conservation agency meet and talk to local officials about what the state’s conservation priorities are within each town and which conservation method is most appropriate for that town — before allowing more state land purchases.
Hawley has not yet received a response to its letter from the state, Sears said.