by Mary Grow

Until Nov. 1, East Vassalboro Village will be the site of an experiment aimed at slowing traffic. Aware that it could also make roads impassable for large farm equipment, town officials have provided what they hope will be a remedy.

Temporary PVC stanchions have been placed along roads’ white lines, and in places along the center double lines, on all sides of the four-way intersection in the village: Route 32 running north and south, Bog Road to the west and South Stanley Hill Road to the east. Maine Department of Transportation Engineers expect most vehicles obeying the speed limit to pass between them safely.

However, if farm equipment is more than 11-feet wide, its operator will need to find an alternate route or ask the town’s public works crew to move one or more stanchions. The public works department is open Mondays through Thursdays; crew members need three business days’ notice to move stanchions; the telephone number is 923-3985, and the email address is publicworks@vassalboro.net.

Town officials urge motorists not to run into or over the stanchions. The town will have to pay to replace any that get broken.

Residents with additional or alternative ideas for enforcing safe speeds are invited to submit them to the East Vassalboro Village Project Team, through an email to Town Manager Aaron Miller, amiller@vassalboro.net.

by Mary Grow

The three leaders of Augusta’s All Season Home Improvements company met with Vassalboro Planning Board members on Aug. 6 to talk about amending a nine-year-old subdivision.

The 2015 plan was for land on Church Hill Road; it included a dead-end road named Karen Lane that runs southeast off Church Hill Road near the Augusta line. Robert Grieg, Robert “Bobby” Grieg and Carl Brickett explained that the plan had two lots for single-family homes and a larger “parcel” that was to provide space for seven duplexes sharing a common septic system.

The single-family houses were built, but none of the duplexes. Now the applicants want to create one or two separate lots in that area, too.

During discussion, they mentioned that the boundary of one of the single-family lots had been changed.

Planning Board Chairman Virginia Brackett said that change should have been brought to the planning board as a requested amendment. Subdivisions are recorded not just in the town office, but also in the Kennebec County Registry of Deeds; any lawyer involved in a land transfer will require the record to be up to date if the transaction is to be valid, she explained.

Brackett and Town Manager Aaron Miller, filling in as board recorder until Vassalboro hires a new codes officer, advised the Griegs and Brickett on how to find a subdivision application form on line.

Board member Douglas Philips and Brackett raised two other issues they had observed: woodchips apparently being stockpiled on a shoreland lot in East Vassalboro; and possible violations of Olin Charette’s Route 201 junkyard license that the select board approved in February. Miller planned to investigate both situations.

The next regular Vassalboro Planning Board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday evening, Sept. 3.

by Mary Grow

Vassalboro Planning Board members needed only a quarter-hour-long July 23 meeting to approve the Kennebec Water District’s application for a shoreland zoning permit on Outlet Stream near the KWD plant on Route 32.

KWD General Manager Roger Crouse and Water Quality Manager Robbie Bickford had presented the plan to the select board in June (see the June 20 issue of The Town Line, p. 3). They filed a planning board application that Bickford and Project Engineer Max Kenney reviewed briefly at the July 23 meeting.

The permit is for a pipeline under Route 32, from the plant on the west side of the road, that will carry used filter-cleaning water into Outlet Stream. Bickford and Kenney explained that KWD needs to dig up the road and wants to do it before the Maine Department of Transportation rebuilds parts of it and repaves this summer.

“We just need to be under the road before they pave it,” Kenney said. Waiting to dig up fresh pavement would be significantly more expensive.

To accent the point, MDOT crews were working on the road in front of the town office as the planning board met.

Tunneling was a less safe option than opening the pavement, Bickford said, because there are already under that section of road a water main, a sewer main and two fiberoptic cables.

KWD’s application provided detailed plans for the pipe, which will open into an outfall channel between Route 32 and Outlet Stream. Bickford explained to the planning board, as he had to the select board, that the water from the plant will add no contaminants and no significant volume to the stream; it might slightly increase the oxygen level, he said.

If China Lake and Outlet Stream were to flood again, KWD could reduce its discharge, he said, and being completely underwater would not harm the discharge channel.

Planning board members conditioned their unanimous approval on receiving for their files a copy of the easement allowing KWD to cross the lot between the road and the stream. Bickford promised it.

Since Vassalboro is now without a codes officer, Town Manager Aaron Miller filled in as secretary for the planning board. He said David Savage, from Oakland, is assisting with essential codes enforcement duties while Vassalboro seeks applicants to fill the position. The arrangement is working well, he said.

The next regular Vassalboro planning board meeting will be Tuesday evening, Aug. 6. Miller said as of July 23, there was one pending application.