WESTFIELD – Both the Planning Board and City Council will resume public hearings this week on the proposed amendment of the city’s aquifer protection (Zone II) overlay district zoning regulation.
The Planning Board, which meets tonight, voted to continue its public hearing to further investigate issues raised during the 90-minute session on December 2.
The Planning Board will provide a recommendation to the City Council, which opened its public hearing at its Dec. 4 session hearing on proposed amendments to the city’s aquifer protection ordinance, will resume that hearing Thursday night.
The council took that action in case the Planning Board, which continued its hearing to tomorrow night, makes substantial changes to the proposed amendment as part of its recommendation to the City Council.
Proponents say the zoning change will “tighten” the existing zoning regulations and expand the footprint of the city’s aquifer protection zoning regulations.
The zoning is focused on extending protection of the Barnes Aquifer which is a source of drinking water for Westfield, Holyoke, Southampton and Easthampton.
Any aquifer amendment would have wider impact in Westfield which has several other aquifers including the Great Brook Aquifer and the Little River Aquifer, both of which also provide drinking water, and the Southampton Aquifer. Westfield draws about half of its drinking water from aquifers.
One part of the proposed change is that a parcel of land, with any part of that property over the aquifer, will fall under the revised ordinance.
The proposed amendment strengthens aquifer protection elements of the city’s zoning codes, said Ward 4 Councilor Mary O’Connell, who has worked on the amendments for more than a year, at both hearings.
“I see this as a win-win situation,” O’Connell, chairwoman of the council’s Natural Resource Committee which has been working on the ordinance amendment, said. “That impervious surface limit is a big win for aquifer protection, it is not in the present ordinance/”
The revision will also allow, through a special permit review process by the Planning Board, commercial development on less than two acres of land, a requirement of the current ordinance.
“We are protecting more of the aquifer, that’s the attraction to me,” O’Connell said, “and I like the portions that require a special permit for (commercial development) on less than two acres.”
Several members of the City Council, in particular Ward 5 Councilor Robert A. Paul, Sr., and At-large Councilor Cindy Harris, voiced concerns that the commercial area exemption would open the aquifer protection zone to further, and unwanted, commercial development.
Some types of commercial enterprises, such as self-storage, would be banned because of the lack of information about materials being stored. The concern is that somebody could store hazardous material in that type of facility and then walk away to avoid the cost of proper disposal.
