Lawrence Hill Oversight
To the editor:
Re “Wastewater Could Delay Move-In at Lawrence Hill” [June 26, front page]:
In his last meeting with the Wellfleet Select Board in February 2024, outgoing Town Administrator Richard Waldo outlined the next steps for the wastewater treatment facility for the Lawrence Hill project. First was to establish a sewer commission. The spring 2025 town meeting voted to allow the select board to act as a sewer commission.
The next steps were to apply for a wastewater discharge permit from the Dept. of Environmental Protection and to establish regulations and a rate for usage. These items have yet to be addressed.
You can’t build a treatment facility without a discharge permit from DEP. In his discussion with the board, Mr. Waldo was emphatic about keeping the momentum going so as to meet the development deadline.
Why haven’t the current town administrator and select board provided more oversight for this project? It is a 46-unit, 90-bedroom, $32-million build on town land — the most significant development of housing that Wellfleet has seen in decades.
Why was a contract for the treatment facility signed with the Robert B. Our Company if the time frame did not meet the developer’s occupancy deadline? Did someone not read the small print?
I am disappointed that this hard-won development has hit this setback. Up to this point, the project has been sailing along.
Placing blame on the contractor, as the town administration appears to be doing, is a lame excuse.
Kathleen E. Bacon
Wellfleet
The writer is a former member of the select board and the 95 Lawrence Road Task Force.
Editor’s note: After the publication of Kathleen Bacon’s letter, above, on July 3, Wellfleet Assistant Town Administrator John Bugbee reported that a wastewater discharge permit for the Lawrence HIll project had in fact been issued.
Still Negotiating
To the editor:
Your June 26 story “Park Service Nears Completion of Dike at Mill Creek” [page A8] reported that “the Chequessett Club received $6.7 million in 2021 to raise and renovate its five lower fairways by 6.36 feet, the maximum high-tide level if the new structure’s gates were fully open.”
Although various public funding agencies have offered grants totaling $6.815 million to defray a portion of the costs to elevate five low-lying fairways on the golf course, the Chequessett Club has not received these funds to date. The club is still negotiating with the town, through the Friends of Herring River, for an agreement to mitigate and restore our property once the new Herring River Dike is opened.
Anthony Papantonis
Wellfleet and Medfield
The writer is president of the Chequesseett Club Board of Governors.
Bikes on Shore Road
To the editor:
Re “Cape Cod Commission Plans Safety Upgrades for Route 6A” [June 19, page A5]:
It is absurd to suggest that cyclists use Route 6A only “during bicycle races,” as you reported one Provincetown resident commented at the June 16 commission meeting. There are zero bike races ending in Provincetown, though there are many events for fun and charity. The Pan Mass Challenge does not use Route 6A in Truro, no doubt because of safety concerns. And the leap in logic to say safety improvements would lead to a “high-end strip mall” makes no sense, either.
It’s useful to note that in Massachusetts cars are required to give four feet of clearance when passing cyclists — something that seldom happens on Shore Road.
If the Cape Cod Commission wants public comments, it should do a better job of publicizing its survey. I searched for it and came up empty.
Richard Carey
Provincetown and Weston
Editor’s note: The survey can be found by searching online for “Route 6A Visioning Study.”
Another History Lesson
To the editor:
Inspired by Dennis Minsky’s May 28 “History Lesson,” I’m prompted to make a few comparisons between 1930s Germany and the U.S. in 2025:
Dog whistles become vehicles of fear. Dog whistles are designed to capture voting pluralities. In Germany, it was the Jews. Here, the dog whistle has focused on immigrants, particularly brown immigrants, framed as an insidious presence in the body politic in order to rally bigoted voters. Soon enough, the scapegoating instills fear of arbitrary authority unpredictably hitting community organizations, local governments, and ordinary citizens who try to protest.
Attacks on the regulatory state come from the entitled property class. Focused on deregulating public protections to increase profits and wealth, like the Junkers in Germany, the Federalist Society and others funded by fossil fuel and other regressive industries set about weakening the administrative state, undercutting integrity in the judiciary, and kneecapping statutory public protections.
A suborned judiciary plays a significant role. A highjacked selection process produces a judiciary that favors an anti-regulatory laissez-faire agenda while supporting the demagogic leader. Some of the Hitler judges undoubtedly were suborned by fear for themselves and their families. Others recognized that the new judicial politicizing was the way they could rise to previously unattainable heights. Some, of course, were motivated by a true belief in the authoritarian demagogue.
The children of the governing class, of Hitler’s judges, and of the Gestapo, slowly learned of the horrors that their parents had visited on their fellow citizens and the rule of law. In the U.S., we could ask ICE troopers whether their children even now are beginning to realize and recoil at the actions of their parents, who are so cruelly fulfilling the demagogic quotas?
Zygmunt J.B. Plater
Provincetown
The writer is professor emeritus at Boston College Law School
Kudos to the Truro DPW
To the editor:
As I relaxed on my favorite beach a few days ago, I considered how fortunate we in Truro are to have a fine Dept. of Public Works.
When access to Long Nook Beach was destroyed by winter storms, the DPW team, led by Jarrod Cabral, came up with a plan to rebuild it, and over the winter they executed it beautifully, including replanting beach grass to stabilize the dune.
We often fail to celebrate — or notice — the fine work that is done by town staff on the Outer Cape. Thanks to Jarrod and his team for giving us back access to a Truro treasure.
Dave Bannard
Truro
Letters to the Editor
The Provincetown Independent welcomes letters from readers on all subjects. They must be signed with the writer’s name, home address, and telephone number (for verification). Letters will be published only if they have been sent exclusively to the Independent. They should be no more than 300 words and may be edited for clarity, accuracy, conciseness, and good taste. Longer pieces (up to 600 words) may be submitted for consideration as op-ed commentary. Send letters to [email protected] or by mail to P.O. Box 1034, Provincetown, MA 02657. The deadline for letters is Monday at noon for each week’s edition.
