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Cape Cod Commission

    REGIONAL STRATEGIES

    Commission Aims to Create Community Land Trust

    Nonprofit land trusts can sell homes to working people at steep discounts

    By

    HARWICH — An effort to secure more housing for working people on Cape Cod took a step forward last week when the Cape Cod Commission announced it would hold a series of meetings to establish a nonprofit community land trust here. The first public meeting will be on Oct. 16, although the time and location have not yet been announced.

    The Perlman House, a former hotel on Martha’s Vineyard, was purchased through a below-market “charitable sale” by the Island Housing Trust in 2019 and repurposed into seven rental apartments for year-round residents of the island. (Photo by Randi Baird, courtesy Island Housing Trust.)

    Establishing a community land trust was one of the key recommendations to emerge from the Commission’s year-long effort to produce a regional housing strategy, which it published in May.

    Chloe Schaefer, chief planner at the Cape Cod Commission, said her organization would not run or control the new land trust; instead, it has brought on consultants to run the meetings that will guide “local stakeholders” through the process of forming one.

    Two sessions at the Commission’s OneCape conference last week were focused on the project.

    Nonprofit land trusts have been used in a variety of places, including Burlington, Vt. and Martha’s Vineyard, said consultant June McCartin of Outwith Studio. They aim to purchase properties at somewhat reduced prices and then resell them to year-round residents at greatly reduced prices, she said.

    In such sales, the land trust retains ownership of the land and sells only the home and a “ground lease” to use the land. Because land is about half the cost of residential property in many coastal markets, such arrangements can make possible sales at a steep discount compared to market-price housing.

    In places like the Outer Cape, where annual incomes of $400,000 or more can be required to afford a median-priced single-family home, being able to offer stable housing at below-market prices is now seen as a key strategy for retaining a working population.

    “The business that we’re going to have to get into in a place like Nantucket and on the Vineyard and the Outer Cape is not just affordable housing for people making below-median incomes,” state Sen. Julian Cyr said in a speech at the conference. “The path before us in the coming years is that we’re going to have to subsidize housing for all year-round working people who don’t already own a home or stand to inherit one.”

    “Peer communities” such as Aspen and Vail in Colorado and Truckee in California have successfully created a “middle market of year-round housing” to address their housing crises, Cyr said.

    Purchasing year-round occupancy deed restrictions, or requiring them to be included in new developments, have been the primary strategies in Aspen, Vail, and Truckee, but the Commission identified a nonprofit community land trust as an important parallel strategy for developing “middle-market” units.

    On Martha’s Vineyard

    The Island Housing Trust on Martha’s Vineyard has developed 156 units of below-market housing since 2006 and is currently developing another 150 units, said Philippe Jordi, CEO of the Trust, in another speech at the OneCape conference.

    The nonprofit has been able to buy properties at below-market rates because the value of the discount from the market price can be considered a charitable donation for tax purposes.

    In such “charitable sales,” Jordi said, some owners are able to “sell their homes at less than market price and capture the difference in tax deductions.”

    In one such case, the Island Housing Trust purchased an eight-room guesthouse for $950,000 in 2019 and then spent another $950,000 renovating it into seven apartments that are now run as rental housing for year-round Islanders.

    The Trust renovated a second guesthouse and rented it directly to Martha’s Vineyard Hospital as employee housing, Jordi said.

    The Trust has also built clusters of duplex and single-family homes on land it purchased at a discount, selling the structures to year-round families at below-market prices while retaining ownership of the land.

    Banks can lend money for those homes, and the federal government has published guidelines on how mortgages involving community land trusts should be written and sold.

    The pace of development has been limited by funding sources, Jordi said. The Island Housing Trust has primarily been financed with Community Preservation Act funds from the six towns on the Vineyard, along with charitable donations and one-percent interest financing offered to the Trust by “social impact investors.”

    Jordi and other leaders on Martha’s Vineyard lobbied hard for a local-option real estate transfer fee, he told the Independent in June, because it could have provided an exponentially larger funding stream to purchase and develop year-round housing.

    The 156 units the Island Housing Trust has created are “nothing compared to what we could have done if we had the transfer fee 20 years ago,” Jordi said in June.

    Neither the state House of Representatives nor the state Senate included a real estate transfer fee in their housing bond bills this year, although Cyr has told the Independent he expects the issue to return in next year’s legislative session.

    If the eight Outer and Lower Cape towns were all to vote for a 2-percent transfer fee on the portion of real estate sales over $1 million, they could collectively raise $9.9 million per year, according to an online calculator created by the nonprofit Mass. Budget and Policy Center.

    In a question-and-answer session at the conference, the Commission’s consultants said it was important that a broad spectrum of community members join the planning process for the community land trust, both at the Oct. 16 meeting and at a community land trust advisory council that would likely be formed afterward.

    Laura Silber, housing planner for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, said that getting town leadership on board was an important first step. In her experience, “It was engagement with the municipalities that brought the voters on board,” Silber said.

    HOUSING

    Cape Cod Commission Is Developing a Housing Strategy

    A menu of policies should be released in fall; in the meantime, there’s a survey online

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — If you’re subscribed to emails from your town’s government, you’ve probably received a message recently asking you to respond to the Cape Cod Commission’s Regional Housing Preference Survey. The survey asks people across the Cape to rate various multifamily housing types and designs for how well they fit into the landscape and also offers participants maps of their hometowns where they can mark with blue circles where they think such housing would be most appropriate.

    The Regional Housing Preference Survey asks respondents to rate various kinds of multifamily housing — such as these triplexes — for visual appeal and their “fit” in the Cape Cod environment. (Images courtesy Cape Cod Commission)

    The survey is part of a much larger effort that spans the entire year, including public engagement sessions this summer and a draft regional housing strategy this fall. The strategy is being prepared with the help of contractors, according to Cape Cod Commission Executive Director Kristy Senatori, and will include a comprehensive look at housing strategies being used in other parts of the country and a menu of policy choices that towns can choose to adopt locally.

    “Strategy identification is one of the main components of this,” said Senatori. “We’ve reviewed about 20 different plans from across the country so far, identified about 120 strategies, and we’re now working to narrow that field and put together a menu of options so that individual communities can decide what makes the most sense for them.”

    Towns can expect to see model bylaws on that menu, Senatori said, as well as design guidelines that could help towns codify the look and feel they desire in new developments. Design guidelines also help builders know exactly what kinds of projects can meet with speedy approval — an important advantage when discretionary permits at planning and zoning boards can sometimes turn into years-long lawsuits.

    Eastham’s residential zoning task force had wanted to develop design guidelines there, according to task force chair Mary Nee, but the project was too big to be completed by this year’s town meeting. This fall, the commission will be publishing a framework that any town can use as a starting point, Senatori said.

    “We’ll be incorporating principles like net-zero emissions as well,” said Senatori, “so there’s an opportunity for communities that are interested to incorporate that into their design guidelines.”

    Senatori wasn’t sure yet if short-rerm rental regulations would be in the mix. “There’s been a lot of discussion about short-term rentals, both internally and with stakeholders,” she said. “Those discussions are still ongoing, so I don’t have a solid recommendation to share with you yet.”

    The work has already delivered at least one result, however. The Cape Cod Commission invited the housing directors of Vail, Colo. and Lake Tahoe, Calif. to its last conference in August 2022 to explain their year-round-occupancy deed restriction programs — a presentation the Independent reported on last year.

    Provincetown, Nantucket, and the six towns on Martha’s Vineyard all put a version of that deed restriction onto their town warrants this year as home rule petitions — a first step toward copying Vail’s program, which uses special sales tax revenue to buy the restrictions, reserving hundreds of units for year-round occupancy rather than use as second homes.

    The Bigger Picture

    The Cape Cod Commission put out another housing report in 2017, a regional housing market analysis, that specifically called for follow-up actions such as the Housing Market Preference Survey. That survey is now online — in 2023.

    Migration onto Cape Cod — and total population growth — both stopped abruptly sometime in the early 2000s, according to the Cape Cod Commission’s regional housing market analysis from 2017.

    The Independent asked Senatori about the pace of change and why a menu of housing strategies is being produced now, as opposed to five years ago.

    “The housing crisis has risen to the top of our agenda, but it really can’t be looked at independently,” said Senatori. “It’s impossible to continue to build housing that isn’t supported by infrastructure. Whether it’s wastewater or transportation or low-lying roads or climate impacts, the Cape is made up of a series of systems, and we have to make sure that they’re all functioning.”

    The commission has produced a series of major reports in recent years, including a Regional Policy Plan, an Economic Development Strategy, and a Climate Action Plan, Senatori said.

    “Making sure that we have wastewater infrastructure is critical, and there’s been a lot of planning and implementation work there,” she added.

    State Sen. Julian Cyr said that the commission has done a huge amount of work on wastewater issues — and that those problems were decades in the making.

    “The commission has dedicated a tremendous amount of resources to figuring out the region-wide wastewater problem,” Cyr said. “Only 4 percent of Cape Cod is sewered, and the focus on wastewater was necessary and appropriate. Wastewater is key not only to stewarding our fragile environment but to building the denser housing that we need.

    “The broader failure on wastewater dates back before the commission,” Cyr added, “to the ’70s and ’80s, when the federal government was offering to pay 90 percent for sewer systems under the Clean Water Act and our communities said no.

    “That was a very conscious choice — municipalities and leaders were worried that wastewater infrastructure would lead to the overdevelopment of Cape Cod,” he said. “They opted for one-acre or two-acre zoning with Title 5 septic systems, and that really led to suburbanization and sprawl.”
    The commission was created to control that sprawl. “They were essentially created to prevent development — housing wasn’t in their mission — and I think they’re pivoting to housing and they’ve been a helpful partner there,” Cyr said. “And they’ve been essential on wastewater.”

    The Data Are Grim

    An update to the 2017 Regional Housing Market Analysis is also coming soon, Senatori said. The data should be interesting — because the 2017 report was grim.

    The Commission also produced housing profiles for all 15 towns. Provincetown’s shows that the roughly 1,850 people who work in accommodation and food service, retail trades, and health care and social assistance are mostly very far from the $257,000 annual income needed to afford a median-priced condo in town.

    The population of nearly every town on Cape Cod stopped growing around 2003, according to the report. After decades of a growing economy and strong migration onto the Cape, both of those trends flatlined as well around 2000.

    During the 1990s, about 12,000 housing units were added to Cape Cod, nearly all of which went to the year-round housing inventory, the report shows. From 2000 to 2015, more than 14,000 units were added — but nearly all of them went to the second home inventory. The county was losing year-round units when the report was written, and construction had slowed as well.

    Finally, the county’s labor force, which had grown 16 percent during the ’90s, flatlined during the 2000s and then fell by 10 percent during the Great Recession.

    The updated report is being produced by the UMass Donohue Institute. It should show how much Cape Cod has changed since 2017 — and how much has stayed the same.

    ZONING REFORM

    Eastham Group Aims to Increase Housing Diversity

    A task force’s work wins nearly unanimous support

    By

    EASTHAM — At the Cape Cod Commission’s annual conference last month, Eastham Community Development Director Paul Lagg made a brief presentation on his town’s new zoning task force, which began meeting in 2021. For the housing advocates in the room, the key lesson was the successful process Eastham had used: a small group that included one member from the planning board, one from the zoning board of appeals, and one from the affordable housing trust, plus a few at-large members, met every two weeks for nearly a year. The nine bylaw changes they eventually recommended got unanimous votes from the planning board and select board and near-unanimous support from the finance committee, and they easily cleared the two-thirds vote threshold at town meeting.

    The more experience one has with zoning, the more impressive this sounds, because zoning reforms typically fail.

    “All you need is one person at town meeting to get up at the microphone and start asking questions,” said state Rep. Sarah Peake. “Half the people in the room don’t understand the answers, and then they’re like, ‘This could affect my resale value, or we might suddenly have skyscrapers. I better vote no.’

    Kristen Hatch loves her duplex apartment at Stable Path in Provincetown. Such buildings are now legal in most of Eastham. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    “I think it’s the fear of the unknown,” Peake added, “but over and over again, these bylaw changes fail at town meeting.”

    It’s not just voters who fear zoning discussions. Peake and former Cape and Islands state Sen. Dan Wolf struggled for years to enact a statewide zoning reform bill in the legislature. It never came to a vote in either chamber.

    “It’s a mind-numbing subject,” Peake said, “and part of the reason we didn’t get this two-inch-thick bill done is because everybody is like, ‘I can’t even begin to dig into this.’ ” Zoning is “incredibly important to communities,” Peake added, but it rarely feels urgent.

    The most controversial part of that bill did eventually pass as part of last year’s Housing Choice law, Peake said — perhaps because it was the easiest to understand. Towns are now allowed to adopt a simple majority rule, instead of a two-thirds majority, for zoning bylaw changes. The new rule cannot be used at the same meeting that adopts it: it must pass at one town meeting and then will apply at future town meetings.

    No towns on the Outer Cape have put this measure on their warrants, however. The Housing Choice law passed in February 2021.

    Eastham’s Reforms

    Not all of the measures Eastham’s residential zoning task force advanced last spring were groundbreaking. Some were “housekeeping,” cleaning up oversights in the bylaws, Lagg said. But the town also adopted an inclusionary bylaw, expanded its cottage conversion bylaw, and legalized duplexes across nearly the whole town.

    Who’s afraid of a duplex? Not Eastham, which legalized them across nearly the whole town at its May 2022 town meeting. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    Inclusionary zoning mandates that developments over four units include some affordable or workforce housing. “Inclusionary has been around for a long time, many communities have it, so we just needed to get this on the books,” Lagg said.

    Eastham’s cottage colony bylaw had forbidden year-round occupancy, which the task force reversed, Lagg said. The town also added motels and hotels to the bylaw, so they can now convert into multi-family housing.

    “We wanted to set up for whatever may happen in the future with these commercial properties,” Lagg said. “The catch is, if they want to convert, they have to create either owner-occupied, year-round rentals, or seasonal rentals.” A long-term covenant with the town is required for a conversion, and second homes and short-term rentals are not permitted.

    The task force also wanted to create “housing diversity,” Lagg said — housing options that are sometimes called the “missing middle” in between dense apartment buildings and single-family homes. Duplexes, row houses, triple deckers, and Victorian flats are types of home construction that have long been illegal in single-family zones.

    Since 1988, Eastham’s minimum lot size for new construction has been 40,000 square feet, or just under an acre. A duplex required 80,000 square feet. Most of the town’s lots preceded the 1988 rules and were considered “pre-existing nonconforming,” and some of them had prior rights to build duplexes — but both units had to be deed-restricted to affordable rentals, although one could be owner-occupied. No one had built a duplex under those affordability rules since 1988, Lagg said.

    The task force eliminated the affordability rules and made duplexes a legal use throughout the town, on an equal footing with single-family homes. Only in the National Seashore District are single-family homes permitted and duplexes still excluded.

    A duplex at Stable Path in Provincetown. Such buildings are now legal in most of Eastham. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    “We have a zero percent vacancy rate, we have no rentals, and we need to just create units,” said Lagg. The task force included an owner-occupancy or year-round rental covenant for new duplexes in place of the former affordable rental deed restriction.

    “You could have co-owners living on each side,” said Lagg. “What we’re trying to do is prevent further short-term rentals.”

    Especially when short-term rental is not allowed, duplex units are cheaper than single-family homes. “Empty-nesters who want to downsize, young professionals with no kids — when you have options other than single-family, it lets people have some flexibility,” Lagg said.

    “Ninety-five percent of the dwellings in Eastham are single-family homes,” he said, “so we desperately need to create some other housing options.”

    Single-family zoning has dominated Cape Cod for decades, Peake said. Nonetheless, the duplex measures mean that Eastham has effectively ended single-family zoning, and they passed with unanimous support at the planning board, finance committee, and select board. The vote was “pretty overwhelming” at town meeting, Lagg said. The task force is now setting priorities for next year’s town meeting.

    Peake pointed to the importance of the year-round rental covenants.

    “What has to be in the forefront of our mind as we’re building more, allowing density bonuses, and all of that — let’s make sure we’re allowing that to get the kind of housing we want and not just more short-term rentals,” Peake said. “Housing production in Orange or Athol — you can almost guarantee that will support families out there. Not so much in Eastham or Provincetown. That is really the challenge.

    “I think people see the effects of doing nothing, so the time is ripe,” Peake added. “The question that will be asked is ‘Are we building housing for the people we want to house, or is it going to turn into more second homes and condos?’ ”

    LOOK WEST

    Housing Solutions From Around the Country

    The Cape Cod Commission features ideas from Vail, Tahoe, and Boston

    By

    HARWICH PORT — Leaders from across the Cape gathered to discuss the region’s most pressing problems — above all, the housing crisis — at the Cape Cod Commission’s annual conference on Aug. 1 and 2.

    Two of the preapproved free ADU designs offered by Placer County, Calif. (Image courtesy Placer County)

    “We’re seeing restaurants and retail places that are closed two to three days a week now because they can’t get employees,” said Dan Wolf, founder of Cape Air and former state senator for the Cape and Islands. “Every employer in here, municipal or private sector, is having trouble, and housing is the fulcrum.

    “When a hurricane goes through, you don’t say, maybe we’ll fix that in 10 years,” Wolf added. “The challenge is to deal with this as a crisis, and not business as usual.”

    Wolf’s remarks were followed by three speakers from off Cape who were invited to share their housing success stories with local leadership. The housing director of Vail, Colo., a county planner from North Lake Tahoe, Calif., and a housing design leader from Boston all spoke in turn about strategies that are working in their communities.

    George Ruther, Vail’s housing director, told the group that in 2017 Vail formally resolved to acquire 1,000 new deed restrictions on residential units in town. The deed restrictions do not restrict the sale price of the property, the income of the person living there, or who may own the property. Instead, the restriction specifies that the person who lives there, whether owner or renter, must be working 30 hours a week or more in Eagle County, Colo.

    “In 2017, we had about 5,300 year-round residents and 7,200 dwelling units,” said Ruther. “Those 5,300 residents lived in about 1,800 free-market dwelling units and 688 deed-restricted units. The other 4,800 dwellings sat vacant for the majority of the year.

    “We didn’t have land,” Ruther added. Vail is “99 percent built out” and surrounded by National Forest land on all sides. “We do have a lot of dwelling units,” he said. “We needed to figure out a way to get folks living in the homes that we had within town. In my way of looking at things, we don’t have a housing problem, we have an occupancy problem in our community.”

    In the last five years, Vail has paid $11.6 million for 169 deed restrictions in 87 separate transactions. The average cost per deed restriction has been $68,500, and the average cost per square foot was $82. Many of the early deed restrictions were in larger projects, but starting in 2019 the town bought 62 separate deed restrictions on condo, duplex, and townhome units.

    Colorado municipalities “live and die by sales taxes,” Ruther said, and last fall the town voted for a half-percent sales tax increase dedicated specifically to housing. The proposal passed with 54 percent of the vote.

    The town’s housing authority recently began buying homes outright, placing deed restrictions on them, and then immediately reselling them. “With the all-cash buyers that were coming to the table, we had residents that were willing and capable of purchasing, but they weren’t afforded time to compete,” said Ruther. “So, the Vail InDEED program stepped in.”

    Devin McNally is a planner in Placer County, Calif., which runs from the northern suburbs of Sacramento up to the ski towns of North Lake Tahoe. “Similar to Cape Cod,” McNally said, “we have had a major problem with our housing stock being used for purposes other than housing.

    “We call this our second-home culture,” said McNally. “In the North Lake Tahoe region, 64 percent of our homes sit vacant most of the year.” Meanwhile, two-thirds of the working population was commuting into the region from places as far away as Reno and Sacramento.

    McNally said the county first created a deed restriction it calls “achievable housing” and then took multiple approaches to getting units into that “second market” of deed-restricted homes. At first, only local workers with certain incomes could live in them, but after several changes to the formula, Placer County now allows any local worker to live in the deed-restricted units.

    Many programs nationwide are restricted to first-time buyers, but Placer County discarded that restriction as well. “This allows our school district and hospital district to hire — to say, sell your home wherever you live, and we can help you get a new one here,” said McNally.

    Condo conversions and many kinds of new construction are now required to be 50 percent achievable units. The county has also published detailed design standards so that projects can get much faster by-right approvals — including eight free and preapproved plans for accessory dwelling units and a dedicated staffer to help people through the process.

    “We were averaging one or two ADU applications per year,” said McNally. “Now we get over 100 applications per year.

    “We’ve also been tackling short-term rentals,” added McNally. “We did a survey, and 40 percent of people purchasing homes were financing them through a plan to short-term rent.”

    Effective this year, the North Lake Tahoe area has a cap of 3,900 short-term rental permits, which is about 21 percent of the total housing stock there and roughly equal to the current number of short-term rentals. After everyone currently renting receives a permit, there will be a waiting list for future permits.

    “This is something that I think a lot of destinations talk about, with the rise of Airbnb and VRBO,” said McNally. “We now have a person on staff who’s going to be managing this full-time.”

    Wandy Pascoal, a leader at Boston’s Housing Innovation Lab, spoke about that office’s efforts to make ADUs and small infill construction projects achievable. Boston focused on helping home owners create extra units within the existing envelope of their buildings, such as in attics and basements, by giving free technical advice, help with the complex maze of permits and licenses, and zero-percent-interest loans of up to $50,000 to finance the work.

    “We’re now expanding beyond the building envelope, looking at carriage houses, garages, and sheds,” said Pascoal. “We have home owners who are interested in transforming those into habitable spaces — some of them with just a sketch of what they want to do — and we help them move forward.”

    Pascoal is also working on an updated design of the city’s iconic triple-decker housing style. Triple-deckers, which are three-unit buildings usually made of wood, are a historic New England building type that is almost impossible to build today, said Pascoal. The “Future-Decker” project aims to establish a replicable, affordable-to-build prototype.

    “We have a lot of small 3,000-to-8,000-square-foot vacant sites in the city,” said Pascoal. “We don’t have land available to create larger scale developments,” but the Future-Decker would help make scattered-site development possible by making it faster and cheaper.

    Together, the three speakers made it clear that Cape Cod’s challenges are neither unique nor unsolvable. The question that hung in the air was the one Wolf had asked earlier: “If we believe this is a crisis, how do we accelerate the pace of change to address it before it gets completely out of control?”

    ALTERNATIVES

    A Prickly Bikeway Debate Is About to Resume in Wellfleet

    Hopes for a better process to get the Rail Trail extension back on track

    By

    WELLFLEET — On the same day almost a year ago that Gov. Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency, March 10, the select board, state officials, and more than 50 members of the public attended the last in-person meeting about the extension of the Cape Cod Rail Trail bikeway here. Next week, that contentious conversation will resume, but without the state’s involvement — at least for now.

    The Wellfleet Bike and Walkways Committee (BWC) will hold a virtual discussion on Monday, Feb. 15 to gather opinions on potential bikeway routes from Wellfleet to the Truro town line. BWC chair Peter Cook said those ideas will become part of a methodical approach to comparing every possible route — including the route proposed by the state, even though that one has so far proved controversial.

    The bikeway, which currently stretches 25.5 miles from Station Avenue in South Yarmouth to Lecount Hollow Road in South Wellfleet, is managed by the state’s Dept. of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). Its long-term goal is a bikeway that runs the whole length of the Cape.

    bike
    Part of the extension of the Cape Cod Rail Trail in Wellfleet will go through the woods. The controversy concerns where the trail meets Route 6. (Photo Mass.gov)

    Two new sections are planned for Wellfleet, and the agency is ready to move forward on the first, which will extend the path about one mile north of where it currently ends to the DCR’s Wellfleet Hollow Campground (formerly Paine’s Campground) on Old County Road. This first phase should be completed in 2022, according to Olivia Dorrance, the DCR’s press secretary.

    Meanwhile, progress beyond that point is “on hold,” wrote Jim Montgomery, commissioner of the DCR, in a September 2020 letter to the select board. Trying to fulfill the wishes of the April 2019 town meeting, the select board had asked the state to postpone planning and construction of the bike trail beyond Old County Road due to public safety concerns.

    While the commissioner’s letter acknowledged the town’s desire to find alternatives, it suggested his agency saw little chance that a better route could be found. The limitation, Montgomery wrote, is that “DCR does not own any other rights of way.”

    That is why the second phase of the DCR plan has the path joining the state highway at a new trailhead terminus in a parking lot off Route 6, near Oriole Lane. As presented at the public meeting last spring, the project would involve the state’s Dept. of Transportation (DOT) in repaving and adding bike lanes and a sidewalk along the highway.

    That is where Wellfleet’s worries about safety are focused, in spite of Montgomery’s position that what is proposed is “the safest and best approach” possible.

    This is a town whose worries run deep.

    In August 2013, 16-year-old Miles Tibbetts was riding his bike to work when he was struck and killed by a car. He was crossing Route 6 about 100 feet south of Cumberland Farms, not far from where the new Rail Trail terminus is planned.

    A third of a mile north of that spot, Route 6 meets Main Street.

    “There are so many accidents at that intersection,” said the select board’s Helen Miranda Wilson. “It’s one of the most dangerous in Barnstable County.” At last spring’s meeting with DOT and DCR, Wilson reminded officials that the town had been waiting for that intersection to be redesigned.

    Lack of action on that front has not inspired trust in the state’s plans, but Wilson believes further communication could change things. “The process has not been as good as it might be,” she said. Up to now, she added, “Plans have been made without people being on the same page.”

    Town Administrator Maria Broadbent said she expects a meeting proposed by the select board to bring together all stakeholders, from the BWC, to the National Park Service, to state agencies. It is expected to be scheduled in the next few weeks.

    ‘Two Separate Worlds’

    Cook said the Feb. 15 session is only part of the BWC’s preparation for new negotiations with the state. Members are also reviewing past studies by the Cape Cod Commission, the DCR, and the National Park Service, he said.

    The Cape Cod Commission’s Outer Cape Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan from 2017, he pointed out, recognized that the location where the bikeway would meet the highway is “an area of concern,” and one that would require further study.

    From there, the committee is building what Cook calls an “analysis methodology” that will weight community goals and objectives in order of priority. He knows already, though, that “safety is a primary concern.”

    Some townspeople acknowledge there will be pluses to having the bikeway meet the highway. And the location of the trailhead terminus, select board chair Michael DeVasto said, provides an incentive and a false sense of security for recreational cyclists to visit nearby destinations, such as PJ’s restaurant.

    Even with the addition of sidewalks and the improvements to the bike lanes along Rt. 6, DeVasto argued that it is an unsafe corridor for inexperienced cyclists. Connecting casual cyclists to Route 6, which is appropriate only for the most experienced cyclists, is a “convergence of two separate worlds,” said DeVasto. He remains cautiously optimistic about pushing the conversation with the state forward.

    Some residents are proponents of the DCR-DOT plan. John Cumbler, who served on the BWC for six years before resigning out of frustration, said that, although the plan isn’t perfect, he believes safety concerns could be mitigated by reducing curb cuts.

    Cumbler said that while “it would be wonderful to have an alternative route,” his concern is that the search for a viable one has become “a chimera — a false phantom of an idea that will stall any bike path extension.”

    “An alternative bikeway route is not unrealistic,” Wilson said. But, she added, “what is unrealistic is thinking there is any safety in the plan with curb cuts.”

    “The key is, we’re all neighbors,” Cook said of his role bringing those two worlds together. He hopes the BWC’s efforts will bring results “everyone can be confident in.”

    The bike and walkways committee meeting will be hosted by the Wellfleet Community Forum on Feb. 15 at 7 p.m. via Zoom. Email [email protected] to request a link to join.

    PRESERVATION

    Developer Seeks to Raze House in Provincetown Historic District

    Barker’s request to demolish and rebuild will be heard on Feb. 17

    By

    419-1
    The new owner of the 140-year-old cottage at 419 Commercial St. seeks to demolish and rebuild it, due to “safety concerns.” (Photos Nancy Bloom)

    PROVINCETOWN — A 140-year-old cottage on Commercial Street overlooking the harbor won’t make it to its 141st birthday if the new owner is given the go-ahead to knock it down and replace it.

    But that could be a tough sell.

    Since the house is in the local historic district, developer Christine Barker, who bought the property at 419 Commercial St. for $1.6 million in November, cannot raze it without the approval of the Provincetown Historic District Commission.

    Consultant Regina Binder was scheduled to give an informal presentation to the commission on Wednesday, Feb. 3 on behalf of Barker; a formal public hearing on the demolition request has been set for Feb. 17.

    According to the bylaw regulating the historic district, partial or full demolition is prohibited, except when the commission concludes it is warranted “due to extraordinary circumstances.”

    Unlike demolition delay bylaws, which enable town officials to stall the process so that alternatives can be explored, historic district commissions like Provincetown’s have the power to reject a demolition plan outright.

    419-2
    Parts of the rear of 419 Commercial St. were demolished by a previous owner.

    “It’s very rare to have a request to demolish an entire building in the historic district,” said commission chair Thomas Biggert. “There are times when we have to allow demolition, like when a building is unsafe. That usually happens when it’s an accessory building that’s substandard, like a chicken coop.”

    Architectural historian David W. Dunlap, on his website Building Provincetown, describes 419 Commercial St. as having “a delightfully odd facade.” In 1949, Greenwich Village silversmith Paul A. Lobel expanded his business to Provincetown and set up his first local shop in the building, according to Dunlap’s account, and the antique store Ironmongers was there from 1978 to 1990.

    More recently, the building was entirely residential, with the interior space divided into three units. After being owned by Laura Rust Egan (and Marguerite L. Young, until she died) for 44 years, the property changed hands three times in the last three years. The owner preceding Barker demolished a section at the rear of the building.

    Barker initially submitted plans to the local permitting boards for a full renovation and addition off the back. The planned renovation would have accommodated two units. She also proposed boosting the structure 3.5 feet to address sea-level rise.

    Her plans drew considerable opposition, expressed in emails submitted by those living nearby. The extension to the rear, they said, would block both view and airflow.

    A week after filing those initial plans, Barker hired a structural engineer to look at the foundation. Lars Jensen, a principal at the Inghouse engineering firm, produced a report that recommended “the immediate and complete demolition of the existing building structure due to safety concerns.”

    Supports throughout the building are inadequate, Jensen wrote. “The structure may collapse fully or partially under significant wind load or snow load events, which may lead to damage to adjacent buildings,” he stated.

    Barker said she wasn’t happy to hear the structural engineer’s findings, noting, “This is not a demolition by choice.”

    Plans to rebuild after demolition would reflect the cottage’s historic character, Barker said, replicating elements such as the gambrel roof, front porch, and bay window. “We will keep the Commercial Street side extremely appropriate, maintaining the dominant features,” she said. “It will be an improved version of itself.”

    Although Barker is a real estate developer, she said that she doesn’t plan to “flip” the property but hopes to make it her future home.

    Commission member John Dowd said he would not comment on a specific application that’s still pending. “If there are opponents to demolition of the building and virtual erasure of Provincetown history, they should make their voices heard at the meeting,” Dowd said.

    “It’s not unusual that proponents, in concert with their contractor, make a play for demolition,” he added, speaking generally. “It’s much cheaper to tear down and rebuild. They always say it will be replicated, but you can’t replicate all the little things that tell that something is real. In the end, it basically still looks like a different building.”

    Sarah Korjeff, historic preservation specialist and planner for the Cape Cod Commission, said Provincetown’s historic district covers “the vast majority” of the town’s historic properties. “There are 1,100 properties in it,” she said.

    Properties in the district enjoy far greater protection than simple demolition delay bylaws provide, she said. “The demolition delay bylaw is definitely an important tool in preserving historic buildings, but there are still a lot of buildings lost,” Korjeff said. About 25 percent of the buildings that are subject to demolition delays are ultimately saved, but 75 percent are not.

    Korjeff said demolition of a historic building, even if there are structural issues, is not the only solution. “There are a lot of cases where people claimed the building was unsalvageable, but it was just going to cost a lot to preserve it,” she said. “There are engineers out there who can find ways to preserve any historic building in any condition.

    “My experience with Provincetown is that they are pretty good at doing their homework or requiring a second opinion,” Korjeff said. “Because it’s such a big district, they have a lot of experience.”

    Other Outer Cape towns don’t have such far-reaching protections. Eastham has the small Olde Towne Centre Historic District, which is regulated by the town’s historic district commission.

    Wellfleet has a larger National Register Historic District, including parts of Main Street and extending to the harbor, but the designation does not give the town the ability to stop demolition. The Cape Cod Commission can take action on demolition proposals of National Register properties that don’t have the protection of a local historic district.

    DATA DREAMS

    Cape Cod Commission Sends Out New Waves of Data

    Town-by-town statistics on wages, housing prices, vaccine phases, and more

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The Cape Cod Commission plays an unusual role in the life of the Cape.  It’s a kind of hybrid — part technical adviser, part regulator, part community planning agency — with a goal of keeping the 15 towns here in dialogue with each other, the public, and the natural capacities of this giant sandbar in the Atlantic.

    Providing high-quality data to town governments and the public has always been part of the commission’s job. Since the Covid pandemic began, however, the commission has stepped up both data collection and data presentation efforts, to provide information that policymakers might need.

    The commission rolled out its new datacapecod.com website last year, and it has a wealth of information about our towns. Much of it is drawn from the American Community Survey, which is a rolling, years-long sampling project conducted by the Census Bureau. Every year about 1 percent of the U.S. population participates in the ACS, and its reports are based on cumulative five-year totals.

    “We conceived of this project as Covid-specific,” said Jen Clinton, a community development planner at the commission, “but as more requests for information popped up over time, we broadened it” — to include things like employment rates, wage information, and housing costs.

    One inescapable takeaway from a look at the data: housing prices are not connected to local incomes. The gap between median income of local residents and median house prices across the Outer Cape is massive.

    data1
    Monthly employment and average wages by industry in Provincetown. (Source DataCapeCod)

    Datacapecod.com pulls the income and housing information together clearly. Looking at Provincetown’s employment chart, it’s clear that jobs are concentrated in just a few industries, with an average monthly wage of around $3,000. Median home prices, though, were around $600,000 in 2019, before the pandemic. Following the rule of thumb that no more than 30 percent of household income should go to housing, that median price implies an income of $11,500 a month. It would take almost four adults earning average Provincetown wages to buy a median home here.

    Another panel makes this relationship between earnings and home prices clearer.

    data2
    Median household income vs. income needed to buy or rent. (Source DataCapeCod)

    This graph relies on median household income. A household often has two earners, but sometimes just one. The median household income in each of the four Outer Cape towns is only around half of what would be needed to buy the median-price home in each town.

    The Cape Cod Commission is hardly alone in noticing that local incomes and local housing prices are disconnected. By presenting detailed employment statistics for each individual town, however, DataCapeCod provides a precise look into the data that hadn’t been accessible before.

    StatsCapeCod.org is an earlier Cape Cod Commission website that Clinton is hoping to merge into DataCapeCod soon. A map from StatsCapeCod shows owner-occupied housing across the Cape. In North Truro and parts of Provincetown, less than 20 percent of the housing stock is owner-occupied.

    data3
    Owner-occupied housing units. (Source STATSCapeCod)

    According to the census data that the commission used to make these maps, renter-occupied housing is a small fraction of the owner-occupied numbers. Even when owners and renters are combined, only about a third of housing units on the Outer Cape are occupied full-time.

    Estimating Vaccine Populations

    Clinton is currently working on using some of these same data sources to estimate how many people in each town will fall into various parts of Phase Two Covid vaccination plans. The first stage of Phase Two is for people 75 years old and older, followed by people 65 and older, and people with two or more co-morbidities, as defined in a CDC list of conditions that make serious illness from Covid more likely.

    After that, the next stage involves a wide range of workers who are Covid-facing, including teachers, transportation and sanitation workers, and food service and retail workers. Clinton is using census data and employment statistics to estimate how many people might become vaccine-eligible at these various stages of Phase Two.

    Also of interest are the existing data on households without vehicles. Many people on the Outer Cape don’t have cars, especially in Provincetown, and leaders have cited this as one reason why it’s important to have vaccination sites on the Outer Cape, not just in Orleans and Hyannis.

    According to DataCapeCod, there are 211 households in Provincetown without a vehicle, 72 in Eastham, 23 in Truro, and 41 in Wellfleet. Those numbers are drawn from the American Community Survey, and they can’t be understood as perfectly precise, according to Clinton.   Nonetheless, they’re a starting point for understanding who lives here and what they might need as vaccine rollout begins in earnest.

    “We’re proud that people are finding this data useful,” said Clinton, “and we are open to new ideas, too. If there’s something people out there think we could do a good job researching, they can reach out to the commission and we’ll take a look at it.”

    CONNECTION

    A Big Bill Targets Tiny Wellfleet Roads

    Pamet Point and Bound Brook Island roads to get broadband

    By

    WELLFLEET — The global pandemic has rained down calamities at every street corner, but residents of three rural roads in Wellfleet may see a nugget of gold from it. The state’s $627 million economic recovery bill, which was signed by Gov. Charlie Baker on Jan. 14, includes $200,000 to be used to upgrade utility poles there to support high-speed internet connections.

    On page eight of the 101-page bill, Pamet Point Road, Bound Brook Island Road, and an as yet undefined portion of Old County Road in Wellfleet were specifically named in “An Act Enabling Partnerships for Growth.” The $200,000 would go to three utility companies so they can make their poles ready for high-speed internet, commonly called “broadband.” The three companies, which own or rent the poles, are Eversource, Comcast, and the nonprofit Open Cape, according to Frank Schultz, state Sen. Julian Cyr’s communications director.

    pamet
    Pamet Point Road. [Photo Nancy Bloom]
    Heather Draz, one of the only year-round residents of Pamet Point Road, who has worked for 10 years to make this happen, said she is excited. But she won’t believe it until she sees it. For one thing, the legislation is a bond bill, and the money must be authorized by the state’s secretary of administration and finance. Unlike the policy portions of a bill, which become law once Baker signs it, funding for projects outside the state budget is not guaranteed even with the governor’s signature, explained Patrick Johnson, Cyr’s chief of staff.

    But, Johnson added, Cyr thinks it will happen “with advocacy.”

    This is good news for Draz and the other two dozen or so residents of Bound Brook Island and Pamet Point roads.

    But what about the other streets in the rural parts of the Cape, particularly in Truro and Wellfleet, that also lack high-speed internet and are ignored by this bill? (The number of houses that will be connected on Old County Road is subject to findings from a Cape Cod Commission study on high-speed internet availability, said Johnson.)

    A 2010 report by the Truro Cable Advisory Committee identified 65 to 198 home owners without broadband in Truro.

    Making Noise

    Schultz said naming these three specific streets in the bill was easier to sell on the Senate floor than amorphous areas would have been. They are clearly defined and also close to the “middle mile” access that has already been provided by the Open Cape network along Route 6.

    But Draz said the real reason that her street and its close neighbors are in the bill is because “I was loud. I’ve made a lot of noise for 10 years.”

    It also has nothing to do with a new home owner in the neighborhood, Robert Sachs, the former president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (now the Internet & Television Association) in Washington, D.C., who, with his wife, Caroline Taggart, purchased 350 Pamet Point Road for $1.59 million on Jan. 14.

    “I wish I could take credit,” Sachs said this week, “but I give all credit to Heather.”

    Draz attended Wellfleet Cable Advisory Committee meetings for years and worked with various Wellfleet town administrators, who are charged with negotiating the 10-year contracts with Comcast. This, she said, turned out to be fruitless.

    “I had to go over the town’s head, to my state senator,” she said, “and that worked.”

    Cyr, who was raised in Truro and graduated from Nauset Regional High School, “listened and made a point of bringing it to the floor,” Draz said. “I think Julian Cyr’s office should be the one taking the credit.”

    When asked why that one neighborhood was getting connected when so many others aren’t, Schultz said that Pamet Point and Bound Brook Island roads represented the “low-hanging fruit.”

    There is another major chunk of Wellfleet that, for totally different reasons, has no broadband access, said Mia Baumgarten, Wellfleet’s media operations manager. That is parts of Lieutenant Island, the residents of which, Baumgarten said, recently banded together to persuade holdouts among the 110 property owners to agree to easements granting Comcast permission to put in the necessary utility poles.

    Mark Washburn of Sudbury, who helped organize this effort on Lieutenant Island with Sumner Stone of Boston, said only 54 of the 110 home owners on the island currently have broadband. The others, like him, have lived without because of “misunderstandings” (he declined to elaborate) among other property owners who didn’t want to sign easement agreements. There are doctors, nurses, and other professionals who desperately need internet service, he said. And now, he added, it appears they’ll soon get it.

    Draz hopes she will, too. And she hopes the use of state funds to bolster internet access during a time when students and professionals are stuck working from home will set a precedent. For now, however, Longnook Road in Truro, Black Pond Road in Wellfleet, and others remain streets that the internet age forgot.

    This Week In Wellfleet

    Meetings Ahead

    By

    Meetings are held remotely. From wellfleet-ma.gov, hover over a date on the calendar on the right of the screen and click on the meeting you’re interested in to open its agenda. That document will provide information about how to view and take part remotely.

    Monday, Dec. 28

    • Wellfleet Affordable Housing Trust, 4 p.m.
    • Dredging Task Force, 7 p.m.

    Conversation Starters

    Covid-19 Update

    According to the Mass. Dept. of Public Health’s weekly Covid-19 report, as of Dec. 15, Wellfleet had eight new cases of Covid-19 within the preceding 14 days. The town has recorded a total of 25 cases and one death from the virus.

    Assistant Town Administrator Resigns

    Mike Trovato resigned from his position as assistant town administrator on Dec. 15. Trovato was hired on Sept. 3, 2019 and will leave his position with the town on Jan. 13, 2021. According to the town administrator, Maria Broadbent, Trovato accepted a job offer closer to home.

    “He will be sorely missed, and we are sad to see him go” said Broadbent, who added that Trovato was a “real leader in the town administration.” Select board member Helen Miranda Wilson agreed, calling Trovato “very professional and very good.” She said she wished he weren’t leaving. Wilson said the job of assistant town manager is a tough one, and turnover is very common. But she was not sure of the specific reasons why Trovato was leaving.

    Trovato’s resignation follows closely behind the departure of Courtney Butler, the executive assistant to the town administrator, whose last day was Dec. 17. As listed in the 2020 annual town meeting warrant, the salary of the assistant town administrator was $95,000. As of Dec. 22, the assistant town administrator job had not been posted. The executive assistant to the town administrator position was listed earlier this month on multiple online sites with a salary range of $55,000 to $59,000. In 2020, the salary of the executive assistant to the town administrator was $56,990.

    Bike Trail Extension

    There may be an opportunity for Wellfleet to design an alternative to the state’s proposed bikeway along Route 6. The bike and walkways committee is doing the groundwork for the select board, said committee chair Peter Cook, to develop “an analysis methodology and a body of data about feasible local bikeway routes.”

    The committee wants to be fair, open, and objective in considering all routes, including the state’s proposed route, said Cook, who was appointed to the committee on Nov. 24. Cook was a member of Wellfleet Concerned Citizens for a Sensible Bikeway, a group opposed to the state’s plan. At its Dec. 18 meeting, the committee discussed creating a methodology based on other successful bikeways, both in the Commonwealth and internationally.

    The select board is reaching out to all stakeholders, including the National Seashore and Cape Cod Commission, said chair Michael DeVasto, and he hopes the Dept. of Conservation and Recreation will work with the town to come up with a better plan.

    —Tessera Knowles-Thompson

    ZONING

    Wellfleet Looks at Changing Its Accessory Dwelling Bylaw

    Could dropping ‘affordable’ ease the year-round housing shortage?

    By

    WELLFLEET — The planning board is discussing a new zoning bylaw that would loosen the rules governing accessory dwelling units by removing the requirement that they be “affordable.”

    The town’s Affordable Accessory Dwelling Unit (AADU) bylaw has regulated such secondary dwellings since 2002. Though it was designed to increase the supply of year-round rental housing for low-income tenants, only 11 such units currently exist.

    Housing advocates argue that the current AADU bylaw offers too little financial reward and has too much red tape. The income restrictions, they say, exclude renters in the so-called missing middle: those who make too much money to qualify for a rental unit but not enough to purchase a home. This dilemma is especially relevant in Wellfleet, where shellfish grants and permits are restricted to town residents.

    (Photo courtesy Cape Cod Commission)

    Under the existing bylaw, home owners with an accessory unit of 1,200 square feet or fewer on their property can apply for AADU designation, which allows them to rent the unit on a 12-month lease at an “affordable” rate dictated by a special permit from the zoning board of appeals. The unit must be occupied by an “income-eligible household,” that is, one earning less than 120 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI). Priority goes to tenants who earn less than 80 percent of the AMI.

    “If you get two adults working full time, at 40 hours a week and $20-plus an hour, they’re making over $80,000 a year,” said Community Development Partnership CEO Jay Coburn. “They make too much money to qualify for a restricted housing unit (such as the Village at Nauset Green or the proposed Cloverleaf site). There are very few mechanisms to solve that [problem and to] meet that need.”

    Operating in tandem with the AADU bylaw is Wellfleet’s Affordable Housing Tax Exemption (AHTE), which “allows the town to issue tax exemptions to property owners that rent to income-qualified tenants, whether in an AADU or otherwise,” according to Assistant Town Administrator Mike Trovato. “Think of it as property tax relief to incentivize property owners to rent to income-eligible tenants.”

    Yet with only 11 AADUs in Wellfleet, the program is clearly not living up to its potential. Truro, which has a similar bylaw, has zero AADUs.

    Illegal Rentals Abound

    According to Town Assessor Nancy Vail, there are 180 properties in Wellfleet that are classified as “state code 109,” meaning they contain one or more secondary dwelling units built before zoning laws banned such construction. Combined with secondary units that have been built since then, illegally, as well as home owners who rent out their basements or other parts of their homes — which aren’t included in that total — there are hundreds of units eligible for AADU designation in Wellfleet. Most of these units are already being rented illegally.

    These units are largely rented in the high season to tourists, not to year-round residents in need of permanent housing. They are also not monitored for health and safety code violations, presenting liability issues for both the home owners and the town.

    The economics of local tourism drive the rental market. Summer rentals are far more lucrative than year-round ones, even when the AHTE exemption, about $4,000 a year for the average home owner, is taken into account.

    A 2018 report by the Public Policy Center at UMass Dartmouth found that, in Provincetown, “if a property owner can fill their unit every night of the 20-week season from May through September, they could potentially net more than $34,000 for a unit that could otherwise rent for $1,300 per month or $15,600 per year.”

    For the hundreds of owners of these illegal units, that extra money, as well as avoiding the bureaucracy of registering units as AADUs, is worth the risk of being caught and fined for zoning violations. Moreover, according to some town officials, AADUs and illegal secondary dwellings are not actively monitored.

    “We’ve had one building inspector after another, and they just don’t come out,” said planning board member and AADU owner Olga Kahn. “They don’t check on it annually. I find this a real dilemma. Who’s watching? What good is having a bylaw when nobody’s bringing the housing up to code?”

    The proposed zoning change would create a new Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) bylaw, modeled after a template from the Cape Cod Commission. In theory, it would encourage home owners to register existing illegal secondary units as ADUs. (The template contains an amnesty clause that would give owners of illegal secondary units five years to register them as ADUs without facing penalties.)

    The affordability rules of AADUs come with serious administrative costs, Coburn said.

    “The minute you require an income level and an annual income qualification, you’ve layered on a regulatory cost,” he pointed out. “Who’s going to do the income qualification every year? The home owner [likely] doesn’t have that expertise. And so, somebody at town hall needs to do it, or an agency like mine. It’s probably $1,000 a year for the whole equation.”

    Accessory dwelling bylaws can be allowed “by right” or “by special permit.” If an ADU is allowed by right, all a home owner has to do is prove it meets setback, septic, and lot size requirements. The planning board, however, is in favor of a by-special-permit designation, meaning that the home owner would have to go to the ZBA — a process that gives neighbors a say. Even though pushback from abutters could lower the number of ADUs permitted, Local Housing Partnership member Sharon Rule-Agger said that a by-special-permit bylaw would be more likely to be approved at town meeting.

    Zoning bylaw changes currently require a two-thirds majority vote at town meeting. But Gov. Charlie Baker has proposed that such changes require only a simple majority vote.

    “It’s not a panacea,” said Rule-Agger of the ADU proposal. “In the towns that have passed the least restrictive, most lenient bylaws surrounding ADUs, the maximum growth has been maybe five units a year. If we got even four ADUs every year for 11 years, that would be the same number of units as we are proposing for the 95 Lawrence Road project. Both are needed. Every little bit helps, especially to that family that’s looking for a place to live.”

    Editor’s note: Due to a fact-checking error and erroneous information on the Wellfleet town website, an earlier version of this article misstated the qualifications for income eligibility in the AADU bylaw. Tenants must earn less than 120 percent of Area Median Income, not 100 percent, and priority goes to those earning less than 80 percent of AMI, not 60 percent.

    SCIENCE

    ‘Docs for Safe Water’ Claim to Be Their Own ‘Peer-Reviewers’

    But authors of report attack the town’s peer-review process

    By

    TRURO — The 40-page “Report on Private Wells and Truro Safe Water” released in September by a group calling themselves Docs for Truro Safe Water has been promoted by critics of the 39-unit Cloverleaf development as a peer-reviewed scientific treatise on how nitrogen contamination of drinking water threatens North Truro. The document has been cited repeatedly in arguments that the Cloverleaf should not be given the waivers it needs to proceed with construction as affordable housing under the state’s Chapter 40B.

    The authors of the report, questioned by a reporter for the Independent about their peer-review process at their Dec. 1 presentation to the board of health, asked to be allowed to respond in writing. The next day, they claimed that they themselves were the “peer reviewers” of their own work.

    “We are all cross-disciplinary peers and jointly reviewed the underlying science to prepare our report and presentation,” they wrote. “We jointly share authorship of the report and the presentation.”

    Meanwhile, a groundwater scientist from the Cape Cod Commission who examined the report said that it misrepresents the commission’s standards on nitrogen.

    A constellation of North Truro property owners has argued that effluent from the Cloverleaf would poison their wells with nitrates. Others, including Truro Health Agent Emily Beebe, say that groundwater quality in the area has much more to do with existing residential systems — septic systems that aren’t properly maintained and antiquated cesspools that dump nitrogen into the ground basically untreated.

    The authors of the “Docs” report are epidemiologist Ron Fichtner; Dr. Frederick Ruymann, a gastroenterologist; Dr. Robert Brown, a neurologist; Mary Pearl, a conservation biologist; Christopher Clark and Brian Boyle, both engineers; and Robert Simpson, who holds a doctor of social work degree and specializes in behavioral health.

    A view of Pilgrim Pond in North Truro’s Pond Village neighborhood. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

    All seven hold doctoral degrees and are recognized scholars. Their report primarily focuses on the evidence for increased incidence of various cancers even at relatively low levels of nitrate in drinking water. The report concludes with a call for the Truro Board of Health to reset local standards for nitrogen in drinking water to half or less of the E.P.A. standard.

    The authors have not responded to repeated requests by the Independent to interview them.

    Fichtner and Ruymann also signed various letters to the zoning board of appeals from the “Members of the Pond Village Community,” including an Oct. 19 letter describing the Docs report as “an expert peer-reviewed analysis.” DocsTruro.org describes its own report with the phrase “Status: peer review.”

    That same Oct. 19 letter attacks the town’s peer-review process of the Cloverleaf wastewater plan. “The process the Town has followed falls far short of any standards or guidance for peer review we can find,” states the letter. “A more comprehensive multidisciplinary peer review process — with experts in public health, drinking water safety, health economics, environmental sampling and monitoring, and ecology — is essential to garner confidence in this complex process and merit consideration for ZBA approval.”

    This passage also includes a footnote, which offers the E.P.A.’s Peer Review Handbook (4th edition) as an example of standards for peer review.

    But the Docs’ own report does not meet these standards. According to the E.P.A. standards, the Docs’ report was not peer-reviewed at all. One cannot both write a report and “peer review” it.

    The first page of the E.P.A. Handbook states prominently: “The goal of peer review is to obtain an independent review of the product from experts who have not contributed to its development.”

    From that same page of the Peer Review Handbook: “Peer review is an in-depth assessment of the assumptions, calculations, extrapolations, alternate interpretations, methodology, acceptance criteria and conclusions pertaining to the scientific or technical work product, and of the documentation that supports them.… It is conducted by qualified individuals (or organizations) who are independent of those who performed the work….”

    Truro’s contracted peer reviewer for the Cloverleaf, Horsley Witten, lists 38 people at its Sandwich office, including two hydrogeologists, three environmental engineers, three environmental scientists, a watershed planner, and an ecologist.

    Tim Pasakarnis is a water resources analyst for the Cape Cod Commission with a Ph.D. in environmental engineering; his graduate and postgraduate work focused on groundwater chemistry. He said the Docs for Truro Safe Water did not reach out to his office for advice, but he would have responded if they did.

    “The Cape Cod Commission does not have a drinking water recommendation, or an alternate minimum contamination level [MCL] for drinking water,” said Pasakarnis.

    The commission has a 5mg/liter site-wide loading standard, but that is not a drinking water standard.

    “There have been a couple of instances in [the Docs’] documentation that have misconstrued or misrepresented the commission’s reports,” said Pasakarnis. “The way [a citation on page 5] is written is not specific enough to be useful for interpreting accurately. It’s just saying a nitrate concentration. It’s not saying what it represents. It does not represent a drinking water MCL.”

    He’s also not aware of any jurisdiction with an MCL for drinking water below 10mg/L, the E.P.A. standard.

    “I can’t say there isn’t one,” said Pasakarnis, “but based on the extensive research that I’ve done, I have not found either a drinking water or a surface water MCL that’s lower than 10mg/L.”   Nor was Pasakarnis aware of a debate about the federal MCL.

    If Truro follows the Docs’ recommendation and imposes a new local standard for nitrate concentrations in drinking water, it would likely be the first jurisdiction anywhere to depart from the federal MCL for drinking water.

    Failed Systems

    People who work on water quality issues — including Pasakarnis; Beebe; Brian Baumgaertel, director of the Alternative Septic System Test Center in Mashpee; and Jason Silva, vice chair of the Truro Board of Health, who is also a septic engineer — frequently bring the conversation back to the same issue: existing systems that don’t perform well.

    “We have 200-plus cesspools, four or five in Pond Village, putting out anywhere from 20 to 200 mg/L, which is shocking,” said Silva. “I’m not seeing people voluntarily changing their cesspools to Title 5 septic, or their Title 5 to I/A systems. People are not reaching into their pocket and pulling out $30,000 because it’s the best thing to do.

    “I also don’t see people routinely pumping their systems,” Silva continued. “I talk to my friends who run septic companies, and I ask them, ‘Have you been doing a lot of pumping in the area?’ They tell me, ‘No, I’m not really getting any calls.’ Here’s a $300 possible fix, and it’s not even being acted on.”

    There is a county loan program that can spread the cost of a septic upgrade over 20 years, said Baumgaertel. But $30,000 is a lot of money, no matter how you slice it. Could town money ever go towards private septic and cesspool upgrades?

    “There are several nonprofits on Cape Cod that have made funds available for people to have retrofits or upgrades to private septic systems,” said Pasakarnis. “There are certainly some towns exploring possibilities for financing this. None of those are in place or established yet, but several are exploring what that might look like.”

    Editor’s note: This article has been revised and expanded for clarity. Due to a copy editing error, an earlier version reported that the Cape Cod Commission’s groundwater scientist had said the “Truro Docs” misrepresented the commission’s findings on Cloverleaf; in fact, he said the misrepresentation was about its findings on nitrogen levels in groundwater.

    This Week In Truro

    Meetings Ahead

    By

    Meetings are held remotely. To watch live, go to truro-ma.gov and follow the “helpful link” to Truro Channel 18.

    Thursday, Dec. 17

    • Zoning Board of Appeals, 5:30 p.m.

    Friday, Dec. 18

    • Board of Library Trustees, 11:30 a.m.
    • Commission on Disabilities, 3:30 p.m.

    Monday, Dec. 21

    • Climate Action Committee, 10 a.m.
    • Charter Review Committee, 4 p.m.
    • Bike and Walkways Committee, 6 p.m.

    Conversation Starters

    Covid-19 Update

    As of Dec. 12, Truro had three active cases of Covid-19, 18 cases considered recovered, and no deaths.

    Public Water at Pond Village

    The select board will vote at its next meeting in January on whether to authorize an engineering study to determine cost and feasibility of bringing public water to the Pond Village area of North Truro.

    At issue is questionable drinking water quality in this part of town due to the low elevation and inadequate septic systems in the neighborhood. Health Agent Emily Beebe said she spoke this fall with one home owner who lives right on Pilgrim Pond, had a tight septic tank, and still had poor water quality.

    Jarrod Cabral, the Truro Dept. of Public Works director, said all the runoff from Route 6 flows down the hill into this pond.

    “Everything is going into that pond,” Beebe said.

    The town has engaged the Cape Cod Commission to study the area and determine the quality of water. Beebe did not know when the study would be complete.

    But she said, “Having public water as an option is really important for us to do. Developing criteria for who gets town water is something we can look at. But step one is looking at the cost of running a main down there.”

    Sue Areson of the select board said on Dec. 15 she wanted to know first how much town money is available to conduct an engineering study. Because staff did not have a clear answer, the select board agreed to put off the matter until its meeting in January.

    The engineering study would determine price and feasibility of bringing water to homes in Pond Village. Public water is already being extended from the existing line on Shore Road to the proposed housing development known as the Cloverleaf, thanks to a $1.2 million state grant.

    —K.C. Myers

    This Week in Truro

    Meetings Ahead

    By

    Meetings are held remotely. To watch live, go to truro-ma.gov and follow the “helpful link” to Truro Channel 18.

    Thursday, Nov. 12

    • Climate Action Committee, 10 a.m.
    • Truro Housing Authority, 4:15 p.m.
    • School Committee, 5:15 p.m.
    • Zoning Board of Appeals, 5:30 p.m.

    Friday, Nov. 13

    • Community Preservation Committee, 4:15 p.m.
    • Board of Registrars, 5:15 p.m. 

    Monday, Nov. 16

    • Bike and Walkways Committee, 6 p.m.

    Tuesday, Nov. 17

    • Cemetery Commission, 10 a.m.
    • Board of Health, 3:30 p.m.
    • Commission on Disabilities, 3:30 p.m.
    • Select Board, 5 p.m. 

    Wednesday, Nov. 18

    • Planning Board, 5 p.m.

    Conversation Starters

    Covid-19 Update
    As of Nov. 5 (latest available), Truro had two active cases of Covid-19, 16 cases considered resolved, and no deaths.

    Cloverleaf Gets Cape Cod Commission OK
    The 39-unit affordable housing development known as the Cloverleaf is close to approval of a comprehensive permit from the zoning board of appeals. The ZBA reviewed the rest of the requested 12 waivers of zoning regulations last week. All have been approved except for one. The ZBA rejected waiving the developer’s performance bond. The board left it up to the town’s attorney and acting town planner, Barbara Carboni of KP Law, to work out an agreement over bonding with the developer, Ted Malone of Community Housing Resource, Inc.

    Meanwhile, the Cape Cod Commission’s staff reviewed the proposed septic system for the project, an experimental system that has been used with success at similar-sized housing projects. The commission report stated that the system, with monitoring, would “yield a wastewater plan staff would consider consistent with regional policy plan water resources objectives.”

    The ZBA will meet on Nov. 12 at 5:30 p.m. to allow the 114 people who have signed a letter objecting to the wastewater treatment plan to discuss the project further. Chair Art Hultin said he does not expect a vote by the ZBA on Nov. 12, but that may come at its next meeting in December. The ZBA is in the position of granting a comprehensive permit to allow the project based on a year of review.
    —K.C. Myers

    AFFORDABLE HOUSING

    Where Cloverleaf Stands After a Year of Review

    Critiques of the project have been plagued by misinformation

    By

    Approximately 2.4 percent of the year-round housing in Truro is classified as affordable. This translates to 27 homes or apartments that are affordable for residents earning up to 80 percent of the area median income — far short of the 110 affordable units prescribed by the state.

    These numbers are important because they represent 83 families who struggle to live here. Who are these families? They are your neighbors. They work for the town, take care of your property, bag your groceries, and provide critical home care services to our seniors and people with disabilities. They pay more than half of their income for rent, living in illegal and unsafe basements, and participating in the “Cape Cod shuffle,” going from winter rentals to campgrounds to friends’ couches.

    Critiques of the Cloverleaf development have been plagued by misconceptions and misinformation. The Cloverleaf property was given to the town with the condition that it be used solely for housing. At least 25 percent of that housing must meet affordability guidelines. The property cannot be used for a public works facility.

    The town received two proposals from developers, one from a nonprofit, and the other from the for-profit Community Housing Resource (CHR). The proposal from the nonprofit developer was approximately $1 million more expensive; it anticipated approximately $1.2 million in assistance from the town. CHR expected it would need approximately $500,000. Any profit earned by the developer is capped, using a formula imposed by the funding sources. CHR has a proven history of successfully developing affordable housing projects on Cape Cod, including Sally’s Way in Truro.

    There was never a playground stipulated in the original request for proposals. The building with 15 units was anticipated in discussions before the release of the RFP as an ideal configuration for seniors wishing to downsize, age in place, and retain some proximity to their neighbors. There is no rental space in Truro that meets the needs of this growing demographic group.

    Initially, preference will be given for 70 percent of the units to applicants who currently live or work in Truro or have children attending the Truro Central School. If Truro residents are not selected in the initial lottery, their application goes into the second general lottery. Recent lotteries in Provincetown and Eastham demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of applicants currently live on the Outer Cape.

    Approximately half the units will be designated for families who make up to 60 percent of area median income (AMI). Six units will be for income levels of 60 to 80 percent of AMI, and six units up to 110 percent of AMI. The remainder will be market rate, with no income restrictions. This income mix reflects the needs of a healthy and diverse community.

    As for nitrates and wastewater, the Cape Cod Commission states that “the wastewater plan is consistent with the Regional Policy Plan’s water resources objective and sufficiently addresses the potential impacts to drinking water resources.” I think we can put that issue to bed now.

    The zoning board of appeals has had countless hours of public meetings on this application, has reviewed many documents, and has heard from the applicant and his staff, third-party technical consultants, and a large number of members of the public. Throughout this process the applicant has demonstrated patience, flexibility, and a willingness to work collaboratively to ensure the best possible outcome. I think that is to be commended.

    Kevin Grunwald is chair of the Truro Housing Authority.

    FACT CHECK

    Confusion Is on Tap in Cloverleaf Fight

    Cesspools are the real risk to Truro’s water quality

    By

    TRURO — Out West, the saying goes that “Whisky’s for drinkin’, and water’s for fightin’.” In Truro’s ongoing debate about affordable housing at the Cloverleaf parcel, the water is for drinking, and the wastewater is for fighting.

    On Monday, 77 residents who live near the Cloverleaf site on Highland Road sent a letter to the zoning board of appeals, outlining their concern that the development will increase nitrogen levels in local drinking water to dangerous levels. Attached to the letter is a 40-page report by Docs for Truro Safe Water, a group of seven M.D.s and holders of doctorate degrees in various specialties. (The group includes two medical doctors, an epidemiologist, a biology professor, two engineers, and a doctor of social work.) The report focuses on the danger of nitrogen in drinking water and argues for a tighter standard for nitrates than that used by the Environmental Protection Agency.

    With conflicting estimates of the adequacy of wastewater treatment systems being advanced by the developer, town staff, outside engineers, and supporters and opponents of the project, the Independent spoke with several experts on water and wastewater in order to better understand the claims being made.

    What’s Being Measured?

    Tim Pasakarnis, a water resources analyst at the Cape Cod Commission, said that it is crucial to focus not just on numbers, but on what those numbers are measuring. “There’s a lot of milligram-per-liter [mg/L] numbers being thrown around,” said Pasakarnis, “and they don’t necessarily represent the same thing. So, for instance, you have the effluent nitrogen concentration — that’s what is coming out of a treatment system. That number is assumed to be 35 mg/L for a traditional septic system.

    TruroWater
    The Mass. Alternative Septic System Test Center, where you can smell the science.

    “Then you have site-wide nitrogen loading at a development site — that’s the effluent, plus nitrogen from fertilizer and storm runoff, divided by the volume of recharge that comes from rainwater on the site, and modified by the surface coverage of the proposed development,” Pasakarnis continued. Five mg/L is the Cape Cod Commission’s development standard, according to Pasakarnis. Standards for nitrogen in tap water are different, and not regulated by the commission, he said.

    The ZBA ordered an independent review of the design for the Cloverleaf’s wastewater treatment system by the Horsley Witten Group, which found it adequate. Horsley Witten’s Mark Nelson said the system should reduce nitrogen to 5 mg/L.

    What can be confusing is that these three kinds of measurements — effluent, site-wide loading, and water samples — are expressed in the same units, and in very similar numeric ranges. So, for instance, the developer says that a BioMicrobics system can produce effluent in a leaching field between 5 and 10 mg/L. The Cape Cod Commission’s site-wide loading standard for development projects is 5 mg/L. And the Docs for Truro Safe Water argue that the correct threshold for safe drinking water in a well is 5 mg/L.

    Despite all three of those values being 5 mg/L, they refer to three different things measured in three very different places.

    The Bar for Drinking Water

    This could confuse anyone. One of the doctors told the ZBA, “We are trying to understand why the Cape Cod Commission recommends no more than 5 ppm, and the EPA accepts a standard of 10 ppm.”

    Pasakarnis pinpointed the source of that confusion. The commission’s standard of 5 mg/L applies to site-wide nitrogen loading, he said, while 10 mg/L is the EPA’s standard for public drinking water coming from a tap.

    One place where the Docs for Truro Safe Water and the water experts the Independent consulted were in clear agreement was on older septic and pre-septic systems as likely causes of nitrogen contamination.

    “Truro is estimated to still have about 210 cesspools in operation,” says the Docs report — “about 10 percent of Truro homes…. Cesspools lack the ability to filter waste and the sewage eventually contaminates the surrounding soil. For this reason, cesspools are outdated and illegal.”

    Brian Baumgaertel is director of the Mass. Alternative Septic System Test Center, located in Mashpee and managed by Barnstable County. He specializes in all kinds of septic systems.

    “The current rules were put in place in 1995 — that’s Title 5 septic systems,” said Baumgaertel. “Before that, it’s an older protocol called Code-78, passed in 1978. Before that, it’s cesspools and cesspits. There’s still a lot of those out there. They should be pumped out every three to five years, but there’s no pumping requirements in the state code.” Baumgaertel said he does not know of any local pumping regulations on the Cape.

    “People will claim, ‘I’ve got by 50 years without a pump-out!’ ” Baumgaertel said, when, in reality, “the system has failed, and they don’t know it.”

    Because septic upgrades cost between $12,000 and $50,000, according to Baumgaertel, the only time an upgrade is required is when a property is sold. That’s when the gains of appreciation are being reaped, so it’s the least painful time to require such a large, unglamorous investment.

    Passing on a property within a family doesn’t trigger an inspection and upgrade, however. That’s how cesspools are effectively “grandfathered in.”

    Nor is there a testing regime to discover failed systems, said Baumgaertel. That’s because, if an inspection were to discover a failed system, the home owner immediately becomes obligated to bring it up to current codes. Health departments hesitate to check on older systems when findings could cost individual home owners tens of thousands of dollars.

    “I’m on the Mashpee Board of Health,” said Baumgaertel. “We can require any home owner to get an inspection at any time. That’s a power that I can say is very lightly used. I’m not aware of any Cape town that’s doing residential inspections on any kind of schedule.”

    The benchmark number for a properly operating Title 5 residential septic system is 35 mg/L of nitrates going into the tank, and 26.25 mg/L of nitrates discharged in the leaching field, said Baumgaertel. In reality, he said, what’s going into the tank is more like 60 mg/L, a number the state D.E.P. confirmed is typical. “We’ve found numbers as high as 120 mg/L in test sites,” he added.

    That means undetected failed cesspools are likely dumping large amounts of nitrates into the aquifer — possibly 80 mg/L or more. A few failed cesspools could contribute more nitrates than the entire Cloverleaf development.

    Failed systems aren’t easy to solve, said Baumgaertel. “The county has a loan program to help people replace their failed septic systems. It’s a 20-year loan at 5 percent.” That helps spread out the pain, but it’s still an expensive undertaking. (For more information on that program, see barnstablecountysepticloan.org.)

    A 5 mg/L Standard?

    When the Docs for Truro Safe Water report argues for a 5 mg/L nitrogen limit for well water, it is setting a standard that would be difficult for Truro to meet.

    To arrive at their standard, they draw on a variety of studies on cancer incidence as associated with nitrates in drinking water. Emerging science, they say, suggests a new standard is needed.

    Their report, however, doesn’t cite any jurisdiction anywhere that currently has a 5 mg/L standard for drinking water. The Independent attempted to contact the Docs for Truro Safe Water, but did not receive a response by press time.

    The World Health Organization and the European Environment Agency use a standard slightly higher than the EPA’s 10 mg/L. So does New Zealand. Canada uses the 10 mg/L standard. The Independent could not identify any jurisdictions with a 5 mg/L standard.

    There may be such jurisdictions. Or maybe Truro will be the first.

    To really clean up the water, though, someone’s going to need to dive into the cesspool problem.

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