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plastic bans

    CIVICS

    Town Meeting Likely to Be Put Off

    Voters will eventually consider Harbor Hill, water bottles, and off-leash beach rules

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The annual town meeting is unlikely to take place on its scheduled date, Monday, April 6. Gov. Charlie Baker issued an emergency order on Sunday limiting gatherings to fewer than 25 people — an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus.

    Technically, town meetings are exempt from the order, but legislation proposed by the governor outlines a path to delaying them. Town moderators would be able to order a 30-day delay, and select boards could postpone them even longer — past the start of the new fiscal year on July 1. Towns could spend money at the prior year’s budget level until town meeting authorized a new budget.

    If approved, this framework, and the continuing danger to public health, could mean putting off annual town meetings until well into the summer.

    Town Manager Robin Craver said on Tuesday that she will recommend that the select board “cancel” town meeting for now, while the state works on options for maintaining municipal government and services.

    When town meeting does eventually come, Provincetown voters will be faced with decisions about Harbor Hill’s finances, a plastic water-bottle ban, an eminent domain taking for the Ryder Street dune, and a change to the off-leash laws on Provincetown’s beaches.

    Paying for Harbor Hill

    Two articles on Harbor Hill’s finances will generate discussion. The first, an immediate spending authorization on a special town meeting warrant, allocates $100,000 to the completion of the renovation and construction work at the property, which the town voted to purchase in 2017. The second, Article 9 of the annual town meeting, calls for $595,000 from the general fund to be used for the bond payment on the project.

    In a joint meeting of the select board and finance committee on March 9, Craver introduced the articles and explained her reasoning. The $10.7 million that the town voted for in 2017 was not an expenditure of cash, said Craver — it was a vote to authorize debt.

    “When people talk about the debt service like it’s a subsidy, or an addition, they’re counting it twice,” she said. “That $595,000 is your mortgage, basically. This doesn’t go away; it’s not like you’re throwing $595,000 to the wind. You’re actually investing in a property, and at any point you’ll be able to sell it.”

    “It appears to me the rents will be able to cover the operating costs, which they should,” Craver continued. “You will be paying your debt service, which you should. The town owns it. I know there’s been conversations about what other options you might have, such as public-private partnerships, selling some of the portions off, condo-ing it — this also gives you an opportunity to do that.”

    Finance Committee Member Mark Del Franco noted that the project was originally pitched as nearly paying for itself and requiring only around $175,000 a year from the town. At that time, the expansion of the rooms tax to short-term rentals had been seen as a source of funds. Craver recommended against using that tax or the new marijuana tax to pay for Harbor Hill, though.

    Ryder Street Dune

    Another article seeks authorization to purchase or take by eminent domain a series of easements along the harbor between Ryder and Gosnold streets. This stretch of beach was the pathway for devastating coastal flooding in January 2018. The town wants to build a seven-foot dune to prevent the area from flooding again.

    “We have learned that to qualify for grants to cover the construction work, we have to show that we have a continuing legal right to maintain the dune,” Conservation Agent Tim Famulare told the select board in January. “Permission or consent from the underlying property owners is not sufficient. We will need easements that give the town permanent access privileges.”

    The cost of the easements is not yet known.

    Plastic Water Bottle Ban

    A petitioned article from Ted Jones and the environmental action group Sustainable Practices would ban the sale of water in single-use plastic bottles of less than one gallon. Sale of water in aluminum cans, cardboard cartons, and glass bottles would still be allowed, as would soda water and sweetened drinks of all kinds. This same bylaw will be on the town meeting warrant in 11 of the 15 towns on the Cape this year, and its advocates were hoping that Provincetown’s meeting would give them an early and trendsetting win.

    “About 60 percent of the single-use plastic bottle market is for plain water,” said Madhavi Venkatesan, executive director of Sustainable Practices. “Hardly any of them are recycled. Recycling rates are much higher for aluminum cans, and of course reusable bottles filled from the tap are even better.”

    Changes to Off-leash Rules

    An article brought by the animal welfare committee would change the times that dogs can be off leash on town beaches. Currently it’s from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. for seven months of the year. From Memorial Day to Nov. 1, they can be off leash from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

    The article would apply the summer rules to the whole year.

    ENVIRONMENT

    Eastham Unlikely to Go It Alone on Broad Plastics Ban

    But a narrower petitioned article and a bag ban make progress

    By

    EASTHAM — The select board sent two proposed bylaws banning plastic bottles and bags back to the conservation commission for revisions on Monday instead of placing them as articles on the warrant for the annual town meeting.

    Both bylaws originated in last May’s town meeting, at which voters approved two petitioned articles banning single-use plastic bags and polystyrene. Two bylaws were then proposed: the Plastic Beverage Bylaw and the Plastic and Marine Hazards Reduction Bylaw.

    The bottle bylaw would ban the sale or distribution of drinking water, whether carbonated or non-carbonated, and soft drinks in plastic bottles of 24 ounces or less (originally 34 ounces), as well as distilled spirits in 50 ml plastic bottles, or “nips.” “Soft drink” was defined as any beverage containing carbonated water, a sweetener (including fruit juice), or a flavoring.

    The marine hazards bylaw proposes to phase out single-use plastic checkout bags by requiring establishments to replace them with reusable bags, recyclable bags, or compostable plastic bags. Originally, the bylaw would have required establishments to charge customers 10 cents per paper bag, but that provision has since been removed.

    Bottled-up Anger

    The bottle bylaw is particularly controversial among local business owners, who feel it places an undue hardship on them. In spite of their objections, they made it clear Monday that they supported ridding the environment of plastic. Some said they were in favor of a Cape-wide ban on plastic.

    “This is a tough conversation for me because I’m a small business owner — I sell a lot of single-use beverages,” said Susan Knight, owner of Sam’s Deli. “I also hate plastic.”

    Knight said she considered eliminating all plastic beverage bottles in her store on her own this summer but backed down. “It would be suicide — we just cannot do it,” she said. “The market is not ready; the consumers aren’t ready. But they’ll get there.”

    More objections were raised at a public meeting on Jan. 29 led by Karen Strauss and Jim Baughman of the conservation commission and conservation agent Shana Brogan.

    “I’m very threatened at this moment, as is my business,” said Sarah Wilcox, owner of the Eastham Superette.

    Signs in Eastham Superette
    Signs in the Eastham Superette rally customers to fight a proposed plastic bottle ban. (Photo Ed Maroney)

    Some argued that the bylaw would lead people to shop in Orleans or Wellfleet and then dispose of plastic bottles in Eastham.

    “All that plastic on the beach is getting there because people take it out and they just leave it,” said Kevin Plumb, owner of Town Center Wine & Spirits in Eastham. “Has there been any consideration of more recycling bins at the beaches, signage encouraging people if you take it in, take it out, and throw it in the bin?”

    Eleven Cape Cod towns now ban municipal (but not commercial) purchase of water in plastic bottles: Brewster, Chatham, Dennis, Eastham, Falmouth, Harwich, Orleans, Provincetown, Sandwich, Wellfleet, and Yarmouth. Seven towns in the state ban all single-serve water in plastic bottles: Concord, Sudbury, Lincoln, Great Barrington, Aquinnah, Chilmark, and West Tisbury. Three towns, all on Martha’s Vineyard, also ban carbonated soft drinks in plastic: Aquinnah, Chilmark, and West Tisbury.

    Eastham’s proposed bottle bylaw, which would ban virtually all drinks bottled in plastic, is a comprehensive approach that would be the first of its kind in the state.

    “To think that this is going to not affect our retailers, which are very fragile, is not looking at the whole picture,” said Jim Russo of the Eastham Chamber of Commerce.

    Over 200,000 Nips

    The ban on plastic nips alone would be a serious blow to the Superette and Wine & Spirits stores, the owners said. Wilcox said the two stores combined sold more than 200,000 nips last year.

    Nips are an unusual case. Water and soft drinks can be sold in boxes or cans but nips come only in glass and plastic.

    Plastic nip bottles don’t have a deposit. State Rep. Randy Hunt of Sandwich has filed a bill (H.2881) that would add a five-cent deposit on the sale of nips statewide.

    A plastic nip bottle ban in the town of Chelsea led to a decline in nips littering the streets, according to a story in CommonWealth Magazine in August 2018. But the article also noted a different effect.

    “Alcohol-related ambulance responses, which typically trigger police and fire calls as well, have declined dramatically in Chelsea since the advent of the nip ban,” the magazine reported.

    The controversy may soon be moot. At the select board meeting, members discussed tabling the bottle bylaw because of two related bans that were also in the works.

    The Brewster-based environmental action group Sustainable Practices hopes to put a petitioned article for a single-use plastic water bottle ban on all 15 Cape town meeting warrants this year. The group pushed a municipal ban last year that was adopted by 11 of 15 towns. The four towns that didn’t were Truro, Bourne, Mashpee, and Barnstable. Truro may place it on the warrant this year, said Madhavi Venkatesan, executive director of Sustainable Practices.

    Sustainable Practices has confirmed that the petitioned article will appear on warrants in Provincetown, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, Harwich, Brewster, and Chatham. The ban would apply to the sale of noncarbonated, unflavored drinking water in single-use plastic bottles of less than one gallon. Enforcement would begin Sept. 1, 2021.

    Another Bylaw in the Bag

    Though the select board sent the marine hazards bylaw, which bans plastic bags, back to the conservation commission, it is nevertheless leaning toward voting for the bag ban as written to go on the warrant. The commission had suggested focusing on bags with less than 3.5-mm-thick handles, but select board member Jamie Rivers said, “I think it makes sense to have no plastic bags.”

    The commission had already made changes before the Jan. 29 public meeting. One dealt with dates: if either bylaw passes in May, it would become effective on Nov. 1, 2020, but penalties would be postponed until the end of November 2021. This would give businesses time to adjust to the new rules. Both bylaws need a two-thirds majority vote to be adopted at town meeting.

    Ken Taber, owner of the Hole in One in Orleans and Eastham and Fairway Restaurant in Eastham, managed to lighten the mood at the select board meeting.

    “Orleans went through this last year, folks,” Taber said. “We had to get rid of the Styrofoam cups, we had to get rid of the plastic bags, we had to get rid of everything that was polystyrene. It wasn’t a hardship. All I had to do was move whatever I had down to Eastham.”

    LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

    Letters, February 6, 2020

    From Laura Logue Rood, Tom Parker, and Mike Rice

    By

    Harbor Hill: A ‘Failed Project’

    To the editor:

    I read with interest Paul Benson’s article on Harbor Hill [Jan. 30, page 8], which was purchased with great fanfare in 2017. I’m not sure what the town was thinking in purchasing and then planning on subsidizing housing for the middle class. The cry that I’ve heard for years is the need for “affordable housing” and, more recently, low-income housing, given the median income for Provincetown residents is approximately $45,000.

    Last year the town, I thought, wisely approved an additional $492,000 to correct the multiple deficiencies found at Harbor Hill. Now we have to continue to subsidize a failed project. While there may be a Pigouvian tax in economics, there is also the law of misapplied repair: in fixing one problem, you create another. More simply: putting good money after bad.

    Here are some facts:

    $12.7 million in bonds to acquire and renovate Harbor Hill.

    $150,000 annual deficit forecast in February 2017 when they pitched this project. Didn’t happen.

    The Year-Round Market-Rate Rental Housing Trust claimed they could cover this deficit for five years, as they had $1.5 million in the trust. Didn’t happen.

    The town was forced to approve an additional $492,000 subsidy for FY 2020 to complete the renovations and prepare the complex for leasing.

    Rents were lowered significantly to entice people to lease, and the new annual subsidy is still unknown but expected to be at least three times the original $150,000 forecast. Probably $500,000 through FY21.

    As of today, more than $11.2 million has been invested in Harbor Hill. This works out to $400,000 per unit — so far. To me, that’s large. And it’s going to get larger with each passing year.

    Are Provincetown taxpayers OK with subsidizing apartments for people making up to twice the median income? For a single person, that could be up to $127,000 a year.

    Think about it.

    Laura Logue Rood
    Boston and Provincetown

    A Lost Art

    To the editor:

    In your Jan. 16 front-page report on the resignation of Wellfleet Town Administrator Dan Hoort, one sentence didn’t finish the way my mind assumed that it would.

    “He’s very hardworking and fair,” you quoted Justina Carlson saying, “and hasn’t forgotten the fine art of…” my mind assumed: “the handwritten note.” The actual sentence ended: “the beautifully written email.”

    Gentle reminders of aging seem to increase with the years.

    Tom Parker
    Gwynedd, Pa.

    Banning Hydration

    To the editor:

    Banning the sale of single-use plastic water bottles [Jan. 23, page 1] would be detrimental to Cape Cod’s vital tourism economy. After all, being unexpectedly inconvenienced isn’t included in anyone’s vacation plans.

    More important: neither is being dehydrated, which is a public health issue.

    Mike Rice
    South Wellfleet

    CIVICS

    Bylaws Would Ban Plastic Bottles, Bags

    Town meeting may vote on prohibiting sales at local retail stores

    By

    EASTHAM — At any beach cleanup, the haul of trash is fairly predictable: plastic, in the form of beverage bottles, shopping bags, straws, netting, and more. Because much of the litter on beaches and roadsides involves purchases from retail stores (and single-use plastic bags to carry them in), the conservation commission is backing two bylaws to outlaw sales of these items.

    The ConCom acted to follow up on last May’s town meeting, where voters approved two petitioned articles banning single-use plastic bags and polystyrene.

    The select board will vote on Feb. 3 whether to put a plastic bottle bylaw and a plastic and marine hazards reduction bylaw on the warrant for this year’s town meeting, to be held on Monday, May 4. The bottle bylaw would prohibit retail stores in Eastham from selling or distributing beverages and soft drinks in plastic bottles of less than 34 ounces. The sale of distilled spirits in 50-ml plastic bottles (“nips”) would also be outlawed.

    The marine hazards bylaw would require stores to phase out single-use plastic checkout bags and require stores and restaurants to stop using, selling, or distributing plastic straws and disposable polystyrene containers and cutlery.

    So far 122 municipalities in Massachusetts have enacted some version of a ban on plastic checkout bags.

    Stores that supply checkout bags would be restricted to reusable, recyclable, or compostable ones and would have to charge at least 10 cents per bag.

    The bylaw would not apply to polystyrene packing peanuts and foam packaging reused from shipments coming to Eastham, prepackaged meat and produce trays, egg cartons, or similar containers bought from a wholesaler or out-of-town supplier, or polystyrene foam freezer chests enclosed in durable rigid plastic.

    The bylaw would also ban the sale, distribution, and intentional release of helium-filled balloons in town, except by government agencies or researchers.

    Karen Strauss, a member of the conservation commission, said that even though many establishments in town offer paper bags instead of plastic, that is also a problem.

    “Paper bags have their own issues,” Strauss wrote in a document on the bylaw proposal. “Chemical fertilizers are often used on the trees grown for wood pulp…. Paper bags are heavy, and transport requires the use of petroleum. Paper bags, like most other things, are seldom recycled, and end up as solid waste.”

    Some local businesspeople were less than pleased. Leslie Plumb, owner of Town Center Wine & Spirits, said there has been little communication from the town about the proposed bylaws.

    “It’s so anti-business,” Plumb said. “There’s so many unintended consequences with this.”

    The “nips” display at Town Center Wine & Spirits. (Photo courtesy Leslie Plumb)

    She said the volume of nip sales was significant and that if the store had to stop selling them she would have to lay off at least one employee. “We would be in survival mode,” she said. She also claimed that many buyers of nip bottles dispose of them responsibly.

    “As a business we absolutely do support the environment and conservation,” Plumb said. “All of our cardboard and all of our paper bags are recycled. If the town supplied signs to liquor stores to encourage responsible disposal of nips and increased public trash cans and recycling efforts across town, that might be more effective.”

    Rohitkumur Patel, manager of the Village Green General Store, said his business would take a big hit, too.

    Strauss said at the ConCom’s Jan.14 meeting that she would provide a chart of alternatives to  plastic bottles at a meeting at the Eastham Library on Wednesday, Jan. 29, at 6 p.m.

    In an interview, Select Board Chair Aimee Eckman said she agreed with Strauss on the need for the bylaws and that she hoped to make business owners aware of alternatives to plastic.

    “Their businesses aren’t going to collapse because of this,” she said.

    Alternatives include boxed water, which comes in a carton, like milk, or glass soda and juice bottles. Patel said the alternatives are more expensive and he would have to charge more for them.

    “What are you going to do?” he said. “I have to make a profit.”

    Sarah Wilcox, owner of Eastham Superette, did not respond to a request for comment. Cumberland Farms management declined to comment for this story.

    Patel and Plumb said they had heard about the proposed bylaws only recently. The town sent an email to local businesses about the bylaws on Jan. 13.

    “The reasoning behind the petitioned articles and creating these bylaws is due to concern about the increasing amount of plastic found in our environment, the harmful impacts it is causing to sea life, and its inability to degrade over time,” Eckman wrote in the email. “These plastic items were specifically chosen because they are the most frequently collected during beach clean-ups.”

    Most plastic nip bottles end up on the ground, she said in the interview. “People throw those things out their car windows,” she said. “They’re just everywhere.”

    Penalties for violating either bylaw would be a written warning for the first offense followed by a $200 fine for a second offense and $500 fine for third and subsequent offenses.

    Plumb said she feared a loss of business: patrons will just go to Orleans or Wellfleet to buy nips and other drinks in plastic. While they’re there, they may do the rest of their shopping, thus driving business away from Eastham.

    Citizens may submit comments to the select board at its Monday, Feb. 3 meeting at 5:30 p.m. at town hall.

     

    oysterfest 2019

    OysterFest Goes ‘Plastic Free’

    Beer and wine in cans and stainless steel mugs replace plastic cups

    By

    Wine can be canned. Truro Vineyards has done it with a rosé.

    WELLFLEET — Organizers of the Wellfeet OysterFest announced last week that this year’s event will be “plastic free” in response to rising concerns about the environmental impact of single-use plastics.

    Lead organizer Michele Insley said of SPAT (Wellfleet Shellfish Promotion and Tasting), the group that puts on the festival, “We’re a nonprofit that supports the shellfishing industry, and we want to create a festival where we have a great time but are also acting sustainably when it comes to our waste.”

    Changes at this year’s festival will include serving canned wine, beer, and water instead of beverages in plastic cups or bottles and requiring all vendors to use either compostable or reusable products for food service.

    Festival organizers have been working to reduce trash from the event since 2009, when SPAT partnered with the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Wellfleet Wastewater Management Planning Committee to implement shell recycling, removing clam and oyster shells from the solid waste stream and returning the shells to Wellfleet Harbor as part of a habitat restoration effort.

    In the years since concern over single-use plastics has intensified locally. “The citizens of Wellfleet have had this desire on their own, organizing from the grassroots level to implement various single-use plastic bans,” said Insley. “We want to be in sync with our host community.”

    In recent years the festival has slowly chipped away at its plastic use, swapping plastic beads for wooden ones in the kids’ area, offering refillable water stations, and following the town’s lead on initiatives such as the single-use plastic bag ban and the polystyrene ban. Following a vote at Wellfleet’s 2019 spring town meeting to ban municipal purchase of plastic bottles, SPAT organizers began working to follow suit.

    “This year is going to be a big change,” Insley said. For the past decade recycling volunteers at the event have instructed the public on how to sort three waste streams — shells, trash, and recycling. “We’ve been trying to eliminate single-stream recycling because it’s hard to keep uncontaminated,” she added. “This year we’ll still have single stream on Main Street, but inside the festival we’re going to focus on trash, shells, and aluminum cans.”

    SPAT has partnered with Open Water, a Chicago-based company, to sell water in aluminum cans at cost to food vendors so they are able to offer water to patrons. In the beer tent Sam Adams will offer four canned beers and an oyster stout, brewed especially for the festival, which will be available for purchase in a reusable 16-ounce stainless steel cup. Truro Vineyards will offer kegged wines for purchase in nine-ounce reusable stainless steel cups as well as a canned rosé.

    “It can be hard to change packaging,” said Vineyard co-owner Kristen Roberts, “but we are constantly trying to decrease our carbon footprint, and we are thinking more and more about canned products as we move forward.”

    The lead recycling organizer for the festival, Christine Shreves of Wellfleet, said SPAT has partnered with the nonprofit Sustainable Practices of Brewster to sort through cans, and recycling stations will feature new containers with four-inch-square openings to prevent contamination. Sustainable Practices has been behind many of the municipal plastic bottle bans across the Cape and will receive a check from SPAT for the total redemption value of recycled cans.

    Changes to food vendor packaging are less clear-cut. The ultimate goal is to move to all compostable packaging and partner with a Truro farmer who is interested in taking the waste.

    “Unfortunately he still has some improvements to make in order to get licensed by the state,” said Shreves, adding that composting is “still the plan” long-term. In the meantime, the festival is requiring vendors to make the packaging switch to either reusable or compostable goods this year in an effort to be ready when a compost site does become available.

    “The most challenging thing [in working with vendors] is figuring out packaging for soups and hot drinks,” said Shreves. “The only options if you’re using paper are to have a liner of PLA [polylactic acid] or the plastic polyethelyne. PLA has been hard because while it’s not a petroleum product and it is made from plants, it breaks down only in industrial composting facilities.” For the time being these products will still be allowed for use by vendors.

    Some vendors will be skipping compostable utensils in favor of ordering reusable metal utensils, said Shreves, and will provide a bucket for customers to return used silverware. “I’d love to mimic festivals in Europe where when you enter you get a reusable plate, a cup, and utensils and bring them back when you leave,” she said, “It’s exciting to see vendors thinking like that.”

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