Wicked Local
NEW BEDFORD - The Buzzards Bay Coalition has announced a full schedule of free outdoor activities for the summer, resuming its Bay Adventure program, which aims to connect people to outdoor fun on Buzzards Bay and its watershed lands. The program had been limited in 2020, mainly focusing on self-guided activities, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing guidelines required for all organized events.
The nearly 30 activities planned for this summer range from stand-up paddleboarding, kayaking, and fishing to trail running, cycling, and snorkeling, among other things. And the program offers opportunities for children, adults, and families in communities throughout the region, from Westport to Falmouth.
May 5, 2021
Doggett Brook Farm. Photo courtesy: Buzzards Bay Coalition.
ROCHESTER The Rochester Land Trust is partnering with the Buzzards Bay Coalition to buy and protect the Doggett Brook Farm.
The property was previously a hotpoint of contention between owner Craig Canning and neighbors. Canning had intended to set up a farmer s market at the site. Neighbors contested the plans, stating that what Canning had proposed wasn t actually agricultural at all, but an industrial facility in disguise.
The Land Trust and Buzzards Bay Coalition plan to sell the property after protecting it with a conservation restriction.
The trust and coalition expect to sell the property at a loss, to someone who wants to buy a property with the understanding that it will be legally required to be preserved, but will be mostly usable as agriculture, minus a buffer for the waterway at the back.
BOURNE Wastewater infrastructure and how to fund it, as well as the process for hiring a new police chief, topped the list of articles before Bourne residents at the annual and special town meetings Monday night.
Just over 200 people showed up to vote on the 20-articles slate at the spring sessions at the Bourne Middle School gym.
Water protection fund
In an 80-19 vote, town meeting voters gave permission to the Board of Selectmen to discuss updating the Cape Cod and Islands Water Protection Fund. Updating the fund would allow grants awarded the town to be used to help pay for costs associated with its intermunicipal sewer agreement with Wareham.
UMass Medical School will award honorary degrees to four individuals at its 48th Commencement Exercises on Sunday, June 6. The event will be held at Coughlin Field on the campus of Worcester State University.
ORLEANS A bright red crane stood out against a nearly cloudless blue spring sky, hoisting blocks of scaffolding from the site’s access road into a massive concrete foundation.
The scaffolding was part of a temporary support system for the pouring of the slab of the first floor of Orleans’ new $38.1 million wastewater treatment plant, which is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2022. For the past two years, Orleans streets also bustled with crews installing the pipes for the $21.4 million downtown sewer collection system.
This is a moment capping over two decades of contentious debate in Orleans, and one that Alan McClennen, a former longtime Orleans select board member, could scarcely have believed possible just a few years ago when the cost of the town’s wastewater cleanup plan seemed insurmountable.