No Asphalt Plants in Plainville
To continue to show that residents of Plainville and the surrounding towns oppose the asphalt plant and want our by-laws upheld and enforced, we will continue to gather signatures until the Building Permit matter is resolved. Please ask your friends, family, neighbors and co-workers to sign.
IMPORTANT: Ignore the donation page after you sign. The donation is NOT for PlainvilleCAC (it's for the host page) and it is NOT necessary to donate in order for your name to appear on the petition.
FROM CITIZENS OF PLAINVILLE
TO THE PLAINVILLE ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS
Plainville is a small town of approximately ten square miles and eight-thousand residents. Despite our size, we host a regional landfill, a regional truck stop, a regional compost station, a quarry, and we are directly adjacent to the asphalt plant in Wrentham. Increasingly traveled Routes 495, 1 and 1A run through town, while Route 95 is nearby. On the end of town where Mr. Lorusso wants to build his new asphalt plant, residents have witnessed acres and acres of trees — the Earth's "lungs" — destroyed in the last decade to make way for Plainridge Racecourse, big box stores (Target and Lowe's), and a new empty shopping plaza next to historic Bliss Chapel. Once-open space has been replaced by a large inventory of unsold homes (within a mile of the proposed site of the asphalt plant).
We the undersigned believe the toxic burden on our bodies — carried in the air, fouling and diminishing our open spaces, and poisoning the water — is heavy enough without the addition of an asphalt plant that would introduce or increase hazardous pollutants like lead, arsenic, formaldehyde, mercury and hexavalent chromium, to name only a few.
It is for these reasons that the citizens of Plainville voted for Zoning By-laws to prohibit asphalt plants in our town: By-Law Section Two - Use and Intensity Regulations (Amended June 7, 1999 A.T.M., June 4, 2001 S.T.M, June 3, 2002 A.T.M.)
Despite this By-law, Building Inspector John Emidy issued a Building Permit in 2008 to Lorusso Corporation for a new asphalt plant at 787 Madison Street/3 Belcher Street in Plainville. Emidy issued this permit without any notice to, involvement of, or oversight by Plainville’s Boards and Commissions. As a result, the citizens of Plainville were deprived of the opportunity for comment and/or timely action before the permit was issued.
Because Lorusso Corp. has not made asphalt on the property in question since 2002, it must now comply with all current By-laws (Plainville Zoning By-law 3.1). And the current By-laws state that Plainville is not zoned for asphalt production.
For these and other reasons, we ask that the Plainville Zoning Board of Appeals revoke Building Permit #08-225, issued to Lorusso Corporation/ Plainville Asphalt.
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