NEWS ON MT TOM and QUARRY -- WhitingStReservoir

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Date Posted: 07:39:54 06/03/02 Mon
Author: Robb
Subject: NEWS ON MT TOM and QUARRY

FROM: http://www.gazettenet.com/05142002/news/14509.htm

MOUNT TOM COALITION DEFLATED
By JUDSON BROWN, Staff Writer

Tuesday, May 14, 2002 -- HOLYOKE - Two years of negotiations between a partnership of public and private agencies and the owners of 400 choice acres on Mount Tom came to a halt last week when the sellers balked at a $45,000 insurance policy to cover cleanup costs.

The agencies, including the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and the Holyoke Boys and Girls Club, had scraped together the $3 million price of the property and expected to sign a purchase-and-sale agreement late last week.

They covet the site for passive recreation, protection of rare species and an outdoor camp for Holyoke youth. The site includes the defunct Mount Tom Ski Area and is listed as an area of special interest within the Silvio O. Conte National Wildlife Refuge.

Negotiations broke off abruptly when the sellers announced they had signed a five-year lease with an operator called Mt. Tom Rock LLC to start mining traprock again in the nine-acre quarry on the property. Traprock is used mainly for paving.

Since the preservation plan assumed the quarry would not re-open, the mining lease appeared to kill the sale, said the buyers' consortium, though behind-the-scenes talks continued early this week in a bid to salvage the deal, according to Holyoke planning director Jack Hunter,
The property owners say they changed their minds about selling when an independent insurance analysis ordered by the state estimated the cost to clean up oil contamination at the quarry could be as high $775,000, or $325,000 more than the limit they had anticipated.

This left them with an unexpected liability insurance bill, estimated at $45,000, according to Northampton Realtor Patrick Goggins, who represents one of the sellers, Mary Rose O'Connell of Holyoke.
Goggins termed the insurance requirement "absurd," "exorbitant" and "a huge obstacle" to a sale.

As a result, O'Connell and the other owner, Joseph J. O'Donnell of Belmont, decided to lease the quarry to beat a May 31 deadline, after which the quarry would no longer be allowed to operate under a provision of state law, according to Goggins.

Goggins said O'Connell regretted the action, but considered it necessary to preserve the commercial value of the property.

Under the law, a special permit such as the quarry had for a "nonconforming use" of land expires if the land in question is not actively used for two years.

Deadline disputed
However, Holyoke Mayor Michael Sullivan said the deadline Goggins referred to passed earlier this year. The city is ready to take whatever action is needed to enforce its view that quarrying is no longer allowable on the site, Hunter said Monday.

Neither O'Connell nor O'Donnell could be reached for comment.
The potential buyers, who also include the state Department of Environmental Management and the Trustees of Reservations, say the insurance issue is resolvable. They were - and still are-ready to explore a number of solutions when "the rug was pulled out from under us," according to Douglas Pizzi, a spokesman for the state Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.
That agency planned to spend $1.3 million for about 160 acres of the parcel.

"We're very disappointed (the deal fell through)," said Terry Blunt, director of the Department of Environmental Management's Connecticut Valley Action Program, principal negotiator on the deal.

"I'd say we could pull a rabbit out of a hat, except the rabbit turns out to be a badger with dollar signs on its back," Blunt said last week. "This thing is driven by money."
The buyers' disappointment contrasts with their recent optimism when the owners signed a purchase-and-sale agreement with the federal wildlife service, which pledged $1.1 million to buy 100-plus acres of mountain ridge in the parcel.

The Mount Tom parcel is part of an 8,200-acre tract, including Mount Holyoke, listed as a high priority "focus area" within the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, said refuge project leader Beth Goettel. She said she, too, was surprised and disappointed the sale collapsed at the last minute.

"Because the land involved had high mineral value, it was tough to come up with the money for these acres," said Goettel. "It was a heroic effort to pull in enough partners to pull it off, and then it took a lot of time to make it work."

The Trustees of Reservations, a Massachusetts land preservation group, had pledged $300,000 for 68 acres on a hilltop known as Little Pond, and the Boys and Girls Club of Holyoke had committed $250,000 to buy 21 acres near the old Mount Tom Ski Area lodge and pool, where it planned a summer camp.

"My sense is we weren't at the end of the road (in the negotiations) and would have liked to have kept talking," said Charles Wyman, a land protection specialist at the Trustees of Reservations office in Northampton. "It was frustrating when they called after the fact to tell us they had signed the lease."

Partnerships among agencies interested in land preservation are increasingly necessary, mainly because of the cost of land, Wyman said. "It's rare that a single organization has the ability to do it all by themselves," he said.

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