From an historical perspective, the old axiom of "if I knew then what I know now" applies to a number of decisions the town made during the fifties and sixties. The most egregious example is the main sewer line that runs through the main well field. I can say with some degree of certainty that if a similar proposal was made today it would be received with hilarity.
A similar decision was made in the sixties when the town in its wisdom decided to site a salt shed at the town public works barn on Great Meadow Road. The DPW site is located directly across the street from the Great Meadow well field and it should have come as no surprise that a few years later it was determined that there was a rise in the level of salt in the town's drinking water.
Today's rumination is on the subject of the DPW barn itself. Why was the barn sited where it is and considering its environmentally delicate location why has the town not taken any steps to move it? In search of these answers I began this Christmas Eve morning with a little jaunt through the 600 pages of Edward Fogelberg's historical work on Burlington. Strangely, there does not appear to be a single reference to the barn or even the salt shed fiasco in the book.
Undaunted, I then slipped my cd copy of the over 800 articles Fogelberg had written for the Daily Times Chronicle from 1979 through 1994. Compiled over three years of tireless effort by James Ashworth, the collection is an in depth look at the people and places that make up the history of the community. Despite the fact that there is over 800,000 words on every subject imaginable I could not find anything on the DPW site. (This compilation is available from the Historical Commission at the ridiculously low price of ten dollars).
Of course my curiosity is now piqued and I will have to embark on a "mission from God" (line stolen from the Blues Brother's movie) in order to find out the facts surrounding this historical event.
In the mean time let me tell you what I know from memory regarding this site. First and foremost is the little known fact that the town does not actually own the site. The town occupies the property as the result of a 100 year lease that was written sometime in the late fifties to early sixties. It came as the result of some negotiations with a real estate developer. That lease still has some 40 years to run.
How ever given the location of the property next to the well fields, the town began to think of relocating it in the early eighties.
Just such an opportunity came up within the negotiations between the town, state and Sun Microsystems when Sun was in the process of acquiring the old RCA, Lockheed Martin site. Included in these negotiations were discussions with the state about acquiring the State DPW barn in the center of town in exchange for various concessions the town was making in approving a Tax Incentive Financing agreement and Planned Development District that would enable Sun to build a huge campus on the site.
Town meeting approved the whole deal and Sun went on it's merry way in developing the site. Some time later when the town turned its attention to the idea of taking control of the state barn site it became apparent that the deal the town thought they were getting wasn't correct. The state replied that yes you could have the barn but at market price.
The mystery of this misunderstanding has never been fully explained. The town had appointed a special counsel, Gloria Larsen to represent us in the negotiations yet there has never been either an explanation by the town or Larsen as to what went wrong nor has there ever been any kind of legal action by the town to establish who was right.
So here we today. The site is an extremely sensitive parcel directly adjacent to our well field, sitting on our main acquifer, that is the place where all our equipment is stored and maintained complete with all the apurtenant chemicals and tools. The site is complete with storage of silt creating dirt and has pervious surfaces on top of which ride and park all sorts heavy industrial equipment.
To make matters worse we don't even own the site and when the time comes we will be responsible for any environmental clean up that might result from a nearly 100 year use as an industrial site.
Since I can't rely on Mr. Fogelberg's work on the subject I will have to actually do some research of my own. More on this subject later.
Merry Christmas, all of you beautiful Burlingtonians!
