ROCKPORT — A group of homeowners who repaved their street have run afoul of the Planning Board.
The Planning Board had been considering Whale Cove Road as a road project as was known to have its fair share of potholes. Although a private road, it had been designated for winter snow plowing if repaired, according to board Chair Jason Shaw.
But the move by some property owners to hire a local construction company to repair and ultimately repave the private road took board members by surprise, with Shaw calling it premature at a recent meeting.
“You folks took it upon yourselves to do the paving job,” he told the group at a recent meeting. “Nobody told you to do that. Nobody said you had to do that for the town to plow the road.”
Shaw blasted the paving in light of what he said was knowledge by some neighbors that a stormwater management permit was required for the project.
“As they say, ignorance of the law is not a defense,” he said. “You can’t say we didn’t know what the law was. It’s been on the books since 2023. The law’s there. The regulations are there.
“I’m sorry that someone didn’t bring it to your attention sooner. You guys went ahead and did it. You could have not done it, but you did it. I’m sorry that happened.”
Betsy Ware, consulting planner for the Planning Board, said she had issued a “cease and desist” order for the project.
“I said please don’t do anything until the Planning Board discusses this and we analyze whether you need a permit or not,” Ware said. “They knew that they needed a stormwater permit. There’s been a lot of back and forth on this.”
But the order seems to have missed the mark.
“It may be a little bit late because the road has been paved,” Whale Cove Road resident Margot Hintlian said. “I came home Wednesday and I think they were completed (Thursday, Oct. 16).
“Hearing this cease and desist and the fact that we had to have a stormwater assessment made by the Planning Board is news to us,” said Hintlian, who was recently appointed to the Finance Committee. “There needs to be some level of communication amongst all the boards that says what you need to do to comply.”
The neighbors were acting in good faith, Hintlian said.
“We are just acting as citizens,” she said. “We aren’t an organized homeowners association.”
“At this point, I don’t want to belabor this,” Shaw said. He said filling the potholes would have made the private road suitable for town plowing.
Shaw said the Whale Cove Road neighbors first decided to get an estimate from an engineering firm on having the potholes filled.
“(That) would have brought it up to where it needed to be for the plowing,” he said. “That was approximately $3,600. It’s a fairly reasonable cost.”
But Shaw said the next step taken by the property owners concerned some town officials.
“The property owners also decided that they were going to go well beyond the filling of the potholes and were actually going to completely redo the road and repave it,” Shaw said. He said the estimate for the work amounted to about $66,000.
The property owners were previously informed “by a number of people in the Rockport government” that a stormwater management permit would need to be submitted, Shaw said.
“They knew that,” he said. “My thought was to tell them ‘Fill the potholes. Do that now and let’s go through the stormwater management process.’ Then, in the spring do the big paving job.”
That would have been a “perfect solution to their issue,” Shaw said.
However, earlier this month, he said the property owners contractor brought “many large vehicles and rollers and trucks” that he saw parked on nearby Eden Road.
“They were going to go ahead and do the paving, even though they knew they needed a stormwater management permit,” he said.
“Because the permitting has been avoided,” Shaw said, “it’s now become an enforcement action. We will be talking with the town counsel.”
Not everyone on Whale Cove Road wanted the project to proceed, he said last week.
“There is dissension among the homeowners,” Shaw said. “We see the dissension. I don’t know what will happen. The bottom line is they paved the road without getting a stormwater management permit first, which they should have done. They didn’t have to do that, but they did it.”
Stephen Hagan may be contacted at 978-675-2708, or shagan@gloucestertimes.com.