HADLEY — Many of the cities and towns with Connecticut River frontage prohibit recreational vehicles and campers to be set up at the edge of the waterway for any length of time.
But with Hadley, unlike Northampton and Hatfield, continuing to permit campsites along the river for the warm-weather months, the presence of trailers and motorhomes has continued to grow in these flood-prone areas.
“So they all come to Hadley, and what was a few trailers is in the hundreds, sometimes,” Joseph Zgrodnik told his colleagues at a Planning Board meeting this week.
Under a new model river protection bylaw being developed by town planners as a mandate from the state, and necessary to bring Hadley into compliance with Federal Emergency Management Agency regulations for flood plains, more oversight could be put in place for these campsites.
For campsites in the floodway of the river, often rented by landowners to people who want beachfront property for the summer, Planning Board Clerk William Dwyer said one of the worries is that their RVs could become “torpedoes” that hurtle down the river toward the Holyoke Dam, if swept away during high water in the floodway or a storm.
“It does have to be brought under better control,” Dwyer said, adding that officials are working with Pioneer Valley Planning Commission Senior Planner Ken Comia to update the bylaw, last revised in 1996, at the next annual Town Meeting.
Dwyer said the town has to also be prepared for when revised flood insurance rate maps are finalized by 2022. Not being in compliance could be a concern for both the town and residents, such as making it impossible for people to get mortgages for certain homes.
The current bylaw has people get special permits from the Zoning Board of Appeals so they can have the riverside trailers for up to 179 consecutive days between May 1 and Oct. 31. These have to be temporary in design, with no permanent attached structures, and no bigger than 400 square feet. The lots on which these campers are located, in turn, must meet the minimum frontage and dimensional requirements of whatever zoning district they are in.
But there are questions about how many people actually go through this process, whether larger motorhomes are now using the campsites, and whether any penalties are being assessed by the building commissioner.
“What we have now is more of an enforcement issue,” Dwyer said.
A report from Comprehensive Environmental Inc. of Bolton earlier this year, prepared for the town as part of the Community Resilience Building Guide and Municipal Vulnerability Program, states that the unpermitted campsites number around 100.
“The town has identified several environmental hazards and town bylaw violations associated with these camps, including sanitary concerns and tree clearing in flood and erosion prone areas,” the report states.
Planning Board member Michael Sarsynski said most of the campers arrive after the spring floods. “It’s not going to flood then,” Sarsynski said.
But if there are problems, property owners should be held accountable and fines should be issued, he said. “This absolutely has to stop at the landowner,” Sarsynski said
Dwyer explained that there are many concerns that go beyond the floodway and flood plain. He observes that the fire department worries that there may be propane tanks that need to be permitted at some of the sites, and that some people are trying to make the campsites more permanent, such as a request to a utility company to run electricity to a location to power an air conditioner.
And in late summer the closure of Mitch’s Island, located opposite Mitch’s Marina, illustrated other matters.
Kestrel Land Trust, one of the owners, announced the closure in August and characterized there having been “extreme misuse” of the site that included alcohol consumption, fires, dumping of trash and disturbance of natural resources.
