AMHERST — A 54-acre wooded parcel in Pelham, which could accommodate up to five single-family homes, will instead be permanently preserved as part of Amherst’s watershed land.
The Town Council on March 30, without discussion, voted to move forward with buying the so-called Aaron property, located on Shutesbury Road and set amid the reservoir system that provides water to the Centennial Water Treatment Plant. That plant is also located in Pelham.
While the full cost of the purchase is $364,700, the town secured a $218,820 grant from the state’s Energy & Environmental Affairs Drinking Water Supply Protection program and a $90,800 grant from the Massachusetts Audubon 30×30 Catalyst Fund to pay for the transaction.
The remaining $55,080 will come from the town’s water fund retained earnings, an account that has a $2.13 million balance.
A memo from Town Manager Paul Bockelman, Superintendent of Public Works Guilford Mooring and Elizabeth Willson, a DPW environmental scientist, explained that the project began when the Aaron family reached out to the Kestrel Land Trust about preserving the land, leading the town to get involved.
At a Finance Committee meeting earlier in March, Mooring said the land buy shows good faith to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection that it is trying to protect drinking water, and this enhances the water permit the town operates under.
Willson said the town had been looking at the land for a while.
“It would be a great piece of land for the town to acquire. It also abuts land we already own for watershed protection,” Willson said.
In fact, Amherst is one of the largest landowners in Pelham, and pays property taxes on the water supply protection land. Town employees also regularly look at the land to make sure no illicit activity is happening, including overnight camping.
Passive recreation will continue to be allowed on the property, which has undeveloped woodland, with two streams running across the property that flow into the Amethyst and Dunlap brooks, both of which are primary tributaries to the Hills Reservoir.
During Monday’s public forum, the only questions came from North Amherst resident Vincent O’Connor, who said he is concerned about budget surpluses from the previous year and appropriations from free cash being used for capital items. This shouldn’t happen “so we can preserve the availability of free cash to use for the school budgets,” O’Connor said.
Bockelman, though, said the land is not being bought with money from free cash or the town’s operating budget.
Finance Director Sean Mangano said the town had certified $10.2 million in free cash last year. This land deal, though, is being paid for using retained earnings.
The purchase price is only slightly higher than the $355,000 appraised value of the property.
Centennial Water Treatment Plant was rebuilt as a $21.5 million project after being offline in recent years following a 2018 lightning strike. It will be able to take up to 1 million gallons per day of surface water to the Amherst water system, using a more effective and efficient treatment technology that includes dissolved air flotation treatment and granular activated carbon filters.
