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PRESS
RELEASE, Focus:Tamworth
Contact:
Charles
Greenhalgh, 356-5439 (day)
OR
Kate Vachon, 323 8224 (day or evening)
Focus:
Tamworth receives grant from New England Grassroots Environment Fund;
urges attendance at April 27th DES hearing
Tamworth,
April 19 -- Focus: Tamworth has received a grant from the New England
Grassroots Environment Fund (NEGEF)
to "help fund legal and technical assistance in order to regulate
the building and operation of a private sports-car race track located
over a critical aquifer and near conservation land in Tamworth."
NEGEF, based in Montpelier, VT, is a nonprofit grant program designed to
foster a broad range of local environmental initiatives in Connecticut,
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
NEGEF makes grants to help enhance local activism, promote
greater civic engagement, and build and connect healthy and sustainable
communities across New England.
"NEGEF's mission is to support activities that protect the
environment in New England. NEGEF felt that our efforts to be sure that
the Club Motorsports project does not have a negative impact on
Tamworth's environment fit within their guidelines," says Charles
Greenhalgh, spokesman for Focus: Tamworth.
The next hearing on the Club Motorsports project will be on Tuesday,
April 27 at the K.A. Brett School on Rt 113 in Tamworth at 6:30 PM. At
that hearing, the Department of Environmental Services officials will
take comments from the public in Tamworth and surrounding towns on the
issues raised by the application. Comments should be directed to the
list of "20
questions" that the DES uses in considering wetlands
applications. The list of questions is available at
www.focustamworth.org.
"It's important that DES hear from as many people as possible on
the 27th," Greenhalgh says. "This is the only opportunity DES
has to hear directly from individuals. There are some serious problems
with the application, among them the fact that it does not address
several elements of the town's Racetrack Ordinance. We hope that DES
will pay attention to what the people of Tamworth and surrounding towns
have to say."
The mission of Focus: Tamworth is "to preserve and enhance the
town's quality of life through continued citizen input, supporting
careful and fair initiatives and regulations that protect Tamworth's
economic and natural resources." Its current project is to support
the Tamworth selectmen's enforcement of the Tamworth Racetrack
Ordinance, adopted in October 2003 and made permanent by an overwhelming
majority vote at Town Meeting in March 2004.
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