FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Focus: Tamworth spokesperson:
Charles Greenhalgh
603 356-5439 x516
Cell: 603 321-6615
Home: 603 323-3908

If unavailable:
Kate Vachon, press coordinator
603 323 8224
focus@focustamworth.org

Army Corps of Engineers announces hearing Oct 6 on proposed Club Motorsports racetrack

Local watchdog group thanks those who wrote to ask for a hearing

(TAMWORTH, NH, September 8) The New England Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACoE) announced today that it will hold a public hearing on the proposed Club Motorsports, Inc (CMI) racetrack. CMI, a Derry, NH developer, wants to build a 3.1-mile private racetrack for fast cars and motorcycles on the north slope of Mt. Whittier in Tamworth.

The hearing is Wednesday, October 6, at the K.A. Brett School on Rt 113 in Tamworth at 7 PM. Speaker sign-up begins at 6. 

The hearing will also be attended by the NH Dept of Environmental Services (DES). DES is weighing its response to Focus: Tamworth’s request for reconsideration of the conditional wetlands dredge-and-fill permit it issued to CMI in July.

 “We are very pleased that ACoE has decided to come to Tamworth and hear from local residents about this proposal,” said Focus: Tamworth spokesperson Charles Greenhalgh. “We know that many Tamworth residents, property owners and visitors wrote to the Corps asking for a hearing, and we are grateful to them for taking the time to express their concerns.”

Greenhalgh noted that the ACoE’s responsibility goes beyond evaluating the project’s compliance with specific Federal regulations. The Corps, he explained, also performs a “public interest review,” during which it looks at areas like conservation, economics, aesthetics, cultural values, fish and wildlife, recreation, safety, the need for the project, and environmental concerns. “Anyone with comments in any of those areas is encouraged to come and present them to ACoE,” he said.

It is unusual for the Corps to hold a public hearing on a private developer’s project, but the immense size of the proposal, and its potential for impact across lower Carroll County’s recreation and tourist areas, convinced many residents and others with ties to Tamworth to write the Corps asking that they be allowed to present their arguments in a public forum. “Evidently the Corps was listening,” Greenhalgh said.

The proposed racetrack is by far the largest private development ever undertaken in Tamworth. Haley & Aldrich, the national civil engineering firm hired by Focus: Tamworth to analyze the project, has estimated that it would cost more than $50 million to construct, and would involve the moving of more than a million cubic yards of earth. “That’s the equivalent of what the Ambrose gravel pit in Sandwich produces over a seven-to-ten-year period,” said Greenhalgh. The project would also call for the blasting of 300,000-500,000 square feet of ledge in order to create highway-sized cuts in the side of the mountain.

The hearing notice re-opens the period during which ACoE will take comments on the project, and extends it to October 16. After the comment period ends, ACoE will review all the comments before it denies or grants the permit.

During the original comment period, which ended on August 13, ACoE received extensive testimony from the team of experts put together by Focus: Tamworth: the law firm Rath, Young and Pignatelli of Concord, NH; the Manchester, NH office of Haley and Aldrich; sound consultants Hanson, Miller, Miller and Hanson of Burlington, MA; and Dr. Rick Van de Poll, an environmental consultant and principal of Ecosystems Management Consultants of New England, who lives in Sandwich.

In those comments, the experts cited concerns that included

·        the noise that cars and motorcycles using the track would produce and its effect on local property values and quality of life;

·        the potential for pollution of the Ossipee Aquifer, which supplies water to almost 30 communities in New Hampshire and Maine;

·        the impact on regional tourism and recreation;

·        the proximity of the proposed track to thousands of acres of protected public and private land;

and a variety of other issues. The experts also cited the lack of an adequate site for “mitigation” of wetlands impacts. Mitigation sites are land that a developer agrees to purchase and preserve in its natural state in exchange for destroying existing wetlands. The mitigation site that CMI proposes is in Sandwich, not Tamworth, and does not contain enough potentially developable land to satisfy DES mitigation requirements.

CMI can’t start construction until it has all its major permits, which include a second DES permit and the ACoE permit that is the subject of the October 6 hearing. Last month, CMI suddenly withdrew its application to the Tamworth Planning Board for a Special Use Permit under the Tamworth Wetlands Ordinance. Focus: Tamworth contends that CMI needs the Special Use Permit to begin construction. CMI has not said when or whether it will re-apply for that permit. “The permitting process is unfolding slowly, and still has a long way to go,” Greenhalgh said.

Focus: Tamworth is a coalition of local residents who support careful and fair regulations that protect Tamworth’s economic and natural resources. More information on Focus: Tamworth is available at www.focustamworth.org.

-end-

NOTE TO EDITORS: the ACoE public notice is at http://www.nae.usace.army.mil/. Please contact Focus: Tamworth if you would like the full text of the F:T experts’ comments to ACoE submitted 8-13-04.