Planning Board gives green light to medical waste treatment facility

By BILL O'CONNOR
boconnorfosters.com

ROCHESTER— The Planning Board has approved a medical waste treatment facility on Rochester Neck Road from Waste Management.

Waste Management officials are hoping to build the new facility at its Turnkey Recycling and Environmental Enterprise site on Rochester Neck Road.

"This is good news for us, and now we'll be moving on to getting the other three approvals we need," said Alan Davis, a regional manager with the company.

Davis said Waste Management still needs to obtain a wetlands permit, a solid waste permit and an alteration of terrain permit from the state Department of Environmental Services before beginning construction on the facility, which would use autoclaving — in which medical waste can be sterilized using steam — to treat waste from nursing homes, dentist offices, veterinary clinics and private physician practices.

The process of securing those necessary permits has already been started, he said, and the goal is to begin construction sometime this summer with an anticipated completion date in the Spring of 2010.

Planning Board Chair Terry Desjardins said there were no issues raised by board members or residents relating to the plan, and it was also unanimously approved.

The Planning Board also instituted some new user fees for 2009.

The board decided to extend the $100 user fee which applicants requesting an alteration to an already approved site plan are required to pay. Under the new policy, this fee will be extended to all applicants requesting any type alteration or modification, whether the plan is approved or not, Desjardins said.

Alterations and modifications differ in that alterations are large enough changes to a site plan to affect abutters, and therefore a public notice must be issued and another public hearing held if a request for an alteration is made on a previously approved site plan, said Chief Planner Michael Behrendt. The $100 fee was initially only associated with this type of alteration because of the additional work involved, he said.

However, members of the Planning Department determined that it takes just as much work on their part if a modification — a change that will not affect abutters — is made or if an alteration is requested to a plan yet to be approved by the board, Behrendt said. As a result, it made sense to extend the fee to those areas as well, he said.

"Some modifications are very simple ones that I can approve in office, like if someone wanted to change the type of shrubbery in a plan," Behrendt said, noting that those small types of modifications would not be subject to the fee. "Anything that rises to the level of the board for approval will be subject to the $100 fee."

In other business, Desjardins was re-elected as chair of board by a unanimous vote at the meeting, and Tim Fontneau, formerly the board's secretary, was elected to the position of vice-chair that was left open with the unexpected resignation of Lance Powers earlier this month.

Nel Sylvain, who was promoted from a Planning Board alternate member to a full member after Powers' departure, was elected to the secretary position previously held by Fontneau. The election of both Fontneau and Sylvain were unanimous.