Town will remove "hangers"

The Department of Public Works has no plans to collect and dispose of limbs and branches dropped by the October nor'easter on private land, public works director Rich Nota said this week, but his department is looking for an alternative and will hire a tree service to remove the more than two hundred "hangers" that continue to dangle above Harvard's public roads, endangering motorists, bikers and pedestrians.

Nota reiterated his "no collection" policy at a special Thursday morning meeting of the Board of Selectmen this week, where he asked for authorization to spend $25,000 to hire a bucket truck and crew for two weeks to take down dangerous hanging storm debris. He said his department had cash available for the project, but that so far no funds had been released by any federal or state emergency management agency to pay for the much larger task of collecting homeowner brush. A representative of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was scheduled to visit Harvard on Monday to assess the extent of the damage.

Nota told Selectmen that his list of "hangers" filled eight pages, and that he and his crew had identified more than 250 of them on public roads that were a danger to town residents. That's after a crew paid for by FEMA spent two days last weekend removing roughly one third of the dangling branches left by the storm.

"I hate to use the term," said Nota, "but they're widow makers."

Selectmen agreed and voted unanimously to let Nota use DPW funds to hire a contractor. A transfer from the town's reserve fund will likely be necessary later in the year to make up for the extra spending now.

That leaves homeowners with a dilemma: how are they supposed to get rid of their debris? A notice on the town website last week warned them not to pile limbs and brush next to roads, where it might interfere with snow plowing and other work. The notice was gone by midweek, but the policy is unchanged.

While many residents have the space they need to build a nature-friendly "Ranger Rick" brush pile on their property as a shelter for birds and small animals—or to burn it—others do not, and burning season doesn't begin until January. But town funded disposal of debris seems out of the question for now because it is expensive. The cost of collecting brush after the December 2008 ice storm was $750,000 and although FEMA paid 80 percent of the bill, the town was left with a co-pay of $150,000.

Still, Nota said, something needs to be done.

"There is significant damage in some neighborhoods," he said, and he had received an "overwhelming numbers of calls" from citizens asking what they should do.

So have the Selectmen.

"'I'm looking at all alternatives," Nota told Selectmen.

So far, the next best thing to collection paid for by the town, Nota said, would be to make a piece of public land available to town residents as a collection site. Nota said with such a collection point, residents could transport limbs and brush there over the next several weeks and then, later, the town could hire a grinder and trucks for a day or two to chew up the wood and cart it away, possibly to a wood-powered generation plant that would buy it. Nota said that a parking lot next to the Ryan Land would make a good collection point, if the Parks and Recreation Commission approved.

Nota told Selectmen he thought the job of grinding and transporting the debris could be done for $30,000.

Selectman Ron Ricci said he was concerned that even if a resident owns a pick-up truck, it would take several trips to the dump spot to get rid of brush. For those with a sedan or minivan, "It will be hard to transport," Ricci said. Nota replied that he was looking into the cost of having the town haul debris, un-chipped, to a common site, but he said that the job would likely cost at least $100,000.

Nota will return to the Board Tuesday to present a more complete clean-up plan for approval.