Those present at the June 14 hearing voiced concerns about the impact of people camping year round on a tract of land that straddles two zoning districts in Fayston, concerns about a maximum of 56 people camping and dealing with human waste year round in the wilderness, and concerns about the immediate and cumulative impact of True North on wildlife habitat in the area.
True North is applying for permits to develop its therapeutic wilderness program on a 650-acre parcel of land at the end of Bassett Road. True North currently works with teens on lands in Waitsfield and in Roxbury.
At this week’s hearing, abutters and a citizens’ group sought and received interested party status to participate in the hearings, offer testimony and query applicants about the project.
The Big Basin Trust, Liz and John Levy and the citizens’ group were deemed interested parties and given permission to participate.
True North is owned by Madhuri Barefoot and Ty Maves who are seeking permits to create three buildings and 12 campsites on the land. Each campsite is slated for two yurts and a composting toilet. One yurt is proposed at 24 feet in diameter (with a woodstove) and the other at 12 feet in diameter. The composting toilets would be 8 feet by 4 feet. The campsites will be connected by an existing trail network, with some new trails added to reach some sites.
True North is classified by the state of Vermont as a school and provides outdoor recreation therapy to groups of six students at a time. Each group of students has two counselors.
Barefoot and Maves are seeking permits for a maximum of 42 students plus 14 counselors to be camping on the land year round. In spring, summer and fall, students would spread out on the parcel, camping in the woods. During the winter they will camp in the yurts on the 12 campsites.
The 650-acre parcel of land, known as the Lathrop parcel, is subject to a permanent public recreational easement. The Lathrop parcel abuts the Phen Basin block of the Camel’s Hump State Forest and the Big Basin lands.
At this week’s hearing, wildlife biologist Jeff Parsons, who previously testified before the DRB regarding bear habitat in the Lathrop parcel, testified that he returned to the parcel to take a closer look for evidence of bears.
He said that he found three beech tree stands with evidence of bear scarring. Bears feed on beech trees in late summer and early fall before denning up and leave evidence of their forage in the form of claw scars on the trees.
Those beech stands, he said, were small and dispersed on the land. One stand that he was concerned about, he said, was within 300 feet of two of the proposed permanent campsites. He suggested that the impact of those campsites would be mitigated by the fact that they were only used in the winter when bears are hibernating. A third, larger beech stand is located well over 1,500 feet from the nearest campsite and he suggested that by creating an isolation zone around this third, largest stand, the impacts on overall bear habitat on the parcel could be mitigated.
“My feeling is that they’re certainly there in the basin. I saw scat, the neighbors have seen them. I don’t believe that the beech trees are a concentrated seasonal food source that will be impacted, except for the small stand near Camps 1 and 2 that will be used in the winter,” Parsons said.
“I think they are compatible uses. There’s, no doubt, an adverse impact of having the wilderness therapy camp in the basin, but there is not an undue adverse impact. Bears can adapt,” he said.
Woody Dugan, speaking on behalf of the citizens’ group, asked Parsons whether his assessment included an evaluation of the impact of students camping throughout the basin in the spring, summer and fall when bears were active.
“You are describing the impacts on the bears of the physical developments. True North will disperse through the region throughout the year,” Dugan said.
Parsons noted that a lot of True North’s activity would take place off the basin and Barefoot concurred, stating that where campers are located was individualized based on each group and could mean students are in Waitsfield, Fayston or Roxbury.
DRB member Chuck Martel queried Parsons on whether there was evidence that a bear corridor existed on the parcel and Parsons said, “If I felt there was a corridor, it was in the far northwest corner based on the evidence, the elevation and just the feeling that I was in the presence of bears. But most of the basin does not lend itself to being a corridor except for French Brook itself.”
Liv Levy asked if people camping on the land year round would affect how bears move on the land and where they forage for berries. Parsons said that there were berries throughout the parcel because it had been logged, and that there were berries throughout all the adjoining parcels as well. He said that students practicing leave-no-trace camping would minimize the impacts of their presence in the area.
Dugan offered up a letter from a former True North staff member that challenged whether True North practiced leave-no-trace camping. That letter was entered into the record but not read aloud to allow the applicants to respond to it and other requests for information.
Levy continued her questioning, asking the DRB and state officials how True North could be proposing to use ATVs and snowmobiles to re-provision camps and deal with emergencies when the easement prohibited owners from such use. The easement, she said, spells out that the state will deal with medical evacuations if necessary.
She told the DRB that she was concerned that True North’s use of the land would impact the public’s use of the land. DRB chair John Shea also raised that question during the hearing, asking the applicants if the campsites are located right on existing trails or sufficiently far away.
The easement allows the landowner to create a zone of protection around their own uses of the property and Shea also said he felt campsites on the trails would act as a deterrent to the public.
Levy raised an issue that had also been discussed previously: the question of how True North would be permitted. The applicant is asking that the permanent buildings in the rural residential zoning district be considered as a school which is an allowable use in that district, and that the campsites and camping (which take place in town’s soil and water conservation district) be permitted as an accessory use to an allowable use (school).
“True North can’t guarantee that they will be able to rotate students from this parcel to Roxbury to Waitsfield. They can’t ensure that they will receive state permits for camping on that land each year. It is possible that all these students will end up camping on this parcel full time. I don’t see how that can happen without a septic system,” Levy said.
“At full build-out, these students could be digging 28,000 catholes for human waste on this land. This use has more impact than a clustered development of single-family homes. How will this work during wet times when trails in state forests are closed?” she asked.
The Lathrop parcel, she said, is steep, challenging, wet and rugged and she said it seemed likely students would tend to select preferred camping and cathole zones which would exacerbate the impact.
Finally, Levy suggested that the annual traffic impact of the project on an already dangerous intersection of two dirt roads, two driveways, a single-lane bridge and a snowmobile trail, would be treacherous. She urged the DRB to require a traffic study.
The board recessed the hearing until July 12 at which time True North will respond to the letter from the former staffer and have the opportunity to respond to concerns from abutters and the citizens’ group. Dugan, from the citizens’ group, will also have the opportunity to explain his group’s concerns at that meeting.
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