BRIDGTON — After two hours of deliberations Tuesday and nearly a year of meetings, the Planning Board unanimously denied the Sanborn family’s request to grandfather their historically used gravel pit into an ordinance protecting the Willet Brook Aquifer.
The gravel pit sits next to the aquifer, which is operated by the Bridgton Water District. The Water District provides the town’s public water supply.
Each board member expressed regret in restricting the use of personal property, but said that their decision was swayed by the lack of evidence proving when and how the gravel pit was used.
Town attorney Aga Dixon of the Portland law firm Drummond Woodsum told the board that the question before it was to determine the “actual and substantial” use of the gravel pit prior to June 10, 1992.
Actual use and substantial use are two different items, Dixon said. Actual use is the existence of use before the ordinance was enacted and substantial use is defined by significant loss of income or prior financial investment if non-conformance, or grandfathering, is denied.
“We have been offered anecdotal evidence of something that is intermittent, incidental, sporadic,” said board member Dee Miller. “While my sympathies go with the history and railroad and all those other things, I don’t have anything to base anything on.”
At prior public hearings, the Sanborns and their lawyer, Bruce McGlauflin of Petruccelli, Martin, and Haddow in Portland, said the family has used the land for gravel extraction dating back to the 1950s and that it was last used in the 1990s.
“The Sanborns have been very careful in the past to use it parsimoniously. They’ve done it to use it for a resource as a retirement fund,” McGlauflin said at a July 21 hearing.
Andrew Pierce of the law firm Hastings Malia in Fryeburg, representing the Water District, said at the same hearing that his clients haven’t received a clear answer from the Sanborns about how much gravel they intend to extract if operations restart.
The Lakes Region Weekly’s request earlier this week for a copy of documents related to the gravel pit was unanswered. The public is entitled to any documentation related to public proceedings, Dixon confirmed.
Code Enforcement Officer Brenda Day’s site visit earlier this year determined that the gravel banks had been used prior to 1992, but Miller said they haven’t been provided with so much as a bill of sale proving anything more than personal use of the gravel pit.
Chair Deb Brusini echoed Miller’s sentiment, saying that when she takes “the most generous calculations” of Sanborns’ anecdotal evidence of commercial use, she only comes up with about $100 a month in potential losses.
“I think that’s a very generous way to look at it because I’m giving you a number for that year. If I look at it over 25 to 40 years, (that’s) probably on the order of about $100 (of losses) a year,” Brusini said, citing the Sanborn’s sporadic use of the gravel pit over the previous six decades.
“There is nothing that I see from the actual documentary evidence that indicates that the use elevated from a personal use to a commercial use,” said Board member Kenneth Gibbs.
While the Sanborns can resubmit a proposal for personal use, Tuesday’s decision effectively denies any future commercial operations of the gravel pit.
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