The Select Board has begun to brainstorm ways to kick-start enforcement of its earth removal bylaws, over a year after Town Meeting authorized funding for that enforcement. 

Voters at Town Meeting in April 2023 agreed to pay $50,000 for an engineer to investigate the possibly illegal removal of earth from around town.

The town’s bylaws require companies to pay 25 cents per cubic yard of earth removed, which citizens and environmental activists have accused companies of not following. A.D. Makepeace, which operates the Read Custom Soils Company as one of its divisions, is one of the companies thus accused. 

While the town put out a request for proposals, seeking engineers for the project, none responded, according to Select Board Chair Judith Whiteside. 

Town Council Richard Bowen said that, based on conversations with Town Administrator Derek Sullivan, he believed that local engineers weren’t interested in the job because they would be investigating companies they might work for in the future. 

“No one was keen to respond to the request for proposals, because they didn’t want to lose potential customers,” Bowen said. He suggested the town cast its net further afield on future searches. 

The Select Board also discussed other options for taking a look at its earth removal policies. 

Select Board member Sherry Quirk suggested the town reserve the option to raise its current rate for earth removal. The 25 cent rate was set in 2006, and the market rate of sand has roughly doubled since then, she said. 

Jared Chadwick, another Select Board member, pushed back against the suggestion, saying that raising the rate would simply lead to businesses raising their prices for consumers. 

Chadwick said the town needed to look at enforcement before it talked about raising prices. 

Quirk also suggested the town revisit its bylaws governing earth removal. 

Whiteside said the bylaw adopted by the Town of Carver was regarded as the “standard good one” across Massachusetts, and suggested the Bylaw Review Committee use it as an example.  said the Bylaw Review Committee could be aimed to look at that bylaw.