Former military site chosen for new Shutesbury library

Nov. 16, 2021 | Doc Pruyne
dpruyne@thereminder.com

A 21.2-acre site at 66 Leverett Road, formerly a military communications facility, has been designated the site of a new library in Shutesbury.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo

SHUTESBURY – The Select Board voted unanimously to designate 66 Leverett Rd. as the site of a new library, slated for construction next year, one of two locations under consideration.

During discussion, board member Eric Stocker cut to the chase: “Is there potable water on the site?”

In her introductory remarks, Library Director Mary Anne Antonellis told the board that Lot O-32 (66 Leverett Rd.) does have drinkable water. Discussion of the ground contamination at the chosen site, and water problems at the other site under consideration, behind Town Hall, steered the decision.

“The well at Lot O-32 is a pretty shallow well,” said Antonellis, “and that was 600, 700 feet from the soil sample with the gasoline. It did not have gasoline in the water there. It did not test positive for PFAS. It does not have hazardous chemicals.”

Engineering firm O’Reilly, Talbot & Okun tested 10 soil samples from different spots on the site. One sample tested positive for chemical residues of gasoline pollution. The Leverett Road location, a long rectangular property, according to Antonellis, had previously been used as a military installation of some kind.

A cement pad remains about 1,300 feet from the road. Town Administrator Rebecca Torres was able to smell gasoline nine to 15 feet below the surface of the ground there, she said, but was told by the engineers that gasoline wouldn’t normally travel underground far enough to reach the proposed site for the library.

“There’s always been tall tales about the cement pad, there’s big tubes coming out of it,” Torres said. “The owner climbed a tower, with binoculars, and watched out for enemy planes. [But] they were able to identify that this was, in fact, a military installation.”

Torres also informed the board that a storage tank was removed from the property in 1995 by the Army Corps of Engineers. Notes indicate that another 100  tons of contaminated materials were removed from the site that year. “So,” Torres said, “this property has always been curious to us.”    

Rita Farrell, chair of the Select Board, implied that adopting the site for the future library brought attention to a long festering problem.

“It is owned by the town of Shutesbury,” Farrell said, “therefore we have some knowledge of the gas spill. It’s not like what we encountered at the fire station, but the town does have an obligation to get that site cleaned up; so Becky [Torres] has been in contact with the Army Corps of Engineers.”

Torres said, in an amused tone, “They were happy to suggest that, if we were in a hurry, we could clean it up ourselves. But I look forward to working with them ... and it will be much smaller than what we dealt with at the fire station.”

Resident Brad Foster was a second voice at the Nov. 9 meeting to suggest the new library be positioned for a sense of community.

“We felt, and a number of other people also felt, the Lot O-32, it was nice if it would be a visible building,” Foster said. “It would be nice if you could see it from the road.”

The other site being considered, behind Town Hall, would have shared its water source with the new library. Reminded of the flavored drinking fountains at Town Hall, tainted by road salt, the Select Board opted for the Leverett Road location. The question had to be settled before the Trustees of the Library could file an application, due Dec. 1, for a grant from the Small Library Pilot Project, a special program of the Library Building Program of the commonwealth.

A grant from the pilot project will cover 75 percent of the allowed costs for a new library, according to Kate Cell, chair of the trustees. In a previous discussion Cell had commented that this will be the third effort by Shutesbury to gather funding for a new library. She also noticed a greater excitement this time around.

“We have a lot more community engagement,” Cell said. “People are excited about building a library that fits their needs, that they can afford, and that fits the town.”

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