Douglas Conservation Commission Approves Cemetery Invasive Removal With Four Conditions

DOUGLAS -- April 27, 2026, Douglas Conservation Commission approved removal of invasive shrubs at the town cemetery and scheduled a Woodland Road wetland-crossing site walk Monday. The three-member commission, Chair Jim Foran, Kate Rowland, and Mark Mongeon, voted 3-0 to issue a negative determination of applicability for the Town of Douglas Cemetery Commission's request to clear rugosa rose, bittersweet, and other invasives from the rear edge of Douglas Center Cemetery at 15 and 17 Main Street, with conditions including 48-hour advance notice before work begins, off-site removal of all invasive material, meadow-grass reseeding of disturbed slopes, and preservation of two native junipers. For the contested Deer Crossing Development wetland-crossing Notice of Intent on Woodland Road, civil engineer Margaret Payton of Civil Site Engineering addressed DEP and peer-reviewer comments on her five-foot-by-seven-foot three-sided culvert and distributed stormwater plan, but the commission left the wetland replication ratio, at minimum 1.5-to-1 under town bylaw, unresolved, scheduling a May 2 site walk at 9 a.m. before continuing the hearing to May 18. A separate enforcement restoration at 11 and 17 Potter Road, where fewer than half of 133 required plantings survived the first monitoring season, will require 30 additional trees three to four feet tall and two more years of monitoring.