Douglas Planning Board Continues Freshwater Preserve Hearing, Orders Independent Peer Review

DOUGLAS — January 14, 2026 — Douglas Planning Board continues Freshwater Preserve subdivision hearing as right-of-way waiver and water supply questions go unresolved. The board voted unanimously Wednesday to push the public hearing on Eastland Partners, Inc.'s proposed 10-lot, single-family Freshwater Preserve development off Southwest Main Street to February 11, selecting Haley Ward as the project's peer review engineer over an applicant-suggested alternative. Town Planner John Charbonneau told the board that research into two subdivisions the applicant cited as precedent for a 40-foot access-road waiver — Brookside Drive and Churchill Road — found no evidence either constituted an affirmative Planning Board approval of a sub-standard width, and that two waivers the board has formally granted since 2009 both held the line at 50 feet, not 40. Abutter Mike Fitzpatrick of 55 Southwest Main Street submitted written analysis and told the board that Southwest Main Street produced roughly 200 traffic citations in three years and carries only 50 gallons per minute of water flow — one-tenth of the rule-of-thumb minimum for fighting a house fire. Engineer Travis Brown of Turning Point Engineering, representing applicant Eastland Partners, acknowledged the site presents engineering constraints, saying of the basin placement requirement: "Based on your position of not wanting the basins in the 100[-foot buffer], based on where the low points of the site are, I can't physically do that."