Conservation Commission Continues Septic Hearing, Approves Scout Kiosk and Dock Permit

LITTLETON -- March 3, 2026, Littleton Conservation Commission continues contested wetlands septic hearing, approves scout kiosk and seasonal dock. The commission voted unanimously March 3 to support Life Scout Reed Roberts's plan to build a trailhead kiosk at the Balsam Lane town forest entrance, with Roberts targeting a $700 fundraising goal and a late-May construction finish, and to issue a negative 3 determination for a 38-foot, 224-square-foot seasonal aluminum dock at 15 Countryside Road. The evening's central item, a Notice of Intent for a septic system replacement on a 4,000-square-foot lot at 17 Worcester Drive, where the entire parcel falls within a 100-foot wetland buffer and a cesspool must be replaced under state Title 5 rules, was continued to April 7 after commissioners raised unresolved concerns about dewatering near the active cesspool, a missing MassDEP file number, no formal Board of Health approval, a possible Zoning Board of Appeals filing requirement, and the absence of a buoyancy calculation for tanks installed near a six-foot groundwater table. Member Ed Fultz told the engineer that discharging excavation water potentially contaminated by cesspool effluent into a resource area was unacceptable, and pressed for the cesspool to be documented as pumped and unused "for a longer period of time than just 24 hours" before any dewatering begins.