Mountain Street Residents Ask Select Board to Back Scaled-Down Road Alternative

WILLIAMSBURG — July 12, 2021 — Williamsburg residents pushed the Select Board to back Alternative 4 for Mountain Street against a MassDOT road-widening plan they say would destroy more than 2,000 square feet of wetlands and increase impervious pavement by roughly 50 percent. At the July 12 public hearing, a resident scientist used a sponge-and-water demonstration to argue that removing the wetland buffer would cause flooding the existing landscape now prevents at no cost, while a second speaker cited international cycling research to contend that the proposed ten-foot bike lanes would leave only about three feet between passing heavy trucks and cyclists — increasing accident rates. A community organizer asked the board to submit a formal letter requesting that MassDOT prepare a functional design report for Alternative 4 and hold separate hearings on speed-limit reductions and semi-truck restrictions before the agency's formal public hearing, expected in August. A written statement read into the record by a neighbor identified only as George described the corridor — spanning active hay farms at addresses 91 through 107 Mountain Street — as a working agricultural and wildlife corridor that should not be uniformly widened.