Newbury v. Rowley

Cool; I like competitions for which town is the most wacky.

The furor over David Hall's letter to the editor of the Daily News continues. Comments on the letter (10) are not close yet to those on the story covering the debacle over the "spite fence" in Rowley (30) but I'm sure there is more to come.

I don't know David Hall very well but I believe actions speak louder than the words.

The man and his family live in a house almost totally constructed from recycled materials (labelled "a shack" by someone commenting on his letter, if that's what s/he was referring to). The home is heated using water that is itself heated by solar power and, I believe, collected in a cistern. He drives, or did drive last time I interviewed him, a VW that runs on biodiesel.

You can read about his home here, in a story from the Boston Globe. Which coincidentally (?) came out some 2 weeks after a story of mine on the house came out in Merrimack Valley Mag. The magazine does not post actual stories on line, so I can't link you to my story.

He and his business partners took some dilapidated mill buildings in Newburyport and turned them into a eco-friendly shopping 'mall' called The Tannery. It's a state model for use of solar power.

Hall was also in the founding group of the Coastal Trails Coalition, a non-profit organization that is advocate for the Coastal Trails Network, a 30-mile system of bicycle and pedestrian trails linking Amesbury, Newburyport, Newbury, and Salisbury.

So I really have a hard time believing that he took snow laden with dangerous chemicals from The Tannery and dumped it at or near his home in Newbury to subsequently seep into the ground water.

I can't speak to the tennis courts built on wetlands. I was at his house more than a year ago and there were no tennis courts then, that I saw.

I know next to nothing about Joe Story, the Newbury selectman. What little I have heard is in the nature of gossip so I won't repeat it. And I'm not taking a political stand for one candidate or another in the upcoming vote for Newbury Selectman. I know even less about Mr. Story's opponent in the race.

I just enjoy the wackiness.

Amesbury sort of bowed out of this competition, by the way, by last fall replacing almost all of its wacky Municipal Council. No fun at all.