Saugus residents tired of truck traffic

SAUGUS – Walnut Street residents told selectmen Tuesday it was time for Aggregate Industries and the town to work out a new truck route.Aggregate was before selectmen seeking to extend its special permit allowing for earth and rock removal. The company is required to seek the extension every six months.This time, however, Walnut Street resident Dennis Gaudet asked selectmen to consider withholding the permit until it addressed truck traffic on his street.Gaudet said there was a time when Aggregate trucks used Ballard Street, but that was changed when residents declared it a nuisance.”So you moved it to Walnut Street,” he said. “Now I would like to see them go.”Brenton Spencer pointed to former selectman Maureen Dever and claimed she held up the permit renewal until the truck traffic on Hamilton Street, her neighborhood, was halted. Spencer said the trucks on Walnut Street are ruining the roadways, causing manhole covers and catch basin grates to rattle and are noisy, dusty and a nuisance.Police Lt. Stephen Sweezey said truck traffic poses several problems in town, but the town couldn’t ban all trucks from its streets. He also argued that Walnut Street was a state road and the town could not impose its will on a state roadway. Spencer said the state abandoned the roadway years ago and selectmen did in fact have the power to restrict it.He asked the board if it would at least sit with the company to try to hammer out an alternative route. Gaudet said he would like to see Aggregate keep its trucks limited to using Routes 107, 129 and 114.Attorney Richard Magnan, who represents the company, pointed out the trucks are already banned from Main, Essex, Central, Hamilton and Ballard streets and Lincoln Avenue.”In defense of my client I’m not sure every truck is an Aggregate truck,” he added.He did, however, agree to sit down and look at alternative routes.