Marblehead health board to redesign landfill cap project

MARBLEHEAD – The Board of Health will go back to the drawing board to redesign the state-required landfill cap and transfer station construction project that was defeated in the June 15 debt exclusion override vote.Director of Public Health Wayne Attridge told the board Wednesday night that he has stopped all current design work and plans to scale down the design from the $22.2 million plan that failed and come before next year’s Town Meeting with a choice of options.The Board of Health is seeking applications for at least three at-large members of a building committee to oversee that process. The committee will include Attridge and Town Planner Becky Curran as ex officio members. The board plans to make up a list of responsibilities for committee members and is scheduled to make appointments in August. Chairman Helaine Hazlett said she hoped the committee would attract people with a variety of professional backgrounds.”Some people have already shown interest,” Attridge told the board.The director said the town included $114,600 in the Fiscal 2011 town budget for landfill monitoring. “We’ll see how far that goes,” he said. A debt exclusion override that would have added $706,961 to that amount also lost.Attridge said he was concerned about all three of the Board of Health’s debt exclusions but the one that he said bothered him most was the purchase of Jeff Dinsmore’s chemically contaminated house and land at 57 Stony Brook Road for $899,950, a purchase Dinsmore negotiated with selectmen in recent months.Referring to Dinsmore, who attended the health board meeting, as “an innocent party,” Attridge said the clean-up of the property was stalled, but the town’s liability was the same.He said he would write to the selectmen and arrange a joint meeting of the boards to discuss further action “as soon as possible.””I think we owe it to the owners to move forward post-haste,” he said. Dinsmore offered no comment when asked.