Middleborough · Board of Health · 88 River Street

Two weeks after the cease-and-desist order The G.O.A.T. News first reported, the Board of Health will ask A Plus Waste & Recycling on Monday why composting at 88 River Street should not end for good. The town says Superior Court may come next.

By John Barrella – The G.O.A.T. News

MIDDLEBOROUGH — On Monday night, the operator of the compost site at 88 River Street gets his chance to tell the town why it should not shut him down for good.

At 6 p.m., the Select Board, sitting as the Board of Health, will open a show-cause hearing in the Select Board meeting room at Town Hall, 10 Nickerson Avenue. Ronald C. High Jr. and his company, A Plus Waste & Recycling Services, LLC, were ordered to appear in the Nov. 3 cease-and-desist order that The G.O.A.T. News first reported on Nov. 9. The posted agenda lists the hearing, then public comment, then a break to the board’s regular 7 p.m. meeting.

The agenda describes the hearing as a step taken “in advance of” two possible actions: an order permanently prohibiting composting on the property, and a Superior Court action for injunctive relief. Both are the board’s to start. The company’s state operating permit belongs to MassDEP, and the 2022 court injunction that already restricts composting at the site is a judge’s to enforce.

The public packet the town posted Friday for the hearing holds one document, the Nov. 3 order. It contains no written response from High, no inspection notes and no correspondence from MassDEP.

The order, and the clock it started

Health Officer Eric Badger signed the order as the board’s authorized agent, citing the state nuisance law, G.L. c. 111, §§ 122-125, and the environmental-suit statute, G.L. c. 214, § 7A. It gave the company 24 hours from receipt to stop accepting organic material and seven days to remove every compost pile and all organic waste. A constable’s return of service shows the order was left at the property at 3:52 p.m. on Nov. 3, which put the removal deadline at Nov. 10.

Whether the company met those deadlines is the first thing the board will need to know, and nothing in the public record answers it yet. When The G.O.A.T. visited on Nov. 5, the smell carried well past the property line, and a front-end loader was working among the piles. Two days into a seven-day cleanup window, that activity could have been removal or continued operation.

What the board can do

The nuisance law gives a board of health two main tools. Under Section 123, the board orders an owner to remove a nuisance at the owner’s expense, and an owner who knowingly violates that order forfeits up to $1,000 for every day of the violation. Under Section 125, if the owner does not comply, the board may have the nuisance removed itself, and the cost becomes a debt the owner owes the town.

The court route runs through Section 7A, which allows a city or town to sue to stop damage to the environment. Before filing, the statute requires written notice by certified mail at least 21 days in advance to the agency that enforces the law at issue, to the attorney general and to the violator. The Nov. 3 order states that it “shall serve as notice.” Counting from Nov. 3, the earliest the town could file is Nov. 24, unless a judge finds that irreparable damage will result and waives the notice period to issue a temporary restraining order.

The record posted so far leaves one gap on that point. The copy of the order in Monday’s packet lists one recipient besides High, MassDEP’s Southeast Region, and the constable’s return records a backup copy sent by first-class mail. Neither document shows a certified mailing or a copy to the attorney general. Those may exist in the town’s files, but the public packet does not include them.

The order also warns that the town may seek “a complaint for contempt” to enforce the 2022 injunction. That injunction came out of a lawsuit neighbors brought. The Appeals Court decision that upheld it names the neighbors as plaintiffs and A Plus and High as defendants, and it does not list the town as a party.

How the board got here

The matter first reached this board on Oct. 26, as a discussion item listed on the agenda as “concerns and next steps.” The packet for that meeting held no documents on it. According to the minutes, Chair Teresa Farley said the neighborhood is residential but the parcel is zoned for the business, and she called the odor and public health complaints long-standing.

Badger, whom the minutes identify as health director, reported that he had documented odors on nine separate days since starting the job. He described the odors as persistent and significant, both at the site and on surrounding streets, and said complaints were coming in more often. He told the board that MassDEP has an active investigation but has not released details. Farley said town counsel had been consulted and that an executive session would follow the next Monday.

Select Board member Tracie Craig-McGee said she had smelled the odor near the site herself.

Neighbors filled the public comment period. Jaime Meserve of 83 River Street (the minutes spell her first name Jamie) told the board that more than 450 email complaints had gone to the town since the site reopened in 2022. She asked the board to issue an abatement order under Chapter 111 and to regulate the operation as a noisome trade. Kristen Flannery of 93 River Street, Judy Tracy of 84 River Street and Jason Meserve of 83 River Street described windows kept shut, yards and a pool left unused, and illnesses they attribute to the smell. A Halifax resident said the odor carries into his town.

Two residents told the board that the town had dropped an earlier lawsuit over the site, and the minutes record them giving different years. Jaime Meserve said 2020. Jason Meserve said 2022. The minutes do not say which is correct.

Members also discussed the parcel’s industrial zoning, which the minutes trace to the former K&F Brick Co. Sean Tracy of 84 River Street said his property is the only other industrial-zoned parcel in the area. Farley asked Craig-McGee to take a review of the River Street zoning to the Planning Board. The board took no vote on 88 River Street that night.

The Nov. 2 agenda closed with an executive session under the Open Meeting Law’s litigation exemption, “to discuss potential litigation involving odor complaints from 88 River Street,” and stated that the board did not intend to return to open session. The minutes of that meeting have not been posted. The order went out the next afternoon.

The record the board inherits

The town’s order rests on a court finding that has stood for four years. In Richard Medeiros et al. v. A Plus Waste & Recycling Services, LLC, a Plymouth Superior Court judge found that the facility’s odors violated the state’s air pollution regulation, 310 CMR 7.09, and on Aug. 22, 2022 barred the company from composting at 88 River Street “until such time as the facility is capable of functioning without emitting nuisance odors.” The Appeals Court affirmed in October 2024. In upholding the injunction, the court noted evidence that the state permitting process relied heavily on the operator’s self-certification and that no permit condition addressed odors.

MassDEP entered a consent order with the company in 2016, when the site was shut down, and issued a notice of noncompliance in September 2022, months after it reopened. The company appealed that notice, then withdrew the appeal while stating its disagreement with the department’s findings. The G.O.A.T.’s Nov. 9 story lays out the full history, and Meserve traced the site’s special permit in a letter The G.O.A.T. published in August.

What Monday’s hearing will need to settle

• Were the compost piles and organic waste gone by Nov. 10, and has anyone from the town confirmed it on site?
• Has the company stopped taking deliveries of organic material?
• Will High appear, and will he bring a lawyer? The order says he may be represented by counsel at his own expense.
• What has MassDEP’s investigation, which Badger described on Oct. 26, found so far?
• Did notice go by certified mail to MassDEP and the attorney general, as Section 7A requires before a suit?
• Will the board vote to authorize town counsel to go to Superior Court, and on what timeline?

The board itself

All five members attended the Oct. 26 discussion: Farley, Vice Chair Thomas White, Brian Giovanoni, William Pike Jr. and Craig-McGee. Former Chair Mark Germain, who Meserve says ignored the neighbors’ requests for action, is no longer on the board. Badger has held the health post since August, after doing the same work in Bridgewater.

Later Monday night

The board’s regular meeting follows at 7 p.m., according to its agenda. It opens with an executive session on negotiations over the employment agreement of Director of Public Works Christopher Peck, who gave notice this month, and the board will vote later on a posting for his job. The board will also vote on four town manager finalists, Shawn E. Cadime, Timothy P. McInerney, Matthew J. Wojcik and Anthony Delmonaco, with interviews proposed for Tuesday, Nov. 24, between 5 and 9:30 p.m. in the police department training room at 350 Wood Street, and on the interview process itself.

Also on the agenda: a billing amendment for the town’s Tyler/MUNIS financial software, authority for the town manager to hire a cash consultant, an easement relocation at 48 Wareham Street, the Oliver Estate entrance restoration, Zoning Board of Appeals associate members, a betterment agreement for 9 Londonderry Lane not to exceed $37,445, and a vacancy on the Permanent Cable Committee.

Barrella serves on the Middleborough Finance Committee and the Town Manager Search Committee. Neither committee has a role in the 88 River Street matter. The Town Manager Search Committee is part of the town manager search that appears on the board’s 7 p.m. agenda.