Ayer vs. PAR/PAS

jaymac wrote:Maybe now we'll find out how much patience/sense of humor the other half of PAS has...

You can say that again...

newpylong-
I would gladly say it again, but that might be construed as gratuitous Guilford/ST/PAR/PAS-bashing.

The Assistant Attorney General who prosecuted Pan Am Railways in Middlesex Superior Court withdrew his request that Judge Elizabeth Fahey find the Nashua-based railway to be in violation of the terms of its criminal probation "at this time."

Read the rest at: http://www.nashobapublishing.com/ayer_news/ci_13522929

Why do I have the feeling that NS, who knows the business of good public relations, had something to say to Guilford, who apparently doesn't know the business of good publics relations, so that this matter starts to come to closure?

Who knows. The egg heads in Billerica are still playing Penn Central - 1970. They haven't figured out that in order to get anything done nowadays you have to have a good relationship with other entities, no matter how much they may be not legally entitled to an opinion. Can you imagine the NS trying to build all of their new(er) facilities down south if they had the kind of attitude that these guys have?

Lily Tomlin's most famous character, Ernestine the Operator, would be the perfect spokesperson for PAR. "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the railroad." http://www.hulu.com/watch/4163/saturday ... -ernestine

haha.. that is so hilarious, and such a good comparison

MEC407 wrote:

The Assistant Attorney General who prosecuted Pan Am Railways in Middlesex Superior Court withdrew his request that Judge Elizabeth Fahey find the Nashua-based railway to be in violation of the terms of its criminal probation "at this time."

Read the rest at: http://www.nashobapublishing.com/ayer_news/ci_13522929

It's also an election year, with MA Attorney General Coakley running for the Late Senator Kennedy's seat, so any "appeasement" of corporate (doners) lawsuits is an issue...

After allegedly failing to follow environmental regulations for a construction site in Ayer, Pan Am Railways was found to be in compliance at a Suffolk Superior Court hearing yesterday.

Read more at: http://www.telegram.com/article/2009101 ... 003/NEWS03

Pan Am and Ayer are back in the news again, almost exactly two years from the last post in this thread:

Nashoba Publishing wrote:AYER -- On Oct. 4, activists called on the Ayer selectmen to rally behind Ayer DPW Director Daniel Nason's recommendation and more forcefully demand Stormceptor-brand stormwater filtration devices for the new Pan Am automobile transfer rail yard under construction.

A 1,200-car Phase 2 project is underfoot, located next to the 800-car Phase 1 lot completed in late 2009 off Willow Road.

Selectmen were to convene in closed-door session this Tuesday night to discuss their legal options. Among the options up for consideration may be seeking emergency injunctive relief to at least temporarily slow or stop the project until Ayer's interests could be heard.

Bev Schultz of the ad hoc Ayer-Littleton Spectacle Pond Association told receptive selectmen of their concerns with the joint Pan Am-Norfolk Southern Railway project, a prong in the joint venture's so-called "Patriot Corridor." But the selectmen have been careful in responding to both Phase 1, and now Phase 2 of the project, hamstrung by its own legal wrangling with PanAm in the past.

Read more at: http://www.nashobapublishing.com/breaki ... i_19096306

Ah, the cycles of nature -- the Seventeen-Year Locusts and the Biennial Turtle-Huggers!
Surely there must be a more expensive and more dilatory option than Stormceptors!

Given that the auto yard sits right next to/ontop of Ayer's water supply I don't blame them for fighting the company every chance they get.

That's why the thread is more correctly titled "Ayer vs. PAR/PAS". The legal issues between the town and the railroad have nothing to do with endangered species.

It has nothing to do with the water supply, either. That excuse was manufactured in 2004 after the local residents tried to stop the project (then in the planning stage) by saying it was a "noisome trade" and the truck traffic and noise would disrupt the neigborhood. That didn't fly because it was already an industrial zoned area, so they came up with the water thing. It's funny how there have been locomotives and trucks operating on that land (San Vel) long before the auto yard (there was a truck transload there), and there was never any worry about the water supply until now. There is no threat to the water supply, it is so far underground even a major spill would have little if any impact.

There are far worse things over the town's water supply than the auto yard. A home heating oil company and a port-a-john emptying/cleaning place come to mind. If this were a Kohl's parking lot you wouldn't hear anything but positive press, even though the environmental impact would be the same.