Feinberg: Is ConsCom horsing around?
By Neil Feinberg/ CNC Columnist
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Warning: This column makes repeated references to horse poop. If reading about trail walkers inadvertently stepping in it or about dogs eating it bothers you, please move on to the police log.
Lincoln's Horsey Set (LHS) showed up in force at last week's Lincoln Conservation Commission meeting. Representatives from Lincoln's major horse boarding services were there, as were a former and current selectman and a few members of Lincoln's venerable Flint and Donaldson families. They were all there to staunchly defend the unfettered right to ride horses on Lincoln's trails.
Recently, the Conservation Commission has received numerous complaints by hikers and dog walkers about trail degradation and the giant piles of horse poop left behind. Most complaints center on a stretch of the Three Friends Trail, which is the trail running from the Smith School parking lot through the woods to the bridge over the railroad tracks (and on to the Codman House or Mt. Misery). It's the wooded area of the trail abutting the Lovelane horseback riding facility that is causing the most concern.
Lovelane is a nonprofit organization that exists where it does thanks to the Dover Amendment. This state law allows otherwise well-meaning educational and religious nonprofit organizations to bypass local zoning requirements and drop potentially inappropriate operations in residential neighborhoods.
Lovelane's Baker Bridge Road facility, offering horseback riding therapy to children with special needs, includes a 12-stall barn, indoor and outdoor tracks and direct access to Lincoln conservation trails. The organization is very successful, providing "more than 4,000 individual therapeutic riding sessions a year," according to its Web site. And it has a long waiting-list for its programs. Unfortunately, it appears that parts of Lincoln's trails have become a victim of Lovelane's success.
"I walk with my dogs often on the trails [behind] Lovelane and I have noticed severe degradation (tree roots uprooted, deep gouges, holes, erosion, not to mention tons of manure) on that trail," one resident wrote to the Conservation Commission earlier this month.
A former Conservation Commission member also wrote, "I have received several call[s over] the last few weeks from people who still think I'm on the ConCom about the state of trails being used by horses. I was dragged the other day by my wife over to the trail that enters onto the Lovelane property and it really was a mess. In fact, on a warm or wet day the trail becomes unusable by walkers...I'm happy to come before the committee to address the issue if you think that would be helpful."
The Conservation Commission must not have thought he'd be helpful because he wasn't there for the discussion. Nor were any others among those who have complained about trail degradation and horse poop. In fact, only the horsey set showed up en masse (all dozen or so of 'em) at 9 p.m. for this non-agenda discussion item. Was it the Pony Express that notified all these people?
The commission's discussion focused first on the flooding which was caused when runoff from Lovelane's facility washed out portions of the trail. The commission then considered what to do with a trail that crosses a wetlands area. Finally, the stickiest issue of the evening was what to do with all that horse poop piling up on Lincoln's trails.
Progress has been made in solving the flooding problem, the commission learned, by rerouting the runoff away from the trail. And the commission is considering spending $800 to restore that section of the trail. Lovelane has offered to use its backhoe to spread the taxpayer-purchased material along the trail abutting its property to improve the surface. Both commission and audience members urged Lovelane's representative to become a more responsible neighbor.
As to the horse poop conundrum, the group was adamant. Referring to it as "a grain and hay product," one horse-riding proponent defended horse manure as good for the dogs that munch on nuggets from those piles. They pooh-poohed the "one or two voices complaining" about having to tiptoe around the poop piles. "People can either step in it or around it," one commission member flippantly suggested. And one distraught audience member asked, "What's next? Do we ban cows due to the smell?"
Commission members saw the level of determination (and the influential nature) of the crowd and did not want to fight the Mt. Misery II battle with a significantly more powerful group. They weren't even entertaining the possibility of considering the thought of banning certain trails, or even requiring horse riders to clean up after their animals, the same kind of restrictions they previously slapped on dogs and their owners.
Last year, dogs were banned from trails without a hearing because the commission had received a few letters of complaint. This year, similar letters of complaint about horses were received, but this time a surreptitious meeting was held that only horse owners knew about, and the results couldn't have been more different.
Here's a riddle for you: In Lincoln, when is what's good for the goose not good for the gander? The answer is, when the ganders are horses and the geese are dogs.
Neil Feinberg is a Lincoln resident and a regular columnist for the Lincoln Journal.
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