The battle over a proposed auto racetrack in Tamworth continued this week.
The track's developers are seeking state approval to dredge and fill wetlands.
Critics continued to voice concern about the possible impact on water quality.
They also argued the track would need a thirty-five foot wall to control noise.
The track has been a hot issue for months in this small town just south of the White Mountains.
New Hampshire Public Radio Correspondent Trish Anderton reports.
Cars overflowed the parking lot at Tamworth's Brett Elementary School as Club Motorsports International, or CMI, made its case to state environmental officials.
CMI's track would not be a classic racing oval.
It's designed to be a meandering road through the woods, just over three miles long, with twists and turns.
It's market is the ordinary citizen, the auto enthusiast who wants to drive Porsches and Audis at speeds over a hundred miles an hour.
Craig Lizotte is an engineer on the project.
Lizotte says the road has been redesigned several times to reduce its impact on wetlands.
He points out the attention paid to the track's proposed water quality system.
LIZOTTE: I feel this project when it's built will have the most comprehensive stormwater system in the area. This is a big project getting a lot of scrutiny. The owners have never told us not to take the extra step. On the contrary they've always told us to take the extra step.
CMI says the system would use grading and culverts to capture and treat water running off the mountain.
The company boasts that its onsite team would take care of spills more quickly than they're cleaned up on nearby Route 25.
But critics of the project were not convinced.
They presented Bob Newton, a geologist from Smith College.
Newton testified racing fuel often contains pollutants like lead, toluene and MTBE.
He argued the project isn't worth the risk to local wells.
NEWTON: residential wells are unmonitored . if contaminates get into the aquifer nobody's gonna know. we're putting a high risk operation next to an unprotected water system.
Critics also fear the impact of noise.
They hired engineer Christopher Menge to determine what the company would have to do to meet noise restrictions imposed by the town earlier this year.
Menge found it would take a 35-foot high wall around the whole track.
MENGE: this requires a noise reduction of 22 decibels and that's nearly impossible to get, it requires a very very high wall. even then we might not achieve it with such a wall height
That wall would not only be expensive and probably unsightly.
Menge argued it would also greatly increase the project's impact on wetlands.
Track opponents want the state to factor that into the environmental permit.
They don't want CMI to go back and ask to fill more wetlands later if it has to add sound controls.
But CMI spokesman Scott Tranchemontagne promises that won't happen.
TRANCHEMONTAGNE: we're very very cognizant of the fact that we can't go in there and make substantial changes to our application that will impact a lot more wetlands and we're confident if we have to do sound mitigation we can add some kind of barrier in a way that will not have a major impact on wetlands
The racetrack issue has divided this town of 2500.
Residents who turned out for the meeting were overwhelmingly opposed to the project.
But last year the town voted down emergency zoning that would have stopped the track.
For NHPR News I'm
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo