A judge has ruled against a group of Rye residents who went to court to try to force the town to reopen a barn to a colony of migrating swallows that have spent their summers there for decades.
The Rye Conservation Commission earlier this year closed the birds’ access to the Goss Farm barn, which the town acquired in 2019, citing a public health risk due to bird droppings.
Though the commission built alternate nesting structures nearby, the residents group argued it was inadequate to support the swallows, which have nested in the 18th-century barn since at least the 1960s.
The group gathered enough signatures to force a special town meeting on the subject later this year, but they also pursued legal action last month.
The town maintains the residents failed to show “irreparable harm,” in part because their lawsuit was after the swallows’ mating season had already occurred. The court agreed.
The parties believe the special town meeting will occur sometime this fall, according to the ruling issued Thursday by Superior Court Judge Jacalyn Colburn.
The court also concluded that “the harm to the town outweighs the alleged threat to the plaintiffs,” specifically that the town of Rye invested time and money for cleaning the barn “to remediate the bird fecal matter and safely open the barn to the public.”
The group of residents has filed a motion to reconsider, arguing that the harm “continues to be immediate, great, and irreparable.” It contends the town of Rye contradicted the record, including claiming that the nesting window for the birds has closed in its entirety.
“Having been deprived of crucial time to preserve a valuable natural resource, the Plaintiffs must now again address the town’s deliberate misstatements of acts that has created understandable confusion for this court,” the residents group wrote.
