Save our Groundwater and Neighborhood Guardians will host a public forum on Thursday, July 13, from 7 to 9 P.M. at the Sugar Shack on Route 4 in Barrington. SOG and Neighborhood Guardians are two grassroots campaigns that have been working to stop the construction of a USA Springs bottling plant on land in Nottingham and Barrington, about five miles west of the Lee traffic circle. The forum will focus on traffic and safety issues related to the construction of the plant.

USA Springs’ original permit for its large-scale commercial access to Route 4 expired in September, 2005. The company has a hearing with the Department of Transportation scheduled for July 25 regarding its driveway permit. This is the most recent in a series of attempts by SOG and Neighborhood Guardians to stop the construction of the bottling plant, which would remove 310,000 gallons of groundwater a day. The groups have filed lawsuits and a series of appeals both at the local and state level.

USA Springs’ has proposed that its delivery trucks would leave the bottling plant and travel east along Route 4 to the Lee traffic circle. They received a special exception permit from the Nottingham Zoning Board of Adjustments in 2001. This permit would allow 60 trucks to leave and return to the plant each day; the company has interpreted this to mean 60 trucks in, 60 trucks out, adding up to 120 round-trips a day, six days a week. The activist groups point out that since this permit was issued, more than 100 homes have been constructed along the concerned portion of Route 4. The groups are concerned that the increase in commercial traffic could pose a possible safety issue for local residents traveling on Route 4, in addition to additional delays caused by increased use. In the current plan, there would be no exit lane from the plant, meaning large trucks would be entering Route 4 at slow speeds, interfering with the normally 50-mile-per-hour traffic.

“We want to hear residents’ concerns at the meeting,” says Denise Hart, communications director for Save Our Groundwater. “We hope people will attend the DOT hearing. After that, it’s sort of a wait-and-see thing.”

For more information, visit www.saveourgroundwater.org or www.neighborhoodguardians.org.