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Township unable to quiet sawmill
(by Joseph Koziol Jr. - October 04, 2012)
Township unable to quiet sawmill
By JOSEPH KOZIOL JR.
MUNSON – Residents are abuzz as a portable sawmill has set up shop in a residential neighborhood.
“The noise is just horrendous,” Township Zoning Inspector Timothy Kearns told Township Trustees last week.
Township officials, however, are at a loss on how to offer relief.
“Under the circumstances, there’s nothing we can do,” Mr. Kearns said.
The work at 10427 Mayfield Road (Route 322) began at the start of September and is expected to continue through October, he said. The property, an approximately 38.5-acre parcel, is managed under a state program that provides tax breaks for a landowner’s agreement to manage forested land, which includes harvesting timber.
According to the Ohio Administrative Code, the property is “land for which the primary purpose is the growing, managing and harvesting of merchantable forest product of commercial species under accepted silvicultural systems through natural or artificial reforestation methods and for which there is an approve forest management plan. The forest land shall consist of a stand or stands of commercial species of forest trees, which contain at least 50 square feet of basal area or at least 300 stems per acre, which shall be evenly distributed throughout the stand.”
A tract of qualifying land must be a minimum of 10 contiguous acres and no less than 120 feet wide.
The property owners were obligated to begin cutting the trees or lose tax incentives, Mr. Kearns said.
Residents were particularly incensed when work was conducted on Labor Day and when work began one morning at 6:30. Besides the noise, he said, some residents expressed displeasure that they were losing part of the natural setting they had come to know.
Initial complaints, about three a week, were somewhat misguided as callers thought the noise was a product of oil and gas well drilling, Mr. Kearns said. “That’s because that’s the hot topic right now.”
The property owners, who were less than pleased with the working hours, have agreed to eliminate the early morning hours, as well as holidays and Sundays.
The township is powerless to stop the work, Mr. Kearn said, because forestry is akin to an agricultural use, which is exempt from zoning.
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