Alna now has a tool a resident said the town was lacking for its shoreland zoning. Planning Board Chair Jim Amaral July 5 brought up the concern resident and past planning board chair Jeff Spinney recently raised that the town was lacking the handbook the shoreland zoning ordinance refers to in determining compliance on erosion control.

The board has received via email a pair of Maine Department of Environmental Protection manuals, one for engineers, the other for contractors. “Those manuals indicate they are a replacement for the existing manual which is cited in the shoreland zoning ordinance, which is a 1991 manual ... no longer in print,” Amaral said in the meeting at the town office and over Zoom. He added, “If you find one, it might be worth a lot of money, because no one seems to (have) a copy of it.”

Member Cathy Johnson then held up what she later explained in email responses was the 2014 revision of the 1991 Erosion and Sediment Control Field Guide for Contractors Handbook. “It seems that in the 2003 revision the 1991 version was divided into two parts ... The field guide was last revised in 2014; the (best management practices, or BMP, manual for engineers) in 2016.”

Johnson said member Peter Tischbein lent her a copy of the 2014 field guide. She received from DEP digital versions of both the BMP manual and the field guide, and she sent them to other members, she said. Amaral is ordering a copy of the field guide for the town, Johnson said.

Also July 5, the board tabled Amaral’s and Delores Carbonneau’s application. According to the June 26 minutes, Amaral and Carbonneau have sought to move more than 10 cubic yards of earth at 707 West Alna Road, in the stream protection district, to replace a foundation. With Johnson leading the meeting during the agenda item, Amaral requested the tabling he said would give everyone time to review the erosion control manuals. The proposal is on the agenda for the board’s 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 18 meeting at the town office and over Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83362512724

The board continued drafting mining and solar ordinances. On the mining one, participants mulled limiting trips per day on town roads, if the town can. “It’s not your bailiwick ... We don’t really have that as a town,” Spinney told the board.

“It might be one of those questions that, down the road, no pun intended, we can ask counsel or something,” Tischbein said.

In March, voters at the annual town meeting passed moratoriums on commercial or community solar energy facilities and mineral extraction facilities and operations, according to Wiscasset Newspaper files.

The July 5 meeting was one of Amaral’s last on the board. In a June 26 email to selectmen, Amaral announced his resignation effective at the end of the planning board’s Aug. 1 meeting. The email notes Amaral sold his business Borealis Breads last November “and since then Dolores and I have been making plans for a multi-year backpacking trip through Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. While we won’t be leaving until sometime in October I will need time to adequately prepare for the trip hence the August resignation date.