December 30, 2017
Vermont

Section of Sheffield road re-aligned; Vermont Wind conveys easement for $1 to town

Amy Ash Nixon | Caledonian Record | Dec 30, 2017 | www.caledonianrecord.com

SHEFFIELD – A section of New Duck Pond Road which Vermont Wind, LLC had built on its property to allow trucks to safely carry loads to the project site during construction has been turned over to the town, and the town has given up the old section of road to make travel safer.

According to Sheffield Town Clerk William St. Peter, the select board recently received a Quit Claim Deed for the easement agreement.

“The quit claim is to swap the current New Duck Pond Road right-of-way for land that belonged to Vermont Wind, LLC,” St. Peter said on Friday.

St. Peter said Vermont Wind “had built a road to ease the very sharp corner in the town road that the long loads could not handle. Now the town will take over the road Vermont Wind built and give up the old road.”

“This should make the road safer since people tear through there and come onto the sharp turn way too fast from both directions,” said St. Peter. “Now they will at least have a chance of not going off the road, but knowing people they will probably just go faster and still barely slide through the corner!”

The work was completed over the summer, but the Quitclaim Easement Deed for the easement recently was received by the town’s select board for the acquisition from Vermont Wind, LLC, on New Duck Pond Road, said Town Attorney Clarke Atwell.

According to the minutes of the Dec. 6 Sheffield select board meeting, the notarized Quitclaim Easement Deed will be placed in the Sheffield Land Records.

“They relocated the road, they moved the road over,”Atwell said this week. “The town gave Vermont Wind the old road bed, it was a more convenient location,” he said. Assistant Town Clerk Wendy Scofield said of the project, “Basically, New Duck Pond Road has a curve that makes a hard turn. The easement realigns the road into a more gradual turn.”

The easement was conveyed to the Town of Sheffield for the sum of $1, according to the deed.

“The purpose of this easement is to allow the Town of Sheffield to construct and maintain a public highway and related improvements (including but not limited to a public highway, ditches, culverts, curb cuts, utilities, poles, guy anchors and all other normal town highway improvements and the like) on, over and beneath the surface,” of the land owned by Vermont Wind, LLC, and formerly owned by David E. and Carol F. Chrysler, who sold the property to Vermont Wind in 2009.

The deed contains details on the path of the easement, which begins on the south west corner of the parcel subject to the easement marked by an iron pin, travels the same course as the pre-existing Town Highway 13 and then travels in a new path that makes the road safer for travel, according to officials.

The exact route of the reconfigured road is explained in a survey for the Town of Sheffield Town Highway 13 Rerouting Acquisition, performed for the town in 2016 by Hardscrabble Mountain Surveys.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2017/12/30/section-of-sheffield-road-re-aligned-vermont-wind-conveys-easement-for-1-to-town/