ORLEANS – Every morning, Bill Wibel walks Kent's Point. In doing so, the Keziah's Lane resident said he's noticed what he calls "a changing ecology," and not for the better. "We own this," he said of the town's waterways during a public workshop Monday to discuss a possible prohibition on the use of fertilizers in town. "We can change it, or we can watch it die." There was little debate Monday over the role...

ORLEANS – Can a "pay as you throw" program help further recycling efforts and curb the amount of solid waste coming through the town's transfer station? The select board hopes so, but board of health members have their doubts. The two boards will have a joint meeting Sept. 15 to discuss pay as you throw, which encourages recycling and aims to reduce solid waste disposal by charging people according to how much...

ORLEANS – On the heels of the state's reclassification of the Cape's drought status, the board of water sewer commissioners voted Aug. 17 to adopt mandatory restrictions governing outdoor watering until at least late September. Only hand-held and drip irrigation will be allowed through Sept. 21, the board voted. Watering will be allowed between the hours of 5 p.m. and 9 a.m. On Aug. 13, the state department...

ORLEANS – As part of efforts to bring sewer to Meetinghouse Pond, the town plans to take more than 23 private roads for the installation of sewer and water mains. Town officials held a public hearing Aug. 18 to answer any questions homeowners in the sewer area had about the takings, which will be limited to the roads themselves and will not infringe upon residents' property. The 485 residents with homes on ...

ORLEANS – It's a digital world, and Peter Van Dyck sees evidence of it wherever he goes. "I get my eyes done at an optometrist in Boston," said Van Dyck, the town's management information services coordinator. "There's no paper at all. Everything's digitized." Orleans is among the latest municipalities to catch up with the paperless wave. In May, voters authorized spending $1 million to fund a technology mo...

ORLEANS – As chair of the town's recreation advisory committee, Tracy Murphy sees what the town has the potential to offer residents and visitors in terms of programming. But speaking before the select board last week, she couldn't ignore what is currently lacking. As the summer draws to a close, Murphy said the recreation department has fallen behind in its offerings compared to neighboring towns. While Brews...

ORLEANS – Multi-colored post-it notes canvassed the walls of the cafeteria in the public works building on Giddiah Hill Road Monday afternoon. Together, they may offer a vision for a new community center in town. That's the hope of the town's community center feasibility task force, which held a public workshop to get input on what residents and town officials want to see out of a new building. The workshop...

ORLEANS – With approval from the conservation commission earlier this month, the Sipson Island Trust is ready to begin work restoring the island to its natural condition this fall. The island went up for sale in 2018, and the nonprofit trust was formed the following year in an effort to protect the island for public access, research, education and recreation. Following an extensive campaign that raised more...

ORLEANS – To what extent should the town administrator have the authority to supervise town staff, and when should that authority fall to the select board? It's a question that's being posed by a potential change to the town charter at October's special town meeting. The charter review committee participated in a joint meeting with the select board Aug. 10 in which the committee presented several proposed c...

Interim Principal Sought To Lead Middle School in 2022-2023 ORLEANS — Nauset Regional Middle School will not have a new principal named to the post in time for the coming school year. A search committee charged with identifying and interviewing candidates for the position has not yet “found the right candidate,” and will restart its search this fall, Nauset School Superintendent Brooke Cenchy said in a...

ORLEANS —  As the old saying goes, opposites attract. Perhaps that’s how Gordon Wright and his wife, Carol, came to be.  “He was more of a mountain man than an ocean person,” Carol said of her late husband, who before moving to the Lower Cape spent time living in Burlington, Vt.  “I was the ocean person.” But over the course of more than four decades on Cape Cod, Mr. Wright came to embrace the region every ...

ORLEANS – When Wendy Cullinan first started with Habitat for Humanity Cape Cod as the organization’s resource development director in 2013, she made fast friends with Bob Renn. In her new role, Cullinan was the staff liaison to Habitat’s faith relations committee, of which Mr. Renn was a member. “ We went to breakfast one morning,” recalled Cullinan, who is now the nonprofit’s CEO. “He invited me to go ...