ORLEANS — Necessity was the mother not of invention but decision at last week's selectmen's meeting. Faced with competing interests – a state remake of Main Street's intersections with Routes 6A and 28 and the need eventually to install sewers and connections in the same locations – the board endorsed a gravity flow system for the sites. Members were facing an end-of-July deadline to get those specs to the M...

ORLEANS — After sampling the unanimous opposition of the architectural review committee to a proposed new CVS building, the owners of Skaket Corners Shopping Plaza withdrew their application last week. The board granted the request without prejudice, allowing the proponents the option of coming back with another plan. During a three-hours-plus meeting July 13, members said the 9,997-square-foot building w...

Three broods of unfledged piping plover chicks will keep the town's section of North (Nauset) Beach closed to oversand vehicles for the immediate future. Orleans was scheduled to open its section of the barrier beach to permit-holding vehicles on July 15 under the statewide Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for Nauset Beach South. Under the plan, vehicles will only be allowed onto and off of the beach during spe...

  ORLEANS —  The owners of the Skaket Corners Shopping Plaza have withdrawn their proposal to build a nearly 10,000-square-foot new building for CVS at the corner of Route 6A and West Road. Following a lengthy meeting July 13 with the Orleans Architectural Review Committee, whose members commented extensively and unanimously on why the building did not fit with the community character the town wants to pro...

At length we stopped for the night at Higgins's tavern, in Orleans, feeling very much as if we were on a sand-bar in the ocean, and not knowing whether we should see land or water ahead when the mist cleared away. – from “Cape Cod” by Henry David Thoreau   ORLEANS — Townspeople are invited to walk in the tracks of Henry David Thoreau this summer by reading his “Cape Cod” as part of Snow Library's ...

ORLEANS — Hundreds of July Fourth revelers rocked out during the annual Independence Day parade Tuesday, taking to heart the parade's theme, “Dancing to the Beat of Freedom.” Waving flags and decked out in red, white and blue, people on floats danced, sang, and played all kinds of music as the rolling party made its way through town.

ORLEANS – Days before its mandate expired, the town's revenue committee urged the board of selectmen and finance committee to face facts and do something to avert a steep property tax increase over the next four years. At a joint meeting, committee chair John Laurino said the town must establish a policy to pursue grant opportunities aggressively, thereby reducing the cost of borrowing for long-term projects i...

ORLEANS — Mashpee was the first “green community” on Cape Cod, and since 2010 has received $446,093 in state funds. That kind of “green” appeals not only to the Orleans Renewable Energy Committee but also to the town revenue committee. Both boards were represented at the June 21 joint meeting of the selectmen and finance committee to hear a presentation on getting to green from Seth Pickering, southeast region...

ORLEANS — Hundreds of July Fourth revelers rocked out during the annual Independence Day parade Tuesday, taking to heart the parade's theme, “Dancing to the Beat of Freedom.” Waving flags and decked out in red, white and blue, people on floats danced, sang, and played all kinds of music as the rolling party made its way through town.

ORLEANS -- Selectmen and the conservation commission voted unanimously this week to close the “air” B&B enjoyed by roosting cormorants for decades at Cedar Pond. In separate meetings, the boards accepted an agreement for judgment with Eversource in which the utility promises to relocate its 25kW distribution lines over the pond to nearby streets by the end of next year. It's hoped that will stop the aerial...

The four towns on Pleasant Bay – Brewster, Chatham, Harwich, and Orleans – stepped up their commitment to work together to remove excess nitrogen from their waters. A quorum of each community's board of selectmen, meeting at the Cape Cod Commission's OneCape Summit in Hyannis June 22, voted in turn to approve a resolution crafted by the Pleasant Bay Alliance. The resolution endorses a composite picture of the ...

ORLEANS — Members of the conservation commission got two earfuls each of neighborhood opposition June 20 to Eversource's plan to relocate distribution lines from over Cedar Pond to above residential streets. No one from the public spoke in support of the plan for foiling the soiling of the pond caused by excretions of roosting cormorants. The utility proposed relocating the lines to Canal, Cedar Pond, Jones,...