ORLEANS – Finance Director Cathy Doane said it best: “There isn't one particular method that seems to be across the board equitable for everyone.” That ideal apportionment of betterment fees for construction of the downtown sewer collection system, among users as diverse as a commercial brewery and a two-bedroom condo, was not to be found. At a selectmen's meeting last month, Doane reviewed four methods use...

ORLEANS – With much attention on the waves seeking to break through the dune protecting the parking lot at Nauset Beach, another watery battleground has been less prominent. But miles from its shorelines, the town is dealing with sudden torrential downpours well beyond flood zones, where the damages aren't covered by flood insurance. The Aug. 9 microburst that hit the Lower Cape hard dropped as much as seven...

ORLEANS — The fishway reconstruction project at Pilgrim Lake is being called a great partnership between the town and the state Division of Marine Fisheries. Together the agencies are replacing an aging structure that is failing to serving migrating herring and American eel. “It's a project our committee and volunteers have been advocating for several years,” Judy Scanlon, a member of the shellfish and waterwa...

ORLEANS — Carpenters are joiners. Ian Ellison says his house in Brewster, which he designed and built, was done “the old-fashioned way: wood to wood joinery, with pegs, not nails. There's no steel in the building.” In recent years, the owner of Ellison Timberframes has joined not only pieces of wood but also professional colleagues from Europe and the Americas as he travels the world with Carpenters Without ...

ORLEANS — Everyone agrees that Uncle Harvey's Pond needs help, but there are several opinions on how to restore its health. Last week, marine and fresh water quality committee chair Carolyn Kennedy presented an environmental assessment of the freshwater pond's status and a proposed management plan. She told selectmen of “a series of toxic blue-green algae and cyanobacteria outbreaks over the last several yea...

ORLEANS — Anyone who hoped some of the town's conservation land could be used for a dog park has been barking up the wrong tree. Although dogs and their walkers are allowed on all 14 of the town's conservation properties, they were acquired under agreements that prohibit “active recreation,” Conservation Agent John Jannell told the conservation commission Sept. 25. That definition, he said, includes enclosed...

ORLEANS — The selectmen voted last week, unanimously in most cases, to support the articles on the Oct. 29 special town meeting warrant. They were united in opposition to a citizen-petitioned article that would ban marijuana retail sales, but gave it a prominent position on the warrant before two marijuana-related articles proposed by the planning board. That position was suggested at the outset of the selec...

ORLEANS — Capt. John J. Fitzgerald, like the rest of the men on the bow section of the ill-fated tanker Pendleton, never made it to safety aboard the famous Coast Guard rescue boat CG36500 in that blizzard in 1952. But more than 66 years later, his grandson Matt got to climb aboard, learning about the famous rescue and putting context to some of his own family history. “If I had to sum it up in one word I wo...

ORLEANS — There will be a third article dealing with marijuana at the Oct. 29 special town meeting. A proposed bylaw that would prohibit retail sale of marijuana was checked in at the selectmen's office Sept. 14, hours before the warrant closed. Steve Bornemeier, a former planning board member, and others gathered more than 150 signatures in support, more than the required 100; those have since been certified b...

ORLEANS — The planning board voted last week to maintain a maximum of three recreational marijuana retail establishments in a proposed zoning bylaw amendment. Other options included four, which would be half of the number of liquor stores in town, or eight, the latter as recommended by the board of selectmen. “I'd like to see us walk before we run,” said member Tom Johnson, an adamant advocate of the lower n...

ORLEANS — For some, the town's ship of state is hung up on a sandbar, unable to sail through the planning and permitting necessary to dredge the Nauset Estuary and allow commercial and pleasure craft to navigate more easily between Town Cove and Nauset Inlet. “There IS an emergency in Nauset Marsh,” Charles Carlson wrote to selectmen Kevin Galligan and Mefford Runyon Sept. 3. “Yet, to the best of my knowledge,...

ORLEANS — An international assemblage gathered at the French Cable Station Museum Sept. 6 to hail Le Direct, the first direct transatlantic telegraph connection. “It was a vital communication link,” said James Jefferies, president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), before presenting the Milestone Achievement Award. In 1898, the cable was “the best available technology (and used) ...