1982-03-08 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Board of Health Meeting April 12, 1982 DNA The Board discussed the DNA Research of Collaborative Research Lab. at 128 Spring Street. They siad they will have to come up with regulations and will have to do it soon and come up with a strategy to enforce them which would be difficult. First, either the Board or someone else has to make a judgement of the risk involved. These companies can give us all the information in the world but we have to have a process or criteria involving people that understand it. We need outside expertise. The Board said we have to develop our own regulations within the Town and then get a system to enforce them. We will have to decide if, we as a Board, should put together regulations or should we appoint a committee. After regulations are completed, the Board will have to meet with the Town Manager but Mr. Smith said the Town Manager thinks it should stay with the Board of Health. The Board will have to decide on the decisions and recom- mendations to make and then they should talk to the Board of Selectmen and the Town Manager. The institutions have monitoring groups but they are controlled by the in- stitutions. How the Town itself can have some assurance the institutions is going to do a good job is by having "overseers" and also have bonds and penalties. Lay people can walk through those labs and not be aware of the horrendous stuff going on or it could be totally benign, you just don't know. Whoever gets the duty will have to draft regulations and procedures. Collaborative Research has sent a letter to Mr. Busa, Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, stating that they did their research in Waltham and have no immediate plans to bring it to Lexington but if the Town develops regula- tions they would like the option to bring research into Lexington. Mr. Lambie said he had checked out the zoning -by-laws. They do allow in certain areas laboratory experimental projects, chemistry, and electronics in certain zones but they need special permits from the "granting authority" which in these cases would be the Board of Appeals. Mr. Smith said that we have W. R. Grace Co., Lincoln Lab. and the E.P.A. that could be doing DNA Research in their building and we'd have no way of knowing. There could be any number of weird things going on in these build- ings. Mr. Lambie mentioned that it occurred to him that to go through this drille it is going to take a lot of people and time on someone's part to investigate this. These research labs. are not here at this time and it may be three or four years before they do but in the meantime, we should be in the process of setting up regulations ready and the zoning -by-laws and at the time we could always have the Board of Appeals extend the 90 -day waiting period. 325