IT’S ANOTHER David versus Goliath tale, a citizen’s group taking aim at a developer shrouded in affordable housing practices. But the threat goes beyond one community, one conservation area, one tract of 136 apartments.

The battle brewing at Shingle Place Hill in Manchester by the Sea is a paradigm for what affects cities and towns across the Commonwealth. In nature, diverse species find a way to coexist, thriving side by side and fostering a wilderness and ecology intrinsic to a particular geography. But what happens when that delicate balance is upended by a species without competitors?

Developers wear the armor of Chapter 40B, a state statute designed to encourage affordable housing that can, if exploited, bypass local zoning laws and appeal adverse decisions to the state. Such laws, though established with good intentions, can be co-opted to push sensible boundaries and skirt or delay reviews designed to protect watersheds and wetland resources like vernal pools, and, in the case of Manchester, a cold-water fishery.

This conflict goes far beyond NIMBYism, beyond one group of citizens fighting to protect the woodlands and watershed that have value only to one community. Issues like this actually pit the state against itself.

As taxpayers, we spend millions of dollars to help preserve open space in dozens of communities while at the same time supporting affordable housing initiatives that threaten those very spaces. The state has awarded thousands of dollars in grants to rehabilitate the very same cold-water fishery downstream, and recently awarded more than a million dollars to conserve nearby land in Manchester, which protects the only other cold-water fishery north of Boston.

The state has invested in conservation and climate planning. There are departments whose sole purpose is to study the regional and statewide benefits of undeveloped or rehabilitated land as habitat for flora and fauna, and to rate the land for conservation benefits. There’s the newly minted state Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2025 and 2030, the state Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, and the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program. And there are state and even federally stated goals to protect what little open space remains. Tracts of land, no matter the size, must have value to more than just one town. And the state has so many avenues to demonstrate that value. 

For example, the state Clean Energy and Climate Plan states “Massachusetts’ natural and working lands provide many benefits to the residents of the Commonwealth, including clean air and water, wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration, recreational opportunities, food and wood production, and many other functions on which society and life depend.”

Is the threatened landscape in Manchester, abutting a large, nearly contiguous wildlife corridor, considered natural and working lands? I’d bet it is, by the state’s own definition in that plan — “forests, grasslands, freshwater and riparian systems, wetlands…. watersheds, wild lands or wildlife habitats.”

Meanwhile, developers also compete under a veil of support from the state, touting their embrace of what they characterize as affordable housing—insisting their plan to include a handful of units priced at thousands of dollars per month meets the affordability standard.

In Manchester, the developer asked for, and expected to receive, 21 waivers from local bylaws. Nineteen of the waivers are from the “home rule,” or local wetland bylaw, in Manchester. This bylaw has been on the books for 19 years. It was not just recently created to block development. The aim of local wetland bylaws across the state was to improve on and enforce the protections of the Wetlands Protection Act in areas important to towns for the protection of wetlands, marshes, and vernal pools. By design, part of the Wetlands Protection Act enforcement is through conservation commissioners and local wetland bylaws.

In 2021, the initial permit process took 13 meetings before the Select Board in a so-called “friendly” local initiative permit process before the developer withdrew his application. The developer then applied for a comprehensive permit in a streamlined process of review that involved 17 more hearings before the Manchester Zoning Board of Appeals.

The zoning board denied the comprehensive permit and the developer appealed the decision to the state’s Housing Appeals Committee. And what is that? It is not a court in the state judicial system. By state definition, it is an impartial forum to resolve conflicts arising from the siting of new affordable housing—but it is really a “court” of developers, for developers, by developers.

This is an old state entity created to keep the housing developments moving, now housed under the Healey administration’s newly christened Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. Have they ever met a housing development they don’t like? Do the decision makers in the “committee” even attend the proceedings? How many decision makers are there? Is there oversight for this “impartial” committee?

This is a state versus state fistfight, involving two cabinet-level offices working for competing interests over a limited resource, with small groups caught in the crossfire. How many hours and dollars are spent studying and promoting conservation and protection of the environment by one department, while the other is given practically free rein to cut down large tracts of land in the name of affordable housing? On this particular seven-acre clearcut, 25 percent of the units (34) are labeled “affordable,” a term used loosely here. Compute 80 percent of area median income for the North Shore and see if you believe that is “affordable” housing.

There are many small groups of interested citizens repeating nearly the same fight all across the state—in Weston, Milton, Hamilton, Duxbury, Nantucket, just to name a few. They are all busy fighting their own battles with limited resources. And although there are many government employees and departments whose job it is to advocate for the preservation of open space habitat for wildlife on these little tracts of land, the state doesn’t often join in the fight on the environmental and conservation side – yet does its own review under the housing office.

Manchester residents have raised funds and bought existing housing units to place under non-profit affordable housing ownership. But housing rules are again stacked in developers’ favor, and it’s an uphill battle to get these existing tracts onto the state’s approved housing index. 

Encouraging and streamlining rehabilitation of existing buildings would reduce the environmental impact rather than clear cutting pristine forested land for new housing. It’s time for change. The whole system needs to be revamped to put essential dollars and resources at the forefront of problem solving instead of in developers’ bank accounts and tied up in legal appeals and proceedings.

Imagine how many beautiful, truly affordable, and environmentally sustainable homes a local non-profit could build or retrofit from existing building stock with the dollars that are going into these David versus Goliath fights. And, in the process, imagine the precious biodiversity—from cathedral pines to sea-run brook trout to critical watersheds—we could honor and preserve for future generations.

Patrice Murphy is executive director of the Manchester Essex Conservation Trust.