To the Editor:
The Oak Bluffs’ Planning Board has decided to appeal the ruling by the Massachusetts Land Court regarding the artificial turf field at the high school.
Not only is the planning board’s appeal the correct action to take to remedy the verdict of the Land Court, it is precisely the remedy that Judge Kevin Smith indicates the planning board should take, even though his decision affirms the high school’s argument.
How is that possible?
It is important to remember that Judge Smith understands the structure of Massachusetts courts and the position that the Land Court occupies in the Massachusetts judicial landscape. Our court structure is a three-tiered pyramid. The first tier is comprised of the seven trial courts; the second tier is the Appeals Court; and the third tier is the Supreme Judicial Court. The Land Court is a first-tier court — a trial court. It is a court where judges apply the law as written, in accordance with how the law has been applied in previous cases or has been interpreted by the appellate courts.
Land Court decisions are thus restrained by the court’s role as a trial court. It is not the court where new interpretations of law are made. Nor is it the court where first impression cases (issues never before litigated) are decided with finality.
As Judge Smith wrote in the decision: “I recognize that the protection of groundwater is of critical importance to any municipality, particularly when that municipality is on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. But I am constrained by the language of the Dover Amendment and the cases that have construed it.”
What Judge Smith is actually saying is this: No matter how sensible it is for a municipality, such as Oak Bluffs, to regulate what is allowed to drain into its sole source aquifer, the Land Court is not the proper court for that interpretation of the law to occur. Judge Smith further wrote: “The wisdom of this limitation, under these circumstances, is not for this court to question.”
This is an important and exceptional legal case and quite likely will involve review by the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Citizens everywhere in Massachusetts — those who drink water or those who think children (in order to get a good education) should play on artificial turf no matter what — should be interested in its outcome.
Is the protection of the purity of our drinking water superseded by the educational use of an artificial turf field? Is the Dover Amendment violated when a municipality requires an educational institution to substitute a natural grass field (i.e. same educational use) for a synthetic turf field that might pollute public drinking water?
The proper court to answer those novel questions is the appellate court.
Brian Hughes
Oak Bluffs
