Tewksbury Clears Too Many Trees As Part Of Flood Improvement Work

TEWKSBURY, MA -- Part of the just-completed work that closed Shawsheen Street for nearly seven weeks called for clea-cutting a 20,500-square-foot lot of trees at the end of Easement Road, a dead end in Tewksbury. But the town ended up clearing 53,792-square-feet and left neighbors bewildered as they watched trucks come in and out of the lot each day during the clear-cutting.

Tewksbury is blaming the clear-cutting on "miscommunication" with its contractor. Department of Public Works Superintendent Brian Gilbert told CBS Boston, which first reported this story, that the clear cutting would give water a place to go. Neighbors told CBS Boston that the clearing on the lot, which is an abandoned town well site, now looks like a retention pond.

"I haven’t been back there since they’ve been cutting trees. It’s probably sad…They ended up taking down, I don’t know how much they said, way more trees than they were supposed to and they did it by accident, resident Kylie Flammia said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story had the wrong square footage for both the amount of land that was cleared and should have been cleared. For more on this story, see CBS Boston.

Subscribe to Tewksbury Patch for more local news and real-time alerts.

Patch file photo via Shutterstock.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).