Rocks Are Transported To The Parking Lots And A Moose Is Killed

Durng the mid-summer of 2011, there were indications that a road to access the Danais development project area via the PSNH property had been started. Funds for getting the work underway had been promised by the City of Manchester.

However, instead of proceeding with the new road, Danais instead managed to gain access to his property via the existing access road adjacent to the JPSA building. He then procedeed to carry out some very unusual plans.

Rocks, many of them of near-boulder size, were loaded into large trucks identified as "D & S Excavating Co." The rocks were then transported up the "road to nowhere" (i.e., the road leading to the abandoned parking lots at the top of the hill) and were dumped there.

The rocks had been obtained from a recent resumption of a Waterford residential development, northwest of Countryside Boulevard. Here, extensive land clearing and blasting had destroyed a heavily forested area that was known to be valuable animal habitat.

The truck passages from Hackett Hill Road to the hilltop were extensive. During the heaviest traffic time, it would not be unusual to see a truck driving along the road every few minutes throughout the day.

An aerial view from Google maps shows the close proximity of the access road to the JPSA building - a location where the danger and noise of continuous truck traffic was clearly highly undesirable.

In the lower right of the aerial view, the PSNH parking lot can be seen. The large dirt pile at its periphery appears to reflect abandoned plans for the construction of an access road at this point.

The Google view also shows several curves in the access road near the JPSA building. Clearly, trucks coming towards a curve from opposite directions could not see each other with immediacy. Clips from a video were made of the trucks moving in both directions. The first shows a truck loaded with rocks headed towards the hilltop and parking lots. The second shows an empty truck heading in the reverse direction.

The times recorded from the video showed that the first truck passed a reference point at 00.49 seconds after the beginning of the taping. The second truck passed the same reference point at 1.05 seconds after the beginning of the taping.

On another occasion (not recorded on video), trucks coming from opposite directions apparently arrived at the same point at approximately the same time and collided with a moose that had been attempting to cross the access road. The moose was killed instantly.

The thoughtless and unnecessary slaughter of an animal highly prized by nearby residents and visitors to the adjacent Manchester Cedar Swam Preserve was clearly a tragedy, but was never reported in the local news media. Moreover, the presence of moose on the Hackett Hill property provides a valuable opportunity for environmental education.

As can be seen in the images belw, the rocks were dumped into huges piles on the "phantom parking lots".

Michael Castagna, of Castanga Consulting Group, a "project manager" for the Danais development project, provided the reason for the deposition of the rock piles. The plan is to eventually use a rock crusher and obtain material appropriate for use in road building. In particular, the crushed rocks are intended for the construction of a small road perpendicular to the main access road, near Lot 4 of the property.

video clips, moose and rockpile photos courtesy of Kathy Hansen/JPSA