PLYMOUTH — September 15, 2026 — A court order limits how far the Select Board can press Plymouth’s municipal airport for answers, member Kevin Canty said September 15, while fuel buyers and tenants at the airport cover the cost of its private legal counsel in the dispute, and a neighbor’s questions about a storage tank above the town’s sole-source drinking water aquifer remained unanswered.
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Kathleen Pelletier, who lives near the airport told the board she has waited months for an answer to one question: who oversees the underground storage tank there, and who certifies that its hazardous waste is removed properly.
She read from a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report dated July 3, 2025 that identifies the ground under the airport as part of a sole-source aquifer, which the EPA defines as one supplying at least 50 percent of the drinking water consumed above it. The report places an underground storage tank in a hangar with a bermed area for wastewater. A state environmental impact report filed December 16, 2024 allows aircraft washing only in designated areas graded to drain into a tank pumped as needed. When she asked the Airport Commission where that area was, she said, one response was that nobody washes their planes.
“It feels very disrespectful and not transparent. To this day, I have not received an answer.” Kathleen Pelletier, resident [26:55]
A new commissioner, Tom Bodie, has since requested an on-site visit to confirm the tank is working, she said, and no date is set. Pelletier gave the board a complaint log from the acting airport manager showing 63 complaints over three months, 26 of them early or late operations, and asked whether the commission could fine aircraft that take off early.
Member Kevin Canty said the board would look into both, then explained why it may take a while.
“Our ability for the time being to directly impact what is happening at the airport is limited by a court order that we’re subject to, which I disagree with, but we do have to take literally while it is in place.” Kevin Canty, Select Board [30:30]
The board’s ability to interact with the airport is “being artificially curtailed”, Canty said, and the order is not expected to last in perpetuity. Chair Deb Iaquinto called it an injunction and said the board would engage more freely once it lifts.
Who pays for that fight drew the night’s sharpest question. Steve Lantange from Precinct 18 asked who approves and appropriates the money for the airport’s private legal counsel. Canty said the airport is paying out of its own revenue pool, and that whether it may do so is itself one of the matters at issue. The cost runs through the airport enterprise fund, falling on fuel buyers and on tenants who rent space there, not on general taxpayers unless they are also airport users.
Resident Lisa Lantange asked whether the town ever produced a documented process for the airport to submit warrant articles, saying they have gone forward without agendas, minutes or a recorded commission vote. Canty said staff-generated articles, at the airport or any department, require no commission vote, and reach the warrant as select board-sponsored articles subject to the board’s own hearings, Advisory and Finance Committee review, the caucuses and town meeting. Iaquinto said the board had heard nothing out of order in how the airport develops its articles.
