LYME — Construction work to reroute River Road is slated to resume once mud season ends, but the Selectboard is having to resolve another issue with a key landowner.

Town officials last summer struck a deal with Lyme attorney and farmer Arend Tensen, giving him $87,500 for an easement through 3.7 acres of his 52-acre parcel along River Road, which has been partially closed to through traffic because of structural problems caused by erosion from the nearby Connecticut River.

But now Tensen said he and the town agreed verbally that he would receive up to 4,000 yards of fill from the River Road construction that he would use for a feed-storage project on his nearby farm.

The issue came up for debate last week at a meeting of the newly elected Selectboard, where former Selectman Rusty Keith, who just stepped down, said the fill was not part of any signed contract with Tensen. Instead, Northern New England Field Services is accountable for the removal and disposal of the fill, officials said.

“The town of Lyme doesn’t owe Mr. Tensen material,” Keith, who also raised the issue via an email that wound up on the town listserve last week, said on Monday.

Tensen disagrees.

“There was a misunderstanding on the fill,” Tensen said in a phone interview on Monday. He said he had a verbal agreement with the prior Selectboard and that he also had helped save the town from having to build a longer, more expensive bypass.

“I did not want a short or long bypass road through my property but agreed to a short bypass out of necessity for River Road. I did not want the town’s money — but if the road was going to be built through my property, I wanted to be paid for it along with two construction details affecting my property,” he wrote earlier in the day in a listserve post. “I think that is pretty reasonable.”

And he is backed by David Roby, who has owned development rights to the River Road property. Roby also owns a separate parcel near Baker Hill Road where Lyme needed to obtain an easement to start major construction work on a culvert, and where Tensen also hopes to get some fill.

Roby denied that easement throughout the first part of the year, citing “the River Road reroute project and that he feels Mr. Tensen was treated unfairly to have not received the agreed upon material, up to 4,000 yards of fill,” according to minutes from a Selectboard meeting in February.

At this year’s Town Meeting, voters appropriated $70,000 for the Baker Hill Road project, which will fix a culvert, reline it and rebuild headwalls.

At a March 20 Selectboard meeting, Roby reiterated his support for Tensen, which prompted the listserve message from Keith criticizing the pair. Roby could not be reached for comment on Monday, but he subsequently submitted a signed easement on the Baker Hill property, according to town officials.

But the question of who gets the fill remains unanswered.

At last week’s meeting Selectboard Chairman Kevin Sahr said, “Our best course of action is to re-approach Dennis Thompson from Northern (New England) Field Services and see if we can talk with him and get him to change his plans for the disposition of any fill, and make it available a dollar a yard to Arend.”

Tensen said on Monday said that if there is fill from the project, he should have it and was “reluctantly” willing to pay $1 a yard, but if there’s no fill from the continued bypass work, then “it’s a moot point.”

Daniela Vidal Allee can be reached at dallee@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.