NEW LONDON — Two residential developments, one to provide senior housing and another for workers, may not move forward, as the developers have yet to find a way to access water.
Last month, Continuum Health Services, a Maine-based company that began conversations with New London Hospital eight years ago to develop a senior living facility next to the hospital, filed a complaint in Hillsborough County Superior Court alleging that town and New London-Springfield Water System Precinct officials misrepresented the water precinct’s capacity.
“Unless things change, we’ve given up on the project,” said BJ Branch, the lawyer representing Continuum in the case.
A few weeks later, New Hampshire’s Housing Appeals Board upheld the precinct’s decision to deny Twin Pines Housing access to municipal water for domestic usage for the nonprofit’s proposal to build 60 units of workforce housing across from the hospital on County Road.
“We are obviously disappointed with the decision,” wrote Andrew Winter, executive director of Twin Pines, in a statement. “We believe the deficiencies in the process, including the failure by the Precinct to provide Twin Pines with the engineering report that it relied upon in making its decision, violated our due process rights.”
Both projects have been on hold since precinct leaders ultimately said the infrastructure does not have the capacity to support the projects and groundwater contamination from a nearby dry cleaning business means drilling a well for water is not possible.
The precinct system has a maximum capacity of 500,000 gallons a day, Rob Thorp, water precinct superintendent, told the Valley News in the fall. “They do reach that capacity sometimes in the summer,” he said.
Reached by phone, the precinct’s office manager, said Thorp did not wish to comment for this story.
Twin Pines, a nonprofit that develops and manages affordable housing in the Upper Valley, began working with the New London Planning Board in late 2022 on the project, called Long Meadow Commons, which would create a mix of one-and two-bedroom apartments on an 8-acre parcel.
New London “does not have any workforce housing similar to what we are endeavoring to build,” Winter said in a phone interview Friday.
In 2023, Twin Pines applied for a permit to connect to the Springfield-New London Water Precinct system. The precinct said it would provide water solely for fire protection but not domestic use, citing a lack of capacity on the system.
After the partial denial, Twin Pines drilled five wells before getting one with sufficient water supply.
“Several hundred thousand dollars were expended in the search for water,” Winter said. The money came from a donor, whom Winter declined to name.
However, when results from a July 2024 well test at the site of Continuum’s planned project, a New London Hospital property adjacent to the site of New London Cleaners, revealed the presence of Tetrachlorethylen, or PCE, contamination., Twin Pines decided not to use the newly drilled well for fears of the contaminant spreading.
The Environmental Protection Agency has classified PCE as a likely human carcinogen.
Twin Pines then resubmitted its application to the water precinct for a municipal connection, but was denied again last August.
In the fall, the nonprofit filed an appeal with the New Hampshire Housing Appeals Board, which has the authority to review land use decisions made by municipalities. The appeal alleged that the precinct exhibited “an arbitrary, unlawful, and unreasonable predisposition to approve certain projects and disapprove others.”
The appeal also alleged that a comment by Ken Jacques, former chairman of the water precinct’s board of commissioners, indicates that he did not impartially hear evidence in favor of the Long Meadow Commons project.
“I understand the need for affordable housing in New London,” Jacques said just before the permit hearing began last August. “I think to be fair, New London has never been a place for average workers to live. It’s just not that type of community economically.”
Jacques did not reply to requests for comment by deadline.
Before the court hearing in November, both parties agreed to enter mediation in an effort to settle the dispute outside of court. The mediation window remained open until March 4, when the court ordered it closed because the two parties had not reached an agreement.
The decision, dated July 14, acknowledges that due to Jacques comment, Twin Pines’ “claims of bias on behalf of the Precinct are difficult to ignore.”
However, it upholds the precinct’s decision to deny Twin Pines because granting access to the water “would force the Precinct to provide service that a majority of the experts represent is not possible.”
The Housing Appeals board “strongly recommended” the precinct impose a moratorium on new approvals and connections until the capacity of the system can be increased and that Twin Pines should have the option of a first connection to the water system if/when it’s upgraded, the decision said.
“The parties continue to talk,” Winter said. “The goal is to make sure there’s adequate supply and that we have realistic assumptions on the amount of water the project will actually need.”
Although the project cannot move forward without municipal water access, Winter is “hopeful that with continued work with the precinct we will be able to find a path forward,” he said.
Continuum is less hopeful about its plans to construct New London Place, senior housing with 95 condominiums and a 40-unit assisted living facility that would include memory care.
Without access to town water and because the groundwater is “terribly contaminated” by the dry cleaners, the project is stalled, Continuum’s attorney Branch, who is a partner at Backus, Meyer & Branch, LLP based in Manchester, N.H., said.
The complaint — filed by Continuum against the precinct, the town of New London, the precinct’s Superintendent Rob Thorp, New London’s Town Planner Adam Ricker and Underwood Engineers based in Concord — alleges that precinct officials indicated there was sufficient water supply and Underwood Engineers issued a technical memo stating there was capacity to serve the new facility’s water and sewer needs in 2018.
Continuum continued with the project, believing it would have municipal water access, but in spring of 2023 the precinct sent Continuum a letter stating that “despite its representations and the confirming representations of the Town’s consulting engineers, there was insufficient water capacity” for the project, the complaint alleges.
“(A)ll of the defendants are in the business of supplying information and therefore there was a duty to make sure that the information supplied which was shared by all defendants was accurate,” the complaint filed on June 27 said.
The complaint alleges that Continuum has accrued $3.7 million in damages from continuing to pursue the project.
The goal of the legal action is “to achieve a reasonable resolution for the incredible amount of time and energy and money that was spent to get this project up and going,” Branch said.
Although the project was originally a collaboration with New London Hospital, the agreement with the hospital expired at the end of 2024, Audra Burns, a Dartmouth Health spokesperson, said.
“New London Hospital may explore potential future options for the property that was slated for New London Place, but there are no immediate plans,” Burns said.
Ricker and Underwood Engineers did not respond to requests to comment by deadline.
Christine Friedman, the attorney who is representing the town and Ricker, declined to comment via email Friday. Friedman said she has asked her clients not to respond to questions from the media.
“My client is extremely disappointment that Continuum couldn’t carry out this project because it would be very worthwhile for the town of New London,” Branch said. “It would have allowed a lot of people in New London to stay in New London as they aged.”