Dighton Board of Health votes to spin off Stormwater Committee to Selectmen

DIGHTON — May 21, 2026 — Dighton Board of Health unanimously votes to separate its Stormwater Committee and hire a new office manager. At a May 21 special Zoom meeting, Chair Tammy Mello and members Christopher Isibor and Vincent Hebert voted 3-0 to ask the Board of Selectmen to reconstitute the Stormwater Committee as an independent body no longer under Health Board oversight — a structural change driven in part by a September 1, 2026 deadline to spend or return a $45,000 ARPA grant funding a 34-page revision of the town's stormwater bylaw and regulations. Stormwater Committee member Nancy Goulart, who wrote Dighton's original 2007 stormwater bylaw, told the board the town is in technical violation of its own regulations because MassDEP has never updated standards the town incorporated by reference, and said she has already notified the EPA's enforcement division that Dighton is actively working toward compliance under a Weston and Sampson engineering contract. The board also voted 3-0 to send the Selectmen a recommendation to hire Ashley as shared office manager for the Health and Building departments, and tabled Pay As You Throw bag bids to its June 16 meeting after two vendors failed to respond to outreach.