Dear Brian,

Thank you for your report about the March 25th Zoning Board Meeting.
I'm sorry for the disappointment. I don't know if my comments will be
of any help at all. But I shall make them nonetheless.

I try to assume a lawyer's attitude toward legal controversy. The lawyer
gets paid whether he wins or loses and has reason to be satisfied in 
either case. I consider a contest such as the asphalt plant controversy
as a game which I would like to win, but which I enjoy playing even when
I lose. I never give up. There's always the next round.

I don't yet know all the details, but I see the asphalt plant controversy
as a game with many potential players. In addition to Mr. Presby and your
StopPresbyAsphaltPlant project, there are the other abutters, the planning
board, the zoning board, the Town Selectmen or Supervisors or whatever they
call themselves, the voters, state and federal environmental protection agencies,
the state and federal trial and appeals courts. They all want the same thing: 
respect, dignity and above all power.

Mr. Presby is in a vulnerable situation. I don't envy him. I wouldn't want to
be in his shoes. You and I understand that the regulatory parameters are mere
fig leaves. No one, not even the authorities required to enforce them, take
the regulations seriously except when it suits them to assert their authority 
against actual and potential violators. While the planning board and the zoning 
board are bound by their commitments, the environmental regulatory agencies are not. 
They have the freedom from month to month to ignore or to enforce their own regulations,
to relax them or to make them more stringent as they see fit.

Mr. Presby's factory is mobile. It can be moved out as easily as it is moved 
in. I'm convinced that if its opponents are persistent enough, it can't survive. 
If I were thirty years younger, and if I didn't have a very sick wife to take
care of, I could do more than encourage you with words. Please feel free to e-mail
or to telephone, I you think there's anything I can do that would help.

Best wishes,

Ernst Meyer