A West Tisbury couple’s proposal for a home-based automobile repair shop has been met with vehement resistance from other property owners in the Vineyard Meadow Farms neighborhood. 

The town zoning board of appeals has received more than 50 letters opposing Katherine Voshell and Nick Lucas’s plan to replace an existing two-car garage with a two-bay mechanic’s garage and outdoor parking for five vehicles.

An association of homeowners on nearby Waldron’s Bottom Road also is contesting the application, and the West Tisbury planning board has opposed it in writing.

“Although the property is located close to the main road, impacting the abutting neighborhood minimally, the board finds the location for this request to be beyond the scope and scale of allowable use within the rural district,” planning board chair Leah Smith wrote in an August letter to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.

At a public hearing before the MVC Thursday night, abutters implored commissioners to deny the application for West Tisbury Auto Care, saying it would intensify vehicle traffic on their roads and pose the risk of petrochemicals entering their water supply.

More than a dozen private wells in the Vineyard Meadow Farms and Waldron’s Bottom Road area were discovered in 2019 to have been contaminated with per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), long-lasting chemicals found in firefighting foam that can harm human health if consumed.

“I can’t overestimate the trauma that the PFAS business did to the neighborhood,” Waldron’s Bottom Road resident Joseph O’Donnell told commissioners Thursday.

Katryn Gilbert, of Vineyard Meadow Farms Road, concurred.

“It’s a very touchy subject for a lot of us … because we have gone through so much, and we’re not done,” Ms. Gilbert said.

“We don’t know how many years we were really contaminated, [and] the effect that’s in our bodies now might not show up for another 10 years,” she told commissioners. 

Mr. Lucas told commissioners that all automobile work will be done inside the garage building, with runoff draining into a sealed tank.

He’d also install an oil-water separator beneath the outdoor parking area and have his waste oil removed by a Lakeville company licensed to take contaminated oil, Mr. Lucas said.

Christopher Zieger, a site remediation consultant hired by the Waldrons Bottom Association, said a level of risk remains despite the proposed safety measures.

Oil-water separators are unregulated, Mr. Zieger said, and if contaminated runoff from the auto shop were to reach nearby wells, it could bypass filtering systems installed to block PFAS.

“They move throughout the groundwater differently and need to be removed differently, so there’s a good chance that the current PFAS systems aren’t going to remove petroleum contamination in full,” he said.

Mr. Lucas told commissioners the home-based business would replace a mobile auto mechanic service that he plans to buy, whose proprietor would become an employee of West Tisbury Auto Care.

He doesn’t intend to leave his own full-time job at a company that handles heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, Mr.  Lucas said.

Shifting the mobile business to his proposed garage would reduce the amount of automobile service work now being done in driveways with no environmental protection, Mr. Lucas said.

He also told commissioners he did not believe the business would attract significantly more traffic than any other address in the neighborhood.

“I’m looking at doing low volume, not oil changes every 15 minutes, and by appointment only,” Mr. Lucas said.

“There’d be a total of five cars going in and out every day,” he said. “The [zoning board of appeals] did not see the need to do a traffic study.”

He does not plan to put up a sign or advertise, Mr. Lucas said, and he intends to set his hours of business so that they don’t coincide with pickups and dropoffs at the nearby school bus stop.

Waldron’s Bottom Road resident Brock Callen raised a lone voice in favor of the application.

“We need small businesses that are trying to do the right thing and going through the right channels and trying to build environmentally respectful properties,” Mr. Callen said.

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission hearing will continue Dec. 11, after commissioners have visited the property.

Also Thursday, the commission declined to take up a discretionary referral from the planning board in Edgartown, where the Winnetu Oceanside Resort is seeking permission to have amplified music at five of the 28 outdoor events it is permitted to host each year.

The resort hotel currently must abide by a special permit that allows the events but prohibits amplified music outside. Owner Mark Snider wishes to take advantage of an updated Edgartown bylaw allowing any owner of three or more acres to have outdoor amplified events up to five times a year.

The planning board referred Mr. Snider’s application to the MVC under pressure from neighboring Katama homeowners and their lawyers, who said the events would sharply increase traffic and parking congestion in the area.

Mr. Snider, however, said his hotel offsets attendance at the outdoor parties by cutting service at the Dunes restaurant.

“It actually will reduce traffic significantly, because most everyone at a wedding is staying at our hotel, and we have 100 car spaces at the hotel,” he said.

“We’re prepared to stop the music at nine o’clock instead of 10 o’clock to be courteous to our neighborhood,” said Mr. Snider, who is proposing the music only in the spring and fall seasons.

“Martha’s Vineyard is the center of the world for 10 weeks, and then a business that has to survive 12 months of the year suffers in the spring and fall unless it can generate business,” he said.

Commissioners voted unanimously, with Jeff Agnoli and Douglas Sederholm abstaining, against taking up the Winnetu application as a development of regional impact.

“I don’t see how there’s a regional issue here,” Ben Robinson said.

Thursday’s action returns the application to the Edgartown planning board.