Effingham—October 19, 2025—Effingham officials have decided not to seek professional help to ensure that Conway developer Meena LLC complies with conditions the Planning Board attached to its approval to pump gas at the former Boyle’s Market.

The town’s conditions, which are in addition to DES’s requirements, were hammered out by Planning Board advisor North Point Engineering after several years of contentious public hearings over how to reduce the development’s threat to the Ossipee Aquifer.

The conditions include locating diesel fuel pumps at least 15 ft. from the apartments and 25 ft. from the traffic right of way. The bioretention basin, a key physical component of the stormwater management plan, must have an impermeable liner, and its spillway must be away from the “steep slopes.”

Conservationists and municipal officials of neighboring towns who opposed the gas station welcomed the conditions, which are largely technical. They said the conditions could provide an extra level of environmental protection.

But the fate of those safeguards is uncertain three weeks after a heated exchange between a Selectman and a member of the public revealed that the town did not have a plan to monitor the development for compliance, even though construction had started.

Effingham does not have a building inspector or a code enforcement officer, two positions that might ordinarily have responsibility for ensuring compliance with site plan approval conditions.

The Select Board agreed to consider hiring North Point Engineering as an advisor, a suggestion made by Planning Board Chair George Bull. But at last week’s Select Board meeting the idea was nixed.

“We’re not going to spend any more town money on this project,” Select Board Chair Leo Racine said in answer to a question about the town’s monitoring plans.

Racine said the Select Board made the decision during a work session the previous week.

In an email to Ossipee Lake Alliance, Racine elaborated on the board’s decision, saying there is no statute that would allow the Select Board to hire an engineer and charge it back to the developer.

Asked if the town had a back-up plan, Racine declined to answer. He said he was “not involved with the lawsuits [and the] planning board on the details about Meena” and would defer to Planning Board Chair Bull.

Bull did not respond to requests to comment on the compliance question.

The Planning Board hired North Point Engineering in 2022 after the Lakes Region Planning Commission questioned the site plan’s “adequacy.” The project was ruled to be a Development of Regional Impact.

North Point’s first report confirmed many of the errors, omissions and deficiencies that conservationists and municipal officials of neighboring towns had pointed to during months of prior Planning Board hearings.

North Point’s view that Meena needed to apply for a “special use permit” met fierce resistance from the developer’s attorney. That resistance set the tone for legal push-backs from the developer that continued long after Meena replaced the McConkey Construction Company with Horizons Engineering.

North Point wrote four more technical evaluations of Meena’s plans over the next year-and-a-half. Its last report, in 2023, expressed satisfaction with the final set of changes, which contained conditions that opponents of the plan argued needed to be required.

Those changes were included in the Planning Board’s 12-page Notice of Decision, which was signed on August 8, 2023. The NH Supreme Court upheld the Planning Board’s approval last month, and construction began almost immediately.

Meena agent Jim Doucette did not respond to a request for information on the gas station’s construction schedule, including when the business might open.