Let’s face it: The two sides fighting over use of the Hoit Road Marsh have no intention of joining hands and singing kumbaya.
One side wants to repeal a recent ban on riding motorcycles on the marsh ice. They say nearby homeowners want the pond and surrounding land to be their own private park, unlike any other state-owned property in the state. The ban isn’t fair, they say.
Neighbors – who worked with city and state politicians to ban the riders in the first place – want to snowshoe in the peace and quiet of nature and look for loons in the summer. They say the riders are so brazen, their engines will rattle the dishes in the cabinets, even on Christmas Day. The noise isn’t fair, they say.
These days, it’s an all-or-nothing game playing out before the state Legislature. A bill to repeal the ban, which began in 2019, recently passed the House and is headed to a hearing before the Senate transportation committee this month.
Neighbors want their peace and quiet. Riders want head back onto the ice and have fun.
Divvying up the days in each week might make sense, so these two very different sports worlds, each with their own fervent goal, each with a right to use the marsh, could have their own time on the body of water and peacefully coexist.
That’s not how this has played out.
“I’ve been on the marsh on snowshoes and I’ve been talking to ice fishermen,” said Linda Stephenson, whose house abuts the marsh. “It’s hard to share with motorcycles because they’re so fast and overwhelming, it drives any people who want to wander around or fish away, so it’s hard to compromise.”
In other words, the bill in front of the Senate Transportation Committee is all or nothing, win or lose, yours or mine.
If passed, power would shift back to the riders. The same thing happened in 2019, when at the request of Concord Mayor Jim Bouley, a single line was inserted into the state budget that created the ban. When the budget passed, power shifted to the property owners.
No public hearings were ever held. The New Hampshire Fish and Game Department wasn’t consulted. Not that time.
Fish and Game, it turns out, is not in favor of the ban, since no similar restrictions exist on bodies of water as large as Hoit Road Marsh anywhere else in the state, explained Captain Mike Eastman. He’s the figure at center stage, taking most of the heat from marsh residents and their backers.
Eastman, though, said Fish and Game offered a peace treaty long ago. He said no one listened.
“We wanted to set rules, not riding Christmas or holidays when people are home,” Eastman said. “We gave certain dates, Saturdays, not Sundays and we tried that, but (the homeowners) were not interested in a compromise.”
That sets the tone here. This is a Grand Canyon-sized gap. Residents say the marsh is partially man-made, which means it shouldn’t be regulated by the state in the first place. They argue the ice riding harms the wildlife. But Eastman says he’s checked the area.
“I’ve gone there, and these guys are not doing anything illegal,” Eastman said. “People are speculating. The impact I see is the two-legged wildlife that lives around the pond.”
That two-legged wildlife is shouting from the rooftops, hoping to kill the bill that would repeal the ban and allow riders back on the ice.
Stephenson moved to the marsh in 2019. Problems began before that. Both sides say they were there first.
Abutters of the marsh have said for several years that the early-morning rumble of 20 hard-charging racers doing 55 miles per hour infiltrates their homes and rattles their ornaments during the holiday season.
Including Christmas morning itself.
Their ace in the hole might be a law that seems to favor their side.
Bodies of water larger than 10 acres come under State Fish and Game jurisdiction, not city governance, and Fish and Game has always prided itself on opening these areas for motorcycle ice racing, with few restrictions.
However, the statute makes exceptions. A body of water with something called an artificial impoundment is not supervised by Fish and Game. A dam fits in this category, and Hoit Road Marsh’s open water was expanded by a dam in 1972, they say.
“Artificial impoundment water bodies do not meet the definition of state-owned public water,” wrote Eric Sommers, who lives 200 feet from the marsh’s edge. “Therefore, (Off Highway Recreational Vehicle) use on the Marsh does not fall under the exceptions.”
Eastman conceded the law was ambivalent, saying of Sommers’ words, “He is not incorrect. I see the argument, and it’s being interpreted differently than how the state meant it to be.”
The way Fish and Game sees it, the marsh is 100 acres, plenty big enough to be considered a state-owned public body of water.
Eastman has made some analogies, comparisons that have been torn apart by his detractors.
For example, Eastman saw a parallel between moving near an airport, where you’d expect to hear planes landing and taking off, and moving to the vicinity of Hoit Road Marsh, where some homework or logic might have given warning that a few dozen motorcycles drop in for a visit each winter.
Eastman also said he’s seen no evidence that wildlife is in danger near the marsh. He said Interstate 93 is more deadly to wildlife than the machines that roar around Hoit Road Marsh for a few hours at a time.
“Turtle and frogs and salamanders are in mud and hibernating, and turtles are not walking on the ice and getting run over,” Eastman said.
Emails have grown testy. In one, Stephenson told Eastman that it was silly to quantify areas of danger through road kills.
In the end, the Legislature will decide if Hoit Road Marsh remains the only state-owned public body of water not permitting OHRV use.
The Senate Transportation Committee will hold a public hearing on it Feb. 22 at 1:40 p.m. at the Legislative Office Building.
As for compromise, both sides say they have tried. Both sides say they have been rebuffed.
“It’s hard to find a compromise,” Stephenson noted, “because it’s like all or nothing to them.”
However, the same section of law does spell out a small compromise on another body of water, right here in Concord.
“Speed limits for OHRVs traveling on the frozen surface of Turtle Pond, also known as Turtle Town Pond, in the city of Concord shall not exceed 55 miles per hour,” the law states.
Eastman hasn’t given up hope of a general compromise so both sides can enjoy the pond.
“Maybe in the future, it is something we can do.”