Most of the clearing calls we get in Ossipee are on sand, and a lot of that sand sits inside the town’s Water Resource Protection Districts. That matters before the first tree comes down. Over the aquifer, any use that leaves less than thirty percent of the lot in its natural vegetative state needs a Special Use Permit from the Planning Board — and so does making more than twenty percent of the lot impervious. So the question isn’t how much we can take. It’s how much has to stay.
The districts went into the zoning in 1989. They cover the recharge area around Dan Hole Ponds, the community water supplies, and the stratified-drift sand and gravel the U.S. Geological Survey mapped in its report on the Saco and Ossipee river basins — Water Resources Investigations Report 95-4182, if you want to look it up. That same study put the potential yield of the aquifer shared by Ossipee, Freedom, Effingham, Madison and Tamworth at about 7.7 million gallons a day. People around here call it the biggest stratified-drift aquifer in the state. Whether or not that’s strictly true, the town treats it as if it is, and a clearing job here gets planned the same way.
Thirty percent sounds generous until you lay it over a one-acre lot with a house, a garage, a drive, a leach field and some lawn. It goes quick. We sketch the keep-zone first — usually the back third, the slope toward any brook, whatever buffer the lot owes the water — and fit the work into what’s left. If the plan won’t fit, you’d rather hear it before the permit application than after the slash pile.
Then there’s the pine. Up around the Route 16 and Route 41 corner in West Ossipee the woods turn to pitch pine and scrub oak barrens. The Nature Conservancy has protected more than 2,700 acres of it since 1988, and it burns parts of the preserve on purpose, because that forest is built to burn. The last big wildfire through the barrens, in 1957, ran over 3,000 acres in Madison and Freedom. Resinous slash left in a windrow beside a new house is the wrong kind of firewood. On those lots we chip it or haul it. No brush piles curing through August.
If your Ossipee lot is on sand, plan the part you’re keeping before the part you’re clearing. Over the aquifer, thirty percent has to stay natural, and it disappears faster than people think.
Sand clears easy and erodes easier. The flat, well-drained ground that makes barrens country so buildable — the Conservancy cited exactly that as the reason for the development pressure when it bought there — is the same ground that walks off in the first good rain once the duff is gone. Ossipee’s ordinance says as much: erosion controls go in before construction starts, disturbed ground stays exposed as briefly as practical, and sediment gets trapped until the site is stable. We stage it that way regardless. Silt fence and a stone entrance first. Then the machine.
Stumps come out with an excavator and a thumb, and the root mat gets grubbed and screened so the topsoil — usually thin on sand — can go back down. On the bigger parcels a mulcher takes the understory and leaves chips on the ground instead of bare dirt, which on sand is a real advantage. Near Ossipee Lake or Broad Bay, RSA 483-B governs everything inside 250 feet of the water. Cutting there is selective by law, and the measuring starts at the reference line — on a dammed lake that’s the full-pond elevation, not wherever the water happens to be the day you walk it.
Last, cover. Loam and seed what’s going to be lawn, mulch what isn’t, and leave the keep-zone completely alone: no parking the machine in it, no stockpiles, no just-this-once brush pile. Digging season runs about April through November and frost goes four feet and better, so a lot opened in late October sits under snow with whatever cover it got. Get the seed down before then, or plan to mulch heavy.
Wooded clearing in Ossipee runs $3,000–$8,000 per acre. Sandy lots in pitch pine and scrub oak tend to come in toward the bottom — shallow stumps, ground that’s easy on equipment. Shoreland lots and anything where the slash has to be chipped and hauled sit higher. If the lot is over the aquifer and the plan needs a Special Use Permit, you hear that up front, not after the quote.
Inside the town’s Water Resource Protection Districts, any use that keeps less than thirty percent of the total lot in its natural vegetative state needs a Special Use Permit from the Planning Board. The same goes for rendering more than twenty percent of the lot impervious. Outside the districts, the underlying zoning controls instead.
Check the Water Resource Protection Districts map at Town Hall. It follows the stratified-drift deposits in USGS report 95-4182, the Dan Hole Ponds recharge area and the community water supplies. Where the line is in doubt, the ordinance puts the burden on the owner to show where it falls, and the town can bring in a hydrogeologist.
It can be. Pitch pine and scrub oak barrens are a fire-adapted forest — that’s why The Nature Conservancy burns parts of its Ossipee preserve under controlled conditions. Resinous slash drying in a pile beside a new house through a dry summer is fuel, plain and simple. We chip it on site or haul it off.
Three to eight thousand per wooded acre. Sandy pitch pine lots usually land at the low end, since the stumps are shallow and the ground carries a machine well. Shoreland work, chipped-and-hauled slash and steep ground on the mountain side of town push it up. We walk it and quote one number.
No. Within 250 feet of the lake, RSA 483-B limits tree cutting and keeps a vegetated buffer in place, and the town’s own setbacks apply on top of that. What’s usually possible is a path, a view corridor and a building envelope set back from the water. We find the reference line before we plan anything.
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