Marking the second time this year that a state court has recognized protective land use regulations in the town of Edgartown, the Massachusetts appeals court early this month upheld a local board of health regulation which prohibits guest houses in the Katama area.

The regulation, first adopted by the town board of health in 1985, was rooted in concern about contamination of the groundwater at Katama. The case is important because it upholds the broad powers of town boards of health.

“Only when there is no rational connection between the regulation and the public purpose to be achieved will a court strike it down....Measured by that standard, the board’s prohibition of the construction of new guest houses in Katama was solidly connected to the maintenance of safe drinking water,” wrote the Hon. Rudolph Kass, an associate justice of the state appeals court who heard the case. The case was an appeal of a 1993 superior court decision which also upheld the board of health regulation. The appeals court decision was issued two weeks ago.

Plaintiffs in the case are Katama homeowners Paul and Carolyn Hamel. The Hamels own a four-bedroom home on a two-acre lot which is affected by the regulation prohibiting guest houses. In 1992 the Hamels applied to the board of health for a variance to build a two-bedroom guest house on their property, using a procedure which is included in the health regulations.

The request was considered twice by the board of health — and was denied both times, in part because the board found that there was no emergency and that the Hamel home was used primarily as a rental home in the summer.

The decision was challenged in superior court, where the plaintiffs lost, and then appealed to the higher court.

At the center of the Hamels’ challenge was the claim that the board of health usurped the zoning powers vested to the town planning board when it enacted the regulation which prohibits guest houses.

But Judge Kass disagreed. “To be sure, a provision that dictates whether certain kinds of uses may be located in a certain area has the ring of a zoning regulation,” he began. “To some degree, however, different courses of land use control — zoning, planning, environmental controls, health regulations — overlap. So, for example, a zoning ordinance may, in certain circumstances, require a sewer connection, because zoning codes, too, treat with health issues...[and] Environmental regulations, to the end of securing clean water, dictate where structures may be built.”

The appeals court decision also recounted in some detail the events which led to the regulations in the first place. “Disquieting levels of nitrates, ammonia and saltwater had been detected in private drinking water wells in Edgartown,” wrote Judge Kass. The judge also noted that among other things, the board of health imposed a moratorium on development at Katama in 1982 and commissioned a hydrological study of the aquifer, before it adopted the regulations which embrace a large portion of Katama south of Meetinghouse Road and Crocker Drive. The regulations also include a four-bedroom limit for houses in the area.

In the end Judge Kass concluded:

“It was reasonable for the board to anticipate the problem and to make rules which would diminish the per-person use of lots, thereby producing one of several devices that held out promise for reversing the deterioration in the water supply....In sum, the regulation forbidding guest houses is rationally related to its purpose, reasonable, and therefore, validly adopted by the board.”

The decision was hailed this week by Edgartown health officials and by town counsel Ronald H. Rappaport, who represented the town in the case.

“This decision is important because it is as far as a Massachusetts appellate court has gone in upholding the powers that boards of health have in taking steps to reasonably protect drinking water,” Mr. Rappaport said.

“The importance of the decision is not so much Katama, not so much the Hamels, but it is that health and planning can cross over — and that is helpful for a lot of communities in the commonwealth,” said town health agent Peter L. Look.

Mr. Rappaport also noted the consonance of the decision with a decision by the chief justice of the Massachusetts Land Court earlier this year upholding three-acre zoning in the rural coastal perimeters of Edgartown.

He said: “The [appeals court] decision also recognizes the fragility of the Katama Plains area and has language which is strikingly similar to that used by Judge [Robert V.] Cauchon in his recent decision upholding three-acre zoning. What we are seeing is a consistent judicial recognition of the importance of this area and appreciation of the reasonable planning efforts which Edgartown has taken.”