A recent comprehensive site assessment of the town’s land on Depot Road confirmed that the old landfill boundary extends beneath approximately three-quarters of the Transfer Station and several Department of Public Works structures.

In a special meeting of the Bare Hill Pond Watershed Management Committee Monday evening, Aug. 10, committee members devoted more than 2 ½ hours to addressing public concerns and comments.

State Sen. Jamie Eldridge got an earful from Devens residents this month. Eldridge spent nearly an hour fielding questions from the Devens Committee and Devens residents at the committee’s Aug. 4 meeting.

MassDevelopment’s presentation to the Devens Committee last week confirmed what officials had signaled for months.

The House voted 148-2 Wednesday night, July 8, to pass the $425 million, 82-page  Mass Wins economic development bond bill, after the House Ways and Means Committee struck a provision that would have stripped Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley of their veto power over zoning changes at Devens.

“I leave with the fondest of memories and very good feelings about it all,” Dr. Linda Dwight said, sitting at her nearly bare desk on June 29, her next-to-last day as superintendent of schools for Harvard.

Negotiations between town officials and Solect Energy are continuing, with the latest plan extending the date by which a formal agreement must be signed to Aug. 30 from the previous July 4 deadline.

The town must cap the former Harvard landfill, and the work will force the Department of Public Works headquarters and the Transfer Station off their current site, Town Administrator Dawn Dunbar told the Select Board Tuesday night.

The low water level at Bare Hill Pond has garnered attention this spring, and at a well-attended June 25 Conservation Commission meeting, Bare Hill Pond Watershed Management Committee Chair Bruce Leicher updated the committee and the public on the state of the pond in a 10-minute slide presentation.

At a June 24 hearing, the Select Board declared a 3-year-old German shepherd named Ranger met the legal standard of a dangerous dog, having seriously bitten a woman in May.

Longtime Town Hall employee Julie Doucet has been promoted to the position of assistant town administrator and human resources director, assuming the dual role as of July 1.

Harvard’s town charter has no way to remove an elected official who has lost the public’s confidence. That gap, and several other issues, are before a nine-member review committee working toward proposed changes for Town Meeting in the spring of 2027.

Dawn Dunbar’s new office at Town Hall is easily twice the size of the one she occupied as Harvard’s assistant town administrator. She is still settling in.

This week, Harvard lost a farmhouse that had stood near town center for more than 200 years. The house at 87 Ayer Road, which had long been uninhabitable, was demolished, leaving only its chimney standing.

A provision in Gov. Maura Healey’s economic development bill would remove Harvard, Ayer, and Shirley from any formal governing role over zoning changes at Devens, replacing their three-town approval process with a single meeting run by MassDevelopment.

The Select Board voted unanimously Tuesday night to appoint Dawn Dunbar as Harvard’s town administrator, capping a three-month term as interim town administrator that began after the previous administrator, Dan Nason, resigned in February.