Update:
there now exists a Rattlesnake Review Group, available for meetings with the locals who live around the Quabbin Reservoir where the proposed refuge would be located. The group has 13 members.

Their next meeting is in Ware, Massachusetts, at the K of C Hall, on 22 March.

Remarks from the review group's guest speakers, like the state herpetologist and a professor from U Mass Amherst, have been less about the snakes' threat to humans, and more about the humans posing a threat to the snakes.

article in the Worcester Telegram