Speaker 1: All right, let's go ahead and get going folks. Welcome. Today is July 17th. This is our one. This is the NATA Conservation Commission. First and foremost, today's July 17th. This is our one meeting in the month of July. We'll have one meeting in August, which is August 7th before we resume our twice monthly schedule, starting in, starting in September, seeing as how we got quorum. Now, why don't we go ahead and open the public public meeting here just before. As we do that, just a couple of things for people who may be on, on the call or waiting for certain agenda items to come up.
So the project at two 16 to two 18 South Main Street has requested a continuation, which we will do as well as the Stormwater Permit Certificate of Compliance at Five Milk Street. The applicant has asked for us to take this up on our August 7th meeting. So if you're here for those issues, we will not be addressing those this evening. We'll be taking those up again next, next month on our August at our August 7th meeting. So with all that, I would like to go ahead and the first item on the agenda for us is a request for determination of applicability for 25 Commonwealth Road Constitu at State Park.
Let me go ahead and formally open this. I see we have a representative from the applicant here on the call today. So in accordance with the Wetlands Protection Act and Nats local Wetlands bylaw Article 79, the NATA Conservation Commission will hold a public meeting on a request for determination of applicability filed by Nick Christopher Comprehensive Environmental Inc. Representing Jenna Johnson, mass Department of Conservation and Recreation for Property, located at 43 Commonwealth Road Map 11 lot 22. The proposal is for planting and installation of hammock posts throughout the state park. So with that, if we have, do we have Nick on the call?
I thought I saw. Speaker 2: Yes. I think we have Nick and we also have Jenna. Nick, feel free to unmute yours. Oh, you are. There you go. Speaker 1: Great. Nick, if you could just walk us through this as an RDA. So just introduce yourself for the minutes and then just walk us through what you got planned. Speaker 3: Sure. So, yeah, I appreciate that. So, so thank you. So again, my name is Nick Chrisia with CEI or Comprehensive Environmental, and we are a representative of the engineering firm for this project. And I'm joined tonight by Jenna Johnson from Mass DCR. And yeah, so, you know, try and be sensitive to everyone's time tonight. But essentially this project is part of
Mass dcr R'S Project Shade. It's a pilot project that over the course of seven different public parks with across the commonwealth, the DCR is looking at enhancing public shade and to reduce, in part, to reduce the, the impacts of heat island effects, particularly on vulnerable commi, vulnerable comm communities. So, just real quick, I'm gonna read Project Shade's vision statement, which is to create a network of resilient, resilient, and shaded gathering places across the Commonwealth parks
that provide safe, comfortable, and equitable outdoor spaces for all, especially vulnerable communities during extreme heat events. So, so kind of jumping right into this project. So, so this project is, is centered obviously in Constituit State Park, kind of in this, this great lawn area. I I'm assuming most of the commission is kind of familiar with this area, but there, the existing conditions are, there is a number of large existing evergreen trees within this area, many of which are, are starting to approach the end of their anticipated natural lifespan.
And, you know, these trees over the course of the years have provided substantial shade to, to previous and current generations of, of park users. And DCR wants to kind of continue the legacy of providing shade to park users in the future. So in response, DCR is looking to provide a number of these sort of next generation shade canopy trees, so that as these existing trees start to kind of die out, there'll be this next generation of trees to kind of take their place and continue to provide shade. So the second piece is that the DCR is looking at installing a number
of dedicated hammock posts within this area. So DCR has noted that a number of the, the existing park users bring hammocks on their own and, and string them between the existing trees. And over the years, you know, it's kind of a number of nails and other damaging fasteners and so on and so forth that have been hammered into these existing trees. So they're looking at sort of creating these dedicated, dedicated hammock posts to, to provide, to park patrons moving, moving forward. So it might be best just to go to the last page. I think the last page shows like the permitting, the, the,
the, yeah, so we zoom in on this area. This is kind of like the whole project. I think the whole project has something like 46 trees and 18, like 18 hammock posts or something like that. The bulk of which is located within your jurisdictional areas, but, but not all of it. So, you know, we kind of showed most of the project, but with a focus on obviously the jurisdictional, jurisdictional areas, you know, a good portion of it's located within the a hundred foot buffer zone. And then there's also ai, I believe it's a, a special flood zone protection area that's associated
with Lake Cotuit itself. So I believe under the Wetlands Protection Act, I believe native tree plantings are, are exempt. And these will all be all be native trees. And, you know, the only other thing I kind of wanted to note is that the hammock posts, rather than kind of doing the traditional thing where you would, you'd excavate down and you put in concrete with a, with a post kind of set into the concrete, we're looking at doing helical anchors that they'll just basically corkscrew into the soil, which will help help reduce dis dis disturbance and, and impacts and so on and so forth. So, you know, again, I mean, I I, I could go on and on about this.
We, we did have a public education and outreach presentation like a, a month or so ago about this. But, you know, just being sensitive to everyone's time and this being just a quick, hopefully a quick RDA, you know, Jenna, unless you want to chime in on any anything, I'm, I'm happy to take any questions that there may be. Speaker 1: Great, thanks Jenna. Anything to add? Speaker 4: No, thank you Nick, and thank you commissioners. Speaker 1: Great. So in the application, I mean, there's a list of tree species all look appropriate and appropriately native for what is being accomplished here. I do appreciate the, the helical screw approach to the,
to the hammock posts. Any questions from the commission on this? Questions, comments, concerns? Speaker 5: I had a question there. There's two other projects that we approved, right? And it, it looks like they wouldn't, they don't overlap at all with this one, right? Speaker 2: No, they, they're separate projects. Yep. Speaker 5: And there's like, don't treat plantings going in like where they were putting in that Speaker 2: The new pavilion? Yeah. New p no, they're all, all separated from those areas. Okay. And just for the commission's update, the beach nourishment did happen earlier this spring very successfully. Speaker 1: So the left hand is talking to the right hand as part of this, as part of this project clearly. Okay. Speaker 5: And then just a question on the hammock post there,
the drawing, it shows a dome cap and one thing, and then I was just curious about the other cap they were showing there. It, it looks like a square rectangle and then I'm Speaker 2: Not square, so that's the top of the helical pier. So the post will sit, Speaker 5: Sit on top of that, top of Speaker 2: The Speaker 5: Got it. Okay. I wasn't sure. Okay, thanks. Good. Speaker 1: Right. Any other questions? These Speaker 3: Aren't, you know, a hundred percent construction ready drawings yet. These are, these are for permitting, so we're, but, but yes, I mean the, the top will be a domed or, or at least a safe, you know, we, we wouldn't have sharp edges
or anything like that sticking up. Speaker 1: Excellent. Thanks for covering all the bases there, Jim. Any further questions from the commission? Any questions from the public on this project? Speaker 2: If you're in the room, feel free to physically raise your hand. If you're on zoom, please feel free to either raise your virtual hand or I can try to scan through folks if anybody has a, a physical hand raised. Okay. Speaker 1: Not, not seeing any. So with that, this is an RDA, so someone would make a motion to close if that's the pleasure of the board. And then we would issue a determination. So if the, what's the pleasure of the board? Does someone, someone wa wanna make a motion to close? We close. Thank you David. Is that seconded? Speaker 3: Second. Speaker 1: Thank you Jeff.
Is there any further discussion on that? All in favor in the room. And we got Chris at home, I think Chris or Chris on video. Chris? Yes. Yes. I'm a yes. So make a, a, a determination, presumably a negative three determination. Speaker 2: It's also be a negative two because of the bordering land subject to flooding. So work within a resource area. Speaker 1: Okay, so a negative two and a negative three finding on this. I'll make that motion. So moved. Thank you Jeff. Is that seconded? Seconded. Thank you Jim. Any further discussion on that? All in favor in the room, Chris? Yes. Alright, thank you folks. Appreciate all the good work. Look forward to yet another set
of amenities at the state park. Speaker 6: Thank you for, thank you for your time today. Appreciate it. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. All right, next item on the agenda. Hold on one second, lemme get back to my next item. The agenda is a notice of intent four, five and seven Alger Street. We have representatives of five and seven Alger Street on the call are in the room please. Speaker 2: Yes, we have Nicole Hayes from Goddard Engineering on the call. Speaker 1: Hi Nicole, how are you? Speaker 7: Good, how are you? Good. Speaker 1: Lemme formally open this please. In accordance with the Wetlands Protection Act and Natick local wetlands bylaw article 79, the NATA Conservation Commission will hold a public hearing
on a notice of intent filed by Nicole Hayes of Goddard Consulting representing Steven Ross, seven Alger Street Realty trust for property located at five and seven Alger Street Map 54 lots, 94 A and 94 B. The proposal is to, is to demolish two existing single family homes with associated detached structures and construction of a new single family home with associated site features including drainage infrastructure. So Nicole, would you please walk us through what your client has in mind? Speaker 2: Nicole, would you prefer to share your own screen or have me share the plans? Speaker 7: You can share the plans, yeah.
Especially the updated ones. Yep. Yep. Speaker 2: Do you want me to start on existing or scroll right to proposed? Speaker 7: You can start with existing please. All right. Good evening. My name is Nicole Hayes, professional wetland scientist with Goddard Consulting. As it was already mentioned, we are going to be raising the existing structures on the site and then we are going to be the constructing a new house. The resources located on the site are boring,
vegetated wetlands along this property line here and isolated wetland and corresponding buffer zones. So if we go to the next page. Yep. So the proposed house, there we go. We'll be located outside the 25 foot no disturb and outside the 40 foot no structure, it will be within buffer zone. We do have 12 trees being taken down, but we are mitigating with the planting of 16 trees.
And they're located, there's a planting area right down closest to the IVW and BVW. The storm water will be collected via roof trench drains and got and be sent to three vac infiltration systems. There'll be 120% storage volume requirement, which we meet for the house. And erosion controls will be implemented at the limit of work. And for the steep slopes we have
proposed erosion control fabric. So that's, that's the overview of the proposed project and existing conditions. And I can take any questions if there is any. Speaker 1: Well rest assured there will be some questions. Would you talk, so roof, roof runoff, all is being handled, how Speaker 7: The roof runoff is being sent to the infiltration drains and the three cal tuck Speaker 1: And that's all, that's all roof runoff for all of the, all of the building sources? Yes. Speaker 7: So it's, yes, Speaker 2: They're collecting
Speaker 8: Roof and run and driveway. George corner here and runoff Speaker 7: And driveway. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 7: Trench drain there. Yep. Trench drains near the driveway will also go into the, the chambers. Speaker 2: And those are directed through a deep hood sump prior to the infiltration chambers in order to meet the water quality standards. Yep. Speaker 8: Correct. Speaker 1: Okay. We're just orienting ourselves with these plans here now. Speaker 9: Yep. Speaker 2: And so the site does, or the proposed site plans do almost entirely mitigate
runoff from the two and the 10 year storm events. And we do see substantial reductions in the 25 and a hundred year storm events. And just to, to bring to the commission's attention in the Google Drive folder, we did receive two abutter letters regarding this project, which are both available in the drive folder. Speaker 1: So the overall changes in topography of this site look to be, I mean, you know, obviously there's some, some regrading that's happening, but it's not, Speaker 2: It does work with the existing topography. Speaker 1: It's not raising, it's not raising the, the height of the yard.
Speaker 2: It does, it shifts the high points slightly, but, but overall there is not an increase in lot height Speaker 1: Across the board. Right. I mean it's not like that, you know, the whole lot is being raised by two feet or three feet or anything like that. It's being shifted around a little bit. Speaker 2: Yeah. The soil testing across the site until they hit depo test, pit five, which is the one closest to the wetland resource area, no models or weeping were noted in the 10 foot deep 10 feet, George, I can't remember what the depth Speaker 8: Was. Yes, Speaker 2: 10 feet deep. Yes. Speaker 1: So it's good. It's good soils. Speaker 2: Yeah. Obviously once you get close to the wetland, the groundwater raises up
and models were seen at about 90 inches below surface grade with water being seen, oh, I'm sorry. Models at 54 inches below surface grade and water at 76 inches. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 8: And five, Speaker 1: This will be, so it's a walkout basement, so a full basement. Do we have on the plans, do we have stockpiling locations noted? Speaker 2: No, we do not though there is a fair amount of area on the site outside of the buffer zone, would the commission be comfortable requiring those be located outside the buffer zone as a condition
or would they prefer to see revised plans? Speaker 8: The amount of, may I speak, George Connors the engineer with the engineering and sure. Representing Mr. Ross, the, the amount of grading is really mitigated because the house is a walkout basement in the front area between the street and the front of the house. The house foundation top of concrete will be about three feet above the, above the street at the highest point. So really there's not gonna be a whole lot of
material other than removal and stockpiling of the top and sub. Speaker 1: So there's no Yeah, fair enough. But at some point in the construction process, there will be a need to have a stockpile somewhere, right? Speaker 8: Yes. Okay. Speaker 1: So, so we just like to make sure that, you know, I, I think, you know, because of the way the proposed house is situated, there would be plenty of room in front of the house or off to the, you know, facing the house off to the right, you know, in the upper left corner in this drawing where, where stockpiles could be placed with appropriate controls
around them just to ensure they stay, they stay in place. What is the net fill calculation on this? I mean, you know, net fill or lack thereof on the site. I mean, is there, is is fill being imported into the site or is it just all being used? You know, Speaker 8: The, the, the only material that really will come in, it's gonna be crushed stone for the sub foundation and for the infiltration systems, the site is pretty level and it's Santa gravel. So all that material would be reused as appropriate.
Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: I think the, the major shift in grading lines, the, the 1 34 line is slightly pushed out on the Alger Street side of the, I suppose Alger is on two sides of property, so that's not necessarily on the eastern edge of the lot. Yeah. But overall the lot does remain fairly in line with what it currently is. Speaker 1: Kind of does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 8: It does Speaker 1: Plans for a washout pad
or anything of the sort to not be tracking mud and dirt out into the street Speaker 8: Again because the sand and gravel, I'm not really seeing this a lot of soil that will be tracked out. Okay. But we can certainly put wherever the access is a line of crush rock for the truck tires. Speaker 2: Would the commission be comfortable if these things are shown on the revised plans prior to a building permit issuance? I mean, we can also wait on this and hope to review conditions at the next meeting, but I just Speaker 1: Trying to, yeah, I mean, I think to George's point,
you know, because there's not a lot of fill being brought in or taken out, you know, it's probably not really gonna be much of an issue. But, you know, I think to make, ensure that the site is really buttoned up and clean and all, I think having a gravel, you know, a gravel apron Yep. You know, for trucks to, to use or for, for the equipment to use. And where is, where is the primary access for construction vehicles gonna be on the site? Speaker 8: It's going to be from Leach Lane down Alger, the algae you see going. Yeah, because the other part, part of Alger,
I don't know, you'd have trouble dragging your little kid's wagon down it. Yeah, yeah. So the, the main access is the frontage where the house is gonna face Alger. Okay. I will agree to any kind of a condition for a stone apron and a stockpile with the necessary ation around it. And I would suggest they be in that area where DTH one is for the site access and the storage and I'll add that to the plan tomorrow and get it to you. Oh Speaker 1: Great.
Yeah, that'd be super. And then do we have a, do we have a site planting plan, particularly within the buffer zone? So Speaker 2: The revised plan in the folder you see revised site plan seven 16. Yep. Page two of that sheet does show the proposed planting locations as well. I apologize, I didn't have time to color it up today. Oh, perfect. But the three red buds are proposed along the eastern property line near where Alger turns to Alger. The, there are three sugar maples proposed along the western
property line, and then the remainder of the plantings are proposed within the 25 foot, no disturbed zone, along the edge of the wetland resource area. Speaker 1: And is that the, but is that the extent of the plantings? I mean, you know, these are, these are the, the replacement trees. Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's, there's three sugar maples, three rivers, so that's nine plus Speaker 1: Five. What I, what I'm curious about Claire though is 16, what is the, what is, what is the landscaping plan? Speaker 2: Ah, yes. Speaker 1: Replacement trees are great
and I certainly appreciate the net gain and tree count, but the overall landscaping plan, particularly as it relates to invasives and anything else, you know, because of its being located in the buffer zone, I think would be of interest. George, is that something that the applicant has, has settled on at this point in time? Speaker 8: No, actually not. I'm sure that the ar the building architect will come up with that at some point in time and it could be subject to your approval at that time. But as I see this, mostly it's gonna be
grassed area other than some stabilization on the slope for in that shaded area. Okay. Speaker 1: The other thing I'd like to talk about is whether we have the 25 foot, no disturbed zone delineated, you know, with a split rail or anything like that with our, the reason why the, with appropriate demarcations that, you know, no further encroachment on the resource areas to happen and no, certainly no lawn clippings, yard waste or anything like that gets dumped over the fence.
Speaker 2: Yes. So Speaker 1: That, so I'd like to, you know, I'd like to see a condition for that. That's Speaker 8: Fine. That's fine. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: And then the markers that we generally require could be placed on that fence. Yep. Speaker 1: All right. I think that's my questions for all for now guys. What else? Speaker 5: I was just cur curious about that concrete pad there. It, it's on the, on the old and the new, that's not gonna be removed or Speaker 2: I believe it is gonna be removed. Okay. I think it's just some of the overlays are a little bit darker than others. Okay. George and Nicole, can you guys confirm? Yeah, Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah. No, that'll go, that's true. Okay.
Speaker 5: Figured out. Speaker 1: Alright, other questions? Speaker 5: That, there were a lot of things in those letters, right? Speaker 1: Yeah, no, we'll go over that in a second. I wanna, I wanna open it up for public comment in a second. Cool. For sure. Speaker 10: So kind of two things. I'm looking at a, a map number two, at least in the Google Drive folder it, and I'm trying to wrap my head around why there's a driveway on one set of plans and there's no driveway on this set of plans that I'm looking at. Speaker 1: This is na p plan two PDF you're talking about Mike? Correct. Speaker 2: I'm just gonna share it so that folks at home know what we're talking about as well.
George, this is just the basic PO plot plan that was submitted as part of the project materials. Speaker 8: Yeah, that was for a zoning opinion because we have two streets and frontage was the issue. Speaker 10: Okay. Okay. It'd probably be, shouldn't be in our, Speaker 2: It will not be a referenced document in the approval. Speaker 10: Okay. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 8: Yeah, setback was an issue with respect to zoning. So we discussed it with the building inspector, Speaker 10: So the members that have a little bit longer history than
my 10 or so years on the board or commission. Is this a section of the stream that is a river or is it not? Speaker 2: So the stream itself does run south of this area. You can actually see the 200 foot riverfront area shown. Yeah. He's got on the detailed plot plan. It does not, it is shown on the planes, but it does not extend onto this lot from the, the stream that runs under Leach lane. This Speaker 10: Section of the river is riverfront? Correct. Okay. Speaker 1: Okay. So riverfront area is not a concern Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 1: For the project. Okay. Other questions before I open it up for public comment? Speaker 10: And then the other house that's being raised, is there gonna be, I know you said there's not gonna be any need to bring in any material, but is does that house, existing house at number five or or seven have a basement? Speaker 8: I, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Speaker 10: Okay. Speaker 8: Those are old, old houses. Speaker 1: What, just to calibrate when you say old, old, Speaker 8: Old, old, Speaker 1: What, what, what does old old mean? Speaker 2: I Speaker 8: Can find that out. Oh, we've got a hundred plus years. Speaker 1: Okay. I'm sure some neighbors will have some opinions about that as well.
So let's hear any other questions from the commission right now? Anyone from the public wanna make any, have any questions or comments about this project for, for us to consider? Speaker 2: Do we wanna start going through the letters that had been submitted prior to the meeting and then jump into Speaker 1: Yeah, so I've got, I see one here under Speaker 2: The other one is an email file. So it's listed under, so Speaker 1: I've got the one from Wally and Elizabeth. Speaker 2: Yes. The one from Wally and Elizabeth. And then Conservation commission letter re five seven Alger Street from there. O'Toole is the second one. Speaker 1: So just to, just to for transparency's sake.
So this is alle an email from Elizabeth Fagan. Dear Conservation Commissioners, we live on Matthew Cord off of Leach Land in South Natick. Matthew Court runs parallel to Alger Street. This is an old neighborhood that has been inhabited by some families here for six or seven generations. There has been very little development in our neighborhood since we bought our house in 1992. The lack of development has helped preserve the environmental infrastructure that has existed here for centuries. We're concerned about the proposed development at five seven Ger Street. We're concerned about the wetlands on the property and how the stream and the native vegetation will be destroyed by the reshaping and restructuring of the landscape in the existing slope on the back of the property.
The water table is very high in this neighborhood. Many of our neighbors use sump pumps at different times of the year. We ask that we ask you to visit the site and assess the impact of the potential damage to the existing lot and they're unable to attend tonight in person. Are you Wally or Elizabeth? Are you on the call here tonight and want to add anything to that? If you're here? Don't hear 'em here. They Speaker 2: Are here. I'm, I'm helping them get unmuted. Okay. Speaker 11: Thank you. We, I think we're on. Yes, Speaker 1: We can hear you. Speaker 11: Okay. Hey listen, this is Wally. I just ran across the street. I live on Matthew Court.
It's 15.2 inches of Paved Road on Alger in front of the house. You said 32. I just wanna make sure, just so you know, dude or whatever. We moved the neighborhood. It's an old neighborhood. Speaker 12: The roads are really narrow. Speaker 11: Roads are narrow and it's bigger than Matthew CORs Wow. Speaker 12: Cart paths. Yeah, they're unaccepted roads. So our road isn't even paved. So is it common for the conservation commission to come out and and assess the sites in person Speaker 1: When we, when we determine that that would be helpful or appropriate? We certainly do that. Please
Speaker 11: Do. That's Speaker 1: How do we spend a lot of our Saturdays? Speaker 12: Yeah, well we appreciate that. Speaker 1: When you, when you say please do, I mean we've, you know, we, we've taken a look at the plans. What, what exactly walk, what exactly are you interested in us taking a look at or where, where do you think a site visit would, you know, add, add value to the, to the, Speaker 12: To the conversation? Well, I think so you can actually see where, where the stream runs through the property you are, where the wetlands are. And I know we've had downpours but we've also had dry weather. So I, I haven't seen it recently,
but typically there's a stream running through that property. So I will just Speaker 2: So you know, clarify, just 'cause this has come up in a, in a number of the letters provided, there is a, a small intermittent stream corridor that runs, actually, lemme just share my screen so folks can see what I'm looking at. There is a small intermittent stream corridor not shown on the state maps, but shown on our local maps that runs along this area here. But that is not part of the subject lots for development. There are no streams delineated on the subject property. Speaker 1: And it's intermittent as well.
Speaker 2: The, the small stream on the off abutting parcel. Yes. Speaker 11: Just can I have one more comment? Oh, yes, sorry. Speaker 2: I just wanted to Please Speaker 1: Go ahead Wally. Excuse me. Speaker 11: I've only lived here. Am I Speaker 12: On? Yes. Yeah, Speaker 11: I only lived there 32 years. So what happens is we live closer to the bottom of the hill. The water runs down ours, it goes across Ontario tools, it runs down and it goes across that and over to the brook at Honeywell Farms. Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 11: That's the water. Speaker 1: All right, thank you for your comments. Appreciate that. So the, sorry, Claire, the other, the other letter, I'm not seeing it on my screen. If
Speaker 2: You, in the, the, I don't know how you have your icons set up, but there's one that has a large colored drawing. Speaker 1: Oh, there we go. Yes. Got it. All right. So this is from there. Toole. Hello all I'm writing in regards to the proposed raising of five and seven Alger Street in development of a new dwelling on the same set. I have a few personal concerns regarding the development, which I'll briefly list at the end of this letter. My principle aim, however, is in regards to the altering of the vegetated wet areas on the sloping portion of the land. Also, I'm seeking only to show my individual observations and intuition based on my familiarity with the area,
the sloping, the, the, the sloping area on the back of five and seven Alger Street. The proposed building site and yellow is where the slope is shown along my drawings levels and then extends along between the homes on Leach Lane number 20, numbers 23 and 25 and 29 and Alger Street number nine to Gilmore Ave. The brook blew on my drawing crosses lower leach lane, then returns to cross Gilmore a bit further to where it turns towards the Honeywell farm after crossing Alger.
Oh wow. This is long letter I'm gonna be reading for a while. At the turn towards the farm is stream read in the drawing from higher on the sloping vegetative land joins the brook in a T configuration. The area board, the area bordered by Alger and Gilmore on two sides. And the brook proper on the remaining two sides is definitively wetlands and heavily vegetated and and heavily vegetated. So variable the two sides in the brook proper and the remaining two sides. So this is where, I mean I think we're in agreement that this has been delineated as as wetlands, correct? Yes. Yeah. Is definitively wetlands. This area is commonly flooded as the brook drains
through the culvert across Alger on through to the Charles through the farm. Not really certain is the origins of the stream. I think it's because it's almost always wet in the sloping area. It may be part of the natural conduit of groundwater. The entire area becomes full with rain. So I'd also think that running of storm water and snow melts likely contributes. But truly the vegetated area as the sloping area levels out is almost always wet green dots. And that is, you know, I don't think there's any, any, any controversy about that. Which is why the most, which is why the most previous owners installed water gardens, plants, bushes, trees that would thrive in wet environments. This is my observation, my query is whether this vegetative wet area,
including the stream that joins the brook, plays one an essential role in the absorption filtering and cooling of groundwater from higher on leach land as it flows towards the river. And two, a parallel but also a central role in collecting storm water and snow melt to help snow to help slow the Torrance of water as it also drains towards the river. I have no qualified insight to question the engineering offer by the builder, but my intuition is that the disruptor of the vegetated open space of the slow and the sloping area in the sensitive area, really, really a small part of the larger wetlands watershed, but perhaps contributing majorly to groundwater processes that serve the filter and cool water as it return to the river will have regrettably deleterious effects.
My intuition suggests this area may benefit from further assessment so it does more fully and realistically categorized future generations should inherit a sound ecosystem and we should not risk losing a vital and I replaceable resource. Honestly, most of the homes in this area deal commonly with flooding during wet spills. But going forward into the future will, will the flooding become overwhelming? We have videos from some recent quick intense rainfalls providing an idea of the present scenarios. The area. The area experiences. Yes, I could share these if interested. I would think the adjacent vegetated open space likely contributes in slowing down the Torrance of the flooding and thus provide some degree of dampening the acceleration dampening the
accelerating water levels. Isn't that partly the goal of vegetated open space within the watershed to help slow the storm water and rapid snow melts and provoke, promote groundwater recharge? This I'll leave as I have every confidence. The conservation commission will consider all this with better insight than I can offer. My final personal concerns, I'll briefly describe the proposed erosion barrier or the proposed erosion barrier. The barrier is discontinued along Alger Street directly across from a pristine meadow. Never, never cultivated. And as such as some conservation importance because of limited access to the building site, single lane road, I'm certain large construction vehicles will be idling in the area left unprotected by lack
of an erosion barrier. And also just on the street perhaps an erosion barrier could be installed along the opposite side of Alger Street to protect the field as well as a row of shade trees. Yeah. Due to the single lane nature of Alger Street. Can construction traffic be managed if the culverts, if the culverts are used? We'll come back to that one in a sec. Yes, Speaker 2: I can clarify. Great. Speaker 1: I have great concern for some very old and important shade trees on the corner of Leach Lane in Alger Street is spruce in a Japanese maple. With the weight of idling construction vehicles can idling construction vehicles on the network of small streets be restricted? Is there a chance that con number four, is there a chance that construction will include a requirement
for blasting ledge five Finally, two residences on Alger Street in the homes of are the homes of elderly neighbors. We really need open routes for emergency responders and as such, idling and parking of construction vehicles on or along the sides of the street should be limited. Great, thanks Terry. Appreciate those, those comments. So first and foremost, culverts, Claire, you said you could clarify that? Yeah, Speaker 2: Of course. Quickly, and I'm not sure if Terry is here tonight. He is, I'm just trying to share my screen so the folks at home can see. So this is the area on mass map. Our apologies, I don't have access to the town's drainage
or the town's GIS mapping, so I can show where the drainage pipes are located. But there are, she's referring to the culverts that cross under Gilmore and under Alger that convey the perennial stream. But as discussed already, construction access will be from Leach Lane onto Alger Lane. So there would not likely be any risk to those. Speaker 1: Okay. Those, those are the culverts we're talking about? Yes, Speaker 2: Exactly. Okay. Speaker 1: Alright, good. Speaker 13: It's only 15 feet wide. 15.2. Speaker 1: Sure. Blasting, I haven't heard any indication that blasting would be required. Can
Speaker 2: Please clarify that that, and Speaker 1: None of those soils, is there any, is there any indication, George, that blasting would be required here? Speaker 8: No, none whatsoever. As you know from the plan, we have test holes surrounding the house going down that roughly 10 feet and the soils map for the area shows it to be sand out washed. So no, we don't expect that at all. Speaker 1: And just to, just to clarify or to, you know, alleviate any concerns, I mean, if blasting were ever to be a consideration on a project like this, that is a highly regulated effort that would fundamentally change the plans
and it would need to be basically that this, this public hearing process would need to be reopened if blasting was determined, was determined to be necessary. So it would not happen without there being extensive public notice and all kinds of conversation about why. But all indications at this point is that there's no, there's no need for blasting, none is anticipated. The soil testing shows that none is, is gonna be needed. So I personally, I'd be really surprised if lasting, you know, came onto anybody's radar as part of this project. But it's, it's a fair question to ask. Speaker 2: And we did get a clarification from Frank Honeywell
that the existing dwelling at seven Alger Street does have a basement. He's not sure about five. Speaker 1: Got it. Okay. So there are basements in the, in the neighborhood there. But again, the soil testing that was done on the proposed location shows well draining soils. Speaker 8: I knew that. Speaker 1: Correct. And so, so we have, you know, the opportunity, what the applicant has proposed is a fairly significant set of infiltration system so that rainwater that lands on the roof would then be piped directly into these infiltration systems where it'll be infiltrated back into the, back into the earth
Speaker 2: There. The, yeah, the project has met the town's stormwater bylaw requirements to demonstrate an improvement in runoff management under the proposed conditions as compared to the existing conditions. I Speaker 1: I see a hand raised from Brenna. Yes. I was Speaker 2: Just gonna, Speaker 13: Hi there. I don't know if you, Speaker 2: Oh, we could hear you and then you muted yourself. Speaker 13: Okay, now we can hear. I'm having a, I'm having a lot of technical difficulties. This isn't meant to be oppositional at all. It's coming from a place I live at 18 Elger Street, so down around the corner. And in terms of coming onto Leach onto Elger Street one,
it's a really, it's a difficult turn. It's very sharp and there's no protection on any sides of Elger Street going in front of that property again, not around the turn. So none of the sides are protected, it's just off to grass or gravel and it's very narrow. So I'm wondering both in terms of the protection of, of that, you know, land there, but also in terms of where vehicles will be during this construction. Not just how they'll get to the site, but also where they will be in terms of passing by.
But also, you know, several of, there are elderly people, but there are also children including mine in the area who ride their bikes through there and everything. So I have a question in terms of like protecting the, the outer edges of the street and the narrowness of the street and the traffic, both when it's mobile and stationary. Thank you. Speaker 1: Yeah, fair Bren. Appreciate the question. What would be our regulatory, I mean, as part of an order of conditions? So Speaker 2: As part of an order of conditions, can Speaker 1: We do, can we do some kind of parking and or traffic plan? How about that?
Speaker 2: Unfortunately not. There is a potential, if the applicant is open to this, they may be willing to install erosion controls along the Alger Street side, opposite to where the development is gonna be occurring. But the commission's jurisdiction in this project is limited to the wetlands buffer, the wetlands and the buffer zone areas on the lot. So site access and vehicle locations and idling limitations would fall under, they may not fall under anybody's jurisdiction. Idling falls under state regulations.
Technically there are idling limits in the state of Massachusetts. Vehicle access may be something that falls under the building department's jurisdiction as part of the building permit process, but does not fall under the conservation commissions. I would, Speaker 1: I yeah, I hear where you're coming from. Yeah, I, I would argue that we do have, we do have regulatory authority on, you know, on the basis of runoff from the street that if increased traffic is gonna cause any kind of erosion issues with vehicles are parking by the side of the road and causing degradation of soils and things like that.
I would, I'd, I'd be willing to, yeah, I think I'd be willing to take a flyer on that and to put some, Speaker 2: I think that we can condition things as they relate to that. Should there be concerns. Absolutely. You Speaker 1: Know, I mean vehicles, you know, parking along the side of the road for three or four months and if there's a number of them could damage the soils, damage the vegetation and all that, which could lead to erosion. And I think that could be an appropriate regulatory handle for us to take hold of to ensure that that doesn't happen. And George, it's actually an interesting question for your applicant is that it is a very narrow street.
I mean, I, I live on an unaccepted road and the north side of town and people parking by the side of the road can really constrict traffic flow. Speaker 13: And, and I'm sorry if I can just add there in terms of it really being a concern, living there and taking that street every day, all of that is soft for all the reasons that we're talking about. It is, there's definitely, there's no way there would not be erosion there and to have vehicles parked there. I hear you saying there's nowhere else to put 'em, but there's no way that, hold on a will not Speaker 1: Hold, hold on a second. Hold on a second. Don't, don't, don't argue yourself.
I mean, I think what you're hearing is someone who's advocating for your position Speaker 13: In this. Oh, I know, I know, I hear that. Speaker 1: So I think we could put a restriction on there from a, from an erosion perspective around parking off the road and then if someone's parking on the road, they're blocking the road because if they gotta stay on the paved surface. And so I think parking is gonna be a really interesting issue, George, for your client to be, for your contractors to be thinking about so that traffic isn't, traffic isn't impeded and we're not damaging any of the, any of the,
the vegetation or soils around it. Speaker 8: Well there's no question. The logistics of getting material and workers to this site is gonna be a, a kind of a task in and of itself, or happy to do whatever is necessary to maintain the road during the process and repair whatever damage obviously that would occur, but I can't imagine it'd be too much damage. Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. And all, all this is something that we would be thinking about and then sorting out as part of, you know, if we get to a place of, of issuing an order of conditions on this.
Alright. Other comments or questions from the public or abutters? Please sir, if you could come up to the microphone so people at home can hear you. Sure. And first of all, identify yourself and where you live and then let's hear what's on, what's on your mind. Hi there, Speaker 14: Dan Weddle. I'm at 25 Leach Lane. I'm in a butter. I did receive a, a letter You Speaker 1: Did receive a letter you said? Speaker 14: I did receive a letter, yes. Thank you very much. So I'm in kitty corner, if you will. Okay. Okay. And I, I have some questions and also I'm gonna say I have the same concerns as everybody else does. So, so it's another, another data point there.
Question with regard to intermittent stream versus non intermittent stream and how that comes into play in your decision in whatever the zone is that you're, you're talking about and how can I say that it is intermittent versus you coming out and seeing that, that that stream that's right next to me, which actually is an abutment that comes, it starts there and it comes into my house. Excuse me, my, my my lot 25.
And it is one of the little teeny tributaries that that adds to that stream that is perennial that goes under the culvert, that goes right into, into the Honeywell farm. So it is there it is, it is totally there. It, I've actually given it plenty of space for the, for the vegetation to grow around it. I bought my house in 1998. It's a 1961 built house. So it's much later than Speaker 1: I'll say it's a newcomer. Speaker 14: It's a newcomer. Right.
I think actually it probably was a, a, a dump lot because I find a lot of broken glass. I mean that's probably what it was at one point. Right. And, and so that, that is a bit of a concern for me is that it, it not knowing, obviously it's as, as you all do what the, the number of, of feet around, around that stream, whether it's intermittent or not, can be, can be built as well for any of the, the runoff. That's one major question I have. And the second question I have is I would love to see whether or not in the abutment there are some real
old willow growth trees that I can imagine they're either gonna do this at some point. 'cause one of them did that in my house. That's what Speaker 1: Willows do. Speaker 14: Yeah, I know that 19 2004 I had one land right on my house. Okay. That's a bummer. So I get it. But at the same time, the, the conservation of that, you know, it would be wonderful to, to keep that if possible rather than having all brand spanking new little teeny trees. So those are the two questions that I would have that I would ask commission to.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So let me address the, so the intermittent versus non intermittent, I mean basically an intermittent stream is treated as kind of wetland resource areas are treated in general. I mean, if they show characteristics of wetland, soils, vegetation, all of that, then it's a resource area and then that is all the protections associated with it. Okay. Where the, where the, the bar increases or where the, where the level of protection increases is, if it's what's called a perennial stream, which is a stream that's kind of, that's in simple terms constantly running, then it gets essentially protection under the River's
Protection Act, which sets off a 200 foot buffer zone instead of a 100 foot buffer zone. I mean there's all kinds of, you know, devils in the details, but that's basically what's going on. Okay. The, the finding here or the determination here or the, the what's being maintained here is that this is an intermittent stream here, so it's been being treated as a wetlands. Yep. You know, and clearly the wetlands delineation shows that, and so there's no, there's no controversy there, there, you know, there, there's no argument about whether there's wetlands in the back of this lot or not.
That's clear. And there's, and then there's, there's then a 25 and a 40 and a hundred foot buffer zones or zones of protection that are afforded to it because it's a wetlands. Right. That, that's the deal. Does that, does that answer your question? So that Speaker 14: Helps. And then the actual number of feet from where that intermittent stream starts to where Speaker 1: Your, depends on Speaker 14: Where zone and the, the building happens. That's, that's why I asked you to come on out right, is I'd love to see that specific number of feet. Speaker 1: So, so what's what what the plan shows here is that a wetland scientist went out and delineated it.
And the wetland scientist is someone that the applicant hires, but the wetland scientists, they, their credibility, their professional certification really rests on them providing accurate information to us. And so that's been delineated. And then that's where then the counting starts for the delineations. Speaker 14: And that is across boundary lines or that's within a boundary line? Speaker 1: It's boundary lines meaning property lines. Speaker 14: Property lines are yes. Across, Speaker 1: It doesn't property lines, it's, it's blind to property lines. Speaker 2: So the, the buffer zone extent on this property,
Speaker 15: This is that outer buffer zone line. So these are the wetland areas that have been delayed. That intermittent stream corridor, I'm Speaker 2: Gonna do it with my cursor so folks at home can see it as well. Sort of runs on, again, this adjacent lot here Speaker 15: Into these wetland resource areas. So essentially what the wetland scientists who did the flagging on this lot is that these buffer zones to these wetland areas go out further than the hundred buffer zone from the edge of the stream. So this is what has been delineated as the sort of maximum extent of buffer zone jurisdiction on the lot. Speaker 1: So basically, I mean what, where the edge
of the wetlands is, is, is indicated by these black triangles here. That is where the scientist has gone out and in some cases literally put stakes in the ground that says this is the edge of the soils, this is the edge of the vegetation that is indicates that this is a wetlands on this side, it's a wetlands on the other side, it's not a wetlands that is a, it's a 75, I'm, I'm making these numbers up, 75% of science, 25% in arc, in, in terms of these things. It's eyeballs, it's years of experience and just seeing, taking soil samples,
vegetation samples and all that. But that's then where the 20 foot, the first zone is a 25 foot Noe disturb zone. And that's basically the rule is that the way the law is written, it says, unless otherwise permitted by the conservation commission, of course nothing can be disturbed. You know, you can't disturb that. Right. 40 feet from zero to 40 feet is a no build zone where you can't build anything. You can't do anything there then, you know, but you could under some circumstances disturb the soils or whatever, so long as you return 'em back to their original condition and that that's not gonna cause any negative
impacts on the resource area. Then there's the a hundred foot zone, which is what is makes it jurisdictional for us. So anything within a hundred feet of a wetlands or 200 feet of a river then is jurisdictional to conservation commissions in the commonwealth. That's when processes like this start is, is when you have, is when something is proposed within that a hundred feet or 200 feet in the case of a river happens. So, you know, we've got data in front of us from that's been, that's been provided by the engineer Yes. The applicant's engineer. But we have no reason to at this point in time, no reason
to dispute where those wetland stakes or flags have been placed. So now what we've, what we've got is we've got plans that then show what's gonna happen. Are they staying clear of the zones and they have to stick to that. 'cause they then come back to us at the end of this process and say, okay, we did everything, you know, as we said we would. And then we look at engineered drawings that said, did you in fact go into the buffer zones? Did you, did you do what you say you were going to do? That's Speaker 14: What I would ask. Speaker 1: Right. Which is, you know, so they, in order to close out this process, they have to get what's called a certificate of compliance. And that happens at the end of the day. And when they're all done, they come back
and they have to get certification from an engineer that says, here's what was done. Here's, you know, referencing off of all these points on the maps here, you know, did they do what they said they were going to do? And then they have to get a certificate if they want to close that else or else they've got that hanging open on their deed and they can never sell the place because a mortgage will not be issued to a place that has an outstanding certificate of compliance on a place. Speaker 14: Understood. So then I, I guess I need to do a little bit more homework and understanding where those triangles are and why they're not on my property or, or the property next to me. Well the,
Speaker 1: The reason for that in Speaker 2: May it, the delineation is only done to establish jurisdiction on the lot that is being permitted. Speaker 14: So then the confirmation happens after, Speaker 1: Well, no, so the, you know, the applicant hires an engineer to, to professional Speaker 2: Wetland scientist, Speaker 1: I'm sorry, a professional wetland scientist to support them for their project. They're not out there to delineate wetlands on your property. They're, they're, they're out there to wetland to delineate wetlands in general. In, in in general. In general. Speaker 14: I get that. Speaker 1: And, and yes, in general, but they're not gonna go and be flagging wetlands on your, on your lot for example.
That's not, that's not what they're paid to do. You know, they're being paid by the applicant to delineate the wetlands that, and, and to delineate any buffer zones that may go onto the subject property that that's what we need to see as part of our process. So if, if there is a wetlands offsite, offsite where, but where the buffer zone within the extends onto the their property, we need to know that because that still holds, you know, I mean that's the, the buffer zones are blind to the property lines. Right. Speaker 14: Okay. So at some point that will be publicly available.
Speaker 1: What's publicly available? What will be publicly available? Well, Speaker 14: I guess that's what I'm asking is, is all of these Speaker 1: Materials, all of this is part of the public record. Yes. You can get access to all this stuff. End Speaker 14: Of the day though, if, if, if I'm not in agreement that that has been, Speaker 1: Then you properly delineated Speaker 14: Properly delineated. Right. Then I go through a process of coming and asking. So Speaker 1: The question I would ask you then Speaker 14: My measuring tape out and Speaker 1: Right. So the question I would ask you though is that, you know, we would need to be convinced that there was some basis for you to challenge this. Speaker 14: Yeah. The intermittent stream. Yeah. You would appeal it to the That's right. That's
Speaker 1: I'm right. Department Speaker 10: Of Environmental Protection and there's a whole process for that Speaker 1: And okay. Right. I mean if, you know, and, and that's, that's totally true. I mean all of our, all of our processes here, if people don't like 'em, you can appeal 'em, but you know, you need to have grounds to appeal it. You know, you saying not as a wetland scientist as you know, saying, I don't think this is right. That's one place where we can go out as a commission and we can walk it and we can take a look and say, yeah, we agree. I mean we've been all been all been doing this for a long time. Yeah, yeah, sure. So we could go out I, right. So we could go out and we could take a look and if we think there's, you know, and we, and we've done that many times.
We've gone out there and we've said, don't like where that flag is. You know, we see evidence that this, you know, it should be 10 feet further, it should be 10 feet closer, whatever. Yeah. You know, and if, if, if the commission here, it's ultimately our decision, but if we see evidence or hear evidence that it's in fact might, that might be the case and that would be a reason why to your neighbors request earlier, that could be a reason why we might wanna go out and take a look. 'cause if, if there's, you know, any evidence to, you know, that, that, that would support that, we'll do an appeal. Speaker 10: Okay. Speaker 2: Got it.
So I will just note about the appeal process. The appeal process goes to D-E-P-D-E-P will either issue a up a superseding order of conditions upholding the commission's decision or they will issue a denial. I, it is very rare that I have seen DEP issue a denial on an appeal project. And this is not to discourage anyone, I just want to share the lived experience of an agent for almost eight years. Sure. Oftentimes local conservation commissions are able to work with developers to gain additional conditions like these roadway protections that we're discussing that are then lost in the
superseding order of conditions. Again, this is not to discourage anyone. I unfortunately saw it happen on a, a very sad project in Newton that sometimes the compromises that local commissions work with developers to get in permit conditions that fall in that gray area of the law get lost in that superseding order of conditions process. And based on my professional assessment of the grading and the surrounding areas, the soil testings done on the site, the mapping of the intermittent stream in our local maps, I do believe that the wetlands have been appropriately
delineated on this law. Speaker 1: Thank you. Alright, thanks. Speaker 7: Can I, can I just say something? Speaker 1: Who Speaker 2: Is this? This is Nicole. This is Nicole. This is, Hey Speaker 1: Nicole, Speaker 7: How are you? So if she can put up that plan, the existing conditions plan again, I just wanna mention about the intermittent stream, the plan. Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm, I'm sorry, Nicole. My zoom controls are in the way of my, Speaker 7: There we go. All right. So you see if, if you zoom in on the, the wetlands, if you see flag numbers 1, 2, 3,
and four, that is the start of that intermittent stream. That's where the water comes out and continues offsite and joins with the perennial stream that the, the neighbors are talking about. So they are correct. There is an intermittent stream out there. I didn't follow it way off site because it wasn't pertinent to our locust property, but that is the, the start, the head start of that intermittent stream that people are talking about.
So I, it has been captured, it is part of the wetland resource area that is on the plans. The buffer zones are done off of that. So I just wanted to let the neighbors know that, that I did see that area and it is included in the delineated resources. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thanks Nicole. Other questions? Please come up. Appreciate all these questions. I mean, this is the time for folks to get your questions answered. Speaker 16: Hi, my name's Matt Lanin. I'm also a resident of Ger Street. Brenna is my wife.
She actually stole my question, but to piggyback off of, you Speaker 1: Can deal with that Speaker 16: Later. Exactly. And what goes on back at our house, we'll sort out questions seem to be either about erosion or sort of access and functionality to the street itself. My question is, I appreciate that we've sort of considered a plan to make sure that Alger Street and in fact the on the map, the, the road that goes diagonally up from left to right. I think that'd be maybe the north boundary is actually harp court. So for the ease of reference to the blueprint between Alger and Alger, the the top is HARP court.
So there's Har Hart Court Harp, HARP Har Harp Court. Speaker 2: Yes. There, there's conflicts between what is listed on the actual street signage and what is listed in the assessor's. Speaker 16: Okay. So in any case, HAR court was the road that was shown with the Google map image. Yes. And my question basically is if we sort of create a plan so that all construction vehicles are, are sort of constricting the road as as little as possible, that'd be great. But I can imagine that over the course of the entire construction, you have the construction trucks
and you have the painters and the carpenter and people just aren't getting the message and day in and day out. We're just, I'm happy to ask them to move, but at some point, what is our right and what is the protocol to say like, look, we, we need passage through harp court without having to ask them to move their trucks each and every day the cops. Speaker 2: So yeah, blocking of the roadway would be something that you would report to the building department as well as the, the non-emergency police line. They can send a, an officer out to clear the vehicles Speaker 16: Department and Speaker 2: The police. Correct. And then any damages can be reported to me so
that we can enforce the conditions requiring management and repair of any like erosion or roadway damages, if any are caused. Speaker 1: Great. Thank you. Great. Thanks. Thanks for the question, Matt. Other questions? Speaker 2: Again, if folks on Zoom have any questions, you're more than welcome to use the, the raise hand function or physically raise your hand. Elizabeth, I see you raising your hand if you wanna go ahead and unmute. Speaker 12: Hi I another question about, it's again, the parking, the access, the trucks, the tree dam, you know,
heavy trucks on, on tree roots can, can damage them, but it takes a few years to show. So I just want you guys to keep that in consideration too. Just because, I mean, my husband did just go across and measure out at harp court and it's 15 feet and two inches wide. It's not 32 feet, I mean inch 32 feet wide. Speaker 2: I believe that 32 feet is the width of the right of way corridor. Not necessarily the paved extent of the roadway.
Speaker 1: That's how wide the road could be. Speaker 12: Yeah. Okay. So, but it's actually 15 feet fair. So I mean the, the whole access thing and then the potential damage to existing plants and stuff, I ju I just think it real is real as well as the, you know, the erosion problem. So I just wanted to bring that up. Thanks. Speaker 11: I I just wanted to say we really appreciate it if you come down and check it out and see what the location is and you get a better feel for it. Thank you. Speaker 1: Great. Thanks Frank. Alright. Pleasure of the board right now. We've got a a, a plea
for us to come take a look at it, you know, which, which is, which is understandable. You know, I'm not, I don't have any reason to, to consider, you know, to doubt the delineation of the wetlands. I and honestly, if you look at where the, where the, the flags are on the map, you know, changing any one of those by a few feet would not materially change the, you know, the, the proposed project. All that being said, I would not be opposed to us, you know, going out there and taking a walk on site and looking at it and just, you know, laying eyes on. We've all been out there before for
other projects in the area. I Speaker 2: I mean, I was gonna recommend at least continuing to review conditions at the next Oh absolutely. Speaker 1: Public hearing. I'm not interested in, I'm not interested in closing this out tonight. Speaker 2: Personally, the one thing I was gonna bring this up in other updates, but since the site visit has come up during discussion, I will note that it has recently been circling in the agent community that a decision from 2017 has been going around regarding open meeting law and its applicability to site visits. I think prior understanding of most commissioners and agents in the state is that questions may be asked at a site visit, but no answers or discussion.
They can be voiced for the applicant to record and address in a public hearing that has now been debated by this 2017 court decision as to whether Speaker 1: Questions can even be asked. That Speaker 2: Questions may count as deliberation. If a questions are our part, if a quorum is present of the commission. So what I was going to potentially recommend is maybe doing individual site visits. I'm happy to meet with that folks out on site or just do a, a silent site visit. Again, this is one decision out of potentially many. It's just something that's been raised in the community
that I wanted to bring to the commission's attention. That's Speaker 1: Fair. I mean, yeah, meeting laws are open meeting laws. They are Speaker 2: Indeed. Speaker 1: And so we need to, we need to comply with what, with anything there. Would the commission be up for a site visit? Speaker 10: Sure, I would be Speaker 1: Up, yeah. Yeah, I would too. So why don't we take a look at it and our next meeting is August 7th. Seventh. Speaker 10: Could I ask a favor of the applicant? Possibly. And I may be out of bounds and I'd I highly doubt. Welcome, welcome somebody to tell me I'm out of bounds. So this, this hearkens back to a project on South Main Street, abutting Johnson School
where there was a number of trees designated for removal, however they weren't owned. Speaker 1: Boundary trees. Speaker 10: Boundary trees. So we have three trees on Harp road street court. This is the north Yeah. Court on the, this is on the northeast side of the property. So Speaker 2: That would be actually Alger. Yeah. Speaker 10: Okay. Alger. Yes. Excuse Speaker 2: Me. No, it's, it is very confusing. Speaker 10: Thank you. I'm not a south NAIC person. So the 22 inch oak, is that, is that Speaker 2: So Speaker 10: My center of the tree accurate in the plans,
the same thing with the 10 inch maple, you know, those types of things. If that's the property boundary, who owns the northeast side of that Speaker 2: Alger Street? So yeah, so I did review that, anticipating a question about it because Alger way or Alger Street is a private unaccepted roadway. I haven't reviewed the deeds specifically. Generally the homeowners owned the center line of the roadway. Yeah. So they would also own those particular boundary trees. But I can review the deeds prior to our next meeting. Well I Speaker 1: Don't think, let's just be sure. Yeah. Speaker 10: Whose job that is. I, I won't say, I don't know if it's necessarily yours
but Well it's not arts Speaker 2: 'cause it's a private way. So I think it's gonna fall on me if we're gonna get an answer to it. Speaker 10: Yeah, just I, I think the main thing we'd obviously, I'd hate to see a tree removed that wasn't Yes. There's plus it's jurisdictional to our Speaker 1: Work anyway. Right, I get it. Speaker 17: Related, related question, what power do we have if there are, you know, 40 inch white oaks on the side of that road that we're worried about the trucks rolling over those roads, what authority do you have, if any, to protect? Speaker 1: We can absolutely protect them. I mean we can put drip line fencing or whatever we think is appropriate to
Speaker 10: Protect those. I Is that a scenic? Is it? Well it's a private way. So private. So it can't be Speaker 2: Designated. No, it's not a scenic route. And David, what trees that you're referring to, are they on harp court? Are they on I'm sorry, no Speaker 17: Tree in specific. Speaker 2: All. Okay, perfect. Speaker 17: I'm just thinking about where the trucks are gonna go during this whole exercise. David's mic is out. Speaker 2: Oh Speaker 1: David, turn your mic off. Speaker 17: Oh, Speaker 1: It's off. There you go. Now it's off home. Alright, Speaker 2: Just to repeat David's question to the mic is how do we gonna potentially protect the roots of trees along the roadway if they are damaged? So what I will note is that this project,
because it's receiving an order of conditions from the commission, is also essentially receiving its storm water approval through this process as well. We could potentially, I I know our standard condition for wetlands is that trees within the wetland are buffer zone area that are dire demonstrably harmed by construction activity, have within two years of the start of construction have to be replaced. We could potentially extend that under the Article 79 a regulations to extend to trees within the project area rather than just the buffer zone.
But I will, we will need to double check on that because the stormwater bylaw doesn't specifically protect the trees, but it does protect from erosion. So I think if we go at it from that perspective, trying to meld these regulatory authorities together on this particular project. Speaker 1: That makes sense. Thanks. Thanks Claire. Before we get into picking the date for a site visit, ma'am, please, why don't you come on up and introduce yourself and let's hear your question. Alright. Speaker 18: Cindy Bates, I have a suggestion that if there's a, a revision of the plan or maybe a separate one to delineate where the actual road pavement is versus the 32
or whatever else, we just, just to make it visually clear to people that are looking at it. Speaker 1: Fair appreciate that we can ask the applicant to do so. So how are people looking for a Saturday morning site visit and in the next, in the next couple weeks? Our next meeting's on Thursday, August 7th. We could do this Saturday. We could do Saturday the second. Anyone going on long vacations anytime soon? Anyone? Anyone not available on either of those Saturdays? Speaker 10: August 2nd isn't a great day for me, but yeah, me neither. You don't need me.
Speaker 1: Oh, Mike. Yes we do. August. How about, how about this Saturday, August 26th? No, Speaker 2: July 19th. Speaker 10: Yeah, July 19th. I promise Speaker 2: We're not that far yet. Matt. Speaker 10: I'm ready for August. Took a Speaker 1: Week out of all of our lives. How about Sat, do you wanna do Saturday the 19th or Saturday the 26th? Speaker 10: I think 19th. Speaker 1: 19th would be both the Saturday. Just get on it Chris. What? Speaker 19: Yeah, I may have a conflict, but I can try for that. Speaker 1: Okay. Saturday, August 19th. George, is that something that you could, you don't have to be, but could you be available? Speaker 8: I can have a representative
of Mr. Ross out there. Okay. Speaker 1: Is Speaker 2: There any chance, Speaker 7: This is Nicole again. I I am not available this coming Saturday. And if you wanted me there or not, I can Speaker 2: Nicole, the wetland scientist is not available this Saturday if we wanted her there. Speaker 1: Okay. How about if we looked, how about if we looked to, we could, you know, because it is as, as Jeff reminds us, it is actually light after hours these days. We, we could do an evening during the week and keep our Saturdays sacred for sleeping in and drinking coffee or whatever we do. So I know that's How about, how about Wednesday?
Wednesday the 23rd? Sure. Can't do it Jim? No, Speaker 7: I can't do it. Speaker 1: Is it is the whole week during the week or no? Speaker 7: No, just Wednesday. Speaker 1: Just Wednesday. How about Thursday? The Thursday the 24th. Thursday is good. I think so Nicole Speaker 7: Not Thursday the 24th. I have a hearing that night. Speaker 1: Who's more important? Nicole? How about Speaker 7: Every client? Speaker 1: How about Tuesday? I can't do it Tuesday. I can't. How about Monday? Sure. Speaker 7: Yeah, Monday's good. Yeah. Monday the, the 21st or the 28th. Oh Speaker 1: So Monday. The Monday the 21st? Yes.
Speaker 2: Great. 'cause I'm out town the 28th. Speaker 7: That's fine. Speaker 1: So Monday the 21st. How is 6:00 PM It's still nice and light and Speaker 2: Works for me. Speaker 1: Sure. Monday the 21st, 6:00 PM on site. Everyone good? George, could Speaker 8: You have I am. I am. I am. Speaker 1: Excellent. Good. Okay, so Monday the 21st. This is this Monday, 6:00 PM we'll meet on site. Do not park off the road. I was gonna say don't block the road. Don't block the don't knock trees over. Let, let's do that and we'll go take a look at it. Alright. And abutters, those abutters who are here,
would you have any issue if we happen to step two or three feet off the property onto your property? Is that anyone objecting? Come on. Come on in. Okay. You know we made this point around just to kind of look at, look at stuff. Just to clarify the rules of site visits is that neighbors, abutters? All of that. You have to have the, the permission of the property owner to go on their property. We, we have authority as conservation commissioners. We we're allowed to, if you do want to go onto the property, you gotta get permission from the o from the property owner. Okay. But we will, we will show up on mass on Monday at
6:00 PM and take a look at what's going on and then we'll reconvene here on August 7th. Speaker 2: I just sent a calendar invite to everyone's con com email. Speaker 1: Everyone good? Any questions? So Speaker 20: You'll be able to identify the specific trees that will be coming down and the specific and the specific areas where you'd be putting the trees up. Speaker 1: So we will well we will, I mean we have the plans in front of us that is, that is proposing where they will go. I mean we're not asking at this point for them to put stakes in the ground and say maple, maple year you have right now. Yeah, I mean, you know there and then we'll see what, if any, you know, things may change as part of this process in terms of where they put them.
But we have that information in front of us. We have the maps that show us where the wetlands are and we're pretty good at reading these maps and so we can then figure out if we think the delineations were done properly. I don't have any reason to doubt it, but all that being said, you know, let's, let's do that. Let's take a look and then we'll reconvene here on the seventh and continue this conversation. Would Speaker 2: The commission be comfortable if I had draft conditions ready for the seventh? If we're ready for Speaker 1: That? I think you can certainly prepare draft conditions, you know, include all of the, and so, yep, I've got one just for everyone's benefit. The way the process works is that if we, you know, the permit in our, in our world is a set of conditions.
It says you can do this under these conditions. And so a proposing is that she puts together a set of draft conditions based on, we have a standard boilerplate set of conditions and then we add to that based on the specifics of the project. And so, we'll, you know, we'll go into our meeting on the seventh with that we'll include Claire, the, the road stuff, you know, the protect, you know, the tree protection, the road protection, the erosion control, all that as part of it. We will debate those and those will be all public before they, before they get voted on. It's all part of the public record. So we'll proceed that way. Any, any questions? Any questions from anyone at home right
now about where we stand? Any questions here in the room? Alright, hearing none someone make a motion to continue this to August 7th. So moved. Thank you David. Is that seconded? Speaker 2: Seconded. Speaker 1: Thank you Jim. Any further discussion on that? Those in the room, Chris? Yes. Excellent. Thank you all. Thank you all for your time tonight. Appreciate it. We will. Thank you. Good night. We'll be seeing you again. Speaker 2: Thank you. Good evening. Thank you. Thanks Nicole. Speaker 1: Alright, let's move on. Thanks so much. Thank you. Alright. Alright. Why am I? There we go. Alright, next item on the agenda. Speaker 21: Matthew Speaker 1: 31 Arcadia Road. Mr. D'Antoni, how are you? Speaker 21: I'm doing well. Duchenne has a
also a meeting over in Wellesley and he was gonna do it by Zoom for this one. He is on. Is he on? Yes, he's okay. Great. Speaker 1: Okay. Okay, cool. Let me, lemme go ahead and I'll formally open this then hold. Okay, here we go. So, in accordance with the Wetlands Protection Act and na, local wetlands BI article 79, the NA Conservation Commission hold a public hearing on a notice of intent filed by de Shang Wang Claw LLC representing Christopher D Antonio Chad McCombs, LLC for property located at 31 Arcadia Road Roadmaps 26 lots, 36 B. The proposal is to demolish an existing single family home in construction of a new single family home with associated site features including septic system
and drainage infrastructure. Chris, welcome. Speaker 21: Good to see you Matt. What I'd like to do is just, I'll start out with a, with an overview of the project and then I'll hand it off to Dechen to do the technical stuff if Yeah, if we could start out with the existing conditions plan. Speaker 2: Yep. Just trying to zoom in a little bit so we can all actually see what we're talking about. Okay. Chris, I'm gonna try to don't touch the screen because, but I'm, I'm gonna try to mimic, mimic your movements with my cursor. So Speaker 22: The property is located on Lake Ochi. The lot is roughly, well not roughly,
the lot is 40 3071 square feet. The lot tapers down to the lake. The wetlands are very well defined along the lakefront here. The majority of the project is really, Speaker 23: You're talking to the microphone. Speaker 22: I'm Speaker 2: Sorry. Oh, they can't hear you 'cause you're not talking into a microphone. If you want to grab the podium mic and just hold it, just make sure that light is turned on. Speaker 21: My apology. Speaker 22: So the existing dwelling, Speaker 21: The existing dwelling as a colonial was constructed about 60 years ago. It has a walkout condition
where they've cleared the yard in this area, the init, the existing septic system is in this area. What we've done is we've tried to use the flattened out area of the lot and the existing driveway to minimize the impact on the site. We're taking down 29 trees and we'll be replacing 30 trees. It's a common driveway. We come up the hill and there's also a dwelling right here. Claire, if you could go to the landscape plan and then I'll have Dechen go back. Speaker 2: That one is, I apologize, that one's a picture. I didn't have that one open in my PDF so lemme just get that shared. Speaker 23: So I think that that one was in jak,
I just converted to PDF. If you want I can show it here. Speaker 2: It's okay. Dechen, I've got it, I've got it ready to go. I just needed to get it open and get my share reset. There we go. And this is the revised one, Chris. Speaker 21: Okay, great. Speaker 1: Is the revised one, the one that we have in the Speaker 21: Folder here? Speaker 2: It's an image file, not A PDF, but yes, it is in the folder. Speaker 21: Okay. So the, we got clear's comments. I think we Tuesday afternoon. So Wednesday we got in and we've been working with clear back and forth to address all the concerns. As you can see, we, we've utilized the existing driveway coming into the property
and the proposed dwelling is outside of the a hundred foot buffer. The only thing that hangs into the buffer is the deck. And it, it really is just an overhang of the deck. The septic system is gonna be in this area right here. And again, we try to utilize this area that was really flattened out the impact of the site as far as excavation goes because the site that drops down and it, it, it, it goes off in this direction. The existing house is a full walkout and this will be a full walkout.
One of the recommendations that we implemented that, that Claire had put forth was to do a retaining wall in this area. And this retaining wall will have an average height of about three and a half feet to help lessen the, the slope that we had graded down in this area. One of the other changes that we made with regards to planting is clear recommended that we go back to really replacing what we had, you know, in the buffer zone. So there'll be 29 trees removed total, we're replacing 30 in the buffer zone.
We're gonna be doing there were, there were 10 white pines and three red oaks that were, that are being removed and that's what we're gonna replace in that area. And then up in this area, there'll be four other species of trees. Claire brought up a good point in today's email and she was concerned about some of the canopies of where our plantings are gonna be. So I went out to the site today, I took photos and there are some areas that trees will have to be relocated, but I thought the best thing to do is to, to, to leave this plan in place
and have the commission in the order say that, you know, we will pre-mark all the locations of the trees. Claire can come out and inspect it before any plantings are done. Just thought that was a good way to handle it. The other thing is all the, all the plantings outside of the, the erosion control barrier will be done by hand. There'll be no machine work. And one of the other things I wanted to ask the commission is that there were a lot of down trees in, in this area beyond the, beyond the erosion control barrier. And I want to know if we could, if we could
remove some of that by hand. Just tree dead trees that are just fallen. I don't know what the commission's thought is on that. Is is the house currently occupied? The house is not occupied. It's not, Speaker 2: I mean, deadfall removal is something that I could review at a pre-construction site visit if the commission is comfortable with it within the property boundaries. Speaker 10: Is this on the property? Is the deadfall on on DCR land or on the subject property? Speaker 21: The state property. This is the lot line right here. And then beyond that is the state property. So the dead but the deadfall Speaker 10: But the dead fall Speaker 21: Would, yeah, on the property. That's on your property. Oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, just on our property. Yep. Okay.
A couple other things too. We've had, we've been speaking with Carol about the erosion control barrier and one of our thoughts was whether we go with a silt fence or a a staked waddle, I'd like to delineate it in the field, Claire, and then we can make our adjustments here if you wanted to come out and take a look at it instead of just, 'cause that's been our, our in the past, you know, we're looking at a, at a piece of paper right now, so things in the field have to change a little bit. So we would like to, to delineate this and if we have to pull it in a little bit, we'll, we'll, we'll pull it in a little bit.
Speaker 2: Think that would be up to the, I'm, Speaker 21: I'm, I'm comfortable collaboration with Yeah, it just, because we were talking about whether to use, use the, the staked water or the, or the silt fence. Yeah, the staked water, because the site is, is predominantly, it is all medium course gravel, sand, I mean it's all bank run gravel. So the, the conditions for drainage and the conditions for the septic system are, are the best soilers you can have. So that's really the, the scenario of the property. And then I'll let Duchenne take it over as far as the technical aspect. Speaker 1: Chris, just one, one quick question. I mean, all these trees that are in, in green here,
these are all full-sized trees or these arb ravie or what's the So Speaker 2: The numbers correspond with the planting schedule provided, that is one. Anything marked with a one is an arbor, ie. I believe the one's marked with two I'm gonna say is the service berry three is a magnolia four is a red bud, five is the red oak and six is the white pine. Nope, five is the white pine, six is the red oak. The planting schedule is also provided in the, the project materials, but I think I had that right off the top of my head. Speaker 21: We did delineate it in the, in the, in the table.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm just getting it shared up on this. I'm looking on screen right Speaker 1: Now. I'm looking on the image file right now, so I don't, don't see the, Speaker 2: I've got the table up. Speaker 21: Okay. Speaker 1: Does, Speaker 21: Does, does anybody have any questions as far as just the overall project? Speaker 24: Again, the driver for the majority of those trees, is it, is it site preparation or Speaker 21: What's that? The, Speaker 24: The driver for the 30 trees to be taken down. Speaker 2: 29. I miscounted the removal. Speaker 21: If we just go back to the Yep. Speaker 23: On the, on the left hand side of the trees will be cut ass 29. And on the right column is the mitigation plans. So it's based on your bylaws. PB h is,
Speaker 21: You know, we can go to the landscape. Speaker 2: Oh, the landscape plant. Apologies. Chris, I thought you meant the, but Speaker 1: I think the question comes from, I mean like for example, down towards the front of the lot, down towards the Arcadia road circle, there's, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 trees or four, you know, four or five trees down there that don't look like they would be within the building envelope. But is that because of the septic? Speaker 21: Yes, sir. In the front. So this, this is the flattened out area of the lot. Right now the driveway, existing driveway comes in here, existing house. This is really the, the, the flattened out and lease disturbed area of the property
and you know, we have to go down into a, you know, we have to create some sort of yard. We didn't, you know, we didn't go all the way to the end here. We've actually got the, the no build zone line is, is, is right here. So we still are pretty far away from, from the no build, you know what I mean? We kept, we kept it, we have to give a yard, but we didn't push the envelope on this. My point. Speaker 1: What, so where on the site is the existing septic? Speaker 21: What's Speaker 2: That? I'll, I'll pull up the existing Speaker 1: Condition. Where on the site is the existing septic? It's the Speaker 2: SH Speaker 21: Existing septic is is right Speaker 1: SMH right on the side. Okay. Yep. Speaker 21: Right here. Yeah. Speaker 1: And
and why are, why are you pulling that to the front of the house rather than putting the de septic there on the side? Again, it needs Speaker 2: To be substantially larger for that bedroom. Speaker 1: Oh, just water. It just needs to be bigger. It's Speaker 5: Humongous Speaker 21: The septic system. So we put, we put it here because of the drainage is gonna be here and just how we worked the site, we were just trying to keep everything in front of the house. Okay. We kept the septic. The septic right now is pretty close to the 100 foot. Now we're about 70 to 75 feet away from the Okay. From the buffer. Speaker 1: Alright. Speaker 21: Actually that was the best for the location Matt.
That was the best place to put the septic on the site. Speaker 1: Other questions for Chris before we turn it over to sang? Jim? Speaker 5: I I just getting back to Jeff's question I think was why on the x's where the trees are coming out. Yes, yes. Right. And so yeah, why all those, you can see the, I guess like you said, you, you gotta clear the land to a certain degree there, right? 'cause you're shifting the house over and you, you only got a few in the front. It looks like they take down for the septic, right? Because it's on the septics on the other side of the s driveway. Speaker 21: Eps up here and the house is here. Speaker 5: But I guess just maybe the ones towards the back there,
you know, maybe there's in bad shape or something too. I Speaker 21: Don't know. Yeah, I I mean we, we didn't, we didn't push the envelope on the yard and, and it's, it's, it's an acre lot and we certainly there were clusters of, of white pines throughout the property, which is why we're going to, you know, we're gonna mitigate that so. Speaker 1: Well, but, but back to the question though. I mean, for example that, you know down that in the, in the triangle there on that side of the lot that that bunch of trees 'cause the building envelope's not there, it's not there, Speaker 2: There is some regrading that's Speaker 1: Happening in that area.
It might be regrading I guess. Yeah. Okay, okay. Okay. Speaker 21: There there's some, there's no material coming off the site. What's nice about it is that this is a walkout and this is a walkout so we can use the material but we've gotta also flatten this out too for a yard because the lot pitch is pretty good to the lake. So we're trying to create something but still keep it away from the lake. Okay, Speaker 5: There you go. Okay. Alright. Speaker 2: Chris, I just will note Chen's response to my comments. The retaining wall does really need to be add added to the stamped plan because the builders are gonna be
building off the stamped plan and grading off the stamped plan. So Speaker 21: I mean that's, I mean that if if that we can add it to a plan, it doesn't Yeah, it's on a landscape plan, we're still gonna build it the way it is on a Speaker 2: Plan. Well it's, it's been hand drawn into a, an image of a landscape plan that's not necessarily gonna be what's going to the folks who are building it in the field. So I think it, I it's Speaker 21: Pretty easy Speaker 2: Commission's preference, but Speaker 21: Well, we'll do, we'll do whatever you want, but it's pretty easy to follow. Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, that's fine. But as part of the record though, I mean that's fine. I mean we need to Speaker 21: Have it. Yeah, we, I mean we've done it both ways. That's fine Claire. Okay. Speaker 1: Alright. Any, any further questions before we turn it over to sang to talk through storm water?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I, I just got one, Chris the, especially you know, from the case we just had, so they, they're sharing this driveway, coming the common driveway come around. Any issues with, you know, like you say construction vehicles coming out is it is already been worked out, there's no issues there? Well, Speaker 21: Our site's a little different than the site that was just put forth because we've got a huge area here. We can park all vehicles on the property. Speaker 5: Okay, so you don't, Speaker 21: Their site's pretty tough because Yeah, half the site goes right down into a grade change and into a wetlands. I,
Speaker 5: I get you. And just more about the common driveway. That's all I was wondering about. Yeah, right. Yeah. You know, maybe you can, I don't know, you Speaker 21: Can. Yeah, no re not when we, when we take the house down, we're not bringing in, we're gonna do it with small equipment dumpsters. We're not bringing in these big trucks just for that reason, Jim. Gotcha. There's Speaker 2: Also a bit more of an extent of pavement in leading up to the site as compared to the Alger Street. Speaker 21: We are, we're very cognitive of it 'cause we don't want to damage it at all. It's in great shape and the approach is for both of us.
So we're, we're pretty, pretty conscious of the fact that we gotta be very careful with that. Cool. Speaker 5: Great. Thanks. Speaker 21: The, the people that own the property next to us, this was t's old house. Oh sorry. And they've done a wonderful job remodeling it and landscaping it. So we're, you know, we're gonna do everything we can to preserve that. Gotcha. Okay. Duchen. Okay, Speaker 1: Duchen, let's hear what you got. Speaker 5: Yeah, Speaker 23: Good evening. Chen Wang from Creative Land and award engineering. Chris, just given a very good you overall project. I just want to point it out some of the basic setting
and on soils and geology. So we are on a kind of esker, it is all, all wash, so it's probably the most permeable soils you can find in New England. It's hinley soils. We did a testing, even half of the radi is 107 inches per hour, so you cannot even keep up. So putting that in context, so the, so therefore moving the septic system away from the, the, the lake is the right thing. So the bylaw requires a hundred foot setback, so minimum,
so compare with the state only 50. So moving to the front for construction and for repair is not going to have any issue. You know, for the, for the new, the new system you can see is significant bigger than the, but the eSport worked for the permeability 60 years no problem because the sew are so good. So with that, and we are keeping the existing driveway as you can see for construction access and also overlaying so proposed the drawing rate. So we are providing 12 gallies,
in my view opinion Cornerstone did the construction based on the rate, they probably just used the standard BP 8.27 inches per hour. So, but here you, you you are talking about hundreds or 10 times faster than the rate they use for design. So therefore 12 units is very overkill. But anyhow, so it's already there. We, we will keep using it so the water from the roof will go recharge gallery and the driveway pitch into the back
of the driveway will go through a depression vegetated area. So almost like a mini rain garden before they go in into the area drain with, with a two foot sum. And, and then after the treatment, the filter through the lawn and then goes through the sump and then it will go to the change subsurface again, the water is tremendous, so based on the low rate default rate, so all stormwater peak will reduce by like 40
to 70% from a hundred year and the two year storm is no flow at all. It is just no flow. So for both existing and the proposed side, you can see the zero zero runoff for the two year storm. And for 10 year storm it's a, it is kind of 0.01, I mean 0.01 CFS to, to 0.0003. So it's a, it's a even to up to a hundred year storm, you can see that the, it's like one fifths
of CFS so for the, for the peak. So it's a, it is a really, in my prediction, you won't see any except for some overland flow from the, from the lawn just given the soils are so permeable and 30 feet all the way there just, there's no way. So for stormwater for this side is very easy and so I don't see any compliance issue because of the good soils that also make the settle erosion control relatively easier
give walk out basement in the back and so the slope is going to be cut more mired at the proposed condition. So, so from that perspective then we taking the, the advice or you know, suggestion from a clear, we added the retaining wall basically followed the one 70 contours to the, to the, to the south south I think it to the south of the house. So Speaker 1: Duchenne, quick, quick, Speaker 23: Quick. So that will further Speaker 1: Dechen, Speaker 23: Minimize that need for, for a heavy salary erosion control.
I think it to, to go to, to avoid any existing tree loose cut or re in the seal fence. I I, I honestly think state straw waters will do the job but obviously we will follow whatever the commission decided at the end of it. So, so to either use a seal fence or use a modify. Speaker 1: So Duchenne, can you hear me? Speaker 23: Yes. Speaker 1: Okay, I've got a quick question for you. Do these, do these run off numbers, these calcs,
do these change at all with the, because of the presence of the, of the retaining wall? Speaker 2: No, they should not. Speaker 23: No. The, the retaining wall will, will hold it will be, will have a little, actually probably slow down the water, the runup of probably a little bit mess. Speaker 1: Okay. The other question I have is that in the circle on Arcadia or on the shared driveway, is there, is there any issues currently with pooling storm water or anything like that? No, Speaker 23: I don't, I don't, I I didn't observe any sign of it. So the neighbors maybe if they, they present,
they can tell us as again the soils over here is asker is asker means it's like in old wash gravels and, and the 20 to 30 feet deep to the lake. So that, Speaker 2: So we haven't heard any abut Speaker 23: Reports, reports that generate runoff Speaker 2: Roadway, flooding, runoffs. Speaker 1: Okay, Speaker 21: Thanks Shane. Lemme just comment for a minute. I'm familiar with the property. I grew up down the street here, so the water, everything comes down that, that common driveway and hits Arcadia circle. Yeah. And then it disperses into properties that are lower it, there's no drainage there
but everything is tapered off. It's so Speaker 1: There's no pooling or anything? I'm just looking Speaker 21: There's no pool? No, no, Speaker 1: Because the way the vol, the volume numbers in the rate numbers currently look is that there's no change to the front of the house. Yep. Right. And I just wanna see if there was an opportunity, if there was storm water issues down there, if there was an opportunity to improve things I gotcha. By improving drainage off the site, then that would be great. I mean, you know, there there's no change in the numbers or it, you know, there's slight changes but that's all in the noise as far as I'm concerned. Okay. Speaker 2: It, it's pretty small runoff numbers to begin with heading towards Arcadia. Speaker 1: Small numbers to, to contend.
I just wouldn't wanna miss an opportunity to make things better for Arcadia circle if we could, if it was an east, yeah, it Speaker 23: Definitely a good, good, good point. But it, for this side, it is just that the soil are just so good and most of them are have good size trees there. I don't, I didn't observe during the wetland fragment, I didn't really observe any flooding perspective from, you know, the, the water they shed to the side and we just go into the soilers right away because it's so permeable. Speaker 2: One late in the day request from Bill McDowell is just that the, the great structure
for the area drain be a beehive structure rather than a flat structure. Just so that, that's Speaker 23: A good idea when you Speaker 2: Fall, it doesn't get immediately covered by the leaves. I'll send that in email as well. That's because I know that that came late in. Speaker 23: Yeah, you can put it in the condition or also you can, Speaker 21: Claire Speaker 23: Can you put that in the, the next round of that, the clear update? You can make a note of it. Use dehi. Speaker 1: Okay. Other, any so questions from the commission on this? I mean it's a good sized project. It seems fairly straightforward. I'd love to see, I mean, you know, I'm not, I'm not big on the arbor ie.
Personally. I mean those are there I guess for screening, but if there is any chance to replace some of the proposed arbor, ie. With other, other species Okay, that would be great. Just from a Speaker 23: Yeah we did, we did replace 13 of them by a white pine. So Speaker 2: Yes, there were 26 arb Brie proposed originally that was Revis Speaker 23: Knows only 13. Speaker 21: Oh no, no, we, we took all that out. We ended up, because we ended up replacing in the, in the buffer area, we ended up replacing the 13 trees we took out, it was 10 white pine, three red oak, we, so we put that in there so all those arbor went away.
We replaced it with those 13. So there's not that many arb. Okay, Speaker 1: So the arb, so the ones that remain on the other border on the other side of the, or Speaker 2: Outside of the buffer zone or Speaker 1: Outside the buffer zone. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Questions from the commission for this? Speaker 10: I think, you know, the only thing is, is just, you know, stockpiling if, you know if there're gonna be a stockpile area, is that it? I assume it would be in the front, but Speaker 21: You know, it's, it's, there's not much material to be stocked because if you look at the plan and you look at where the existing, the existing dwelling is and where the new dwelling is, all
that topography is is going west and the existing home has a walkout and our house is gonna have a nine foot walkout. There's really not a lot of material that we're moving around there. There's not much. Speaker 2: And we can condition that Speaker 1: As part of permit. Yeah, it's Speaker 10: A lot. But you have a larger basement than the existing, but we'll, Speaker 21: We'll be, we'll be stockpiling initially where the septic system is Speaker 10: Because you'll be using different, you'll be using some sort of, Speaker 1: You know, sand gravel Plymouth Speaker 10: Sand or whatever they used, you know, for septic, right. Wash, Speaker 2: Wash, double mason sand,
title V, whatever it's called these days. If you guys could take outside conversations into the hall, please. I tried. Okay. Speaker 21: I I do have one other question for the commission. The existing dwelling is outside of the a hundred foot and my question is, I'm requesting that we, you know, we put up the erosion control barrier and that we can move forward pulling a, a demo permit for the existing house since it is outside the, Speaker 1: In term in in what timeframe? Like, like you want to go now? Well
Speaker 21: I'm, I'm, I'm asking like we, we know what the project is now and we're gonna, if we put the erosion control barrier, can we move forward taking down the house? Speaker 1: Yeah, let's see how this conversation goes. I mean I think that if we vote to close and issue an order of conditions, whether we issue that now or down the road, I, my personal sense would be that as long as erosion control was in place, Speaker 2: Which would be required regardless under the stormwater bylaw. Right. Speaker 1: As long as erosion control was in place, I wouldn't have an issue with you going ahead with demo. Okay. And then thank you And then we can nail down the
conditions for the construction, you know, for the, the remainder of the project. Okay. I think that would be okay. Speaker 2: The commission's preference on that one. Yeah. Speaker 1: Any, would anyone have any issues if with that prior to us formally issuing an order of conditions on the remainder of the project? Speaker 10: I think that the main thing is, is slope and matching the slope and the situation to, to the erosion control method. Yeah. You know that's really the major thing that I have in my brain. Yeah. Is, is you know, I understand the soils are hinkley,
I understand it's the greatest, you know, drain soil Speaker 1: God has ever created. Speaker 10: I get it. However, we have on percent, you know, precipitation in this wonderful climate now and Speaker 2: I think the, Speaker 10: I don't care how well drained the soils are, they still can erode. Like Speaker 2: Would the commission be comfortable with me determining the appropriate method of erosion control based on the slopes that I'm seeing out on the site? Yeah, Speaker 1: I would, Yep. So other, other questions for the applicant? So what I'm hearing I think with the process is that, you know, we can come back
to if there's any further questions but if is that we would vote, we could vote to close, Claire could draft up some more, some conditions that we could consider at our next meeting. But what we're telling the applicant though is that so long as erosion, Claire will work with the applicant to get erosion control in place. So long as that's in place that pull in a demo permit and getting going on that part of it is Okay. That would be great. Before we issue the order of conditions, if that, thank Speaker 2: You. Just so the commissions where I will issue an administrative approval noting because that allows for work outside of the buffer zone with erosion controls in place so that that way we just have all the appropriate documentation
Speaker 21: In place. Okay, great. Appreciate that. Thank you that, Speaker 1: That would be fine. Further questions. Okay. Hearing none, happy to entertain a motion to close the public hearing on this if there, is there any questions from the public on this? Speaker 2: I believe everybody in the room is here for something else. Pickle, pond, something else. Speaker 1: Okay. If there's no further questions on this, someone make a motion to close the public hearing. No motion to close. Thank you Jim. Is that seconded? Seconded. Thank you David. Any further discussion on that? Those in the room Chris? Yes. Alright, so Claire we'll work with you Chris, to on erosion control. Good to go in the demo. Great. With that in place, we'll reconvene on August 7th
to talk about the order of conditions. Okay. We'll vote on that and get that launched on Speaker 2: August and then you can start construction after Speaker 1: That. Great. And then you can Thank you. Good to go. Appreciate it. Excellent. Great. Alright. Thank you. Thank you Chen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, what I'd like to do in the spirit of just timeliness and, and I'm just gonna suggest and colleagues and others in the room, we can pick up the easy stuff, the continuations and all of that. Thanks Claire. Thanks. We can do that. After this, what I'd like to move is skip ahead to the discussion around pickle Pond. Just as a quick background for this, before I let Claire say a few words
and give kind of people project background. I mean for a number of years the, you know, so the commission is the formal deed holder of of all the proper, all the parcels in in in the pick pond area. And for a number of years we've had the vision of putting some kind of connectivity for walking paths that go between the Oakdale neighborhood, the Harwood neighborhood, whatever you want to call it, across an op, an open stretch of water to the uplands on the other side, which is where there's a fairly extensive trail network that would provide walk in connectivity between the Oakdale neighborhood and then eventually Weathersfield there.
It's also a part of the constituent aqueduct property that's been, that was the subject of an eight m permit some years ago. And the, the co aqueduct has been, has turned into a pretty nice amenity for the town. And so the commission has applied for a grant and has grant funding as well as some town funding to, to build the bridge and to put a walking trail walking connectivity between, you know, between these upland connections. And so I'll turn it over to Claire to kind of walk through some slides that to show what we're talking about and then we can, we can go from there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Of course. So the picker pond connector bridge was originally identified as a goal of the town in the 2020 open space and recreation planning process. It is listed as an action item in the table at the end of the open space and recreation plan. And the intent was to connect two currently fully separated trail systems across this roughly 250 foot stretch of open water. Currently the walk to get from the Harwood Road trailhead on the south side of the pond to the either the Erie or the Huron Road trailhead on the northern side
of the pond is about a 1.25 mile walk. So this would create a much shorter connection obviously, and a much more convenient connection for folks looking to explore the entirety of the parcel. So this connection is not only valuable for the immediate connection that it provides between the Oakdale and the Weathers field neighborhood. It's also incredibly valuable for the regional connection it holds. The purple line shown on the screen is the mapped and publicly accessible constituent aqueduct trail. This trail as it is currently publicly accessible, runs from the pick pond conservation area all the way east
to Quin McQuinn Road in Newton where it then ends in private property. But there are sidewalk connections once you're there in Newton. It is not fully on the aqueduct alignment. There are a number of mapped sidewalk and roadway connections throughout Wellesley, but it is fully publicly accessible and signed along this length. So we do open ourselves up to a great regional connection. We've heard from some folks in Wellesley who use this trail on a pretty regular basis and so really hoping to open this area up to the sort of region a little bit more.
This is just a brief overview of the project timeline so far. So our initial site survey and geotechnical work as well as the wetland delineation were completed in the fall of last year. The draft layouts for the potential boardwalk connection were reviewed by the commission, the trails and Forest Stewardship Committee and Open space advisory committees in the winter of this past year. The final layout and construction style, so stick build versus prefab versus floating was finalized this spring after we received our budget estimates for those three options
and the permit ready plans were completed in May of this year. We hit a little bit of a snag in reaching out to the state regarding our permitting. It was recommended that we confirm whether or not this pond falls under our Chapter 91 jurisdiction, which is a state jurisdiction over navigable non-Title rivers and streams as well as great ponds. The state has a record from 1914 that lists Piri pond at 10 acres, which would qualify it as a great pond. So the town did submit an application in early June
to the state requesting that formal determination of whether or not Piri pond is a great pond based on our historic and current record data and mapping data. So we are waiting for that determination but have a notice of intent ready to file once that determination is made. If it is determined that we do not fall under chapter 91 jurisdiction, the anticipated schedule, we do hope to hear back about that review this summer so we would be able to be permitting the project. I said anticipated summer 2025 Given that we are halfway
through July at this point, fall may be more accurate. The construction bid would be released shortly after we would contract with that firm and construct the bridge. Hopefully this fall and winter because of floating boardwalk was selected both due to the cost and the disturbance. We do have fewer restrictions in terms of time of year when we can construct boardwalks and bridges that require piles or anchors are generally best done during low water periods to minimize the height of the water while you're trying
to install the piers, as we've learned from our island bridge construction project. But the floating boardwalk offers a little bit more flexibility because it does not rely on the water being level being low. And then restoration plantings are scoped as part of the project for the areas that would have to be disturbed. Those would go in in the fall of 2025 if the timing works out. But if the season is too late for those plants to reasonably thrive, they would be planted in the spring following. At this point, I'm gonna jump off of my slides and jump into the permit plans that have been developed
by our contractor at KCLA. So this is just the overview of the area. Just to orient folks on the right side of the screen that we are looking at. This is the southern side of pick pond, so it would be accessed off of Harwood Road. On the left side of the screen we have the north side of the pond, which is accessed off of the Erie or Huron Drive or from the Bradford Road Trails. The access to this location
for the bridge install will primarily occur from the Harwood Road side. In terms of the boardwalk launching itself, the boardwalk bridge sections, the floating boardwalk sections would be launched from the water and installed that way because we are gonna be improving the trails as they lead down to the proposed boardwalk. There will be small machinery access from both sides. This will be mini bobcats, mini excavators with appropriate soil and trail protection to minimize compaction in any ruing in those areas.
I do just wanna note, 'cause we do have residential homes on the access side off of Harwood. The commission owns this large grassy area and access to the site would be pushed as close to the existing tree line as possible to create as large a buffer as possible to the abutting neighbor on Harwood Road. Zooming in a little bit to our construction areas, starting on the north side, there will be two trees that have to be removed on this side of the project in order to accommodate both equipment access and construction of the new timber box staircase.
There are several other trees in this access area that will be protected throughout the duration of construction and are proposed to remain throughout construction. The existing trail, which is just sort of a naturalized surface trail that leads down to the edge of the pond before it stops, will be replaced with a timber box staircase that is anchored into the hillside leading down to a gangplank structure that will connect the edge of the bank with the floating boardwalk sections. This allows the boardwalk to move
with water heights as they vary. The water levels don't vary hugely much in this area because of the, I'll say, aggressive beaver activity in the area. But we do still see some water fluctuations, especially during the, the large drought periods. The boardwalk, floating boardwalk sections will then cross the extent of the open water before meeting up with a second gang plank on the southern side, which will also lead to a set of tiered timber box staircases before leading up to the existing sort of flat area where the trails split along the edge of this peninsula.
There are a number of restoration plantings planned for these areas, including trees and shrubs to mitigate for the underbrush that will be disturbed throughout construction. There is quite a volume of green briar in this area that's gonna have to be removed to facilitate access as well as some plethora and some high, I think it's low bush blueberry in this area specifically. But there is a very robust replanting plan including shrubs, plugs, and trees on both sides of the trail to restore the areas following construction.
The floating boardwalk will have handrails on either side and we worked with the floating boardwalk company to modify their standard handrail design, which is just a single railing along the top with support posts to have wires or other posts running in a horizontal manner to prevent folks from being able to access the water by, in this case, children falling through the space between the handrail and the boardwalk plank. So we are taking that into consideration. The boardwalk structure itself will meet a DA accessibility standards.
The topography of the approaches on either side are too steep to accommodate full a DA accessibility, but we are complying with the, and Mike, you might know this, I know the acronym very well, FST A g, forest and Trail Sustainable Accessibility Guidelines, I believe is what it stands for. We will be working under those guidelines for the trail approaches in terms of the staircases to make things as accessible as possible for folks at this point in time. As I mentioned, we are in sort of a holding pattern while we wait for this determination for the state.
So we wanted to take this time to do a little bit more specific and direct community engagement on the project and really wanted to get folks feedback, thoughts, concerns about the proposed project before we move into the permitting phase. Speaker 1: So one of the things I'd like to add to this is that, you know, the, the internal internal to the, to the property manal, I think is a fairly clear, clear project. The thing that we will be also putting a significant amount of energy into is, is thinking about the access from the Harwood
Road side of things. And as Claire mentioned, you know, the, the path, the intention would be to do some slight improvement, slight grading on the road, accessing down to from Harwood down to the pond. It's fairly rutted. You Speaker 2: Know, I'm, I'm pulling up a Google Maps view of, of what I can access on Google Maps at the very least, which isn't, isn't Speaker 1: A lot, it's fairly rudd. It's not, I mean, you certainly can get vehicles down there. The intention is not to open it up for veic vehicular access, but leveling that out a bit
to make it just a bit less rutted for people to walk down there if they, if they wish. But then up on the grassy part where it's, it's town owned land as, as you hug the, the tree line there, we would also come up with a robust planting and or fence and or screening planned so that particularly as you face pick pond from Harwood Road, the, the homeowner on the left, the property on the left, there would be a, a good bit of screening to any, any pat walking path going down to the,
going down to the pond. Speaker 2: And these steps would likely come after construction access is done. So that way once the equipment is pulled out, we're essentially improving the existing trails. Speaker 1: But I just wanna, I just wanna make clear that there, that having that robust screening, fencing, planting program in place for that is high on our list of priorities and would be part of this effort there. Another question that people often ask about things like this is, you know, if, if people are going to to park there currently on Harwood Road, along that strip
of land across, you know, here to the, I'm sitting here looking at my drawing and there's not, it's not on the screen, but on the, let's say on the west side of Harwood Road, it's a, it's a no parking zone and the intention would be to keep it that way. Speaker 2: Yeah. So the no parking, and I'll get it back up on the screen so everybody can see it. The no parking starts. And let me throw it back to map view actually. 'cause it's easier to see. So the no parking area begins at this roadway intersection along this front here. Technically roadway parking is allowed along the, the narrower strip of property right down past.
But yes, the, that, that is also part of the consideration of any trailhead improvements. Speaker 1: But the, in the intention of this is that it's not a, it's not intended to be a destination location where people would be driving from other communities or from God help us Wellesley or anything like that to come visit this. This would be a place for people to walk to. Speaker 2: And I think that's part of the hope is that with the regional connectivity of the constituent aqueduct, that we're creating these off-road connections, that constituent aqueduct design work, now that we have the GP the Ground penetrating radar survey back,
I'm actually going out there with Weston and Samson tomorrow to pick that work back up and get it ball rolling again. Speaker 1: But that's something that we would, we would also commit to monitoring and collaboration with neighbors and other interested parties to make sure that, that that's not a, that doesn't become an issue. Speaker 2: We've got some very, very active and very dedicated trail stewards in the pick pond area currently. Speaker 1: So with that, you know, any questions from the commission or points that we haven't made at this point? I mean, all of us are pretty familiar with it. I go down there all the time.
I, I bring my kayak down and fish on pick roll pond, you know, we're in, we're in the process. For those who don't know, we're in the process of constructing a bridge using actually helical screws and, and building a bridge across Speaker 2: Replacing a, Speaker 1: Replacing a Rube Bridge Goldberg to put it nicely bridge over to the island there. And that's, you know, it's, it's been a great project and it's something that we're still in the process of completing, but, you know, that'll be done certainly by the end of this year. So anyway. So any, any comments from the commission
or questions or other points that we should cover before we open it up to any questions or comments from, from anyone? Anyone else? Alright. Any, any questions from the community, from neighbors, the butters? Anyone like that? Ma'am, here in the room, would you come up to the microphone so people can hear you at home? Well, Speaker 2: She's coming up to the mic. If folks online have any comments they'd like to make, you're more than welcome to use the raise hand function in Zoom, which you can find under the reactions button. I believe there might be also be a separate raise hand button. I know when folks update their zoom, it always changes.
Yeah. Speaker 18: I'm Cindy Bates. I live at on Lincoln Street right next door. I I think this is very exciting. My, my question is, does that abutter, where that grassy area is, is that person being consulted about what kind of plantings they'd like? Speaker 1: We would absolutely engage that, that family, that homeowner in that process. Okay. Thank you. As part of this. I mean they, you know, that, that, that property is the one that is most visually impacted by this. And so we would be obligated to do so. Thank you. Speaker 2: And just to note though, the notice of intent,
because of the size of the property, does not require any abutter notification. The town's intent is to notify Abutters in the Harwood and Weathersfield neighborhood about this upcoming work so that folks can participate in that discussion. Speaker 1: Any other questions or comments at this point in time about this? Mr. Barra? Welcome. Speaker 25: Joel Barra. I just came to, to, I saw the notice and to thank you for your leadership on this. I recall I was on the board of the MWA when we opened up the aqueducts. Yeah. And Natick was one of the first to do an eight M permit. And I remember the tour
because I think a lot of people weren't aware of Pick Pond at the time, but with Bob Eisen, manger and Martin, some of the people here, Josh Ostroff and you know, really at the time, the, the sense that there wasn't a lot of open space in that part of Natick. And there actually was, we just had to get access to it. And you know, this is a big step toward that. And I just, I wanted to thank you that, you know, this was always part of the long-term vision. And I would say I did walk the, you know, from Weathersfield to Roll Pond.
And at least when I did it like two, three years ago, it was, it was pretty rudimentary and overgrown. I, I don't know if there's any long-term vision for that, but, but you know, there's such a population there that would benefit from access. And, and I would also say, 'cause as you recall, it was extremely controversial to open up the aqueduct at the time. The, but the vision also included a connection to Pamela Road and, and we decided not to do that section because there were some abutters at the time who were adamantly opposed.
But that's another connection that I, I hope at some point we think about. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. It's the, the connection from Bradford Road into the Piri pond area is been Speaker 2: Improved a little bit. Been improved a bit, but the overgrowth is a continuous problem that we're dealing with out there. Speaker 1: Overgrowth plus plus water levels, water Speaker 2: Ls have been okay. Speaker 1: Recently. Speaker 2: Yes, recently. Right Speaker 1: Over the years. The water levels have, have fluctuated a lot. But yeah, you know, the Pamela Road connection would be fabulous. You know, the problem is that we don't have any daylight of town on land to Pamela Road.
You know, we would have to get an easement or buy something from somebody in order to get that. Speaker 25: Is that not part of the aqueduct? There's the, the ownership Speaker 1: Is not the aqueduct is, is subsurface at that point. Speaker 2: The, the parcel ends at the rear of the private home. Lots off of Pamela. So the MWRA parcel ends right at the back. Great. Speaker 25: I didn't, I didn't recall that. But anyway, it is just great to have access 'cause those are beautiful trails. Beautiful in there. And I just want, I came just to thank you. Speaker 1: Yeah, no, thank you Joel for all, all your work and especially for the a m permit process.
We do have any other, any other hand raised questions currently? Speaker 2: Got a hand raised. Amy, if you wanna go ahead and unmute Amy. Speaker 26: Yeah. Hi, my name's Amy Weiner. I live at 48 Harwood, so I'm not the immediate butter, but I'm next door to them. Yep. And all overall, I'm looking forward to this, this should be a lot of fun for us to be able to have access to the other side of that without having to drive around. My question is about the, about the beavers. Do you have, what, what do you, how are you,
how are you planning for them? Speaker 1: So we are as, as you know, Natick is, I think officially in the beaver farming industry. You know, there are beavers all over town. The water levels in the Piro pond area have been driven by or mediated by certainly rainfall and increased rainfall, decreased rainfall in some instances. But you know, that plus the condition of the culverts and or the presence of beavers around that go under route nine. And then the condition of the culverts and or the presence of beavers
and the culverts that go under Oak Street, that drain little Jennings pond, which is on the other side of Route nine. The Claire and I were talking this week, DOT did a is in the midst of, and did a pretty extensive clean out process under, in the culverts under Route nine this past month where they went and removed many truckloads of debris and silt and all of that from those, from those culverts. They are going to be assessing that over the coming months. And Claire even told me that DOT has a dive team
who goes out and assesses underwater abutments on bridges and culverts and all of that. And if they decide they need to send the dive team out to look at the culvert, they will do so. So there's that. We have also taken steps to manage the beaver population in the little Jennings pond area and to make them unwelcome and as well as putting in beaver, what so-called beaver deceiver technology, just hardware that makes it really diff or makes it much more difficult for them to plug things up.
So we think we're in pretty good shape right now, but we're gonna be managing it closely. Beavers are gonna come and go and there's gonna be times when they come and they plug things up and we gotta take care of it. And we need to actively manage the beaver population. There'll be periods of time when the population goes down and we don't need to pay as much attention. I mean, I've been on the commission for a number of years and early on beavers, you know, there's the occasional one, but it hasn't been as persistent an issue as it has been over the last five years, hopefully over the next, you know, until we teach coyotes how to eat beavers, you know, we, we,
you know, hopefully we're in a place where we're gonna see the population start to decline just naturally just through the ebbs and flows of mother nature. But, so we'll see. So that's kind of a soft answer to your question, Amy, but you know, we're very aware of it and we're taking active steps now to manage it. We will continue to do so where we look to people like you and other neighbors and abutters to these properties to let us know if you're seeing a lot of activity, if you're seeing water creeping into your backyard, whatever, so that we can, we can take the necessary steps at that point in time. Yeah, thanks. Speaker 2: The inlet, just for larger context, the Inlet Stream
to Piri Pond does have a be or deceiver or a flow level or device that helps ensure that water flow is maintained into the pond area. We've not seen Beaver activity in the location of the proposed boardwalk to date. But as Matt said, it's definitely something that we're aware of and we'll be monitoring for throughout. Speaker 1: And there are, I mean, there are beavers on the other side of pick pond. I mean, there's a lodge by where we're building our bridge. Yep. So there are beavers around, no doubt about it. You know, and it's just something we'll have to pay attention to and manage appropriately. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions?
Speaker 2: If folks are unable with a small enough group, you can just unmute if there's any questions you're looking to ask at this time. Speaker 1: And there will be, as Claire indicated, you know, the formal process for this is that once, once we get the final notification back from the state about Great Pond status for pick pond, you know, honestly I, I never thought it was close, you know, but the fact that Speaker 2: Was always my opinion, that Speaker 1: Was always my opinion that it wasn't close. But because of one document from 1914 that some scribes put onto a piece of parchment at some point, you know, we have to go through this process, you know,
but then we'll have a, we'll have formal public hearings around the project itself. A formal notice of intent, which will give people, people another opportunity to speak to this. We have the funding, we have the plans, we're ready to go. You know, you know. But we want people to be engaged and to have input into it. Particularly those, you know, the abutter certainly right at the top of the hill on Harwood. Before that gets going, I just wanna be clear about that. Any other questions? All right, let's move on then. I think we can stop here for now. Yeah. Thank you for your everyone's engagement. Stay tuned. There'll be more to more to talk about in the coming days
and weeks, but really appreciate everyone's engagement on this. Speaker 2: And I would just note folks who are also always welcome to reach out to me by email to be added onto the list for project updates as well as to ask any questions you may have. Speaker 1: Alright, so let's move on then for the agenda wise. Move back, Speaker 2: I Speaker 1: Guess move back our computer sitting here now thinking really we're, we're in pretty good shape now, so we've got two quick continuations. If I can just get back to my appropriate screen. There we go.
Speaker 24: Well, three Milk Street. Speaker 2: No, we're gonna do 2 16, 2 18 as one for the notice of intent and the major stormwater. At least that's how we've done it. Speaker 1: Okay, so the Ben Stevens from Trask who is for the Milk Street project has asked us to take this up at our next meeting because it's not a formal hearing, we don't have anything to formally open. Just we're on notice. We're gonna take this up at our next, at our next meeting. Next item on the agenda there is to have a continuation for both the stormwater, both both the storm water and the wetlands, the storm water permit
and the wetland's notice of intent for two 16 to two 18 South Main Street. Would someone make a motion to continue that to August 7th? So move. Thank you Jeff. I'll take Chris as a second. Any further discussion on that? Those in the room Chris? Yes. Good. Speaker 2: Just so the commission's aware on that one. There will be revised materials available on Monday. Most likely I will email them out directly to the commission 'cause I know it's a big project. It'll be going to Dominic as well for the peer review. Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. So we're all continued. We're good. General business discussions. We talked about Pi Roll Pond, beavers at Town Forest.
Any further updates on that? What do you got? Just the Speaker 2: Big update for the commission from, since our last meeting, beaver Solutions did go out to repair the existing infrastructure and add the additional cages that were being added. If anybody has driven by in recent days, you will have seen there's certainly been a change in the water levels. All the tops of the cages are visible. I think when I drove by earlier today, it was probably about four to six inches of cage visible. So water levels are definitely moving. Again, we have not seen any red damning from the beavers at this point. This is the sort of least active time of year for them.
So as we move into the fall and the colder weather, we'll be keeping a really close eye. Beaver solutions will be back out in late September, early October to do another inspection to make sure everything is functioning. But that work has been completed and appears to be in working order. And that sort of goes along with what Matt had mentioned. Mast DT was out just before 4th of July. Clearing out those culverts under Route nine, they removed another 16 cubic yards of material from the culvert and are likely gonna be doing one additional cleaning potentially this year, most likely next year based on
the schedule that we've been seeing. And that's the big update about beavers at Town Forest. Speaker 1: Okay. Anything else from community development? Just Speaker 2: A couple of quick ones. The commission has not had a formal meeting since this offer was made and it needed to be accepted. But Speaker 1: This is a big deal. Everyone pay attention to Speaker 2: Big this deal. John Townsend current de deputy Town Administrator of Finance has donated a canoe to the Conservation Commission. So it's a 15 foot, very beautiful and great shape. Fiberglass canoe, nice paddles, a set of sawhorses for it to sit on and a little set of wheels
to get it into the water. Speaker 1: How are we gonna store this? Speaker 2: It's currently being stored undercover at the Oak Street Yard. Okay. DPW yard, that was the, that was what was hinging on us being able to take it was me being able to find somewhere to store it. 'cause I don't have enough garage space for a 15 foot canoe. And so it is being stored at the DPW yard. I worked out with a spot with Brian Casey. We'll be working to get, I'll probably get like a tarp to cover it up during the times we're not using it. But this will just be for use of the commission. Other town members, town staff members or boards or committees to access water bodies for, for projects.
I was mentioning to Matt, I had talked to the commission last year about the presence of some water chestnut in Big Jennings Pond in my evaluations throughout this spring. It does appear to be a very small population at this point. So I will probably be getting out in the canoe in the next couple of weeks to do some hand removal of that from Big Jennings Pond. Otherwise it's just the duck weed that seems to be taking over there. And the other big update is we've wrapped up a number of grant projects. We are, we have heard rumors that EEA has finished their approvals
and now they're just waiting for the higher offs sign offs on grant awards. So we are all waiting with bated breath for additional grant award announcements. And that goes for things like the, the DCR DAM and seawall grant as well as the MVP grant applications and the DER culvert replacement grant applications. That the Speaker 1: DCR dam. Is that for the South Natick Dam? That Speaker 2: Is indeed. That is for the construction funding for the, I believe $1.2 million park? No, that's for the actual spillway removal. Ah, okay. The parks project has submitted to CPA for funding
for the permitting phase of the project. The dollar value to get us from the permit ready designs. We have now two final construction documents was such a small dollar value. It did not feel competitive at a grant level. It was only about a hundred thousand dollars. And for permitting only. So the Angela and the Community services division has applied to CPA to fund that portion of the project, we would then be applying for MVP funding for the FY 27 cycle. So in February next year we would be submitting an application to MVP for construction funding for the parks,
which would then line up the funding availability perfectly. Speaker 1: So what happens though? I mean if, if the, if the DAM funding doesn't come through, I mean my understanding was that because of the town meeting, the, the, the town meeting funding allocation for dam maintenance was that we had the funding in hand for the dam removal project? Speaker 2: No, we had the d we had the funding in hand for the design and engineering Got it. Of the dam repair option. We were able to consult with council and some of that funding was used as match funding
for the design work that was done under the current grant that we were working under. But there was no, there were funding appropriations done for the removal, but they were borrowed appropriations. So they were, the money is not in hand. It would be something that's levied against the taxpayers, which we are trying to avoid at all costs. So Speaker 1: If, so, if that grant is not approved, Speaker 2: Which it, from what we have heard from the dam, sea Wall staffing folks is very unlikely but is a possibility. The town has also applied to the Hazard Mitigation grant funding program through FEMA for that funding as well as a belt and suspenders.
Speaker 1: Who's fema? Speaker 2: Who knows these days? Thankfully it's MEMA distributed funds. But it Speaker 1: Is Hema, not fema? Yes. Okay, great. Yeah, thank you for the update. Any further topics, things to discuss? Everyone good? Happy hot. Speaker 2: Not in here. Speaker 1: Not in here. That's true. Alright, with that someone make a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Thank you Jim. Seconded. Second. Thank you David. Any further discussion? No. See you Chris. Take care. You guys have a good night. We're done.