Speaker 1: Folks, welcome. This is the Native Conservation Commission. Today is Thursday, March 6th. Speaker 2: Oh, Matt, I don't know if we have sound yet. Speaker 3: And my mic was off. Speaker 2: There we go. We should be all set Speaker 3: Now. Welcome everybody. This is the Native Conservation Commission. This is, today is Thursday, March 6th, 2025. We do have a slight adjustment in this schedule. The one of our commissioners had a family issue come up and won't be able to join us until approximately seven 30. And there's only four of us available this evening for meetings. The other three are, are out of town, so we're operating
with a thin or no bench. So we, so we need to wait for the public hearing part of this, of this meeting until, until George arrives again at around seven 30. So we're gonna move some of the general business discussion items up to the front. We'll go through those if we have, if we finished with those and are awaiting, still awaiting our colleague to arrive. We'll, we'll go into recess until he gets here, just to take a break. And then we will, we will reopen. So sorry for the inconvenience for folks. You know, we've been pretty good on quorums for the past, past few years. I don't know that we've ever really, in the past few
years had an issue with Quorum. But with all that, let's, let's get going, talking about some of the general business discussions here. One of the agenda items is, is around violations for Meadow Pond Lane. And that will be continued, or we'll, we'll, we'll pick up that discussion next time. There's no updates on that. The next general business discussion is around the brick grant application for dam removal. So, Claire, please, Speaker 2: Yes, and of course my Gmail has decided that it needs to verify that I am who I say I am. But the town is approaching the end
of the design phase for the Charles River Dam removal for folks who are interested and for the commission's notice that notice of intent has been filed and will be opening with the commission on the March 20th meeting. But in preparation for construction phasing, the town is applying to various grant programs this year for funding to support that work. We're focusing on two grant funding applications. The first is the FEMA brick program, which is building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities. That funding is technically federal funding.
So is a little bit more in the realm of up in the air in today's day and age, but we are still gonna be applying for this funding. The secondary grant program that we'll be applying for when the RFR is released is the state's DAM and seawall program, which is a state funded program that we are more sure about in terms of potential for funding. However, in order to make sure we have the most competitive application possible for both programs, I have drafted a letter of support if the commission chooses to vote to sign it.
I will note that the letter of support is focused on the fact that the town is looking to get funding. It is not necessarily commenting on the merits of any permit applications. It is just a letter of support as the town pursues this funding. Essentially just looking for the commission to say, thumbs up, thumbs down, happy to read the letter out. It is fairly short, fairly standard letter of support, but just looking for the commission's authorization to submit this on behalf of the commission. Speaker 3: So we would've to formally vote to authorize
Speaker 2: Yes. And we can wait to vote on it until George gets here. I just wanted to get the introduced Speaker 3: What Claire, what, what percentage of the funding, I mean, how much funding are we seeking with this application and what percentage of the funding would this represent? Speaker 2: Yeah, so the DAM and seawall is a match program. It's a minimum 20% match program. The town has developed an application based on a 25% match based on the recommendation of MEMA staff that we go a little bit above and beyond in order to demonstrate even more competitiveness in the application pool.
That funding would be coming from the existing town meeting appropriation that still has money available to Speaker 3: 25%. Speaker 2: Yes, the 25 along with staff time. Right. There's a fair amount of staff time that goes into these grant applications and, and grant management. So it would be a mix of some existing appropriated funds and staff in kind match. Speaker 3: Would that then represent the bulk or all of the funding that is required to do the dam removal project? If that's Speaker 2: What happens? Yes. So we would be applying for the project costs as currently estimated by GZA for the dam removal process.
Speaker 3: Do we have a, do we have any sense of what the, what the likelihood or what the competitiveness of this program is? So the, Speaker 2: Like I said, we do feel we are a very competitive application in this program. It is just the future funding availability for this program that is in question. Speaker 3: Okay. Any, any questions or concerns on this straight up, straightforward letter of support? Yes. You know, that's, that. Okay. When, when George gets here, we can talk it through and, and then, and then do a formal vote to authorize us, or I guess me to sign it, me to send it on the commission's behalf. Speaker 2: The tree protection bylaw,
the commission discussed at some of our earlier meetings this year, potentially pivoting from our initial plan of attack, focusing more energy into tree committee and a, a voluntary replanting program, rather than coming down with the hammer initially with the bylaw. Between the last meeting and this meeting, I did hear back from MAPC that we were not selected for the technical assistance program, which I think further supports that path. I am looking at other funding and technical assistance options to continue the bylaw development as sort of a backup. Primarily the DCR Urban
and Community Forestry program does fund the development of tree bylaws. So when that funding round opens for the year, I will likely be applying to that program so the town can hire a, a consultant with a little bit more technical savvy to help us develop this bylaw, which I think builds in a greater, greater opportunity to get that baseline canopy cover model completed. If we can bring in a consultant who has that, you know, technical mapping abilities, I think that'll be a great win. So just wanted to give the commission that update.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and, and just to say this out loud for, for the public, for the record, you know, we've been discussing for some months now, the idea of, of drafting and putting in front of town meeting a tree protection bylaw, which would basically put trees on privately owned property above a certain diameter. If, if residents wanted to remove them, they would be permitted to do so, but there would be a need to provide some mitigation and or payment into a fund to replace those trees. The overarching goal from that, that this commission's trying to achieve is to maintain
or increase tree cover in the town we see there as being significant environmental, economic and other benefits from that, you know, from that goal. And there's a variety of ways we can do it in conversations with stakeholders across the community and our, in our internal conversations. You know, what, what has dawned on us or where I think our, our mind is at right now is that we would like to try other non-regulatory methods first to accomplish that same goal. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, if we can accomplish
that goal without a bylaw and without the administrative burden that that would represent, that would be a good thing. And so the idea would be to, you know, in panel, a tree committee who would be charged with public education efforts, managing a voluntary tree replanting program, doing some data collection, some monitoring around tree cover in the community, and then to see how that goes for a year or some amount of time that we could de decide if we see that that is not being successful and that we're not making the progress that we wanna be making, then we can think about
a regulatory approach. But for right now, you know, the in That's cool. The mindset is to give this a try first because we haven't tried that yet. Yep. And I would rather do that than, than, than put a That's great. Yeah. A bylaw in place that, you know, honestly in this environment, there's, you know, the override being voted on. There's a lot of fairly controversial, honestly divisive issues in front of, in, in front of the community right now. This would not be a non-controversial thing, and that's not to me to say that we wouldn't be willing to take on a controversial thing because we think it's the right thing to do.
But if we could, again, if we can accomplish the goal that we believe in, which is maintaining or increasing tree cover in the community, without that all the better. So that's the intent. So we're gonna be, we're exploring what those options could look like. The intention, however, is to have a, a draft of a bylaw in our back pocket and to work with either MAPC, actually not MAPC now, but other resources to, to draft a bylaw that we can have in our back pocket so that, you know, if and when we decided that that was the appropriate or the, you know, kind of the, the measure that was needed,
we'd be prepared to do so in a prompt manner. You know, really I think just taking a very data-driven approach and just, you know, seeing if this can work and if this can drive the metrics in the right direction. Awesome. We're we're good. Like it? Yeah. Any, any comments or concerns about that or No. Okay. Alright. Claire, keep going. Yes, Speaker 2: I have a whole host of other updates. Folks may have seen the post on Facebook from earlier this week, but the tree work is going on at Town Forest currently. It started on Thursday last week. We'll likely go for a couple days into next week as well.
This work was to remove hazard trees, primarily pines and other dead trees from around the water reservoir at Town Forest to ensure that there's no damage to that structure. The structure is from the sixties and hasn't been renovated or rehabbed. So definitely trying to get the maximum longevity outta that infrastructure as possible. I'll be walking the area with art good behind, again following the work. He and I were out there last week, but once the work is completed, just to ensure that there's no additional stabilization or rehab necessary following the equipment,
leaving the site, the crane that they had out there was Speaker 3: Ginormous so Speaker 2: Big apparently 'cause they dropped the crane off and then had to cancel the work because of the ice. They couldn't find a good place to anchor the crane. And apparently it throws off the whole company because they have to send mast DOTA transportation plan for every road that they're gonna take the crane on. So once it gets delivered to a site, it has to stay there until the job is complete. So I was learning quite a bit about Speaker 3: But that, that giant crane that drove up the access road from Bacon Street.
Yep. Speaker 2: And the road's still in good shape I think. Speaker 3: See that would've been a site. Yeah. Speaker 2: I did also meet with Eversource a couple of weeks ago. There is a electrical power service that runs from the end of Bradford Road into the pick pond parcel that supplies power to the well pump house on the property. The commission may remember folks who have been on for a while that Eversource had previously done tree maintenance in that corridor and done a very bad job of it essentially bulldozing through the, Speaker 3: It was, it was stripped mined.
Yeah. I mean it was, it was really cleared out far beyond what Speaker 2: We would've approved. Absolutely. There is a, a newer arborist at Eversource that's been working on a lot of projects here in Natick that knows art good hin from a previous life. And so he's been really great about reaching out when there's tree work happening in advance to walk areas. So he and I walked the alignment, they'll be doing all of the tree work with hand equipment. There'll be no machinery accessing given the amount of wetlands out there, but there are approximately 41 trees
that are gonna have to come down Speaker 3: Up to what, what diameter, I mean they, they cleared everything out less than three or four years ago. Right? Yeah. Speaker 2: So they're only removing trees this time. They're only removing trees that will grow to a height that will impact the wires. Right. Speaker 3: So they may be small trees but that might grow. Speaker 2: Exactly. So the majority of them are mature white pines that are just at risk of falling on the, the wires. There are some other smaller oak trees and smaller aspen trees that are growing under the power lines that'll be coming out.
But all of the understory and shrub vegetation will be left undisturbed. Speaker 3: So is that something where you will, will they tell us when they're going out there? Yes, Speaker 2: So they are, Speaker 3: And then when they're done, so we can take a look at the, yeah, Speaker 2: So they are operating under the exemption in 10.02, two B, if I'm remembering the citation correctly, that allows for the maintenance of electrical utility lines as long as impacts are being minimized, which the use of hand equipment is certainly a minimization in this instance. But I, I will be walking the line with Russell once the work is done as well.
Just to do a, a final assessment, Speaker 3: Did you walk down the trail from Bradford across the boy, the Eagle Scout Bridge? Yep. And all that. What was the, the water levels like Speaker 2: Much lower than I've seen them in quite some time. That's great. So water levels were below the level of the bog bridges. The bog bridges, I mean there was snow on the ground so it was hard to tell a hundred percent but the lowest that I've seen them in quite some time out there. Speaker 3: And is that, do you think that's due to the, the, the cleaning out of the, of the, Speaker 2: I think it's primarily due to the drought 'cause we are still technically in a critical level three critical drought. I know it still hasn't been updated. The state's releasing updated maps every month.
But the north, our region is still considered level three. I imagine with all the snow melt things are probably much higher than they were when I was out there walking it with them. Speaker 3: But the cleaning out of the, of the culverts under Route nine though, so Speaker 2: They did an initial cleanup but they are certainly by no means done, they removed eight trucks of sediment from that culvert and it is still not fully cleared. So that's amazing. There's probably a little bit of help with that. But I think the drought was, that's the primary driver, the constituent aqueduct project. I provided the trails and forest an update on this project. I think I provided a light update
to the commission at the last meeting. But we did finally bite the bullet and to estimate that MWRA is not going to come in and cost share on some of the exploratory work that we were hoping. So we have adjusted our scope with Weston and Sampson. The project will still end up with us having permit ready designs, but we are losing the permitting support and the construction administration from this phase. Speaker 3: And that's all for the ground penetrating radar Speaker 2: Work. And that will cover the cost of the ground penetrating radar with Feldman. We're in the process of updating that contract right now sitting on Jamie's desk waiting for his signature.
Speaker 3: Basically the concern though is that because of the proximity of the actual aqueduct structure itself and where like footings and other things would need to go, we would and Speaker 2: The level of unknown about the condition and the depth of the pipe. Currently all the only record plans that we or MWR have regarding the pipe is a plot plan from 1910 that shows the pipe location and the manhole locations and that is it. So Speaker 3: I still think we should use that as a tunnel under route nine for the, for the aqueduct truck. There Speaker 2: We go. Keep people from having to cross there. So the ground pipe radar radar work will proceed
when the weather allows. The snow does to be fully melted and gone before that work can move forward. The Natick high school dug pond stormwater treatment project, the survey has come back from the survey team. So Weston Sampson is getting started on designing that site feature. The modeling work that was done for the larger watershed has been mostly completed with some, I think they called it stabilization. That still needs to be done in the model, but we expect to have probably by the end of this month the three GI concepts for the watershed
that drains to that point. And we should have the designs for the actual treatment feature sometime by the end of April. Speaker 3: When would you expect that to come in front of us for permitting? So Speaker 2: We are currently working on an MVP application to continue that project. So our current scope takes us only through permit level designs because we weren't sure where we would be at the end of a one year grant project. We had applied for a federal EPA grant with CRWA to fully fund permitting and construction and maintenance equipment. That's probably on hold for the feature. Yes.
So we are adapting our approach and we are gonna be applying for an MVP grant to move the project forward through permitting as well as furthering the concepts that are developed in this phase to full design and also in an effort to address some other identified problems in the area. Try to expand that watershed model to include the Pegan Cove, Pegan brook area just north of, 'cause the Doug Pond watershed essentially ends right at
the base of that and also expand it to the outlet of Doug Pond. If folks have ever taken a peak at those culverts that go under Windsor and West Street, sort of, that's the outlet for Doug Pond and they're not in very good shape. So assessing the outlet of Doug Pond to see if there's improvements that can be done there to improve, you know, flood mitigation stream. Speaker 3: Is that then all drains then into the wetlands behind the, the school by, by the, by the, by the landfill. Speaker 2: Yes. And it all drains into Indian Brook eventually, which is still a part of the Charles River Water,
which is a part of the Charles River watershed and I know Sherburne has identified some of those wetland crossings under Route 27 as issues with flooding in the past. So we'll likely be coordinating with Sherburne on that as well. So that project is going forward. We are planning for the next phase to make sure that it doesn't sort of fall off after we end up end with this MVP round. And we will be doing a site walk on May 3rd as part of the Earth Day activities with Charles River Watershed Association that goes from one South Main Street down Route 27 up
through the Johnson School in the residential neighborhoods to the settling pond. And that it'll come back up along Pond Street. So it's a roughly two mile walk that'll be doing probably over the course of two hours 'cause we'll be stopping and talking about certain things along the way. And Charles River Watershed is gonna be partnering with us on that walk. So their staff will be here as well. Speaker 3: Just to add to that. Yeah, I mentioned this at our last, at our last meeting. So I'm the Conservation Commission's representative on the Upper Charles Conservation Land Trust on Saturday, April 5th
in the Lebowitz reading room at the Morris Institute Library. We are the Upper Charles Conservation Land Trust is sponsoring a presentation, a talk by Emily Norton, who is the executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association and her presentation's called Love That Dirty Water, the Charles River then and now she gives a great talk, really dynamic speaker. So that's Saturday morning, April 5th at 10:00 AM there will be Facebook stuff that gets blasted out to various natick relevant groups and all. There will be an event Bright,
it's free, free to the public. The event Bright is simply just to keep track of how many people are signed up to go. So keep an eye out for that, but that should be a really interesting, a really interesting event. There'll be food and snacks and there you go and, and all that. So keep that in mind. April 5th, Saturday, April 5th, 10:00 AM at the, in the downstairs big room at the, at the Natick Library. Speaker 2: Another update this month on March 18th, there will be a public meeting for the Charles River Dam Parks Improvement Project. This is the parallel project that's running with the dam removal project related to the renovations
of the parks on either side of the Charles River in South Natick. That meeting on March 18th will be diving a little bit more into the future waterfront concepts that are being developed for the town to pursue further once the river settles into its new location. So things like kayak launches, fishing areas, boardwalk, all those types of things. It will be the final public meeting associated with that project. There will also be a site walk for that project on May 4th as part of the Earth Day activities around Natick.
It'll be very similar to the site walk we did for the project last year. There'll be staff at each of the three park locations as well as signs throughout the parks to give the public an idea of what is coming as part of these redesigns. The one thing that we're adding for this year's site walk is there will be full renderings to sort of actually show you standing in the field what you would be looking at in the future at that same location. So it's gonna be an exciting weekend of events. Speaker 3: And just to, just to clarify something that you said,
you said something about last public meeting, I just wanna make sure people understand that that's the last public meeting of that particular body. Yes. Looking at that particular Speaker 2: For that grant project, there will be many more public meetings as permitting occurs for those designs and, and moving forward through that project. Speaker 3: Yes. For the, for the whole Charles River Dam project. Yes. Speaker 2: Yes. Both just wanna make that really clear, both components of it. And just since we are now recording and just as a secondary update, the dam removal notice of intent will be opening at our next meeting March 20th. GZA has sent out the formal abutter notices,
but as it only requires notice within a hundred feet, the town had sent out additional abutter notices to approximately 60 properties upstream and downstream of the spillway. We are also notifying the Wellesley and Dover Conservation agents so they can make their commissions aware and we will be noticing all of the community organizations that have been participating throughout the DAM advisory committee process of the meeting time as well. Just 'cause I know that there are folks who are interested in seeing what's going on with the dam. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Just to, just to reiterate, so this is our next meeting, which is Thursday, March 20th, here in the at town hall, will be the opening of the Charles River Dam removal Notice of Intent project. Yes. Where we'll be starting to hear, you know, from at least jurisdictional stuff for us, of which a lot of it is jurisdictional for us. So we'll be starting that public hearing process. It will not close in one meeting. Absolutely not. There will be multiple opportunities for people to provide public comment on the, the science, the impacts, all of that stuff related to the Charles, the proposed Charles River Dam removal project
Speaker 2: And GZA will be presenting the project to the commission, not myself, pick Pond Bridge. Kyle is working on permit level designs, but we will be getting a notice of intent in for that application as soon as those designs are ready. Island Bridge, the most of the ice has melted out there. I'm really just waiting for water temps to come up a little bit more for us to get out there, but I imagine if the weather keeps trending the way it's been trending, I could see us getting out by the end of March, early April. That'd be great. So really looking forward to that, getting
that fully installed. And just a tangential update. The Trails and Forest Stewardship Committee has a new chainsaw, if there's any tree removal work or the trail clearing work that needs to be done. Our old chainsaw, we thought we just needed a new battery for it. We bought the new battery, the chainsaw had lived, lived the end of its life. And so we did replace it with another electric chainsaw for, for trail approved trail steward use for removing damage trees. Speaker 3: And there are, there are multiple members of the Trails and Forest Stewardship Committee as well as the Conservation Commission
who have gasoline power chainsaws as needed. And are, yes, there's some people who are quite skilled with them just to alleviate any concerns people may have around people using those things out in the field. Speaker 2: Yes, we, we have not had any issues to date. And just another quick update, Pegan Cove Paul Casey and I have been in light communication is what I'll refer to it as. He has provided me with an update that the long-term Permit and leases committee in DCR did meet regarding Pegan Cove. They are working on a draft of a long-term permit for us
to fill the gap while we wait for a new lease to be written and approved by Speaker 3: The legislation. When does, when does our lease expire? Speaker 2: So, oh, I forgot Jeff was chairing this meeting, so you missed the big update, which is despite me reaching out in April of 2024. Our lease expired at the end of November of 2024. Oh goodness. I received a response back from DCR the first response that I had received back since my reach outs starting in April on December 5th stating, oh, we just need a, a signed letter on letterhead from town
administration requesting the lease renewal. I submitted that the next day and then didn't hear back again for several weeks. And when I finally heard back from DCR Paul Casey informed me that we couldn't renew the lease because the lease had already expired. And that in order to get a new lease in place, DCR leases require a vote of the legislature and it can take approximately one to two years to get a new lease in place. So we are gonna establish a long-term permit to allow the stewards to continue working on the parcel while we await a new lease. Speaker 3: Jose, this was a, was it a 20 year lease that we had? Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry. A 20 year lease that has been in place and renewed regularly since 1974. Yeah, Speaker 3: Exactly. Yeah, it's been around, it's not a new thing. No, Speaker 2: It is not a new thing. The, the continued lack of communication from DCR is long running frustration. Speaker 3: God bless 'em. They do good work, but Speaker 2: They do good work. They are also understaffed and underfunded, but it, it's definitely a little bit of a challenge sometimes to get in touch with them. So hopefully George will be here in the next two to three minutes. Oh, Speaker 3: See, look at that.
Wow. On, on, on command. One minute Speaker 2: Early, George. Speaker 3: Oh, okay. No, don't go back out. Come back in. Hey George, welcome. Hey, George. All right, let the minutes reflect George Bain joined us at 7 29. Excellent. Alright, we have quorum so we can get going on, on the public parts of these meeting. Let me just go back and get this open. So the first item on the agenda for, to open the public hearings. First item on the agenda is a certificate of compliance for 30 Lakeview. Welcome. Sorry to keep you waiting. Alright. If you wouldn't mind us introducing yourselves and fill us in on what's going on and what we can do for you here tonight.
Speaker 2: So Michael and Amanda received an order of conditions from this body in 2012 for the construction of a garage at the property and some required mitigation plantings from the commission. They're now looking to sell the property. And Speaker 3: I was just gonna say, what inspired, what inspired you to come in and ask for this now? We, Speaker 4: We thought, we thought we had taken care of everything with the project. We hired Mitchell Construction outta Medfield and they took care of all the permitting and everything, but this last thing fell through the cracks and we weren't aware of it until we went to sell the house and it turned up now. So we're trying to clear it Speaker 3: Up. It's funny, Tom Mitchell did the gut
renovation on my house Oh. Back probably right about the same time. So he's, you know, maybe busy with my house or something at that point. Speaker 4: Tom Sr. Or Tom, Tommy Junior. Speaker 3: Tom Sr. Okay. Tom Senior and Tom. But Tommy Junior wast, nah, I'd have to go back Speaker 4: And, because now, now Tom has retired and Tommy's Speaker 3: Running it, it was Tommy Sr. Yeah. So, and they did nice work. Yeah. Right. So it, anyway, okay, great. So let's take a look at the plants and just kind of make sure that everything was done according to Yes. Speaker 2: So we did get an as-built plan for the project. The statement of certification is on the as-built plan. And we also have invoices from a
and m natives for the plants and photos of the mitigation, planting areas in full bloom as obviously my site visit two days ago, things were not, not leafed out yet, but based on the photos, my site visit on Tuesday and the as-built, I do believe that the project was completed in substantial compliance and is ready for a certificate of compliance. Speaker 3: Okay. Looks like the documentation's in order. Yeah. Great. Any questions? Speaker 5: No question. I go buy it. Oh. At least twice a day. And it's, and it's still standing? Oh yeah.
My house still still standing, so I'll take say it's, it's, you know, it looks very, very nice. Great. Speaker 3: All thank you. What's the pleasure of the board Motion issue? A certificate of compliance. Speaker 5: So Speaker 3: Move. Thank you, George. Is that seconded? Seconded. Thank you Jim. Any further discussion on that? All those in favor? It's just us. No one, no one is out there. There. All right. So that's it. Done. We, you'll get it in the mail. Good luck. Thank you. I hope you're staying in Natick. Maybe Speaker 5: We had a, what? Speaker 3: Are you staying in Natick? Speaker 5: No, we, we moved to Concord. We moved up Speaker 3: To Con to Concord. Ah, excellent. Well it's a slight downgrade from na, but Speaker 5: That's, anyway, the
Speaker 2: Permit will be ready for you guys to pick up at the counter tomorrow. Speaker 5: Oh, okay. Great. Thank you much. Great. Thank you folks. Yeah, thank you. Speaker 3: Alright, next item on the agenda is a request for determination of applicability for Phillips Pond Road. Do we have representatives of Phillips Pond Road here please? Speaker 2: Yes, we do have Eric Rubin from Danon Management on the line. Great. Speaker 3: Good evening. Good evening, Eric. How are you? Speaker 6: Good. And yourself? Good. Speaker 3: Lemme just formally go ahead and open it up. This is a request for determination of applicability. So in accordance with the Wetlands Protection Act in Natick local wetlands Bylaw article 30, the Native Conservation Commission hold a public meeting on
a request for determination of applicability filed by Eric Ruman from Dan and Management for property located at zero Phillips Pond Road Map 74 lot 3D The proposal is for tree removal and vegetation management along roadways within the Phillips Pond neighborhood. So Eric, why don't you just talk us through what, what you've got in mind. Speaker 6: Yeah, so the area that we're talking about, we have a wooded, wooded dirt road that leaves leads to our pool area and tennis court. The area has quite a few hazard trees and also some invasive plants that we want to take care of here.
It's illustrated, we're gonna be doing some heavy pruning to kind of open up and remove some dead wood outta the trees and to make it impassable in some areas for larger emergency vehicles. But our arbor identified, as you can see on this map, about a dozen trees he's recommending to remove. Some of them are dead, some of them are ash trees, just undesirable hazard trees that he thinks is better fair to be removed at this point. We did a walk with Claire the other day and I think we've also submitted a letter from our arborist outlining some of the details as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I did review the trees that they're looking to remove on a, a very treacherous sidewalk with Eric and the arborist. The, the road was an absolute sheet of ice and the majority of the trees that they're looking to remove either lean heavily into the roadway obstructing emergency vehicle access for fire truck clearance, or they have large deficiencies in them, some trees with big holes in the bottom splits or visibly dead trees. They're also planning to do some invasives management. Any native plants within the areas of management will be flagged prior
to any treatment being done so that they're retained. I did recommend that the commission condition a walkthrough after those plants are flagged, but before any of the treatment is done, just to, as a double check. But overall, the, the project seems very permissible under the, the regulations. Speaker 3: Is there any proposal to use herbicides? Speaker 2: No. Eric, I believe we talked about it in the field, that we would just be looking at mechanical removal at this point in time. Correct. Speaker 6: We were requesting to, to paint and it Speaker 2: Cut. Oh yes, that is the, Speaker 6: And that would be done by a licensed pesticide applicator, Speaker 3: But it would be painting not spraying. Yes,
Speaker 2: That's, yeah, Speaker 6: I think he says that in there. Proposal. Yeah, we would paint the cut stubs. Speaker 3: I see that Speaker 6: That's the third bullet there on the end there. Speaker 3: Ah, right there. Okay. Any, any questions from the commission on this concerns? Speaker 2: Oh, and just to clarify, 'cause I know Mike would ask if he was here, the stumps are not proposed to be ground. Got it. Speaker 3: That is in, in honor of Mike Downey. Okay. This is a request for determination of applicability. So we would vote to close and vote to vote to issue a determination. Is there a, any, anyone? There's no further questions.
Anybody wanna make a motion to, to close Motion closed. Thank you Jim. Is that seconded? Second. Thank you George. Any further discussion on that? Those in favor? Any post issue determination? Presumably a negative three Determination. George, you think Speaker 5: Don't have Doug here. So I'll say we Speaker 2: Do, we've got Doug line. Speaker 3: Doug's line. Hey, speak up Doug. Come on. Speaker 2: Oh, his camera's off. He might be on grandpa duty. It would be a negative three. It is just Speaker 3: Off it would Episode, Speaker 2: Episode. No riverfront area. Speaker 3: Alright. Would someone make a motion to issue a negative three determination then? Sole move. Thank you, George. Is that second ish? Second. Thank you J Jeff. Any further discussion on that?
All those in favor seeing? None of opposed. All right. So negative three determination. So yeah, Eric, you've, you've got what we need or we've got what, what what you need. You have what you need for this. Let us know if, if anything changes and, but otherwise we're, we're good to go with this. Speaker 6: Okay. When we flag those natives, Claire, we'll let you know. Yeah, Speaker 2: Just gimme a shout. Speaker 6: Yeah. Great. And just a quick note. I I just wanna say Claire is just wonderful to work with. I guess I, I'm sure you guys know, but you guys are very lucky to have her
and she makes following the rules a lot easier in this town. And we wanna thank her from Phyllis Bond for ev everything she does Speaker 3: That's nice testimony. Eric, thank you for that. We'll try not to let it go to her head. Cliff. Speaker 2: I was gonna say feel free to submit a letter to town administration. No, I'm joking. Yeah, Speaker 3: Nevermind. That's, strike that from the minutes. Yeah. Thank you Eric. Thanks guys. All right. Next item on the agendas. I've got a notice of intent for 29 Indian Ridge Road. We have representatives of 29 Indian Ridge Road Speaker 2: Here. I do not believe there's anybody on the line 'cause they have requested a continuation to our March 20th meeting as they do not have a file number. This project is also due to be heard by the Board
of Health on Monday next week as it is a septic project. Okay. And so by continuing we'll also get their decision though there's not any expected issues from their Speaker 3: Board. Okay, so let's go ahead and open it then. So in accordance to the Wetlands Protection Act in Natick local wetlands by Article 79, the NA Conservation Commission hold a public hearing on a notice of intent filed by Cornerstone Engineering Inc. Representing Mary Blasberg for property located at 29 Indian Ridge Road Map 77 MAP 77 lot 18. The proposal is to replace a failed septic system for an existing single family home. Would someone make a motion to continue this to our March 20 meeting? So moved. Thank you George. Is that seconded? Seconded.
Thank you Jim. Any further discussion on that? All those in favor? Great. None opposed. Alright, moving right along. So next item on the agenda I have is a notice of intent for 56 Morenci Street. Do we have representatives of that project here on the line? Speaker 2: I also believe that we do not have any representatives on this project because they have also requested a continuation because they do not have a DEP file number. Speaker 3: Excellent. Blasting through the blasting through the, the items on the agenda. So lemme go ahead and formally open it in accordance to the Wetlands Wetlands Protection Act and Natick local wetlands bylaw Article 79, the NA Conservation Commissioner hold a public hearing on a
notice of intent filed by Beck to engineering VT Inc. Representing Wilson Gardens Trust for property located at 56 Morenci Street Map 39 lot 78 A through 78 nn. The proposal is to relocate an existing dumpster pad adjacent to an existing parking area. Would someone make a motion to continue this, to March 20 please? Speaker 2: I motion to Speaker 3: Continue. Thank you Jim. Is that seconded? Yep. Thank you George. All, any discussion on that? All those in favor? Any of opposed? Alright, continue to March 20. All right, Speaker 2: Look at Speaker 3: That. Look Speaker 2: At that. We just got through four public hearings technically
in 10 minutes, but Speaker 3: Now we're getting to the good stuff. Yeah, careful what you wish for. All right. Next item on the agenda is a continuation of the of DCR R'S proposal for constituent State park 11 Commonwealth Road. This is a continuation for the installation of a a pavilion constituent state park. Do we have representatives of this project here on the call? Speaker 2: Yes, I believe that we have Nick Habel from Conoco Engineering. Speaker 3: Hey Nick, how are you? Speaker 7: Good, how are you guys doing? Speaker 3: Doing good. We're doing good. Thank you. Lemme just go ahead and open this up. So this was,
Speaker 2: Oh this one has already been opened. This Speaker 3: Has formally been opened, but it hasn't been really discussed in any detail at this point in time. So Nick, if you wouldn't mind giving us an overview of the project, what you're proposing and, and we'll go from there. Speaker 2: Nick, would you prefer to share your own plans or are you okay with me sharing? Speaker 7: That's fine. I think there's mainly just the one screen that's worth seeing. Yep. So like you said, my name's Nick Keebel with Conoco engineers and scientists representing Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation here for the notice intent for the state park pavilion construction. We do have a DEP file number that came in last minute
number 2 3 3 9 1 8. Abut notices were had legal, the legal ad was placed, so that should all be set there. The project is located, it's listed as 43 Commonwealth Road, but the actual work is taken place on 11 Commonwealth Road. It consists of installing a new shade pavilion, an associated concrete pad and some gravel walkways to connect the new pavilion to the existing parking area. The proposed pavilion's gonna provide a much needed shade location where visitors can meet, enjoy barbecues, that sort of thing. Family gatherings. As far as kind
of the nitty gritty details, the pathways, they're gonna be roughly about 4,000 square feet in total. They're gonna be made with a porous material, I believe it's a, a porous gravel and they will be a DA compliant so that everybody can have access to it. The pavilion itself is going to be a 60 foot by 40 foot constructed pavilion. Yep. And it's gonna sit on a 66 by 46 foot pad concrete pad. The proposed location of the pavilion was chosen because it's actually a prior disturbed area that was an elevated location
for a former septic system that served the park. The system's no longer in use so they figured, let's put it to a better use. The surrounding area consists of basically just maintain field. It's just grassy field that they kind of mow every once in a while. I guess they're proposing to start this project in the spring of 2025 if everything goes as planned and they're expecting it to take four months. To complete a little background or summary of the resource areas, the resource areas were flagged in July of 2024. By Conoco, they flagged a lot of bordering,
bordering vegetated wetlands around the site. Another resource area on the site that was not flagged was the bordering land subject to flooding the 100 year floodplain. Yeah, that's perfect. So mostly the biggest issue or not issue, the biggest piece of this project that we're going to be impacting is going to be buffer zone. There a lot. I think some of the walkway, or most of the walkway perhaps, is going to be in floodplain, but it's being installed at grade, so there's gonna be no fill, there's not gonna be any sort of change in elevation. So therefore we shouldn't have any sort of permanent impacts there.
There is, I think 777 square feet. I think if you go to the next page, it shows the, yep. It shows where the buffer, so 220 square feet of permanent impacts due to the walkway to the wetland buffer zone. And if you scroll down a little more. Yep. 775 square feet of permanent impacts to the wetland buffer zone. Again, I think this is kinda, it's all disturbed area. So as far as disturbance and impacts, it's I think pretty minor comparatively since it's just a grassy field. But in general, we just wanna make sure we're covered
and make sure we're taking care of business that needs to be taken care of. Speaker 3: Great. Excellent. Any, Speaker 7: I think that's all I have for you guys. If you have any other questions or need some clarity, I'm here to help. Speaker 3: Great. Any questions from the commission on this project? Speaker 5: The pathway, let's see. Most of the pathway, which is I guess whatever is closest to the wetland buffer is still on. It's still on disturbed land. This is all disturbed land? Speaker 2: Yes. This is all prior disturbed area. There's no tree removal associated with the work that's being proposed and the majority of it is in existing lawn. Speaker 5: How big is the pad that it's going to be on
Speaker 2: 44 by 64 I believe. Speaker 7: 46 by 66. There you go. No, it's just gonna shoot out about six feet extra or three feet on either side of the pavilion. Speaker 3: Okay. And the pathways are all permeable Gravel paths? Nos no hard top, no, no Speaker 2: Hard top propose. There isn't a specific spec provided for the pathway. My guess is that'll be based on the bid responses for DCR, but the proposal listed in the notice of intent narrative states a permeable surfacing such as organ lock soils, which is the sort of self stabilizing Yep.
Material. Speaker 3: Okay. So really the only impervious is the roof and the pad itself. Speaker 2: Exactly. Which are majority outside of the buffer zone. Right, Speaker 3: Exactly. Okay. Any other questions? Speaker 8: Is the existing structure that that's shown in one of the photographs there that that's gonna remain? Speaker 2: Yes. The small one story wood structure I believe is set to remain. That structure is where the electrical service to the new pavilion will be coming from. Speaker 7: And I believe the water as well. Speaker 2: Oh, and the water as well. There you Speaker 7: Go. Because I think they're gonna have like a bubbler a water for, Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a fountain and a A dog bowl spigot. Yes.
Speaker 3: Okay. Other questions? Any questions from Abutters residents about this pro, this project as proposed? Speaker 2: Feel free to use the raise hand function in Zoom or if you have your video on, you can visually raise your hand. I'm scrolling through folks now and I am not seeing anyone. I have a feeling that most of the folks on the line are here for our next two projects. You think? I think. Speaker 3: Okay. Hearing no questions and no further questions from the commission. What's the pleasure of the board? We can vote to close and vote to issue an order of conditions on this if that's the pleasure. Okay. Anybody wanna make a motion? Speaker 5: So moved. Speaker 3: Move to
Speaker 5: Close Speaker 3: Vote. Move to close. George made a motion to close. Is that seconded? Seconded. Thank you Jeff. Any further discussion on this? Hearing? None. All those in favor? Favor in the room to close. Alright. Public hearing is closed Order of conditions. I think this is as about cut and dried and straightforward as it gets in terms of a fairly easily permittable project. But I think, you know, really making sure we have in the order of conditions that the permeable pathways part of it is just very explicit. I mean it's explicitly part of the approved plans, but just to be sure any other, Speaker 2: And I think an as-built plan that demonstrates no net loss
of flood storage for the pathways. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I mean as-builts of course would be part of any closeout, but yeah, Speaker 2: But just calling out specifically pathways specifically to have as built. Speaker 3: Okay. Any other special conditions we wanna put on this? So our standard order conditions plus. Plus the making sure that the permeable pathway is part of it and the no net loss of flood storage is verified as part of that. Alright, with that in mind, would someone make a motion to issue that order of conditions as discussed? So moved. Thank you George. Is that seconded? Seconded. Thank you Jim. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Okay. Done. Thank you. Appreciate your time.
Let us know if you have any questions for, if the plans change, Speaker 2: Nick, that'll probably be ready to go on Monday next week. Speaker 7: Okay, thank you so much. Actually, real quick, is that something that gets mailed or picked up? So Speaker 2: I'll shoot you guys an email and whatever your preference is, we can go with that. Speaker 7: Perfect, thank you so much. Of Speaker 2: Course. Speaker 7: No, great night. Speaker 3: Alright, next night I'm on the agenda is I've got the Lake Constituit path, so let's go ahead and formally open this and then we can, Speaker 2: This one has also already been opened. Speaker 3: Okay. Alright, so this has been formally open. So do we have representatives from DOT or rep representatives of them for this project?
Speaker 2: Yes. I believe we have several staff from HNTB, which is the engineering firm working on the project on the call. They did provide a presentation in advance of the hearing that the commission has in the Google Drive folder. Marissa, Jonathan, Chris, did you guys wanna share screen or would you prefer if I share screen? Speaker 9: I can share my screen if that's all right. Speaker 2: Marissa, I'm just gonna make you co-host. Speaker 9: Sure. Let me know when that's set. Speaker 2: You should be all set. Speaker 9: All right. Speaker 3: Alright, Marissa, you're on. Speaker 9: All right. Lemme just make sure I share my correct screen here.
All right. All right. Can you see my screen? Speaker 3: Yep. Got it. Perfect. Speaker 9: All right, just so just for the record, I'm Marissa Cipher, I'm the wetland scientist on the project as well. With me tonight I have Jonathan Capis, who's the project manager, and then Chris Nailer, who's our stormwater engineer. And we're presenting on the Lake Tut Path project. Just for starters, we just wanted to go through an introduction of the overall project, discuss the existing conditions, any proposed improvements on the project, discuss the project impacts our proposed mitigation methods, and then we can take questions.
So we're proposing the Lake Ridge Path project, which includes the development and construction of a shared use path to the constituent rail trail from Hartford and Speed Street. Essentially the purpose of the project is to improve access to the existing regional bicycle network for both pedestrians and the bicyclists along Route nine. Specifically, the first portion of the project located over by s Spain and Hartford Street includes the widening of an existing HMA path to a shared use path just to provide access from S Speed Street
to the shared use path connection at the end of Hartford Street. The second portion of the project will begin at the end of Hartford Street near the cul-de-sac. It extends 2,400 feet to the constituent rail trail. The intent of the project is to provide a connection for the critical gap in the bicycle network there, and the design will consist of a shared use path, generally 10 feet wide. There are some areas of reduction where it's tighter, such as eight feet, and then six and a half feet close the pedestrian bridge at Lake Constituit. There also is a retaining wall proposed
near the cul-de-sac at Hartford Street. Some of the construction work that's included would be clearing and grubbing, full depth pa, full depth pavement, widening less than four feet, reconstruction of driveways, installing granite curbing the shared use path, obviously sidewalks, fencing, storm water control measures, and just some tree trimming along the way. It's just important to note that the project does not propose changes to the existing Route nine bridge over Lake Tuit
or anything at the signaled intersection at Spain and Hartford Street or or Route nine. The area, the project area here was delineated back in January, 2024. During that delineation, we identified a lake constituent and just a non-jurisdictional ephemeral stream, which is upgradient of, of any resource. So from there we have bank and land water, and then the a hundred foot buffer zone off of like aate. There also is bordering land subject to flooding. FEMA does not have a BFE for this location.
So in order to establish the base flood elevation, we took a look at the US stream gauges and pulled the maximum lateral extent, which happened to be 138.12 feet. So that's what we ended up using for the, to establish the elevation of Speaker 10: B-L-S-F-I. Speaker 9: Just to reiterate some of the proposed improvements, we are taking an eight to 10 foot bidirectional shared use path with grade separation and concrete barriers.
Again, it's being reduced near the bridge to six and a half feet just to match the existing bridge in that area. And then we'll have some 12 foot wide passing zones at the east and west approach of the bridge at Hartford Street, we're just proposing a connector connection to the path and we're proposed to be signed as a shared street to allow all modes to share the roadway at the Speed Street connector. The project proposes to widen the current four foot walkway between Hartford and Spain Street to an eight foot wide walkway. The proposed storm water management system is
that we're developing an infiltration trench just surrounded by a gravel, diaphragm and grass strip for sheet flow pretreatment and to capture street flow sheet flow from the prepare the proposed shared use path and convey it to the outfall. We have a flexible porous rubber layer just to, you know, facilitate the flow and to the outfall. We're also proposing two deep sum catch basins for pre-treatment prior to discharge. And Speaker 3: There's no addit. Where are you referring to? The trench, the, and these deep sum catch basins?
Or is this just generic across the whole project? Speaker 9: No, so let me skip down here for you. That page, so the infiltration trench is here, so it's within the buffer zone right here. Okay. Speaker 3: So you're referring to just, just jurisdictional stuff for this commission here right now, and it's then Correct. It's that. Okay. Speaker 9: O Yeah. Other than the main, you know, SW Street and Hartford, but yes, this will be just what's within jurisdiction. And just Speaker 2: To clarify that, it's infiltration trench was between the SPRINGVALE entrance and the bridge. Speaker 9: Yep. Yep. Go back up here, sorry.
Alright. That being said, we're only impacting the buffer zone. There's no impact to bank or BLSF or land underwater. We have about 16,646 square feet of permanent impact, which is primarily from the shared use path construction. Any grading and clearing fence installation, the stormwater management improvements, pavement widening, and any rock fill that we need to do. There are 1,694 square feet of temporary impact, which is primarily just from the placement of erosion and S controls. During construction, we will have erosion sediment control,
such as silt fencing, straw bales, compost filter tubes. The project also does require a Nip D'S general construction permit, and along that we'll have a SW and we do plan to have some invasive species management for Japanese knot wheat along the corridor. At this time, we don't have a management plan, but that will be established by the contractor for the exact means and method of the invasive species management. With that, we can take some questions. Speaker 2: So, Marissa, just to jump in quickly, so between the initial package that the commission received and what's being presented tonight, there was revised materials submitted to the commission
that are available in the drive. I did include in my staff notes the responses from the mass DOT team on all of my prior staff comments, most of which were addressed in full. And then the commission has any of the remaining questions that I have. But yeah. Speaker 3: Okay. Yeah, so questions from the commission on this. I mean, Claire, you've, you've been out to the site. I think we would probably behoove us to, to do a site walk out here and to take a look at this just 'cause it's a, it's a tight fit. It's going right over the lake, you know,
I certainly would like to lay eyes on it. Speaker 2: Yes, I will just note currently it is, it is quite the overgrown corridor if folks have driven along this section ru so just given folks the heads up that this will definitely be a little bit of a bush whacking site visit. Speaker 3: We have bush whack many a time and so that's, you know, that's no worries on, on that one. And so, so the differences, Claire, would you just give us a voiceover on the differences between the plans that we're submitted and what we're seeing here this evening? Speaker 2: Yes. So very minor. Most of the revisions that were done were, and Marissa, feel free to jump in if I am
misconstruing anything, but I believe that most of them were clarification responses to staff questions. And there were some updates to the stormwater management report, specifically the hydro CAD calculations based on staff comments. And then some additional materials were provided to call out the specifics of jurisdictional activities for the commission at the request of Speaker 3: Staff. Okay. So I'll all fairly minor and technical stuff. Yep. Okay. Are there other kind of jurisdictional technical questions? I mean, I think if we do a site visit, you know, that will certainly give us an opportunity to take a close look at this.
I've got some higher level, higher level questions or requests to the project team after that, but I just wanna see if we have any kind of technical questions about it. Speaker 8: The herbicide treatment, they talk about they might using sprayers and misters. So, and is, is any of that near the bridge. That's what I was wondering. Speaker 2: Yeah, so the, the work that's being discussed is within the buffer zone. There are some areas outside of the buffer zone as well. The project team has provided the mass DOT contract specs for determining herbicide and pesticide use. As Marissa said, the contractor will determine the
final methods and means. So what the commission will do is we will condition that we have to receive a copy of those methods and means as part of the pre-construction site men, pre-construction site visit documentation. So that way if there are any concerns, the commission can review and potentially request adjustments. Speaker 3: Is there any in, in an o and m plan? Is there? I'd be, I'd be curious. I mean as soon as there's Japanese knotweed anywhere there's gonna be Japanese, not weed there forever unless it's treated very aggressively. And is there, is there, as part of the ONM plan or maybe as part of conditions, if we are to condition this
would be some kind of thing around who owns, who owns that maintenance and who will be responsible for that long-term maintenance? Yeah, Speaker 2: So we did get a response about the long-term maintenance from the project team. MAs DOT will be responsible for the long term maintenance of the shared use path. Marissa, I don't know if you guys have a specific answer about, because I know that the invasives will be determined by the contractor. Do you guys have like a set time period of required treatment? Is there, will MAs DOT do follow up? I'm just curious. Speaker 9: As of right now, we do not, correct me if I'm wrong Jonathan, but that will be completely conveyed
by the contractor in their invasive speech management plan. Speaker 2: So the commission does have potentially an opportunity to condition requirements around that treatment. Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Speaker 5: What is the standard treatment? Speaker 2: What Speaker 5: About weed? Speaker 2: So the standard treatment is either gonna be a foliar application or a cut and drip application of, I believe you guys had tri LaPierre listed in your Speaker 9: Yeah, that might be one of 'em. That's, but it, Speaker 2: It's either that or, or glyphosate are the standard treatments for not weed. There's been a lot of science in the last couple
of years about the effectiveness of those types of treatments. Studies have found that the, unfortunately the foliar application is more effective on large stands of knotweed because you have a higher surface area of the plant that's being exposed to the herbicide. But in smaller stands and obviously stands that are in a more sensitive area, like the buffer zone, the cut and drip method does still do quite a good job of managing the stands. Speaker 5: Well the cut and drip is also technically I would expect it to be less in, I'll use the term polluting.
Speaker 2: Yes. It's obviously a more targeted application. So you get less of that, that over spray. Speaker 5: Has anybody ever gotten into the issue of literally some type of a temporary for very bad areas, temporary light, tight coverage? Because that works. I mean I personally have had that work and you know, just, oh, black tarps. If you have an area that keeps, and the problem is it'll keep on coming back. But if you put that down it's, well, I tried different methods and it's more effective than even the drip. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I know that Marissa, I'm not sure of the exact specific stands of knotweed, but I believe at least some of them are likely on the DCR portion of the parcel. Speaker 9: They may be, yes. Speaker 2: Yeah. So they may be limited in the types of treatment they can do based on the landowner permission. So they have to be able to get, I don't know if DCR would be a huge fan of black tarps in the state park for months on end. Well, for Speaker 5: It, it's not necessarily that long. You just have to get it at the right time. Yeah. And if you have a butters, I would think the abutters would jump at the chance
to get rid of it for good. Speaker 2: Yeah. So I, I think what I would recommend is when we're going through drafting conditions, I'll have some options for condition language that the commission can review that gives us, you know, some flexibility in terms of the treatment styles. Speaker 3: Some risk. Marissa, would you, would you walk through the stormwater piece of this? I mean, is there, are the, is the stormwater infrastructure that currently exists on eastbound route nine, is that gonna stay, is that gonna stay intact and with no changes to it and the, the deep sum catch basins that you're proposing would be in addition to what's already on the road?
Speaker 9: That's true. I'm gonna defer to Chris Nailer, our stormwater engineer. Speaker 3: Yeah. Chris, if, if you could just kind give us a voiceover from, let's start at the, at the water treatment plant and just head down to the bridge and then back up towards Archer Drive and just kinda walk us through what the features are, what the general strategy is and, and then we'll go from there. Speaker 11: Sure. Where, let me, do you want I can open up our drainage plan. We can just, Speaker 9: Sure. I can stop sharing. Speaker 2: Chris, I just made you co-host as well in case you need to share your screen. Speaker 11: Okay, great. Okay. Can you see the screen there? Speaker 5: Yep. Speaker 11: Okay, great.
So if we start over at the northern end, which is right here is where the coach short path trail crosses over. Yep. We have some drainage structures right at the driveway openings 'cause it's standard to collect run runoff upstream of driveway openings. So we've added those. Every new catch basin will have a deep sunk, there's an existing catch basin here that we're changing to a manhole and then replacing it with, I mean adding in these two catch basins on either side.
Speaker 3: And that's all on the, on the edge of the road. Speaker 11: On the edge of the road, yeah. All the work, it's Speaker 2: All within the shoulder. Okay. Speaker 11: All of the work is within the shoulder of the road. There's, there's the limit of work really is the shoulder of the road. You can see the saw cut line. Yep. That is the extent of our work. So we're really not getting into route nine at all. The stormwater management that we're collecting is, is really from the impervious path. So we're collecting from that path wherever we can and collecting it in pervious pipe and giving that an opportunity to infiltrate. But the, we're only taking credit for the infiltration
that we're putting right here and the where the path we have room where the path pulls away from Route nine a bit. So that's the infiltration trench. One minor difference in the current set of plans versus the ones that we originally submitted is we got some more detail of the utilities in here. So we had to, in order to protect those utilities and not have to relocate them, we did shift this infiltration trench closer to the path. But with everything that we could to still keep that stormwater management feature this
as we cross over the bridge to the other side, there's really just the path and that's all we have within the road right away. So when the path drains, it's gonna drain into a trench that's right next to the path for through a perforated pipe that's surrounded in stone. And the only reason for the por porous rubber on top is really to keep that stone material contained within that trench. I know that there's been situations where you have open trenches next to paths that, you know, we don't want that gravel to get loose and then run down the path.
Or also we want the, you know, if a biker should veer off the path, we want them to have a best, smooth, stable surface to, you know, regain control of their bike as well and not go right to gravel. And that that porous rubber is pervious so that it can go down and stay within the pervious stretch of the trench. So that runs along the full length of this path until we get to where we join up with the cul-de-sac here at the end of Hartford Street. Speaker 2: And just to clarify for the commission, I should have pulled it out and included it as a separate file, but the most UpToDate plans are a part
of that revised NOI package in the Google Drive versus the separate plan set, which is the originally submitted plan set. Speaker 3: Okay. And is there any going up to Archer and just make sure I get the road names here, right? Go yeah, go. Going up to Archer and then ultimately to, to Hartford. The end of Hartford there. Are there, you know, is the stormwater infrastructure there gonna stay the same or are you adding onto that as well? Speaker 11: So Archer, I'm not sure where Archer is. You mean the center that goes to Speed Street? Yeah, Speaker 2: Yeah. Archer is the residential road that the path runs behind.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. Sorry I'm referring to Archer on the map. Sorry to to No, that's okay. To the end of Hartford there. Sorry. Speaker 11: Yeah, there, there's the only thing here really is reconstructing that path and having that connection to Speed Street. There's really no stormwater management. Okay. Along here. It's all just basic sidewalk work. Speaker 3: Okay, got it. Well this is all stuff that when we do a sidewalk we can kind of lay eyes on there from the commission. Any other kind of just technical, technical questions at this point And then I want to get to some kind of some higher level stuff that I think a lot of people here in the room might be
interested in hearing about. Alright. How, Speaker 8: How about the plans for the winter, the snow and ice. I'm assuming that path probably wouldn't be in use, right? Is that right? Speaker 2: So currently the town does maintain the capitate rail trail for winter use. We do plow the rail trail, right. As I said earlier, a MAs DOT will be doing the maintenance of this area. Snow and ice management will be done per the MAs dot. And I of course didn't write out what this acronym is,
but the ESPR Marissa, do you happen to remember what that acronym stands for? I can't remember what it is either. It's essentially their environmental services program and it will be a reduced salt area. So there will be limited salt application as it is on route nine in this section along the lake. Speaker 3: So lemme ask a kind of a practical question and that is that, you know, this is a relatively short distance of, I mean it's eight foot, so you could get a a a a pickup with a plow blade down it, Speaker 2: It would, if we were, it would most likely be the town's little tiny sidewalk plow. Speaker 3: But if, but if it's the town's little side,
but I thought DOT was gonna do this. Oh. Speaker 2: And that's why I was saying I, I would assume it would be potentially similar styles of equipment going up this path. I don't know. Mar Speaker 3: My, my question then is though is what is our experience with kind of the town or town versus DOT collaboration on something of this relatively small scale? Is this something where they would truck in a sidewalk plow in the winter to come just take care of this little piece? I mean mass DOT doesn't have little sidewalk plows running
down the side of route nine, I don't believe. No. And so is this something that we would see a little sidewalk plow or something cruising down in the winter? You know, is it big enough to be on their radar or is this basically being set up to be something that's not, you know, that might not be accessible for stretches of time in the winter? Speaker 2: I am Speaker 3: Just practically speaking, there's hypotheticals and then there's realities. Right, right. I'm just, I I just want to get it all out there. Speaker 2: Jonathan, do you have any insight on that? Speaker 12: Yeah, so I mean this is obviously one small section like you said of of of of path. I'm sure you're all aware
that there's a much larger project occurring just to the east of this project. Speaker 2: 9 9 27 9 27, Speaker 3: The 9 27 interchange. Oh yeah. Speaker 12: Oh yeah. And that project does have additional shared use path, which I believe Speaker 3: That's true Speaker 12: Also connects up in this direction. Yes. Fair. I don't know the particulars of, of that maintenance or, or, or or the ownership of that path. But I would imagine that if it matches this, that would make it a much larger path
to clear than say one small section. Speaker 2: Fair. I can reach out to the mast OT project manager on that and see if he just has any Speaker 3: Insight. Yeah, I mean that yeah, fair. I mean I, I appreciate the answer and that makes, makes good sense to me. You, the 9 27 project will be, you know, is their starting preliminary utility work now. They're out there scoping stuff out. It'll be a couple years before that's kind of fully, fully built out and all. And so I'm just, I'm just wanting to just, just get it all out there. Alright. Speaker 8: I, I want to the, the, the big trench there that the
Speaker 3: Infiltration trench Yeah, yeah. Speaker 8: That, that's being put in there for that particular location for a reason. Is that That's correct. 'cause I always, I remember that area getting in a heavy rain that can be a quite a flooded little area. So is that what's gonna help with this? Yeah, Speaker 2: Marissa, if I remember correctly, that that area was selected because of the slopes of the DCR land in that area provides you guys with a really easy way to catch that runoff. But I might also just be making that up. I know that this is an area, so the project does have to meet the state storm water standards.
So the infiltration that's being provided is being provided in part to meet those standards. So this location was also likely chosen because it's in the buffer zone and so contributes to meeting those standards. Speaker 8: Okay. But it, it is just in that one area right? That, that trench, it doesn't run the whole length of the Speaker 2: No, it will not run the whole length of the trail. Speaker 8: Okay. I was just curious to see, Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 8: If Speaker 3: There's a reason. All right. So what I'd like to do is open this up for public questions and comments. What I'd wanna reiterate
or make clear to folks is that, you know, this hearing here is for aspects of the project that are under our jurisdiction and under our jurisdiction is stuffed within a hundred feet of wetlands or the lake in this case, some issues around stormwater management. There may be some bigger kind of philosophical questions around the project itself. And you know, I, you know, I want to give people the opportunity to ask those questions. We don't have the answers and we are not the board that is, that says you know, that this is the right project or not. You know, for where it is. 'cause projects like this tend
to raise questions like that. But there are representatives of the project team here who, you know, if you would like to have those questions heard, you can have them heard, you know, we will, I do reserve the right to kind of stuff that goes outta jurisdiction for us. You know, we got another big hearing to open tonight and to be talking about, you know, so I want to strike a balance there. So with that, I'd like to open this up for any questions from the public. What I ask is that you do identify yourself, name and address, just so we have that for the record. And, and we'll go from there. So if anyone has any questions, please use the raise hand,
hand function on Zoom or if you're here in the room and wanna ask questions about it, come on up and we can answer those at this point. Any questions? Dead silence. Dead silence. Well, I kind of, I misread the room. Oh, Mr. Ostroff has raised his hand. Mr. Ostroff, please. Speaker 13: I mean, I'm not gonna let you get away with that. Other questions first, Josh Ostroff. I don't have a connection to this project now, but did for several years when it was originating and it's good to see folks from the project team. So thank you for being here. And I do not want
to get in front of any abutters, so if there are folks who from the neighborhood who have questions, I would be glad to defer. But I do have a question about the fences and whether those are within the commission's jurisdiction. And, and, and I might've missed the first part of, of the consultant's presentation, so I don't know whether those were addressed. But the idea is to rebuild, replace the two fences that are, they're now further onto the abut property, but, and are, does the commission have any input
or specifications over those materials and the construction to make sure that they're, you know, suitable for the purpose and sturdy and will not suffer the kind of fate that so many of the ones have today. The last question I have is on October 30th, 2023, there was a public hearing mass COT 25% design public hearing. And I see that the path has been widened to be in the eight to 10 foot area with a little, you know, wider area, either side of the bridge for passing.
And I wonder what other changes may have been made to the design of the project. Not, you know, trivial but more significant since then. And I think that's all I've got. Great. I appreciate your time. Thank Speaker 3: You. Yeah, thanks Mr. Ooff. So yeah, fencing, I mean it's, we can provide some input. So Speaker 2: Technically fencing is considered exempt under the Wetlands Protection Act. Un given that it does not bar Wildlife passage. Generally what that means is that the fencing is raised anywhere from four to six inches off surface grade to allow
for amphibian turtle passage. But given that this is also a, a right of way fencing, there are certain allowances that DOT has for that particular aspect of the project. Speaker 3: So we've got some hooks that we can provide, have some influence on it. I think our, our intention, my intention would be to go to have this site walk to go take a look at this into, 'cause that will be a, you know, presumably open to the public site walk because we're not on private property. Yes. And so we can do that and then, you know, certainly entertain comments,
questions about fencing at that point. But yeah, we would have opportunities to provide some input and could see what leverage we have on that if there are opportunities to make things better, more durable. So long as they're advancing the interests of the, that are under our jurisdiction around wildlife and other things like that. Speaker 2: We may not be able to have a fully public site visit. There is a, a small section of private property along Archer Drive that we will have to traverse in order to get, unless we just wanna walk the sidewalk along route nine. Speaker 3: We could, we can, we could finesse that, that part of it.
I think as for the changes to the plan since the 25% plan, I don't know, Marissa, are you the right person to ask that question to Speaker 2: Jonathan? Maybe Speaker 12: Jonathan, I'll take that one. Yeah. So there are two major aspects that were more from the 25% onto the now 100% plan sets. The first of which was the direct result of the a butter meetings that we had Of lighting along the project area. That lighting is designed to limit trespass
to all of the abutters, but also provide security for those abutters along the path. That was a big request. In addition, it provides the proper lighting for the path so that it is a safe path along the entire length. In regards to the fence itself, that fence has been further detailed out. It's an eight foot tall privacy fence along the entire length of the, the abutters once it passes away from the abutters properties on their backyards. The fence is a black pot vinyl chain link fence for the length along Lake Chua path. And then as it approaches passes
over actually four different kinds of fence. My stake one is ever, the next fence is the steel picket fence at the town water treatment plant, which is mostly just a re remove and reset effort on that part. That's why I forgot about that one. And then the final one is, is to match in with the wood fence, the wood post fence that is the stockade fence that's part of the rail, rail trail at the very end. So those are the two big aspects. As Chris mentioned, we made some minor changes to the drainage as it advanced from 25% to, to final design
and in multiple locations just to refine that. And the rest is general refinement. A lot of the offset has to do with adding the lighting because we can't put light poles in the middle of the path. So we needed additional width for that. So that's where a lot of that additional width that you were, you were hearing about Josh came from. Speaker 3: Okay. Mr. Ostroff, does that an answer your question? Alright, excellent. It it does, yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Great. Ms. Henderson. Speaker 14: Hi, can you hear me? Yep. Speaker 3: Loud and clear. Speaker 14: Hi, Jan Henderson. I am at 34 North Main Street. This is fascinating. Thanks so much for your presentation tonight.
I just had a big picture question. This is my first meeting attending. I understand where you said a hundred percent plans. I'm just curious about the timeframe and, and just big picture where the project goes from here, Speaker 15: From the Speaker 12: Sure. So the 100% plan set was submitted to MAs dot just this past January. We're anticipating pending obviously this meeting and a few other things, securing the right of way and all of that stuff, advertising the project
in the first quarter of next year. Okay. And that exact date may vary a few weeks here and there. And then it'll have about a two year construction period. It'll be longer than that till it's finally complete, simply because when the landscape falls, we can't do some of the planting until that next season. So it won't look, it won't look picture perfect until a, a little bit later than that. Speaker 3: Great. Thank you. Jonathan. Does that answer your question, Ms. Henderson? Speaker 14: Yes. Thank you. Speaker 3: Super. David, please. Speaker 16: Hi, good evening. My name is David Dushka.
I live at 21 Rosemary Street in Needham. I bought a bike last year to commute to NA with a, a low carbon impact and I use the CRT every time I commute. I haven't driven to work since December of last year, so I've been, I've been commuting all through the winter. I appreciate the discussion on snow removal. I think that's a critical aspect here. The CRT has a number of areas that are, are lower or kind of sunken down and the town tries to do a little bit of snow removal and the snow gets piled to the side of the trail
and then when it melts and refreezes there's ice on the trail. And that, that after this last storm several weeks ago, that that ice did persist for several weeks. So I, I would encourage you to look at grading of the, of this, this new area to, to ensure that water will run off the trail and not collect and refreeze. I think it is possible to bike year round. It's possible to walk year round if we build the infrastructure accordingly. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. Speaker 3: Great. Thank you Dave. Appreciate the comment. Any other comments or questions from the public on this? Alright, so the next step in this is that we'd like
to schedule a site visit to go out and take a look at it. Yep. Just lay eyes on it and then we would come back here and pick up some additional, you know, those always inspire new insights, new observations, new questions from us. So why don't we go ahead and think about when we could do that. Speaker 5: Well, you gotta get the St. Patrick's Day snowstorm out of the way. Speaker 2: And just to clarify, would we be looking for HNTB staff to join us or is this just really for the commission to lay eyes on the project area given that we can't discuss or debate anything at the site visit? Speaker 3: Yeah, right. I mean I think having, having a staff, a, a representative of the applicant on site to be able
to just clarify things that we observe would be helpful. Okay. And so, yeah, I mean that would be my desire. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I don't wanna necessarily put HNTB staff on the spot. Maybe does the commission wanna offer a couple of options and then HNTB staff can figure out if they're able to provide. Great. I see Jonathan nodding, looking at calendar, I know this weekend is probably too soon. Would folks be available for a weekday site visit next week? Potentially, or, Speaker 3: I'm traveling the next 10 days.
Speaker 2: Okay. So I mean that takes us through to the 20th essentially. Exactly. So Speaker 3: Could we, I mean Oh, I see. So we would continue this to the 20th would be the intention, correct? Yes. Okay. I mean, what about, what about Saturday the eighth, day after tomorrow? Is that an option? Speaker 2: Potentially? Speaker 8: No. Yeah, I'm okay. In fact, I, I've kind of tried to walk it. It's, it's, it's not easy. Yeah. Okay. It's all, it's all Speaker 2: Flat. We could also, it is daylight savings this weekend.
We'll have more sunlight. We could do a pre-meeting site, walk on the 20th, do something at like five, six o'clock ish. I know that limits Jeff and other folks who are coming from the office who Speaker 3: Actually work for a living. I know, Speaker 2: But it might be the best option in terms of what Speaker 3: Day, the 20, the 20th. I mean, I could get, I could get out from Boston by like five 30 though if we, if I schedule a plan. Is that possible for you? Man? Speaker 8: It's possible. Speaker 3: What about 5:30 PM on Thursday the Speaker 2: 20th? I would say HNTB. Would you guys be able to do something prior to the meeting on the 20th at like 5:30 PM
Speaker 12: I'm sure one of us can. It would be, yeah, I could probably be available. We'll, we'll we'll figure it out though. Yeah. One, one of us will be able to do it. Speaker 8: It'll be, it'll be dusky to dark. Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's, what sunset right now is at I believe like 5 45 ish. We'll be gaining an hour. Speaker 8: Oh, so 6 45. Oh Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah. Sunset's 6 45 right now. So we'll be gaining an hour. So we'll still have a little bit of light. It's not gonna be ideal, but it won't be as bad as the 200 pond road site visit that we did. Yeah. Right. In full darkness. Speaker 3: Why don't we schedule that then?
Let's say 5:30 PM Thursday the 20th. Yeah. Park at the end of Hartford. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we can park at the end of Hartford or, Speaker 3: Or the water plant. No, we Speaker 2: Can't get any water. Nope. We can't access the water plant. And if there are commissioners, 'cause I'll have to email the three commissioners who aren't here tonight. If commissioners aren't available for that time, I could probably get out with folks and walk it at another time if we want to try that as well. So Speaker 3: Let's go Thursday. Thursday, March 20th, 5:30 PM Park at the cul-de-sac at the end of Hartford and then we'll walk. Yeah, Speaker 12: I will, I will note that if you park on, on, on at the end of Hartford, it will be very difficult to get to the other section, the larger section of it.
There is a fence that blocks you off. Yeah, Speaker 2: I'll send an email about, Speaker 3: About the end of Bacon Street parking Speaker 2: Logistics. Speaker 8: Yeah. Okay. Speaker 3: Okay. Claire will send an email, I'll Speaker 2: Send an email about logistics. Speaker 8: But anyway, we'll, we'll figure, Speaker 3: We'll figure it out. Speaker 8: Okay. Honda dealership. Speaker 3: So we'll go take a walk on that and then we'll reconvene here on, on Thursday evening, March 20th to answer additional questions and go from there. Any additi any last questions from anybody? One last one. Speaker 8: Telephone polls that I, those planning on being moved is, is, I thought I saw some poles like right in the middle where that, Speaker 2: Those might be the new lighting that's going in
for the pathway at Jonathan. Marissa, they Speaker 8: Look Speaker 2: Like, are you guys shifting any telephone poles as part of the project? Speaker 12: There are a few holes that carry lighting for route nine that are getting relocated. Oh they, they look like, like they look like utility poles in the plans 'cause they're just wooden utility pole with lights on them. Yep. Speaker 17: Okay. They getting relocated Speaker 12: And there are a couple old utility poles that were not fully removed from the CRT project that still need to get pulled out. Aha. Speaker 18: Good Speaker 3: News. Okay. Alright, with all that, I make a motion to continue this to Thursday,
March 20th please. Motion to continue. Thank you Jim. Is that seconded? Second. Thank you George. Any further discussion on that? All is in favor. Alright. Continued. Thank you folks. Appreciate your input. We'll see you on Thursday at five third, Thursday the 20th at five 30 and then we'll see you back here for the meeting Thursday evening at seven o'clock. That's the water. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Alright, next item on the agenda is I've got a storm wide stormwater management and erosion control notice of intent filed for 2 16 2 18 South Main Street. Lemme go ahead and formally open this in accordance
with Natick Stormwater Management and Erosion control bylaw Article 79 A. The Conservation Commission will hold a public hearing on a major stormwater permit application followed by Anthony Gagliardi. Two 16 to two 18 South Main Street, Natick LLC for property located at two 16 to two 18 South Main Street Map 60 lots, 36 A and 37. The proposal is to prepare two lots for an open space residential development including site clearing, regrading, retaining wall construction, roadway construction and drainage. Welcome. Speaker 19: Good evening Mr. Chairman. Good to see you Speaker 3: Of the board. Alright, so
Speaker 19: Commission Speaker 3: If you would go ahead and introduce yourself for the, for the minutes and then if you would just give us an overview of what's, what's on the table here. Sure. Speaker 19: Thank you again. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the C Commission. Claire. My name's Anthony Gagliardi. I am the managing partner of 2 16 2 18 South Main Street, Natick, LLC. We're the owners of said property on South Main Street. To my right is Edmund Han of SP Engineering. He's the engineer in the project and Omar Guzman is joining us on Zoom. He's the the lead civil engineer in the project.
We also have Steve Cosmos, our landscape architect, John Rockwood from Ecotech. He's our environmental scientist. He's also involved preparing the NOI for this project. And also joining us is Mark Arnold from Guard Consulting. He's a soil scientist who prepared the storm water pollution prevention plan for the project. So on that I will turn it over to Omar who will run us through the civil engineering assets of the project, storm water, utilities, et cetera. Speaker 2: Omar, would you prefer to share your screen? Speaker 20: Yes, please. Yep. So can you see it there? Speaker 2: Yes, we are seeing the plan. Speaker 20: So good evening everyone.
My name is Omar, I'm with Spoon Engineering. I'm just gonna go over the general site plan characteristics for this project, starting with the existing conditions plan. That's a little better. And just going over here with the existing site, it's as mentioned initially, it's a 7.3 acre combined area. It's mostly a vegetated site. It's has various slopes throughout, so it's speaking around towards this to my, to the left of the property, which would be the east, and then loping down to a vegetated wetlands to the west, which is de lineated here to the right
with the respective buffer zones. The property contains very little manmade structures, just having residential dwelling parking garage 4 2 16 and then having a driveway and a another dwelling for two 18. And just jumping in straight. Speaking about the development, the development is proposing to build 26 units consisting of six buildings. That would be three, three units. So triplex units. We have six buildings that are single units here at the back
and then have two more single unit buildings here at the front. And it'd be conveyed through the means of this roadway, which would be from the start, 26 foot, 36 and a half feet wide roadway comes up and then splits into essentially three parts going, having an access through the left. And the center would be, if you could see my cursor would be going around from the left and then also coming in through the center for the access to the units and then exiting through the right.
And these, this roadway, it's, it's mainly slope upwards and, and trying to match as much as possible with the site topography. So it comes up with a maximum slope of about 6% coming up up to this point than has different various, various slopes throughout peaking at around what would be midway through where the buildings are. And then pitching two ways with two different watersheds throughout the project. So, and I'll proceed with the generalities of the drainage
and water and sewer throughout the set. Just going over essentially mainly what the roadway is. So as mentioned before, we have a kind of a side by side with the profiles for this project we're looking at, you see it here is the red line is what the proposed scrapes will be at the center. So we've coming down from south main or minus 2%. And this is done to create kind of a catchment that would prevent from the run of ever, you know, collecting here and then going towards south main.
And then it would come up 6% up to this point. From there it would go about 5% to around the center of the left road and then coming down 2% all the way to the back. And then in a similar way, the, the center would come up almost 5% all the way to the center, then 2% down to the back. And in a similar fashion, the exit portion of the roadway would come, it would be here up 2% and then it would come down and then it would be exiting.
So along with this and this general base plan, we're looking at, you know, roadway and grading specific specifics. We have also two proposed retaining walls here, the larger one being about 10 feet in height. And the second one being about seven feet. We have the site contains a lot of ledge, which I'll get into later on. But we also have a cut of ledge at the back here to towards the east side of the property. For the roadway, we've included the details just going through the cross sections I mentioned before.
So for the entry being that portion goes up and then splits into three, we'd have that 26 and a half foot wide roadway entry section. And then it would split into sections that are 18 feet wide for the actual roadway. And then 23 for the portion that includes the sidewalk. Looking at the drainage of this project, the project was assigned to have essentially two sheds for the proposed areas. As mentioned before, you know, peaking at around right around where units 24 and 23 are. It's kind of the midpoint of that peak
of the proposed grade. The, the conveyance of the stormwater would be through catchment structures that would then be directed towards a system, one system at the front and then another system at the back, the system at the front consisting of underground cold tech units. And then also having a proprietary separator for total suspended solid treatments. The system at the back being compromised of bio retention basin, that would have also a proprietary treatment unit and then it would seep through and overflow in both cases at different points in the case
of an overflow towards the wetlands to the south for the bio retention basin and towards the east for the cultech units. And then just going through the plans here, we have the specific details for each of the systems, the code tech system being a pretty standard system of underground units. Then it would have that overflow, the sign to handle both the, the one inch as required by Natick plus the 120% increase of storage for the aquifer protection district.
As well as trying to reduce the outflow at the discharge points as according to the DEP requirements. And as for the, as for the by retention basin, same conditions being considered having structured overflows in the case of a larger storm event in or not a larger storm event, but an emergency event where the, if the system were to ever overfill it would have means of conveying towards the wetlands towards the south. And then looking at the sewer, we've, we've gone through this with the town engineer
and just the standard native requirements. Were having a, a water and sewer coming in for the units prior to the development. A connection was made for the sewage connection at South Main Street. So that there's an already existing connection there, which the whole project is connecting to the same thing as applying for the, for the water locating hydrants and also distributing the, the pipes along the roadway so that it can, you know, reach all the units being proposed. And again, similar to the stormwater,
we have the standard details as native requirements for the, the sewer and the, and the water along with profiles of these, which we could get into more in detail as we get into the questions. And then lastly, we have a, a general grading plan and then going towards what the erosion control. So the site does contain a lot of ledge throughout the site. We had a geotech engineer do some probe testing for the site and that helped us kind of get a rough idea of what the ledge was. But also for the, the general site,
we prepared this grading plan just looking at what the surface to surface comparison would be for both the existing and the proposed surface. And kind of just creating a legend just for a reference for both the commission and also the planning board to review and kind of see what the impact that's being proposed for this project. Along with this, we've also included the erosion in the Ian control plan. One thing I would note a Claire is that it's has a slight variation from the one we've submitted, which is just highlighting this yellow area, which is, it's been provided by a drilling
and blasting company, which the developer is now working with. Oh, great. So just to give and, and a rough idea of where this blasting is gonna happen on site due to that ledge that was found. The project is also proposing to have a super silt fence throughout the area that's gonna be worked along with a construction entrance and proposed stock piled areas. And along with these of course, we're providing the details for the, for the, the different silt fence and also in the protection for the existing basins at South Main Street. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Speaker 2: So just to clarify for the commission, this project will require a major stormwater permit as well as a notice of intent. Right. For the work in the buffer zone, John Rockwood has filed the notice of intent set to be opened at the three 20 meeting. Though the majority of the work is occurring under the major stormwater by, sorry, under the stormwater bylaw, rather than the wetlands regulations, the only jurisdictional area that work is occurring in is buffer zone. So there's no specific performance standards that the project is trying to meet. Speaker 5: Okay. There are two, what is it, two 16
and two 18 listed as road spots or what's there now Speaker 2: It's just two single family homes. So there's one single family home on Speaker 5: Approximately where would those appear relative to your access? Your proposed access would be demolished. Speaker 2: Yeah, so the, the home, the Speaker 5: Homes will be demolished. No, no, I'm just curious. I I'm trying to visualize it. I mean, you know, reading maps and things like that has a certain lack of reality. So Speaker 2: George, if you've driven down Patriot
bark mulch is right here. Yep. Actually right Speaker 5: Before Patriot. It's on a Speaker 2: Planet. Omar, I'm, I'm just gonna stop your sharing so I can do a street just to give, give folks a little bit of a, Speaker 5: That's on Sub Natick and the Patriot that's, that's near our friend there, Speaker 3: The owner of Patriot Park Speaker 5: No further north. Speaker 3: Mr. Ey? Yeah. Yes. Oh yeah, yeah. It's further. It, it's it's south of Mr. He, Speaker 5: So, yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. I need to share my screen. Sorry. I always, I'm looking at it so I assume everyone's looking at it. So to just give folks a little more context, the Okay.
Entry drive for the development will essentially be in the footprint of the existing house. Currently two 18 is accessed through a gravel drive off of the back of the Patriot bark mulch lot. So the roadway will come up through here through the narrowest portion of the lot and then up to the top of the hillside at two 18. Speaker 5: So you're, you're, you've got a major abutter, there will be Patriot, Speaker 3: Patriot on the south and then South Na Hills Speaker 5: On the north. You've got, then you've got a east potential blasting
area find there. Yeah. A lot of things have happened along there. Speaker 2: Yes. And it, it, the reason that the water and sewer stubs were put in is because the, obviously South Main Street was reconstructed. So there's the five year moratorium on that. I know you guys just got bill's comment letter last night. Yes. I think it's a lot of very similar things as to what's in my comments. I know I mentioned to Anthony early on in the process that the commission would likely be looking for a peer review on this project given the blasting
and the wetlands and everything that goes along with that. I sort of brainstormed with Matt before the meeting, just trying to make sure we're not wasting anybody's time with, I don't think that the, a peer review is not needed for the wetlands jurisdictional aspect. It's buffer zone. It's pretty cut and dry in terms of how that permitting will occur. I think that the peer review is necessary under the town's stormwater bylaw. Not necessarily you guys have provided the documentation to show how you're meeting the bylaw requirements. I think it's more just about sort of looking at those
external circumstances of blasting of temporary storm water management throughout construction, things like that. Things that the commission has maybe learned, unfortunately the hard way that need to be addressed during this permitting process rather than after the permitting process. Sure. Given the amount of area that's gonna be cleared, the commission has a real sort of eye on making sure that the project moves forward as smoothly as possible. Anthony, would you be comfortable with, I will put together a draft scope for a peer review, provide that to the project team in the commission for review and comment.
If we get to an acceptable point, I would issue that out to various engineering firms in the area. I do have to be a little bit selective with that, just to make sure we're not breaching any of the lovely Massachusetts ethics violations that we have here in the state. I would issue the request for proposals out to some engineering firms. We would get quotes back that would be provided to you. You and the commission would then discuss which quote to move forward with, if any of them are found to be acceptable. And then we would initiate that peer review process. I've, I've been through that before. Okay. I just wanna it, we also have some new commissioners, so not just for you guys.
So my thinking about the timeline for that is this is estimating two weeks out for responses from the engineering firms. Obviously we get responses back faster than that. We can move this a little faster, but my thinking is that we continue this hearing to the April 3rd commission meeting that will give us enough time to get the scope out, get proposals back, and then depending on the timeline, the commission can either discuss or we can have already chosen a peer reviewer prior to that four three meeting. And so John Rockwell, just since I know you're on the call, I think what would likely make the most sense is
to open the notice of intent at the next hearing and then also continue that to April 3rd to then do a, a large scale project update on the April 3rd meeting. That'll give you guys time to look at the staff comments. We'll get the peer reviewer involved and that way we're just trying to streamline that process. Speaker 21: I agree with that Claire. There's a lot of overlapping documents. Yep. Yep. Planned storm water, everything else is going to affect both. So they're gonna have to move together through this process. Yep. Speaker 22: Would you want, would you anticipate comments from
a peer review for that? Speaker 2: I would hope to have initial comments. It's obviously gonna depend on the timeline of getting responses back, but my goal would be to have a draft scope to you guys by end of day Monday next week. Okay. So trying to move things along as quickly as possible. Speaker 3: What that would also do is give us an opportunity to go take a look at the site, ice and water, snow, whatever, allowing, I think it would Speaker 19: Be good. It's mostly gone. Speaker 3: It's mostly gone. Yeah. I mean now it is, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think it would just be good. It would be good for that. Well, just, just one kind of basic question from my side is that, you know,
so there's up to 30 feet of material to be removed from, from blasting. Yeah. You know, was there thinking done around, you know, basically constructing the projects with kind of in alignment with what's there? Speaker 19: There was, but the issue with that was the slopes of the road became too steep for the planning board to be comfortable with. Speaker 2: Yeah. The maximum road steep in there, if that's Speaker 19: Fair. Eight. Our initial plan, this is, this is our third plan. Yeah, yeah. We're interested in the history of it, but our initial plan had some nine point half, 10, 10 to 10% slopes on the, on the roadway. Speaker 22: So Yeah. And we had to cut
and fill balanced on our initial plan where, not worth, Speaker 19: But, and we also had 17 to 20 foot retaining walls on, on the south side, on on the lower side. So we tried to balance the Yeah, Speaker 22: Yeah. Speaker 19: The, the slope, the walls and Speaker 22: Yes. But obviously with a, with a higher retaining wall, we had less of a cut, whereas now we have to lower the higher slope, the slope. So now we have more of a cut. Yeah. Got it. Yes. We, we had all kinds of back and forth with the planning board on that. Yeah. So this is what we have now is what they were, I think the only thing really
they were going to be happy with Speaker 2: And folks might recall who have been on the commission for a little bit. This, this project did file with us, I think at a very similar time last year and then was withdrawn because of the back and forth with the planning board. So this is the, the refiling of the permit. And just so that it's clear on the record, the commission did vote when the PI filing was withdrawn to waive the permit fees for the refiling. So those were waived. Speaker 3: That's all fair. Yeah. Good. I mean I think that, you know, just in for efficiency of time and all that stuff, I mean,
let's get the peer review moving so that we can see, I mean, as Claire indicated, when we see projects built on the side of a hill, we put a lot of scrutiny to 'em. Sure. 'cause we've, we've learned the hard way that they can, they can be problematic. You know, one of the questions that was in both Claire's notes would certainly have come up from the, from one of us and I think in the town engineer's notes as well as kind of the staging of the site prep. So that, 'cause when you clear an entire site like that on the side of a hill, then erosion control runoff, all
of that stuff becomes much more complicated and just much larger scale. Sure. Yes. And so we'd wanna understand what the plan is for that, to mitigate any of that. 'cause what we couldn't have happened, would we have any stuff running into the road? You know, I mean that, that that results in public safety issues and see, you know, stop work orders and all that stuff, which no one's interested in. Yeah. Speaker 19: Storm water management during construction is always important. Speaker 3: It's essential. Yeah. Yeah. So why don't we, why don't we do that? I mean, again, just for the purposes of efficiency,
let's get the, let's get the peer review going there. Let's schedule a site walk. Speaker 2: I was gonna say, do we want to, I know Matt, you're traveling, do we want to aim for like Saturday the 22nd? Sunday the 23rd? Speaker 3: That would be great from my perspective. I'm Speaker 19: Actually not around that weekend. Oh, okay. Nevermind Speaker 2: The weekend, the 20. Oh, I'm not around that weekend. I'm not. But you guys can meet. I was about to say I'm not Matt, are you back by the 15th or are you gone through the whole weekend? Next weekend. Speaker 3: I come back on Saturday. I got on holidays for a week. Come back Saturday getting a plane. Sunday. No, there you go.
Speaker 2: Go. Speaker 5: Okay. What have you got marked off on this, on this? Is there anything, you know, like a preliminary road direction in there? Have you, have you got anything marked off? Because some of us are don't work and you know, Speaker 2: So Speaker 5: Just pull up and walk around there and if there's anything to see there. 'cause that property is all yours now. Yes. Speaker 19: You're welcome to walk at any time. Speaker 5: So now you're up Speaker 19: Deer back there during hunting Speaker 5: Season. I mean now we can walk in in there anytime
we want to. Technically, Speaker 2: Just to clarify, the commission has the authority to walk on is not open to the public. Speaker 5: Oh yeah. And I just wanted to make sure that, you know, I wouldn't be walking into something coming out with 2, 3, 4 broken limbs. Speaker 2: So George, I will say I did walk this site with John Rockwood when we were doing the rad approval in, gosh, I'll the way back in 2023 now. Wow. It is a densely overgrown site. The, I mean obviously the, I don't think the residential homes have been occupied in several years at this point.
John and I were out there height of the summer. So obviously much different conditions than we have now. I would just, if folks are gonna be visiting the site outside of a full commission site visit, I would just definitely encourage folks to move slowly, move carefully. Yeah. And go with a Speaker 5: Buddy too. At, at least you can see with the, with the leaves down, you can at least see some direction. Speaker 21: And also the site is fairly steep and there's ledge Oh yeah. Irregular surfaces. So really be careful how you move around them. Speaker 2: So, and a decent amount of debris associated
with the two 18 house. If I'm remembering correctly, Speaker 3: George, you fall and, and break a leg out there. We're leaving you out there for posterity's sake, just Speaker 2: Saying we need him for yourself. Speaker 3: What about, what about something during the week of the 24th? We could do a Speaker 2: Week of the 24th. That would be the last week in March. I am open, I am out of town starting Friday, but anything prior to that, and again, the commission can meet without me as well. Okay. Speaker 3: What about late in the day on the 26th? Like a five? Jeff, we're beating on your calendar here, but Speaker 23: Sucks. Speaker 3: Like a 5:30 PM Let's see, we'll have,
we'll have enough light at that point to we go take a look at it at least. I mean, I don't know how far back we're gonna go, but we should be good to lay eyes just, you know, entryway compression where the main stormwater handling feature is gonna be. I think that for Speaker 2: Me, the, the 26 works for me. Speaker 23: What the 27th work, Speaker 3: 27th would work for me as well Speaker 23: Because the 27th I could probably arrange for myself not to be in Cambridge. So Speaker 3: Yeah, 27th would work for me in the afternoon. Five, 5:30 PM Yeah, that'd, would that work for you guys? Yeah, it works for Speaker 23: Me. Okay. That Speaker 3: Works for you. Okay. 27th, 5:30 PM Claire, you'll send these out
to calendar holds Speaker 2: And just the, I know the commission is aware of this, but the, the commission can't do any discussion or debate at the site visits. They may pose questions for you guys to then take and answer later talk. We can chit chat, we can chit chat, but there can't be any substantive debate outside of a public hearing. Speaker 3: But we may ask questions for clarification. Purpose be just like, okay, so why don't, why don't we do that? Any, any further discussion needed here at this point, I do wanna give people, and if there's anyone from the public who wants to ask any questions about the, Speaker 2: At this point, do not have any members of the public on the call. It's just the project team members. Great. And Doug.
Speaker 3: Alright. Any, any last comments from you guys? You know, we will go take a look at it. You know, I think combining the hearings makes great good sense just to, for efficiency reasons. So let's, let's proceed that way. We'll see you out there in the 27th and back here on the third and we'll go from there. Sounds great. Speaker 23: Let's time Speaker 3: Everybody, someone make motion to continue to Speaker 2: That also keep you guys out of the dam removal. NOI path. Speaker 3: Okay, good. Yeah. Right. Okay. Jeff just made a motion to continue this to April 3rd. Is that seconded? Thank you George. Any further discussion on that? Those in favor. Good. Alright. Thank everybody. Thanks guys. Appreciate your time so much. Thanks. Speaker 23: I'll see you. Speaker 21: Yep. So Claire, there'll be a brief discussion about the notice on the 20th.
Speaker 2: Yeah, John, I think maybe just a very initial presentation opening of the public hearing and then a continuation Speaker 3: For the notice of intent part. John? Yes. Yeah. And we'll just continue it. You don't, you guys don't need to show up. We'll just continue it to immediately to, to April 3rd. Speaker 2: Oh, you don't even want a, a brief presentation. Oh, Speaker 21: Well it's same presentation you had tonight, right? That Speaker 3: Was true. Right. Let's just, okay, let's just open it. Continue it. You guys don't need to be there. And then we'll, we'll, we'll pick it up and have a, you know, the real discussion on the third. Yeah. Combine both and move forward. Exactly. Thanks John. Excellent. Yep. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Thanks guys.
Alright. We talked about metal pond lane already. Yes, we, which, which Speaker 2: Is that there's nothing to talk Speaker 3: About, but there's nothing to talk about. We did all of our general business discussion. Speaker 2: Yes. We just need to jump back, George, before you got here. Ah, yes. I presented to the commission a draft letter of support. The town is applying to the FEMA brick program building resilient communities, infrastructure and communities. The Speaker 3: Funding for the dam, Speaker 2: For the dam removal to fund the construction phase. Speaker 5: Fema? Yes. What's fema? George. George. Speaker 2: So we are just looking for a vote from the commission
to authorize Matt to sign the letter of support if, Speaker 5: Okay. Have Speaker 2: Fun feel. Speaker 3: Thank you, Speaker 5: George. Don't give them your telephone or your address. Speaker 3: George, would you make a motion to, to authorize me to sign this on behalf of the commission? Speaker 5: I, I would more so. I'd love to make that Speaker 3: One. Is that second. Second. All right. I'll take, I'll take that as enthusiastic support from the commission. Any further discussion? All those in favor of doing it All right. We're good. Thank you. Alright, I think that's it for this meeting here tonight. Someone make a motion to adjourn, please. So moved. Thank you George. Seconded by Jeff. Any further discussion? All in favor. Alright.