 Hello, everyone. Welcome to the March 22nd meeting 2023 meeting of the Amherst Conservation Commission. We're a skeleton crew tonight. Let me take a look who's here. And so I have a few things to say in the first item of the agenda which is comments from the chair. The first is just we're going to take a short recess tonight from eight to 15. So if you're in the audience, and we suddenly go silent at eight to eight, we'll be back by like 810 and 815. And we have to do that because I need to step away and we won't have a quorum otherwise because we're missing commissioners tonight. The second thing is an update on the. Do I call it delineation? Appeal Aaron. Do you want to give us an update on Dan Brooke. Sure. So, some folks might be new to the commission because the appeal has been going on for about a year but you folks might remember 52 faring street. It was a delineation for an abbreviated notice of resource area delineation where there was a review. We did a peer review of the delineation. And it was essentially the order of resource area delineation was a denial because the commission disagreed with the resource area delineation that the applicants submitted and our third party reviewer. We observed that there were differences in the delineation from what was seen on site. So the commission denied the order, and then it went to DEP. There was, there was other issues associated with it to just to be clear. It wasn't just the delineation. There was issues with the watershed as well for determining whether Tanbrook was perennial or not. And the commission did determine that at that location, Tanbrook was perennial. The order went to appeal with DEP and DEP had some differences of opinion with the commission with regard to some of its decision. And, and then that decision by DEP which was called a superseding order of resource area delineation was appealed by the Amherst conservation commission as well as two citizen groups. And since that time, it had been an appeal process for about a year and during that time, myself, the town attorney and the representative for the applicant, as well as the two parties to the appeal had been in negotiations to try to negotiate a resolution on the matter. And the great news is that we did come to a resolution and what the resolution was was essentially that the applicant just withdraw without prejudice the full application, which means that the original decision issued by the commission and the superseding order issued by DEP were stricken from the record, essentially. And the part of that as part of that agreement, there will be two projects, one of them, which is 46 Farring Street, which we've been kind of continuing and continuing multiple times, because of the pending appeal. So 46 Farring Street, which is a single family house lot as well as a larger housing project, which will be off of North Pleasant Street. Those two projects will basically have the review of the resources reviewed based on the project footprint for each of those projects. So those will essentially start from scratch for the review process, but a great success. It didn't go to adjudication. We were able to negotiate through it and come to a solution that everybody was happy with so we are delighted with the outcome and looking forward to moving forward with the applicant on the projects. That's a really big deal a lot of work has gone into this process. So Aaron, thank you for all the hard work. I think in the end it's literally the best thing for the resourcing question. So great work. Okay. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to that seems like the celebration doesn't fit. What we've tried to do, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, thumbs up from Andre. There we go. Thanks Aaron. Great summary. I forgot some of the steps in there there are so many. And the last thing I wanted to talk about. You lose Alex. No, I'm here. Okay. The last thing we're going to talk about was just to check in on site visits. So it seems like attendance at site visits for hearings has been, we've all been struggling and I'm in no place to critique because I just straight up can't get to them. So Aaron and I were talking and given the amount of open hearings we have and given the amount on Aaron's plate. We're hoping that if commissioners have time to attend hearings if you can emphasize. I mean, attend site visits at all. If you can emphasize attending site visits for hearings for public hearings, that would be the most appreciated and kind of best use of your time so that we have commission eyes on hearing and applications that are going through public hearing processes. And then all the other site visits that Aaron does to kind of sort out sites get eyes on them for the first time. I think we're going to try to let just let Aaron do those on her time because her site, her schedule is so full. And if she comes up with something that is unclear or she feels like the commission needs to take a look at she will then ask us to attend a site visit for that. Because Aaron's plate is so full and also all of us are so busy, I feel like if any of us have time to attend site visits, we should attend the visits for the applications for open hearings. So I just wanted to like direct to that our energy and effort to that priority, if at all possible. And I know that there are a few hearings coming up that are going to be complicated and I will double down on efforts to get out there. Because it just, we need to have somebody with Aaron so that when we're talking about the status of these sites. Everyone kind of can work with an informed opinion. And certainly for the ones that are coming up related to the issue that I just raised the ones that are related to the the faring street appeal. It would be extremely helpful if we could get commissioners on the ground and and the other thing just to back that up is that if commissioners aren't available during the daytime working hours. If you have set up site visits in the evenings, it just might mean that I won't be able to be there, but I will make time to be there myself so it just might mean that we might not be there at the same time. But I can arrange to, you know, accommodate other people's schedules if need be if folks can't make it during the day. So if you have any sense to everyone, the message is just if you have time for site visits prioritize the applications that will be public hearings and the rest of them. Let's let Aaron take a first cut and if there's something that she needs clarification on or our opinions on, I would like to just trust Aaron to kind of bring that to us. And then we can make time to be there for those kind of additional site visits. Sounds good to me. Okay. Awesome. Thanks everyone I know it's it's I'm anticipating that things will ramp up here, especially given though that we really have no snow. So, and just with that, the applications on the horizon I think we will need to try to be there, and I will also do my best. Okay. I did I have anything else on my agenda. I'm the, I don't think so. Oh, last item sorry, this is a long update sorry everyone, the we Aaron drafted a letter of support for Beth and the DPWs Beth Wilson and the DPWs grant application for Robert at it's pot wine or pot, probably pot wine pot wine. Okay, sorry, on pot wine, and I read it and think it's great. I just wanted you guys to know about that I know Aaron uploaded in our folder if anyone has any comments please let Aaron know but if you have a chance to take a look at that and you don't have any, you know, unless anyone flags anything, Aaron will send that to Beth. I think Beth ideally wanted it by the end of the month but knowing how these grant proposals go she probably would appreciate it as soon as possible. And that was the last thing on my update list. Aaron did you want to give a quick update I know you and Dave have been talking about. Oh, directors report Dave. Sorry, do you have any updates for us. Sure I can go fairly quickly as I often do I know you've got a full agenda. Yeah, I think as Aaron's work ramps up and as as people become more active in town. So to, you know the department both in planning and conservation, you know things are, are going to get busy very quickly and I think they are, but a couple of just brief updates. One, Aaron and I are working with Nate Maloy one of our senior planners and other staff on the, on a notice of intent for the Hickory Ridge accessible trail this is the grant that we got through the state. We're going to go through the trail to the west of the clubhouse. I won't go into detail on it now but again, we're working on that and I think Aaron Aaron zeroing in on kind of what that no I will include. We're under a pretty tight timeline from from the Commonwealth to get that get that designed so you know we'll see more coming on that very soon. Notices of intent, we have a meeting tomorrow Aaron myself and Brad and Tyler to talk about, you know, trail projects. Our goal as as it has been the last summer or two or field season or two is to really kind of fix what we have as best we can. But there are sections particularly of the Robert Frost trail that we're going to be bringing a notice of intent to you for, you know, some new bridge sections and bridge and or bond bridge sections. So stay tuned on that Aaron has some good ideas and is working with Brad and Tyler to kind of guide them toward that process so there'll be a couple of no eyes coming to you from the department. So jumping around town. I heard earlier in the season that the folks in North Amherst were going to again, they were going to resurrect the pancake breakfast the puffer spawn pancake breakfast. I haven't heard anything recently about that but I'll see if I can, you know, ask around a little bit it's typically in May or the first weekend in June. So let me see if, if that is going to happen this year I hope it does it's a fundraiser for the department for staff at puffer spawn for materials and supplies at puffer spawn so that's a good thing. Aaron and I have also been working with the Hitchcock Center. It is salamander and amphibian migration time. We're working to try to we've we've pulled together a nice group with the Hitchcock Center our fire department police department and DPW. What we're trying to do out on Henry Street is make it a little safer both for salamanders and for people for families for researchers. So there's a potential actually tomorrow night into Friday maybe you and Friday for some movement we don't think it'll be the big big night, but the big night is coming. And our goal here is to try as I said make it make it safer so we're working with the police department. This year we may try on one of the nights maybe more to actually do a road closure and do a detour so that people are not interfacing with researchers and families walking on Henry Street. We're working on that and we're going to be using the flashing signals the solar flashing signals that say a message you know message boards that the police often use when when all of us are maybe going over the speed limit and they say slow down things like that. Or detour or road race or whatever. And we're going to try to make it a little safer out there because the last couple of years it's gotten a little dicey out there for for all of our people who are friends to amphibians. So look for some of that we will have an update on our website probably going up. First thing in the morning tomorrow. These are quick updates amethyst brook bridge I did see some new, a new concept for the amethyst brook bridge recall this is the bridge that we, we've been talking about for a couple of years no doubt through the pandemic, our building commissioner Rob more has been very generous with his time trying to work with us on a safer better more state and more sustainable design meaning let's build this thing once and let's not worry about it for 50 or more years. So I think it will require a new no I coming to you so stay tuned on that. But I think I think you'll be pleased with the design for the amethyst brook bridge. We do have some of the funding in place for that I also have some capital money some CPA money. We may work with the Castro trust and others if we need to do some sort of fundraising to make that happen. Obviously it's amethyst brook everybody loves amethyst brook. I think there would be, it would be a good fundraising initiative if, if we need to go in that in that route that route. Obviously field staff are working, you know on getting things going for the spring. One of the projects there to the projects they're working on with the Castro trust one is recruiting more volunteers to help us out on the trail so if you know folks who want to volunteer out there you can be in touch with Brad. At his email or his, or his phone I believe there is something on our website about volunteering as well. They'll be focused again on kind of fix it first so let's fix the Robert Frost trail let's fix those sections of Bob bridging that need need repair. I'm also working on Chris Valente, who was one of the staff members at Kestrel. Did I say Hitchcock before I meant Kestrel if I said Hitchcock. So at Kestrel. Chris Valente is an expert on sparrow Hawks on Kestrel's. So we're going to be repositioning some of our Kestrel boxes on town conservation land, and trying to do a better job of monitoring and doing some of our Kestrel's and see if we can increase the, the number of pairs we have nesting on town land. Let's see. I just wanted to mention that some land owned by Coles has come on the market in the last couple of weeks. It is out there we've been approached by a number of folks who live up near Atkins reservoir so there's, you know, a couple of parcels up near Atkins that are now on the market. Erin and I have talked about them were talking about them with other town staff I don't want to go into too much detail here. Actually in public, because it is, you know, if we are going to move forward or are interested in those parcels. It's better to have those discussions and and or negotiations, frankly, in private, because they're, they are on the market right now but suffice it to say that we're interested in some of the parcels. Some of them support our watershed work at Atkins reservoir the Robert Frost trail goes through some of the parcels so there's definitely some interest. We can only work with willing sellers, we can only pay appraised value of land. So, if we can't get to appraised value and the market rate or the asking price is well above that. There's no easy way for municipality or the Castro trust to bridge that gap. So, and the reason for that just so people know is that you set really unrealistic and unsustainable comps by doing that. So, suffice it to say I think we're interested. We're talking with Cindy Jones about these goals properties, and we'll see where that goes. Obviously, we would come back to you and other boards and committees in town. If we, if we get more traction on those parcels. Dave, can you just remind me so does the town of right of first refusal on the properties or most of them, there are properties in North Amherst near Atkins near Bridge Street. Many of them are in chapter. So, if, if there are moves the foot to sell them or develop them in certain instances we would have a right of first refusal. This is a very complicated process and not one that most municipalities in Massachusetts have much success with so I don't really put much faith in the right of first refusal. It doesn't work out well for land conservation in most cases. But anyway, you know, I've successfully used it a couple of times in my career. But anyway, so we'll keep tabs on those properties and obviously, you know if we get any traction we would need to come back to you and some other boards and committees in town and, and see if there was an appetite for for preserving those in some form. I think I'll end, we talked about some of the ADA work at Hickory, the solar project is is moving forward at Hickory Aaron has been doing a wonderful job meeting with and guiding dynamic the contractor working for amp on that project. You know we've talked about some of the benchmarks there the trees have been felled. So the next work will be improving the access road between West Bumroy Lane and the Fort River, working on the bridge across the Fort River, and then working on the access roads that are already permitted and and and well, well designed to get to the eastern and the western array, but Aaron is is meeting with them I believe we have our next meeting with them. It is a zoom meeting next week to go over kind of the next steps, but Aaron has carefully benchmarked what they need to do for each one of those steps so we're feeling pretty good about it we've got some feedback from people out there walking the land. We've posted signs about you know upcoming construction, both on our website as well as out there in the field so I think we should all get ready for that construction to happen in the next three to five weeks. So, I think I'll stop there, suffice it to say a lot of things happening out there in the field. In addition to wetland filing so it's going to be a busy spring. Thanks Dave commissioners any questions. And I guess this is a Dave and Aaron Colabo on the land management subcommittee kind of I know you guys had talked about what the charter for that looks like do you want to give us a brief update. I'll let Aaron jump in there. That's okay with you. Yeah, so Dave and I are still working to finalize the land use policy and it's a very long very complicated document there's a lot of comments on it so we're doing our best to get through it with a lot of other things going on. But in the course of that work happening. We basically we have to create a charge for the committee. And so in the board packets, there was a draft committee charge that Dave and I have kind of gone through several times to try to essentially create a directive for the land use subcommittee land management subcommittee so that we have some guidance as far as what the expectations are how long the committee would be in place. The deliverables of the committee to the board how the committee would sort of operate in terms of meetings and its functionality. So that is that's in your folder for your review we can go through in more depth if you want and or if folks want to take a look at it and see if you have comments. I'm thinking that in the coming weeks we're probably going to be moving towards finalizing the land use policy and so if anybody does have comments on the charge it would be a great time to go through those but if no comments come through in the next few weeks we're probably just going to be moving forward. I'm not going to question. I got a little confused between the land use committee and the land use policy. So you said you're going to be finalizing the policy. But on the other hand you're crafting a charter for the committee subcommittee. And then I got a little lost on comments. So it sounded like if no more comments come in on the policy. But then I think you were asking for comments on the charter. Can you just kind of tie that together please. Sure, so you're right there to two completely different tracks, the land management policy has been, we've been working on for the last year and a half and that's Yeah, so that that document has gone through the commission pretty thoroughly with comments and suggestions and now Dave is making his final pass through. Once Dave has made his final pass through. I'll take everybody's comments and incorporate them into the final document. Once it's in its sort of final form, it'll come to the commission during a meeting for public comment review and approval. So there will be a sort of official meeting review of that final document in its final format before it's approved. Now. The land management subcommittee. It's a wait a minute before we leave that public comment. You're talking about public comment during a commission meeting. Yep. And when would the when would the public have a chance to become familiar with it in order to get on and ask a question. So once we get the final, the final draft that will be for consideration by the board, what we'll do is post it on the website and it'll be on an on an agenda. And basically the public will be welcomed to, you know, contribute comments, et cetera, you know, make public comments during a meeting on it. And if there's any other final changes, those can also be incorporated at that time. But there will be a review during a public meeting of that now. While while we are proposing to do that, I just want to make sure that it's clear that the whole intention of that land use policy is for it to be a living document. And so when, and, you know, sort of in tandem, the land you the land management subcommittee goes through its process. There may be additional changes made to that document based upon, you know, management recommendations and plans that the subcommittee formulates. So it's really just like sort of a starting point for us to have moving forward. I just want to add something there, Alex. Just the document, the policy document rules and regulations document that you, everyone, you know, here on the call reviewed, and is now kind of on my on my desk. It's really a codification of, you know, airing really, you know, with fresh eyes kind of said let's bring everything together. Because things were all over the place. So it's really, in my mind, it doesn't break any new ground. It really pulls it all together in one place and we say okay this is generally how we've been doing it we the town. I understand. I understand that Dave you've commented on that several times. I don't know if there was going to be like a 30 day couple of public comment period, where somehow we had to deal with public comments that would come in on the draft before it goes final. Yeah, we could talk about having a couple of weeks, you know, having it be posted for, you know, two weeks at least, you know, meeting to meeting would be a fair amount of time to put it out there and we could, you know, we could publicize it on our website and and of course, you know, Erin could get that out there so if we had it out there for a couple of weeks, and then you all vote on it after the public meeting public here, I hesitate to say hearing I'd say more public meeting or public forum on them. And then that document is as final as it will get at that moment and then the subcommittee will then look at it as well as some of those topics that are in the charge. As I said, the document may change with some committee may come back to the full commission and say, hey, we would like to make recommendations to change the dog policy or policy or whatever. Thank you. Good. Okay. And so with respect to the committee charter I propose since I know Michelle was one of the main people interested in being on that committee I propose we send Aaron any specific feedback. We'll be offline and we can discuss as a committee on the as a commission on the next at the next meeting when hopefully Michelle can be here, if that's all right with everyone. Yep. Okay. Thanks Dave, thanks Aaron for everything I don't know how you guys keep it all straight. Okay, so I think we are ready for our first hearing. Our first hearing at 730 but before we kick that off. Thanks Aaron, I just wanted to break my mind. I just want to go through our general procedure for hearings that we find fair for all applicants and everyone involved. And that is, we shoot for 20 minutes per hearing. And within that the breakdown is a five minute presentation by an applicant or an applicant's representative. Five minutes of comments from staff and any likes site visit photos or updates from the commission. Five minutes for public comment and we ask that people identify themselves and their addresses and kind of interest in the project and then keep their comments and questions relevant to kind of our jurisdiction on the project. And then five minutes for any questions and discussion by the conservation commission. And with that, I should open this first hearing I believe, and Aaron would you bring in David shark and I see him. Yes. I don't know who the representative for dandelion energy is but let me read the RDA. Public meeting is now called the order this meeting is being held as required by the provisions of chapter 131 section 40 of the general laws of the Commonwealth and act relative to the protection of wetlands as most recently amended and article 3.31 wetlands protection under the town of Amherst general bylaws. I'm sorry I cut out there when I joined as a panelist but my name is Hannah qualsky I'm from dandelion energy. I'm actually in this meeting twice. The second version of me is for screen sharing I wasn't sure if you wanted me to share the site plans or if you guys have a copy yourselves. Oh, you should be able to screen share from this. My, my desktop doesn't like having logged in on two different devices. Oh, that's why I'm here twice. Okay. Um, yes, so we'll bring the other version of you in. Oh it doesn't look, Aaron I don't know if I have control over who's in and who's out my. Perfect. Wow. Thank you for anticipating those logistics. I had to do this a couple of times or technology didn't work with me so I try and have backups. But anyway, so this project there's actually two different aspects for the wetlands discrimination that we've asked for. The first one is the geothermal project which is what I'm going to talk about. And then there's also a storm drain replacement which I believe David will talk about when we're finished. So first, this is just a general diagram but what we're hoping to do here is install a geothermal heat pump. This is a replacement to, you know, a combustible furnace to heat and cool your home. The general concept is we drill a hole in the ground. The temperature of the earth is around 55 degrees. In the summer we can take the heat from home and put that into the earth and in the winter we can take the 55 degree earth and bring that heat into the home. There's a compressor inside of the heat pump furnace in the basement here. That can bring the temperature from 55 up to whatever you need it to be to heat the whole home. So the work that we want to do the geothermal wells unfortunately are within the 200 foot boundary of Puffer's pond and the 200 foot setback for Mill River. So you can see here, we are at closest 146 feet from Puffer's pond and 167 feet from Mill River. So we're looking for a request for determination to see if we need a wetlands permit to file a notice of intent for these boreholes. In my letter I mentioned that there are some guidances that may allow us to count this as a minimal work product similar to, you know, a underground line for a solar panel array, but ultimately, it's up to you guys to see what we're doing here. The drill rig is a standard drill rig just like you'd see for a groundwater well. The differences we're going much deeper we're going around 300 feet. We have a special setup which is a Kamakio drill rig. You can see here, these are the well casings that we, you know, advance into the earth, but at the mouth of the borehole, the Kamakio rig has a diverter. So we have to have the cuttings, water, soil, rocks, etc flow away from the borehole site instead of making a, you know, a mess at the site or needing to do a test pit. The cuttings then flow through a hose to a dumpster that we would position on site. Once the dumpster gets close to being filled, what we do is we put a pump in the top of the dumpster we let it settle a little bit so the, you know, thicker stuff gets stuck on the bottom. And then we put the water out into a silt bag. And that silt bag is allowed to slowly do water over time. When we come back to dig the trench from the geothermal wells to the home, we would then get rid of the sediment in the filter bags. Generally, the plan is the site again. There are too many site figures here. We have these two boreholes and a small trench going from the boreholes to the property. The trench will be less than four feet in depth. And it will connect with the foundation of the home. The plan is because of the way the property is sloped to put a silt fence around the lip of the driveway here. And ultimately the property slips away from Puffer's pond, so I don't anticipate having any runoff towards Puffer's pond, but the concern would be any, you know, soil that would escape any, you know, water that could escape during drilling or trenching would flow into the river and the silt fence proposed would prevent that from migrating downstream. Does anyone have any questions so far. Nope. Thank you. I just think. Andre has. Yeah, I do. Sorry, Andre, I couldn't see you. No problem. I can't see me either. Yeah, I'm just wondering. I didn't catch exactly where the water tailings that you're pumping out of the. Out of the dumpster, where are they going to end up. So we would most likely put them in the front yard to do water again so that the water does not run into either Millbrook or Puffer's pond. The silt bags the water slowly enough that we have not had an issue with them, you know, running far away from where we place them. So basically they just slowly do water back into the earth and the ground is able to reabsorb that water, but we can absolutely put down a silt fence, if you guys are concerned about that around the area. Honestly, I would guess we probably put it based on this map right here in the front yard I'm not sure if you can see my mouse, but the goal for that would be beyond the 200 foot buffer zone and we can do that with hoses. And you say that it actually just the waters at a slow rate or. Yeah, so, you know, obviously we'll put the bulk of the cuttings in that dumpster. And if the dumpster gets full that's when we would utilize that the silt bags, otherwise at the end of the day we're taking that dumpster off site, and we'll dispose of the soil and water, or, you know, cuttings off site. All right, thanks for your answer. Sorry I couldn't see you Andre any other questions commissioners. Okay. David. Do you want to introduce yourself and give us the overview of the kind of re water drainage reconnect part of this project. Thank you all for your time. David shark in here. I don't know whether there's going to be a purpose pond pancake breakfast, but there's rumors that there might be what we want to do in addition to the geothermal which I hope you all approve. If you've been on the site you know that it's it's really way downhill from the pond. As Hannah said and Hannah thank you for all your preparation as well. We also wanted to do at the same time there's a storm drain that goes from the basement of my house to the street into the storm sewer. I'm not sewer sorry storm drain and the pipe is broken. So I've got water backed up into my basement at times. So we're hoping, as you can see, that it would go from the south corner. Right underneath there that we would have dug up and then reconnect. They've we've talked to DPW the contractor to coordinate with them to hook up the storm drain under this mill street there. So that's the other addition we thought better to come to you tonight with both of them, then separately. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, commissioners any questions clarifying questions for David. I don't think I see any hands. Okay. Aaron, would you be willing to give us kind of share any site photos and give us a rundown from your perspective. I can't you're muted Aaron. Can you guys see my screen. Yeah. Okay. So this is standing in the driveway with my back to the house looking down so you can see the slope. This is facing toward the the waterfall and mill river so you can see that that's where the area of concern really is. If I just turn around to 180 and facing sort of the house and puffers pond is sort of at the top of that slope. And then again, turning and looking toward puffers. This is the view of the drain you can see where the the roof drain comes down that's the same corner I believe where the foundation drain would be coming from. And then this is turning facing down towards mill street you can see the two yellow flags on the trees these were the trees that were shown for removal on the plan that Hannah shared. And then this is the catch basin that the work would be tied to and then this is looking back up the hill so again you can see that slope. So my comments generally on the application so just a couple sort of housekeeping things are that the plan that Hannah shared shows erosion controls around the foundation drain work but the plan that was submitted to us does not. So just for housekeeping purposes if you guys could provide an electronic copy of that plan that shows the erosion controls around the foundation drain. The other thing is that I guess it was unclear to me in the application that water might be coming out of the dumpster it seemed that the water would be going into the dumpster and taken off site. But if water is to be discharged we would just need some detail on the filter bags that's being used and I'm not saying that we hold up approval for those items but I would definitely like to make receipt of those two items. So this is a condition of the permit that we issue or of the approval that we issue. I do have some conditions drafted for review. Jen did you want me to run through these or I don't. It's your call folks want to read them yourself. I think folks can read them they're pretty standard and the only addition would be just if the applicant could provide the updated site plan showing erosion controls and a detail for the filter for the de watering from the drilling of the geothermal well. I don't have any additions but commissioners if you can just take a couple seconds or minutes and read through those. Let me know if you have any surprises and in the meantime I'm just going to open this for public comment quickly. So if you are in attendance. If you have a question or comment about the application with RDA at 64 Mill Street. Please raise your hand. And I will bring you into the meeting to ask a question or we could comment. I'm looking through this list and it looks like they're the rest of the people for the rest of your hearings. And I don't see any hands raised. Oh, Dave, Dave, sorry if I didn't see that Dave. Thank you, Jen. I just had a question too many Dave's David's, I'll say Mr sharkin for Mr sharkin or his team, and maybe a clarification from Aaron I just wanted to ask a little bit about the broken drain connection. So I just wanted to, I guess in my mind confirm so. That is kind of a historic connection right that's kind of a grandfathered connection because normally just for the public and for the commission. New new work is not allowed to be connected to the public storm drain system so I presume this is something that. I know you mentioned probably meeting with our town engineer Jason skills. Could you say a little bit more about that and am I. It's been there ever since I owned the house in 1986 that there's always been a drain from there that connects underneath underneath the road there. So this is like the French drains around the foundation of the house going in. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's your understanding as well. Right, so I did speak with Jason skills about it he was familiar with it. He didn't describe it as an illicit discharge he describes it as one that the DPW was aware and familiar with. And that he basically had no problem with them being connected to it but I do agree with you that it's not a practice that we would really generally want to encourage, and I'm not sure that. Yeah, I was careful to say if it was grandfathered because it was right before exactly. It's not something we do today to allow homeowners to connect to that public for a lot of reasons but it was. It's really, it appears to be grandfathered because it was there. And I'm sure you can see that discharge pipe in the store in the catch basin on on Mill Street. So, I was just clarifying that for, you know, for my own sake but also for the commission and and anybody in the audience. So thanks. It actually comes up a lot with new construction and additions on houses people want to go oh I'm just going to send it all to the street. And we're really trying to move away from that with all the work the federal government is doing, you know to clean up stormwater that we've all been discharging in streams for, for decades. Thanks. Thanks Dave Zomek. Yeah, just following along I just the maps aren't on the on the screen right now you're not sharing them but it appeared that they run from the drain to the stormwater is a fair distance. And I just curious why there was a need to connect to the drain. Why couldn't why does, what's the, what's the need and the water be absorbed on the site. Meaning like could they just daylight the pipe and have it stay on site and not not reconnect to the drain. Rob, is this new construction, would this be considered new construction. We're not we're not constructing anything new it's a drain pipe that's like I said has already existed it just that it's failing and you know I counted on the professionals and I hired to assess it that they said it needs to be replaced as it is rather than, you know, just, you know, as you said Yeah, so if, if it's no longer the practice now's a good time to quit. And so my question is, if the water can be absorbed away from the house obviously, but the length of distance between that pipe from the house to the storm drain is considerable I mean it's not like it's just right there. And so there's a lot of ground between the house and the storm pipe storm drain. Yeah. So, could it be absorbed around the house and not have to go to the storm drain and therefore come in compliance with today's rules. Alex, yeah, Aaron, could you pull up the picture that shows the slope between the storm drain daylighting and where the catch basin is on the road. Yeah, the one thing I did want is there's a couple comments I just wanted to make on Alex comment. And I'll share the photo. So one of the reasons why they may have allowed this back then is because number one the slope it could cause erosion coming down towards the road and the second is if there is substantial water coming out of the pipe as sometimes happens and I know he's sort of on the downslope side of Puffer's pond so could be receiving some groundwater coming off of Puffer's and with Mill Street on the downhill side if there's a daily situation there. What we've seen in a lot of cases where some pumps are pumping water out is that it comes out onto sidewalks or into roadways and then freezes in the wintertime and causes a public safety issue. So that may be why this was created in the first place. It would be, I'm just, we were dealing with a very similar situation on Bay Road with some pump that is discharging into the roadway and so I'm guessing that that's why that this one was permitted in the situation. So I thought we had two things we had a drain coming off the roof. And then we had the sump pump pushing water out. Most of the vast majority of the water is coming all the time because it's coming from the pond. I mean the ledge from is right there so the water literally runs down and under, and then through the house and out again. That's the way that it's designed. A nickname for our house is a river runs through it. Because it's pretty pretty constant almost almost 12 months a year. Yeah. So, what I hear you saying is there isn't enough soil around the house to absorb the water. Once it's out of the basement. It's a lot of water. And I guess I would have the same concern that Aaron has is that if it's out on the surface and then it might go along the surface and then start eroding into the sidewalk in the street there. Yeah. I guess probably cheaper for me, you know, just just put it to daylight rather than pipe it all the way through. But. My concern. Is there another area of the house where the pipe could daylight from the sump pump that has the ability to absorb it. Well, it's not a sump pump. It's, it's just draining. It's a French drain that just it's constant. It's gravity. It's gravity. I have one around my house. Yeah, but I also can't really reposition it because that's where it's going. I thought I heard some pump in the conversation. It was probably me miss speaking because I wasn't sure what it was actually draining. Well, forgive me for asking, but this is the first time this project, despite what Aaron sent out. And my first question is, is this something we can avoid. All together by. So I didn't understand the background. And that's why I asked Aaron to sort of fill me in on why it might have been grandfathered. Good. Jen, it's sound hearing all the, the full picture there of all the groundwater, you know, both coming. You know, from around the house, but also likely from the pond. And then I think Aaron made some good points about, you know, the road potential erosion of the slope. And then the sidewalk is right there. And as she mentioned, we do have some places where groundwater or water from driveways and or other French drains or, or some pumps. In fact, I had that right on my street where we have water draining directly onto the street and it freezes on the winter. I mean, I'm kind of, I asked the question just so we would all better understand it. But I think I'm, I'm feeling pretty convinced that it, it makes sense to keep the, the historic connection there. But that, that's just my, my thoughts. Aaron, where does the, where does the storm drain empty into where's it go. The catch basin in that situation. I'm guessing that it probably, I mean, I'd have to look at the DPW utility data, but I'm guessing that it drains down towards the Mill River. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for the background. Great. Good discussion. All right, commissioners, any comments on the recommended conditions and with the addition of provision of two additional pieces of information from the applicant. Yeah. It doesn't have anything to do with wetlands but I'm curious if the stone wall will get reconstructed. I have to take a recess in three minutes and I just want to make sure we vote on that. Can we go ahead and get take any comments on the conditions and then come back to the stone wall if there's time. Yeah, sure. Stone walls yes or no question. Oh, it looks like double thumbs up. Looks like yes. Okay. All right commissioners any comments on the recommended conditions. No, looks good to me. Okay, so we're looking for a motion. And you can just reference the listed conditions. I moved to issue a positive determination under the wetlands Protection Act under the town of Amherst general bylaws. I moved to issue a negative determination under the wetlands Protection Act, checking box three with the noted required conditions that are listed here. That's a second from Cameron voice vote Cameron. Hi. Andre. Hi. Alex. Hi. Hi. David Hannah thank you for your time and the great information and explanations. Good luck with the project. Okay. Thank you for your time I'll appreciate it. And I see you back. See you back in what quarter past. Yeah, I think we should just break now if that's okay. And I think we can go till 10 past so we can keep things moving if that's all right with you guys. So I'm just going to like turn off my camera and mute and I'll be back at 10 past eight. Thanks everyone. And just so people in the room know Jen has to take a break for a moment so we're just taking a quick 10 minute recess will be coming right back. Are you going to stop recording. I can't stop the recording because if I do, it won't let me it'll just end the complete meeting. So I'll just continue recording until we reconvene. Nobody will ask us so where's the missing tape. Exactly. But I'll be I'll be here so I'm going to minimize my screen would you just say something when she comes back. No problem. I'm back. Thanks. Hi Cameron. Hey Aaron. I'm wondering if we can talk just briefly after after the meeting. Had a suggestion or a question actually. Sure. So do we just stay on or what. Whatever you're most comfortable with. We could if you if you want to ask it not on on record we can. I can stop the recording and just stay on for a minute and we can talk then. All right. Sounds good. Okay. Thanks. And I think I'm going to drop off once we're done with the hearings. Okay. I feel pretty up to date on everything else and I think front loaded my comments so hopefully that's okay. Okay. Yeah, I don't. I think the only one item might be the. UMass relocation of the storm drain outfall. And I don't think that that is a very lengthy thing, but if we were to approve it. We would probably need a quorum to do so. Okay. Maybe we can do that one first then. All right, Alex, are you back with us. I'm here. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. So. I think we can thanks everyone for that break. I think we can move forward with our seven 40 hearing, which is an RDA. Wetland Wendell services on behalf of Donald. Excuse me and Kathleen. You know, I'm going to have to ask about that one to turn. I think it's Tiagno. Tiagno. Yeah. I think that sounds better if the work proposed to construct a 16 by 24 studio addition to existing residents at 50 wildflower drive is subject to the Wetlands Protection Act and municipal wetlands bylaw. And if you could bring folks in while I open the hearing. Of course. This public meeting is now being called to order. This meeting is being held as required by the prisons of chapter 131. Section 40 of the general laws of the Commonwealth and act relative to the protection of wetlands. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm amended. An article 3.31. Wetlands protection under the town of Amherst general bylaws. Andre. Just sorry, just a quick clarification. I thought that the seven 40 was on. 50 wildflower drive. What did I say? I'm sorry. Oh, the second one. We just skipped one is what I'm saying. Oh, we did. That's okay. It's past seven 35. So we can just switch the order of them. It's completely fine. But thank you for pointing out that we. Thanks. Sorry about that. I think these will both. I mean, I'm sure there are things to discuss, but. Sorry. For the swap everyone, my bad. Okay. Ward. Hello. Hi. Will you be giving us a project overview? Yes. Can Aaron screen share the copy of the plan? Yes. Let me just get to the, you just sent me the update. So let me just pull that one up. So the project is for the construction of a. Studio edition. Within the buffer zone to an intermittent stream. It's was part constructed as part of. The sub division way back in the day. Amherst woods says drainage easement up there. There's a. An intermittent stream with rip rap banks. And you can see the wetland flags a one a seven leaves that concrete head wall. And most of the area between the stream and the proposed edition is lawn and relatively flat. I was unaware of your new bylaw. Requirement that you mitigate any impact over 20% within the buffer zone. So we're proposing. A planting area of 500 square feet. At the edge of the lawn that showed on the site plan here. And we're proposing to plant 20 shrubs in that area. So, um, High Bush blueberry, Aeronia, Shad Bush and winter berry Holly. Most of the work is going to be accessed from the existing driveway at the bottom of your plan. That's where the concrete trucks would come in, but, um, like to have potential access if we need it from Fox glove lane. So that's why we put the silt fence. To give enough room for machinery if we need to access from Fox glove lane. The other thing that we discussed at the site visit was to have a small area of, um, Topsoil stockpiled, which is shown to the right of the way you see the studio edition, which will be covered with a tarp. Just topsoil any other material is going to be sand and gravel will be removed from the site. So we're, we're not any closer to the intermittent stream than the existing single family home. Um, we're outside of the 50 foot with the work. The construction activity will be within potentially within 50 feet on the lawn and any disturbance to the lawn will be restored to one other than that, um, Mitigation planting at the edge of the lawn near the intermittent stream. Okay. It's a great overview. Thanks. Um, commissioners, do you have any clarifying questions quickly or Aaron gives us her. Run down. Looks good. Hey, Aaron, would you be willing to share any site photos? Yeah, that's the area right there where the studio edition will be right in there. Yeah. And that's the one. And you're muted. Very sorry. That was a good collaboration though. Yeah, I'm like talking and it was like words coming out of my mouth. Um, yeah. So this is the area of the sort of restoration where the plantings would be. There's already a natural tree line there. Um, so. It'd be nice to, um, Put the plantings in and reduce the lawn a little bit along the edge of the intermittent stream to compensate for the additional, um, structure area. This is another view of the, um, you can't, you can't actually really even see the, the, um, Swale from this view, but it drops down right behind this tree line with the, where you see that mature tree and these, um, Rhododendrons, it's right behind that. And then this is looking out towards Fox glove and then back to the, um, Swale looking toward the house. Um, I did talk with Jason skills briefly about this and the home owner. Um, I think that there is some, um, Um, Suggestion that this was actually constructed as a stormwater conveyance back in the early 80s to capture stormwater and direct it away from the homes. Um, But even though it was constructed as such with, you know, Riprap armoring, there is flow in the stream. So it still does meet the, um, Definition of an intermittent stream. Yeah, I didn't follow it upstream, but if you could go back one photo. Aaron, if you can, um, If you could follow the stream leaves the site, there's a little bit of a fringe of a bordering vegetated wetland down there, jewel wheat and stuff. And I'm sure if you follow the stream up, you're going to find little patches of BBW, which would make this jurisdiction as an intermittent stream, even though it probably was man made. Um, Given that, I think this is certainly meeting our requirements of the bylaws kind of as proposed. And can you go through the plantings list again? They were all natives, I think. Yeah, it's all natives, all natives. So it would be Shad Bush, High Bush, Blueberry, Winterberry, Holly, and Aronia, Chokeberry. Got it. Okay. So 20 of those. And, um, I think the applicant is going to, it's not going to be like a line. They're going to fit them in where there's, there's rhododendrons in some places and other things. So it's, it's not going to be like a perfect strip, but they're going to plant them, you know, where it makes sense. Okay. That sounds great to me. Aaron, did you have any more info? So Ward, um, it's total, a total of 20, and it'll be a mixture of the three varieties. And, um, if we could just make sure that the, the plantings are, um, you know, you know, decent size plantings and not just sort of seedlings, but maybe like a, um, a 12 inch pot per, um, per planting, that would be preferred just to ensure its success. Um, I have drafted orders of conditions in the project folder for this one, um, the standard boiler plate for residential projects, as well as, um, just some site specific, um, uh, conditions. Um, I know that, um, I, I'll open it up so that folks can have a quick look at what the, um, special conditions are the standard are just our boiler plate for residential projects, which are pretty standard, um, like pre-construction meeting stuff, not crossing the, um, wetland with equipment and that type of, um, condition. If folks want to just read it while you do public comments, similar to what we did previously, Jen. Yeah, that sounds perfect. I. So I guess I'll just say that. There are some surprises, um, that would be great. And in the meantime, I will double check. Um, if anyone in the, any members of the public in the audience have questions or comments about. What was our 740 RDA? Um, and that is a studio addition to existing residents at 50 wildflower drive. You could raise your hand. Last call. 50 wildflower drive. Questions, comments. No hands. Aaron, were you going to say something? Yeah, the only, the only condition that I was a little bit. Sort of unsure about in this particular case, just because it's, it's a lawn right down to, you know, this. Small native strip where they're already putting plantings in. You know, generally when we do a restoration area, we'll have some sort of requirement for boulders as a sort of, you know, restriction for, for mowing. I am a little hesitant in this case just because of the size of the yard and also because, you know, if they chose to plant more or expand that strip that it's, you know, the boulders might be restrictive there in terms of. The wetland itself because it's, you know, so close to the, to the swale. So I guess I would just defer to commissioners whether you think there should be some sort of a permanent demarcation or boulder. Or fence line or something put there to protect the plantings. But that was kind of, that's the only one that I was a little unsure about. Yeah, so my opinion on this is, I think a border is overkill in this case for the reasons Aaron mentioned, but also it might be more disruptive to put boulders or a fence in. Then just the plantings, I mean, if we're talking about 12 inch pots, those could be hand kind of dug and installed and putting in boulders would require some equipment to run back there. So that's my read on this site, but I'm open to what commissioners, commissioners have strong opinions on this. Hope to hear it. Not seeing anything. Yeah. I don't see a need for it with, with such a short distance. Yeah. Great. Thanks, Andre. All right. Well, I'm commissioners. Does anyone have any comments on the conditions or any final questions? Otherwise, I'm Aaron, if you would share the, your PowerPoint. So we can make a motion. I move the issue of positive determination under wetlands protection act under the town of Amherst general bylaws checking box five and a negative determination under the wetlands protection act checking box three with the noted required conditions. And just sorry, just to clarify quickly for the applicants and negative determination when it's a request for determination is. Good. It means that we're not asking for a full, for a submittal of a full notice of intent application. So just to clarify that that can be a little misleading. Okay. Sorry commissioners. We're looking for a second. Second. Second from Alex voice vote Cameron. Hi, Andre. Hi. Alex. Hi. And I'm an I. All right. Diagnose. Sorry. I butchered your name. Thank you for being here. Ward. Thank you. Have a good night. And Ward is staying on, I believe. Thank you. Yep. Sorry. I'll get the right hearing this time. Aaron, will you. Bring in the applicants. Representatives while I. So this is our 735 RDA. When the wetland services on behalf of Marvin and Donna Spence to determine if the work proposed to install a waterline service to existing residents at 597 East Levitt Road is subject to WPA municipal wetlands bylaw. This meeting is now called to order. This meeting is being held as required by the provisions of chapter three. The general laws of the commonwealth and act relative to the objections of wetlands. As most recently amended in article 3.31 wetlands protection under the town of Amherst general bylaws. So I see words here were. The Spence is planning to join. No. Okay. They're down in Rhode Island. Okay. So, and they're not particularly tech savvy. So. Okay. Okay. They've got an existing well that apparently has a lot of iron in it. It's not particularly good, which I know is a problem. We have the same thing. We're at my house. We have a distiller that we drink distilled water because there's so much iron and manganese in the water. So what they'd like to do is to run a one inch. Waterline from. The existing water main. On East Levitt Road. To the existing single family at home. And they've got a lot of iron in the water. And they've got a lot of iron in the water. And they've got a lot of iron in the water. Through. The existing lawn on the property. And the big, in order to do that, they, they're proposing to do a trench. Two feet and whip. And four feet. Deep to get below the frost line. As you're looking at the plan to the right, you've got a shrub swamp bordering vegetated wetland that extends into the lawn. I've driven by this since the 80s and that, that pond you can see from the road there that's an obvious man made pond. Which may Aaron and I were talking about, I don't think maybe it doesn't have an outlet. So the water level fluctuates greatly in it. But the proposal would be to have sediment and erosion control to the right of the trench. Before it crosses the driveway and to the left of the trench or north of the trench after it crosses the driveway based on the slopes to protect the wetlands to the south and the pond and the BVW to the north. The big issue that we discussed, well, it may be other issues, but one of the issues was the water table is fairly high and there were a few pits that were dug to make sure that the proposal route was not going to hit bedrock. And as we observed the other day when we were on the site, the water table is about two feet down in the lawn area. So we discussed inducting the work when the, when the, when the ground, when the conditions are dry. So I told Marvin Spence that which, you know, he's ready to, he was ready to have it done yesterday, but he understands that it makes sense to wait. And otherwise, then we're going to have to do some kind of a dewatering plan and, you know, this, we just wait till the water table is down below four feet. Then we don't really have to worry about that. His contractor said the work would be done in a day or a day and a half at the most. So basically it's just, this is looking right at where the water line would come from. You can see the test, one of the test pits at the bottom of the photo and one of the test pits, yeah, right there. So that's where the water line would go. The erosion control would be to the left in this photo. That's looking at the shrub, shrub swamp wetland. And I don't know if you can see the flags on that one. I don't know. You could see the flags where it comes into the lawn, but it does come into the lawn. I can't, I don't see the flags, but they're right there. I did see pin flags in the lawn. You can kind of see where the wetland is just based on the change in the color of the vegetation there. So that area had hydric soil. So I flagged that in as, as a wetland. Oops, I'm going the wrong way. Facing the house. Yeah. And there's the more, more test pits crossing the driveway and then going up to the house. There's the pond. Yeah. And just. I didn't have any problem with what's proposed. I did put some conditions in the. In the motion similar to the last where, you know, suggesting that the water table be low, or that if they do hit groundwater that we have to come up with a dewatering plan before they can pump it. And also because of the proximity to an HESP area that they should be doing just a quick sweep of the construction area and make sure they don't have any. Wild life in the area before construction, but I think that's something that the contractor could do. Yeah. The area, the area is kind of excluded from the natural heritage and endangered species area. But as Erin and I discussed the species that's probably in the area, it's possible they could use that pond, even though that area is not mapped. So it makes sense to have the contractor aware of that. I believe if that's the pond, I think it is my daughter and I always stop there to see baby geese. Yeah. Okay, Alex, do you probably have a serious question or comment? No, it's more of a construction comment and kind of outside our jurisdiction, but to protect water lines from frost. Consider putting firm. Insulation board over the top. I was told last night. That that has been adopted as code. For houses. I don't, I didn't check it, but a friend of mine as a contractor. Told me that round a campfire. But I've used it in my own cabin where I want to minimize depth of to frost and I just put in. To, to, I think it's two inch firm. Filled insulation. Well, I'll, I'll, I'll tell the applicant that because it's possible. If he hits area where he can't go below four feet, that that would make sense to use that. Yeah. And the contractor can probably talk to him about it and. Yeah. Works. There's a kind of relationship between inches of foam. And reduce depth to frost. That's all I had. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. All right, commissioners, any further questions or comments? Otherwise we're looking for a motion. Jen, we should probably just check. Oh, public comment. Sorry. Commissioners read the proposed. Conditions and I'll check for public comment. Thanks, Aaron. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm a member of the public in attendance for. This RDA for five 97 East Leverett road. If you could raise your hand. Any questions or comments? Last call questions or comments on. RDA for. Five 97 East Leverett road. Not seeing anything. Commissioners. Any final comments or questions? Otherwise. Emotion. I can do that. Okay. Thanks, Alex. I move that move to issue a positive determination. Under well ends protection under the town of families, general bylaws checking box five. And a negative determination under well ends protection act checking box three. With the noted required conditions. Seconded. Okay. Thank you. Alex. Hi. Andre. Hi. And I'm also an I. Thanks, Ward. Thank you very much. Have a good night. You too. Good luck to them. All right. Let's see if I can get the next hearing right. We've done seven 40. Oh. So that. So this one's just a continuation. We're just continuing this to the next meeting. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have a motion to continue the. An UI for. 47 fearing street. I second. Oh, I need the motion. I thought you just gave one. Yeah. I moved to continue a public hearing to four 1223. At seven 30. And this is the hearing for the SWCA for. 52 fearing street. So I can do. It's 52 fearing street LLC just for a record. 52 fearing street LLC. 46 fearing street. Thanks, Andre. Okay. Voice vote. Alex. Hi. Andre. Hi. Cameron. Hi. Okay. What happened? What's next. So I think. Oh, the last one is 21. 21 East. Hadley road. Okay. Yeah. And this should be a relatively straight forward one as well. I just promoted Steve Vano to the. Okay. Panel. And this is, and this is our first time. We were going to talk about it last week, but we didn't last two week, last meeting that we did, right? Correct. Well, let me open this too. So this is the RDA. For in green gardens and on behalf of Steven and Stacy Gordon. We have a panel of witnesses. On behalf of Steven and Stacy Gordon. I have a panel of witnesses over at 21 East. Hadley road. This public meeting is now called to order this meeting is being held as required by the provisions of chapter 131 section 40 of the general laws of the Commonwealth and act relative to the protections of wetlands. As most recently amended in article 3.31 wetlands protection under the town of Amherst general bylaws. Hi, Steve. How's it going, everybody. Good. So if you would give us a quick introduction of yourself and what you're doing. So my name is Steve Viano. And I am here on behalf of. Of the homeowners of 21 East. Hadley road, Steven Stacy Gordon. And so we're looking to do is I was here about. And I believe June was the last time that I, that I submitted a WPA. And that was to do initial clearing at the property to, to remove a large overgrown area on the left hand side of 21 East. Hadley road. And then since it was the, everything, all the brush was removed, we stabilized the area. And then now what, and then we also proposed during that meeting, future work that would then allow us to go ahead and, and replant the area. At the property, the, the comb owner, their long time at Amherst resident. And they've came into this property now and they did major innovations inside of the house. And now they're looking towards the outside landscape of the property. And in doing so, what they're looking to do is be able to, to enhance the landscape around their, around their house. And with that being said, there's, there's a lot of planting that, that is proposed that we'd like to do. And what we would like to do in addition to the planting is we would like to do some hard scaping. And what we're hoping to do in terms of a timeline on the project is once we get approval, we, we, or yeah, once we, once we get approval, we would like to, to be able to get started as soon as possible and be able to restabilize the, or do what we have to do and then restabilize the area by Memorial days when we'd like to have everything planted and done in all set. So looking at the property right here, that Aaron just pulled up what we would like to do. So there's a, if you're looking at the back left of the main residence, there is a Goshenstone patio that was present with the, with the original home. So what we'd like to do with that is we want to resurface that patio. And if we, once we look at the top layer of it to put new base in, if that patio does need a little bit more help, a little bit more help base wise, we'll, we'll stabilize it correctly and put proper base material in then going around towards the front of the house. There will be a short little, little wall just to make a small planting bed in front of the house and some steps that, that then go up to their new addition that they had put on the house, which they applied for a permit for through the builder. That was a, that was a while ago now though. And then to the right of that, there's Goshenstone wall that was present that that did, that was falling apart. And what we'd like to do is reconstruct that wall and then also extend it approximately 10 feet just to wrap around to a portion of the front of the house over there. We want to end the wall into a couple large boulders, just for aesthetic purposes. And then we'll talk about the planting plants for a little in the, in the next picture that we bring up. So this is one of our bigger questions is with the driveway. So the current driveway is a, is an asphalt circle that then leads all the way out to the roadway. And what we would like to do is make that circle a little bit smaller. So it's about 60 feet wide at the widest point between the front of the garage and the front door of the house. So we're going to shrink that down to, to 50 feet and then have a direct access rate into the garage for the homeowner. So we'd get rid of the circular portion of it. And it's currently an asphalt driveway. So what we want to do is put a permeable driveway back in. So with that being a permeable driveway, we want to construct it out of a cobblestone border and then have the infill of that driveway with, with pea gravel or a, or similar roundstone. That's about three quarters of an inch. And we want to, so the, where the garage is. So there's a line that just makes it a little bit bigger, but though that's nothing that, that was just the rendering had it had it off a little bit when we did the first rendering. So, so, so that's just to account for the actual size of the garage. And then we want to just expand a little parking area right to the side of the garage. And then the main question that we had as well was to be able to move the driveway over to where the original driveway was, you could see where the silt sock lines are, where the, where the current entrance is, we would like to move the driveway to the other side of the tree. So then it could follow along the other trees of the driveway to make more of a grand entrance into the property. With that being said, we would make sure that we are, we're away from the drip lines of all the trees and we staked everything out to on the property just to kind of get a little bit of a feel for what that would look like. And we think it also makes an easier entrance into the, into the property since it is the second house in from a main road. You get a little bit better, better visibility coming around the bend as you, as you come from the, from the main road over there, which is West street. What else. So that, okay, so that's that. Then what I did was we made a base map for the planting zone. So we want to put a lot, a lot of plantings in for the property. So the best way for me to be able to describe it was, was breaking it away into zones. So zone five. I wanted to start with sets on the left hand side of this map. Zone five. So to the left of zone five is where the wetlands are, or there's actually wetlands on both sides of the property, but the zone five is standing water wetlands. And then on the other side of the property is the, the mill river. The four river. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So then this, what we want to do in zone five is reestablish a wetlands border. We want to do that by, by establishing multiple different sizes and varieties of birch trees, just for aesthetic purposes and then also to install some red twig dogwood and on the edges of the property, some other, some other native shrubs. And then go into zone four. That's the, that area is where we removed shrubbery. That was presently there. That was overgrown. So in zone four, that is what we want to do is a, an evergreen windbreak all native evergreens and then zone three AMB. So that's the driveway plantings or the entrance way plantings. So in zone three B. There is two large maple trees there already. So I don't imagine us doing, doing too much in terms of planting underneath them, besides maybe some small shrubbery. That's shade tolerance, such as murder dendrons. Then on zone three A that's our, our driveway entrance or our house side of the driveway. That side we want to do mostly lower shrubs, things like inkberry, blueberry, winterberry, things in the islets and the Holly family that give us some evergreen foliage as well as. Giving us, giving us aesthetic appeal to the property. Zone two is the, is the, is the street view of the house, the planting side at least. And in that area, that's also a shrubbery and some smaller trees, just because it's, it's closer to the house. And that's also said with zone one and zone six, zone six, we're going to establish a gradient into the, to the wood line using shrubbery as well. And then I think that's pretty much the overview of all of that. Yeah, I think that's everything. It's very thorough. Thank you, Steve. All right. Erin. Commissioners, any clarifying questions for Steve? Well, that's all fresh. I have a question. Yeah. Go ahead, Alex. Forgive me. I'm having to go back. And would you remind me again, I know where the wetlands are on the left. And you said that they're open water. Where is it on the right? So on the right, that would be the, the Fort River. That's across the street. I just couldn't see it on the drawing. But I, and I haven't driven by it. So I don't know. Yeah, it's just within 200 feet of riverfront. From the front of the house to the, to the edge of the street. I don't know. It's about 120 feet. When I, when I checked it on GIS list. Yeah. So would these plantings be. Mulched in between modem between. Grass. So, so in the front area of the property. To the right hand side of the driveway. That is a, we would like to do mulch in, in all the planting beds. We would like to do mulch. We would like to do mulch. We would like to do mulch. We would like to do mulch. We would like to do mulch. We would like to do mulch. We would like to do mulch. And this is a. We would like to do mulch. And then all the planting beds. And then we'll have a lawn. And so where that snow is right there. So all that will be long space leading up towards the house until we, we reach the house planting areas. Then everything on the left-hand side of the. There you go. On that side of the property. So as you get deeper. So right where that hemlock is there will be a little bit of grass over there. do is on the left hand side of the property we'll keep mulch in the beds there and then another thing I forgot to mention as well is off of the back of the property so behind where that hemlock is probably about 50 feet that's where the wetlands where the left or what we were mentioning the left hand wetlands are we do want to reseed the bank of those wetlands as well with the same native mix that we used when we when we did our first work near the wetlands as well thank you do you want to just give us the run-through of these photos Erin I think yeah yeah I mean we're pretty familiar with this site at this point because this is I think the third RDA we've seen but front of the lot facing east Hadley Road from the driveway turning towards facing the house this is looking back toward the wetland the the hemlock there is about 50 feet from the wetland in the back this is looking back at the area where there was a huge stand of bamboo which had been removed very sort of invasive in the wetlands back there so they pulled the bamboo out a couple of my recommendations and the conditions were to pull the filter sock back out of the wetland now that the bamboo has been pulled out and then this is the area of the wetland that would be reseeded that Steve was mentioning this is looking sort of up the the wetland line towards the neighboring property there's some beautiful old willow trees in the back there and then this is looking toward where the the other direction towards the other property owners house from my perspective I think that the plantings are going to really enhance the buffer zone for this property tremendously and give a lot of habitat value it seems like they've been very thoughtful about providing native species that provide habitat value in terms of like berries and you know areas for nesting areas for shelter and cover so I think that there's there are a lot of benefits to the planting plan that they've proposed I did mention that in the back where they're doing the plantings facing the wetland area that those areas shouldn't be mowed you know that they should be sort of left in a in a natural condition in the back I do think that the existing conditions on the permit are fine from the the order of conditions that was issued previously so I would just recommend that we apply the same conditions to this permit which I did include in the one dry folder yeah the only thing I would add is just I think I appreciate the timeline because I think getting this planted and stabilized sooner rather than later is wise it's just a lot of dirt out there right now yeah thanks Erin so commissioners if you want to take a look at those existing kind of outstanding conditions from all the other active determinations and make sure you don't have any questions or comments I'll just open this for public comment quickly if you are a member of the public and you have a comment or question about this RDA for 21 East Hadley Road please raise your hand I think the two people that are currently still in the meeting are for the UMass discussion after this hearing so I don't think we're gonna have any comments last call nose hands raised commissioners any final questions or comments no okay then I am looking for a motion I move to issue a positive determination of applicability checking box number five and a negative determination of applicability checking box two but with noted conditions second that second from Andre voice vote Andre hi Amron hi Alex hi I'm also an eye thanks for all the prep work great overview Steve thank you good luck good luck thanks for your patience Steve I know we didn't have time to get to it last time no no problem thank you I appreciate uh I appreciate all of you guys okay good luck I hope there's the right amount of rain this spring yep right so the two folks from UMass are here and I know Jen if you want to take care of that and table the other items that's completely fine yep that would be great um I just I just let's see I'm up to panelist okay I see Brittany um so commissioners under other business um this is about um we permitted a UMass Lincoln Ave apartments and um it sounds like the engineers want to relocate the stormwater outfall to a swale over kind of on the other side of campus um so I'll let Brittany and Jared run us through that okay let me let me share my screen and this would be a minor administrative change Erin are we saying to the existing order of conditions okay so that's what we're evaluating commissioners as whether this is a minor administrative change to existing conditions or the existing order of conditions yeah so we we went through the NOI process with you guys in December 2021 I believe so quite a while ago so just as a quick refresher um we have proposed um dormitory building here and here on the site and then we have a parking lot here which is adjacent to the tan brook right here and so we're proposing some new drainage within the buffer to the tan brook and our original plan was to reuse an existing outfall that goes to the tan brook and that is right here in orange um and then we propose an alternative because we needed to do a video inspection of that pipe to make sure that it was in good condition and if we found that it wasn't in good condition we were going to replace the outfall as shown in blue here and then include some hand placed stone at that new outfall location and erosion control and if this was the the way we ended up determining that we needed to proceed it was going to be an administrative change and we would issue a formal drawing for it so we did that video inspection and determined that that pipe was not able to be reused it was crushed um and so we've been looking for alternatives including replacing it and just to quickly run through that drainage pattern again so that existing outfall comes to the tan brook in light blue here and then the tan brook flows to the north and through a 60 inch culvert the culvert is or it already was it was approved to be relocated a little bit so that we could construct the building and so what we're proposing now is this this drainage that's highlighted in orange is what was previously going to be draining to the tan brook and this drainage that's highlighted in yellow is what was previously going to be connecting directly into the 60 inch culvert so what we would like to do is we arrange our drainage system essentially so that what's shown in orange is now going to come this way and also connect to the north directly into that 60 inch culvert so this wouldn't be any additional work within the buffer any any change in work that we're proposing would really be would really be outside of that that buffer line maybe a little bit in here but not any not any areas that aren't already being disturbed so we're not proposing any new disturbance and we are changing where the water is draining to but the tan brook does ultimately discharge into that 60 inch culvert so we don't anticipate any drainage issues with that so really we see this as a benefit do not have to replace this outfall and to eliminate it so we want to abandon that in place and instead connect this way so I think we're looking for feedback from the commission if this can be an administrative approval or if you need us to come back through the commission that was a great overview thanks Brittany I feel pretty clear on the plan and do you have anything any site visit photos or anything I don't have site visit photos to share I can actually try to track some down for you really quickly while we're talking that's okay not necessary I remember exactly what that out looked like I think this is an improvement I know this is an improvement will Brittany will the outfall be like existing kind of futurely future defunct stormwater outfall to tan brook is there any way to like will that be decommissioned or like is there anything we can do to make sure it's clear that that's not functioning and shouldn't have water flowing into it and prevent like kind of any scour erosion at that location on tan brook um yeah so we I don't think that we're proposing to do anything within the tan brook for that out outfall we would cut and cap it on site though okay okay Andres you have a question oh thanks Aaron yeah Brittany I'm wondering if what how you're going to join the that current outflow piping if you would within the or near the structure to the other uh uh yellow portion if you would um how you're going to connect that and uh how much of that is within the um buffer zone yeah so the buffer let me highlight the buffer real real quick you're not sharing oh I'm sorry you Aaron was just showing us the um screen well while Brittany's pulling that up I just wanted to say I one of my thoughts was to remove the pipe or to stabilize it but looking at the photos I see and probably the reason it's failed is there's a large tree that's growing right over the top of it um oh yeah okay yeah so we don't want to rip that out and like further destabilize the bank right gotcha okay sorry back to Andres questions yeah so this red here is that buffer and then you can see the parking the parking lot extends this way so the work that we're proposing would all take place within the parking lot essentially um within the buffer so we haven't quite determined the routing that we're going to take yet we're working with the contractor to determine the best way to do that based on their procurement of materials um so that that is still in flux but essentially we would be taking all of this in orange and bringing it this way and then whether we connect directly to the yellow here or if we want to line parallel to it and make the connection up somewhere closer up here we haven't determined that yet we just know that we want to keep the work out of this area because we have existing trees that we are maintaining so that that work is really going to be coming to the west and then the north so no additional impacts within the buffer and likely less impact correct than the buffer yes no additional impacts within the buffer did you have any follow-up Andres is that no you've you answered my question I suppose if it's going through the parking lot area it's not going to make a much of a difference there either okay thanks for your for your answer Brittany all right um yeah I think this fits squarely under a minor administrative change the existing order of conditions on the existing permit um I'm comfortable with that I think commissioners and lefts anyone has any last concerns or questions I think we would be looking for a motion to improve a minor administrative change for the UMass Lincoln Ab apartments involving relocating the storm water outfall into tanbrook and you can say so moved so moved back in the all right voice vote andre hi Cameron hi Alex hi and I'm also an eye all right that's it Brittany Jared thanks for hanging on for the long meeting good luck thank you we are too thank you have a good night everybody good night thank you thanks all right Erin is it really okay if we table yeah absolutely nothing else on the agenda is urgent so um that is completely fine actually it'll give you guys a chance to have a look over the draft memorandum of understanding we already talked about the grant um and the Amherst Hills Tofino project is I have not been out there yet so um that'll be pending to hopefully the next meeting okay thanks everyone I think we just a motion to adjourn I move the we adjourn second I always vote Alex hi andre hi Cameron hi and I unanimous all right so see you guys in April all right sounds good great Erin you're gonna stay on for a second I will yeah I'm just gonna stop the recording mm-hmm andre is this a personal conversation do you mind if I stay on uh not at all because I have a question for Erin