 Good evening. My name is Christian Klein. I'm the chair of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. I'm calling this meeting of the board to order. Today is Tuesday, December 8th, 2020, and it is 7.32 p.m. The lights confirm that all members and anticipated officials are present. So members of the Zoning Board of Appeals, when I call out your name, if you can just indicate that you are here. Roger Dupont. Here. Patrick Hanlon. Here. Kevin Mills. Here. Erin Ford. Here. Steve Revlach. Here. Donna Rourke. Here. Wonderful. Town officials, Rick Valorelli, you're on. I'm here. And Vincent Lee is on as well. Here. I believe that Doug Hyme is on another town meeting this evening, so I don't think he's joining us. I saw that Emily Sullivan is here from the Department of Planning and Community Development, and Susan Chatnick is here from the Conservation Commission. Here. Person's appearing for the hearing on 5052 Newcombe Street. Robert Nesse, you're here. Yes, I'm here. And is the applicant here as well? Yes, Frank Roche, are you here? Frank? Well, Frank is supposed to be here. I thought I saw his name on the list. I think he's on mute, Christian. Oh, okay. And I see a Christopher Roche on this as well. Yeah, I'd like him unmuted since he's a contractor as well, so he might have something to do ahead. Can you hear me now? We can. Just wanted to make sure you were here. All right, I'm here. Perfect. And consultants and engineers, Paul Havity, should be here as our... I'm here. Wonderful. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. And Marty Nover from Beta Group. I am here, Mr. Chairman. Wonderful. Thank you. You're welcome. And Todd Unzis, are you here as well? Not as I saw your name. Yep, yep, I'm here. Perfect. And then for the applicant, Stephanie Kiefer, I see you're here. Is John Heston here as well? If he's not, he will be here in one second. No problem. He's got plenty of time. We have one more... one hearing ahead of yours. That's what I thought. Perfect. All right. Well, this open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020. The order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. Public bodies may meet remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. An opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public comment period during each public hearing. For this meeting, the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals has convened a video conference via the Zoom app with online and telephone access as listed on the agenda posted to the town's website, identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and it is being broadcast by ACMI. Please be aware that attendees are participating by a variety of means. Some attendees are participating by video conference. Other participants are participating by computer, audio, or phone. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you, your screen name, or another identifier. Please take care not to share personal information. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask you please maintain decorum during the meeting including displaying an appropriate background. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. As chair, I reserve the right to take items out of order in the interest of promoting an orderly meeting. So thank you and welcome all. Rick, I think there's some people in the waiting room. So the first item on our agenda this evening is the minutes from the November 24th meeting. Are there board members with questions or corrections to the minutes? There was somebody who had submitted a correction online earlier, I thought. That may have been me. I just had a word substitution, accept or accept if that's what you're referring to. That is. Yes, thank you. Right there, Roger. Thank you. All right. With that in mind, can I have a motion to approve the minutes? So moved. Thank you, Roger. Second. Thank you. Your roll call vote for approval. Roger? Aye. John? Aye. Patrick? Aye. Kevin? Aye. Chair votes aye as well. That brings us to the second item on our agenda, which is a public hearing. So turning to the first public hearing on tonight's agenda, some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of tonight's business. After I announce the agenda item, I will ask the applicants to introduce themselves and to make their presentation to the board. I will then request that members of the board ask what questions they have on the proposal. After the board's questions have been answered, I will open the meeting for public comment. Public questions and comments will only be taken as it relates to the matter at hand and should be directed to the board for the purpose of informing our decision. The chair will first ask members of the public who have identified themselves by logging in through Zoom who wish to speak to digitally raise their hand using the button on the participants tab in the Zoom application. You'll be called upon by the meeting host. Your audio and video will be unmuted and you'll be asked to give your name and address. You'll be given time for your questions and comments. All questions are to be addressed through the chair. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. The chair will then request that those calling in by phone to please dial star nine to indicate you would like to speak. When called upon, your line will be unmuted. Please identify yourself by name and address. You'll be given time for your questions and comments. All questions will be addressed through the chair. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. Once all public questions and comments have been addressed, the public comment period will be closed. Board and staff will do our best to show documents being discussed. Board will then discuss their findings and crafted decision. The vote taken in this hearing will be conducted by a roll call vote. This brings us to docket number 3639, 50 to 52 Newcombe Street. Mr. Ineszi? Yes, I'm ready to go. Yes, Robert Ineszi representing the applicant. Mr. Roche is here with me on Zoom as well. We are here this evening for the purpose of seeking a special permit to add a shed dormer and a gable dormer to an existing two-family building located at 50 to 52 Newcombe Street. The property is in an R2 zone and the building itself was built way back in 1920. Now, the lot upon which the building is located is kind of typical for the area in which the building is located, very small lots. The square feet of the lot is 3,368 square feet. The first floor of the building is currently occupied. The second floor I'm given to understand is not occupied. We are seeking additional living space there with respect to that area. Now, I have read the planning department memo and the planning department memo has basically analyzed and did some calculations with respect to the new square feet as far as the new area is concerned. And basically, the planning department memo indicates that less than half of the finished square footage area, that is 4446 of 1,115 square feet, would have a ceiling height greater than seven feet. They're complying with the definition of a half story. And the planning department memo goes on to say that under the current proposal, the total square feet of the structure would increase from 3,413 to 3,859 square feet for an additional square feet of 446 square feet. The basement itself has been converted to habitable space and that consists of 738 square feet. The balance of the square feet I'm given to understand in the basement would be mechanical. If you're familiar with the area in which the property is located, there are many other properties in that area that have gable dormers as well. Not so many having shed dormers, but a lot of gable dormers. However, the introduction of the shed dormer, as you can see from the photographs that we have submitted to you folks with our proposal, the introduction of the shed dormer is not an aberration with respect to the neighborhood. Again, it's an R2 zone. The properties in the neighborhood are all R2 and the shed dormer would certainly not look out of character with respect to the other buildings in the area. The roof pitch, by the way, I'm given to understand, is going to be greater than 2 over 12. Frank Roche is a contractor, the client, and Frank Roche can address any questions that you folks may have with respect to building materials, the type of building materials going into the construction of the gable dormer and the shed dormer. The existing square feet for the structure is currently 3413 and ultimately will be 3859. As with respect to any other property down in that area, there is no open space. There is no open space because, quite frankly, the lot sizes down in that particular neighborhood do not allow for that. We are not changing anything as far as the landscaped area is concerned. That is going to remain the same. We've indicated what the percentage is on that, on our dimensional form, but again that is not going to change. We are essentially going to stay within the footprint of the building and we're asking that the board consider favorably our request for a special permit. Frank is here to respond to any questions that you may have regarding building materials and the like. Thank you, Mr. Nessie. I had a few questions. The site plan is very clear that there is no usable open space on the property. It indicates that there is a driveway that comes up the left-hand side that terminates at a garage. The site plan shows on the opposite side of the house two window wells, which I've seen are constructed to date on the site. The drawing set that we received indicates providing a window well on the driveway side and I just want to confirm that that is no longer the case. Frank, that is no longer the case. Is that correct? That is correct. There's no window well on the driveway side of the house. Just the two that you see on the opposite side. Okay, thank you. And does that greatly impact the floor plan of the basement or is it still essentially the same? It's the same. Okay. So the existing front dormer on the building, it's a hip dormer which matches the form of the hip to roof on the building, but it's shown gabled on the, it's shown hip on the plans, but it's shown gabled on the elevations. Is the intention for the rear dormer for that to be hipped as it's indicated on the plan or gabled as it's shown on the elevation? Its intention is to match the one in the front of the house. Match the one in the front. Okay. All right. So the rear dormer will be hipped. That's going to bring up, yeah. So you should see this is the images of the house in question and that dormer on the front, you're saying that's the intention for how the dormer on the rear will be similar to that? I believe so. I'm actually the developer, the architect wasn't available that drew the plans from the back dormer. Okay. Whether it was hip or gable, either would be fine, fine for me with the town as a preference. Okay. And then do you see the proposed attic plan now? I do. You do. Okay. So I just want to confirm, we had a project recently where the applicant needed to add a dormer on the side to accommodate the stairwell. I just wanted to confirm that you're okay with the head height coming up the stairs. Yes. Okay. The only other comment I had was just in the paperwork. We'll pick it up as we go. It references section, zoning code section 814, but it's actually 813. But that's just a clerical, we'll catch that. That's all the questions I have. Are there questions from the board? Mr. Mills. I'm looking at the attic plans. It looks like two windows in the drawing here, but on the elevation from the side, it looked like three. And additionally, the planning board said they'd like to see the elements line up between the windows in the house, existing house and on the dormer. I don't believe we have any problem with that, Frank. Do we? No, no problem. You want the dormer windows lined up with the existing second floor windows? That's what they said in the planning board to get the design elements to line up as they put it. And you know, it's looking here, it looks like three windows, but if we look at the elevation, looking down, it looks like two. I think two have been preferable from our standpoint as well. Yeah. And they will be lined up? Yes. Just so it looks better. It'll be a little bit tough, obviously. Yeah, so if we had one sort of line up with the two, sort of at the front of the Box Bay and then the other, sort of symmetrically across from it. Little clear. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions from the board? Seeing none. So as far as conditions, there are the three standard conditions that we apply to the perm applications. The first is that the final plans and specifications approved by the board for the permit shall be the final plans and specifications submitted to the building inspector of the town of Arlington in connection with this application for the zoning relief. There should be no deviation during construction from approved plans and specifications without the express written approval of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. Second is the building inspector is hereby notified he is to monitor the site and should proceed with appropriate enforcement procedures at any time it determines the violations are present and the inspector building shall proceed under section 3.1 of the zoning bylaw under provisions of chapter 40 section 21d in the state code and institute non-criminal complaints if necessary the inspector buildings may also approve an institute appropriate criminal action also in accordance with section 3.1 and the third standard condition is the board shall maintain continuing jurisdiction with respect to this special permit grant. I would ask that we include that the applicant is to provide a statement to inspectional services confirming this minimum slope of the roof above the attic area considered for half stories at least a 212 pitch we'd like to include that because it's currently not listed on the drawings um we should do that um we will yep um additionally uh condition would be that the rear dormer to match the form of the front of the front dormer and the third as uh minister mills and by the the planning department is to reduce number of windows on third floor shed dormer to two one aligning the fable low second symmetrical one two three those are six conditions are there any additional conditions to be proposed by the board none seeing none uh mr hamlin can i have a a motion mr chairman i approve that this application be approved subject to the conditions that the chair is just read into the record thanks mr hamlin second thank you i'll do a roll call vote of the voting members of the board uh mr dupont uh i mr orork mr orork i i see you about the eye there we go thank you i said i think i got it unmuted but i did mr mills i to hamlin i the chair votes i you are approved thank you very much general thank you okay the next item on our agenda um is a hearing is the copper has to be uh hello yes yeah i'm sorry i'm in la rue i live on newcombe street oh i beg your pardon i completely missed the public well yes yes you did that's terrible big um well my only question is whether the uh proposal will result in a third occupancy or will it be an extension of the second floor occupancy um i can ask mr nessie did mr nessie already jump off um it is very clearly it is going to remain a two-family home um currently there's a single unit on the first floor and a single unit on the second floor the existing plans don't show any encroachment in the attic floor at this time and so they are requesting permission to attach the attic floor to the second floor okay okay so it will work by zoning it can't exceed two units okay good terribly sorry for that is there anyone else who wishes to speak on this item i'm happy to reopen it yes i'm trying to raise my hand oh yes please sorry i also live on newcombe street um we've as our neighbor's bullet test we've had constant construction on the street for the last you know many this house in particular has been under construction off and on for like two years i think and we would hope that we would hope that it would be expedited to get this done can i ask a naive question i don't know is this kind of a run-of-the-mill request i know that a lot of two-family homes in this neighborhood are um have the third floor finished is that the basically what's happening here i don't i confess i don't know what the terms mean for like a shed sure no absolutely um so it is very common in arlington for the the two-family homes that were built to have the attic floor sort of at the time they were constructed in the 20s to sort of be semi-finished um in that there was good act there was a full stairwell going into the attic as opposed to just like a pull-down ladder um with the intention that uh the attic floors would be inhabited going forward at some point um and so we um rick we probably see maybe a 10 or 12 of these a year is that right rick that's greater than 80 of the request okay um is to be allowed to expand into the attic floor the typical issue with expanding is the way the zoning bylaw is written is you have to provide a certain amount of uh usable open space which is space that you can know that's outside in your yard that you can enjoy um and take part in um and that the size of that is relative to the amount of indoor space you have in your home and the issue is that the vast vast majority of properties that were built in the between you know 1900 and 1930 none of them were built with that space in mind and so most of them the the rear yard is not large enough by the definition for usable open space so they have zero usable open space and so we receive um these types of applications all the time for expanding into the attic floor you can only have up to 50 of the attic floor area um with a ceiling height of seven feet so it sort of limits the amount of that you can move out into the attic but they come before the zoning board of appeals for a special permit because they are required to um because by zoning they're supposed to provide additional usable open space however since they already have zero um the fact that they're going to be providing zero is not considered um a an additional um non-conformity because they're already non-conforming thank you so you don't expect this to become a behemoth in our kind of modest neighborhood correct the basically by the rules they could put a dormer on one side of the roof because the roof is hip so it slopes up in four directions the amount they can sort of open up is very limited to that sort of middle portion and by the rules they could only do it on one side so they won't be able to prop up the other side and by the rules they have to have a certain pitch to the roof so the roof can't be flat it has to have a certain pitch to it so it should not it should not appear um overly out of scale for the neighborhood okay thank you what was there a projected length of time for this construction just out of curiosity um rick had they indicated anything to you in that regard they don't so all I can say is uh once the once the job is started there's an indefinite amount of time for them to finish it but in the best interest of all parties uh the owners and the builders they want to get it done as soon as possible okay so looking at the scope of the work a dormer of this size usually takes about three months from start to finish okay it's it's obvious with so much construction going on on our street and just in general in Arlington and all of us working at home it's spent up no I agree I was trying to I visited the site today and was having trouble getting off the end of of the street just because of the amount of construction vehicles yeah it's been absolutely constant through the whole of the lockdown oh wow really literally then I'm just stating fact I'm I realized this work you know everybody has the right to do this work of course no question yeah I know it's been a long time it's been a long time yeah but this house in particular has been like this house has been years and years so more than two years I guarantee you from start to finish from the time it was vacated to now yeah uh yeah endless thank you so much thank you very much we're welcome I apologize for not having you on soon thank you not anyone else to speak to 50 52 newcomb okay okay we're now turning to the comprehensive permit hearing for Thorndike place I'd like to review the ground rules for effective and clear conduct of tonight's business this evening's discussion will focus on the wetlands and flood plains aspects of the submitted materials those documents are available as an attachment to the posted agenda these documents were discussed at a public meeting of the Arlington Conservation Commission on December 3rd I'll ask the applicants to introduce themselves and make a short presentation to the board this will be followed by a short presentation by the board's peer review engineers and I will then ask the conservation commission to present their findings to the board I'll then request that members of the board ask what questions they have on the information that's been presented and after the board's questions have been answered I promise I will open the meeting for public comment um public questions and comments will only be taken as it relates to the matter at hand it should not be directed to the board for the purpose of informing our decision due to previously demonstrated interest in the project and to provide for an orderly flow to the meeting the chair strongly encourages individual speakers to limit their comments and to use their time to provide comment related to the topics discussed at this hearing please note there are multiple hearings scheduled for this project and each hearing will have an opportunity for public comment chair encourages the public to provide written comments to be reviewed by the board and included in the record procedure for requesting to speak will be the same as for the previous hearing please select the raise hand button from the participant tab on zoom or dial star nine on your phone to indicate you'd like to speak when called upon please identify yourself by name and address you'll be given time for your questions and comments all questions are to be addressed through the chair please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes once all public questions and comments have been addressed or the allocated time has been expended the public comment period for this evening's hearing will be closed as noted previously there are multiple hearings scheduled for this project and each hearing will have an opportunity for public comment board and staff will do our best to show documents being discussed if you'd like a specific document to be pulled up during your comments please ask us to do so so that in mind um like to ask miss keifer um is has john hesson joined us john has um if you could make a brief statement about um the revised plans as it relates to wetlands and then um john if you could uh if we can uh rick if we can turn the the give our john permission to show documents on his screen yeah so please miss keifer very good good evening mr chairman and members of the board um to refresh your recollection my name is stephanie keifer um the law from smog and bond representing the applicant arlington land reality and this evening i'm here together with john kassien of bsc um as well as gwen noy's and an art cliff fellow of oak tree development and bob angler of scb our housing consultants so the last time that we appeared before the board for a substantive hearing was on october 13th and at that time we had presented um to the board a preliminary revised plan um in which the the building footprint was um markedly changed from the original proposal the six townhouses that were on dorothy road were being eliminated and the multifamily building um itself was was being um made more efficient with a smaller footprint um and we had indicated that we were working on at that time more complete plans and and to um further finish our evaluation of wetlands and flood um and so i am as the board is is aware um but just as quick background um since that time bsc submitted its um wetlands data forms and its um updated um wetlands information on october 22nd and then on november 3rd there was a large filing that was made with the commission that was accepted um mortuary administrative i guess i would say hearing on november 24th it did it included the revised civil and architectural plans the um the applicant's statement for consistency for master plan open space and has a production plan it had the storm water um reported there a wildlife habitat study um and if i'm missing anything john will will will touch upon that um but that was submitted on october or november 3rd and um since that time we had a further work session before the conservation commission and so we are here this evening to present the revised project and um in keeping with the proposed agenda the focus this evening of course is going to be on wetlands and flood plain um and so with that brief introduction i think i will turn it over to john to present to you um uh his presentation um and uh and should you have any questions we're willing to take them immediately after that or um if you want to wait until after the uh the peer review um gives their response thank you thank you thank you stephanie um everybody bear with me for a minute and hope that technology cooperates tonight is everyone seeing a uh illustrative site plan yes colored site plan okay awesome let's hope it uh it continues as smoothly um thank you again for having us tonight again i'm john hessian uh with the bsc group we are the civil engineer landscape architect environmental um consultants for the applicant on this uh comprehensive permit proposal before you um you know as the agenda uh indicates tonight we'll focus on you know wetlands and flood plain but it's been a little while a little bit of time has passed so i'll give everybody a quick walk around of this current plan um and and just so everybody can get their bearings and then we'll kind of dive into the the wetlands and flood plain components of the project so you know the project is running on darothy road right here people can see my cursor um it's currently proposed at 176 residential units in a three slash four story building we discussed previously the the three tabs of the building closest to darothy are proposed as three three story buildings and from the main east west spine to the south it steps up to a four story building um in addition to support those residential units there's 239 total parking spaces proposed 204 of which are located under the building in a covered parking structure um 27 spaces in the surface lot to the west of the proposed building and eight in this courtyard area off of dorothy street which the main kind of pedestrian entrance to the building is in this location where my cursor is um right now you know a couple of the other aspects of the project you know outdoor open space for the future residents there's a kind of a passive garden outdoor courtyard area in this little niche along um darothy road there's a more formal patio amenity area um on the southwest niche to the proposed building there's a children's play area um in this location here just off to the southeast of the building you'll notice there's a gray um path here this is pedestrian access from the amenity area to the children's play area um and back out to dorothy road there's also an access to the parking garage level of the building um in this location here on the on the east face of the building primarily for uh bike access um you know there's bike storage provided primarily in the garage level but with a smaller storage area on the main floor the first residential floor with access to this to the main entrance exit near the parking spaces um you'll see a dashed line circumventing the building that's our proposed emergency vehicle access fire department access um and i guess i i i missed um in discussing the parking garage the primary for the the only vehicular entrance to the project um to the parking garage is proposed um at the intersection of dorothy and little john and it accesses both the surface parking spaces in um the below grade spaces on in the garage under the building um as stephanie touched on um this is really just a summary of the additional materials that have been submitted since the last time we were together um on october 22nd we had completed and updated wetland delineation um submitted that in the form of a memorandum with the dp data sheets and an updated existing uh environmental resources plan um identifying the the resources as confirmed um in october and then on november 3rd election night we stephanie also mentioned we submitted a significant amount of additional information report on existing conditions architectural drawings um site fully revised site plans stormwater report a wildlife habitat and vegetation evaluation an updated waiver request list and the statement of compliance with the arlington master plan housing production plan and open space recreation plan um so the the the main items you know focusing on the wetlands and flood playing will be tonight will be the information submitted on october 22nd the site plans the stormwater report habitat and vegetation evaluation um and those the the materials the additional materials submitted will be discussed i i understand future meetings with the with the zda as uh you know things that have been informed where we've been again since uh since we were before this board um and that informed our working session with the conservation commission last thursday night we did receive on november 22nd an updated comment letter from the arlington conservation commission um we received uh we actually received it on monday the 23rd but a data's second year review letter which was dated the oh that should say november 20th i'm sorry so data's letter was dated the 20th we received it on the 23rd we received on december 3rd last thursday a letter from the arlington department of public works regarding the isolated vegetated wetland delineation and then yesterday we received a second letter from the department of public works um more of a complete plan review so this is um you know a blow up of the initial plan i showed and it's it's really has the um the floodplain the wetlands the wetland 25 foot uh no disturb and the 100-foot wetland buffer or aura under the local wetland bylaw shown so the orange dash line represents the existing floodplain which is elevation 6.8 the blue dash three dots lines um represent the updated wetland delineation the closest white dash line is the 25 foot no disturb under the local bylaw and the the larger dash line is the 100 foot buffer um under the wetlands protection act in the 100 foot aura under the local bylaw um we submitted that updated wetland delineation delineation it was reviewed by beta beta agreed with our delineation um and confirmed our delineation subsequent to that um the department of public works submitted a letter again raising questions or concerns about a potential isolated vegetated wetland in this northeast corner portion of the site behind the existing homes on Dorothy Road we did not our wetland scientists you know looked we knew that was an area in question and we looked closely in that area there was a couple of data points conducted um and it did not did not support it as isolated vegetated wetland did not have a vegetative community indicative of the wetland and did not contain um hydric soils which also would be or could be an indicator of a wetland area so our position and and it was supported by beta's peer review is that there is no isolated wetland in that portion of the site with the exception of that the it appears in from our working session last Thursday night with the commission the balance of the resource areas were all in agreement on so i'll circle back to the isolated wetland kind of as one of my wrap up points the floodplain uh we're in agreement i i believe we're in agreement with with beta and on the floodplain limits we also proposed it's i see all of you in a little banner with photos this area down in the southeast quadrant is where we're proposing our compensatory flood storage the local carlington wetland bylaw requires a two to one compensatory storage volume two cubic feet of storage for every one cubic feet of impact wetlands protection act only requires a one to one um compensatory storage ratio so we are we are showing a two to one meeting you know your local the arlington local wetland bylaw requirements um you know for the for the site in its entirety we conducted a wildlife habitat and vegetation evaluation um the findings of that in layman's terms was that you know there's really you know limited wildlife habitat um you know and limited values of the vegetative community there's out here there's a lot of invasive species um the homeless encampments that exist i think in reading our evaluation contributes to the the lack of wildlife and and and possibly contributes to the the quality of the vegetation out there um and you know lastly it's it's not really wetlands or floodplain but i'll i'll touch on it briefly um because it's intertwined stormwater management um we we're received of um betas comments we actually had a very productive call um a couple weeks ago with beta we're confident that we will be able to address betas comments and questions and ultimately meet the stormwater standards which is the mass tp stormwater standards which will be required for this this project um and i'll i'll touch on that a little bit later why why i brought that up um and then it kind of to summarize um you know this project has changed dramatically from what the original application was in 2016 what was submitted in march of this year and changed dramatically with respect to avoidance minimizing and avoiding impacts to wetland resources on this site right now the impacts are um we have with the building in the courtyard area this little finger here and this little finger in this little corner of the building we have 3614 cubic feet of floodplain fill or impact but our compensatory flood storage at two to one we're providing 7228 feet of that compensatory storage and our work in the buffer hundred foot buffer or uh aura under the local bylaw is limited to this area here which is primarily the emergency vehicle access and a small portion of the the parking garage and um amenity patio area and the area of that uh disturbance in that buffer is 20 approximately 2700 um square feet so we we feel that you know the project has made uh significant strides and efforts to minimize and avoid um and or avoid wetland resource impacts so kind of in summary from you know the three comment or peer review letters we have from the conservation commission from beta and from the department of public works and from our working session with the conservation commission um there's there's about five one two three four five main headings of areas where there's questions or or potential requests for additional information that are maybe outstanding and as I go through these I think we we discuss some of these and and and propose how to handle or address them during the working session last Thursday night with the with the conservation commission but a couple others I'll provide a little bit more information on the first one as I mentioned earlier with respect to the wetland delineation the the only area where there appears to be any question is on that area of potential isolated wetland we've been out there twice in in january and again in october we knew that was an area of concern our wetland scientists paid very close attention to it we have two wetland data points data sheets that were completed in that area and it's a very very small area with very mature you know three levels of vegetation trees shrub level and ground cover level the soils in the two data points were consistent they were not hydric soils they were sandy loans um and you know there's a there's a request for even more investigation out there and we feel that that's only it's just additional work to further document what we've already determined and which was supported by betas um peer review letter so um we feel that that we've done the appropriate um delineation and the appropriate due diligence looking closely at that area and believe that there is no isolated wetland um and as such it's not shown on our um constraints plan and uh no aura or no disturbed zones associated with that are shown um moving on to the floodplain and compensatory storage uh last thursday night it was discussed that there may be possible alternate locations for our compensatory storage some of the the existing aura to the other bordering vegetative wetlands on site are more disturbed with the homeless encampment and um we we discussed thursday night that at the appropriate time um we it might make the most sense to walk the site with you know representatives from the commission um you know and any anybody that the commission would feel would be appropriate and and look and in the field um identify where the appropriate or where the best location for that flood storage compensatory storage um could be um similarly the floodplain restoration plan our plans show that it to be vegetated um but the commission is asking for more detailed restoration plan um and you know we're you know we're in agreement with that but recommended or suggested that both of those could be potentially conditions of approval on the uh to the comprehensive permit the the third bullet there the climate change impacts um in in looking at the floodplain and compensatory flood storage requirements we believe that we've met um you know both the wellness protection act and our linkedin wetland bylaw requirements there's been some requests and discussion about looking more at um climate change and sea level rise and 2070 um data um i i will say that we did look very closely at the city of cambridge data which um the flood elevations directly opposite this project in in cambridge across route two um are the same flood elevations and their data for year 2030 shows essentially no change in the floodplain um and even for 2070 they it shows no change in the floodplain uh based on precipitation so from rainfall events and you know flows coming from upstream it does show potentially with sea level rise and breaching of the amelia airheart dam um in boston the potential for um sea level sea level rise um which would inundate you know this east east arlington and east cambridge um but the the preliminary elevations on that are approximately four feet and above current hundred-year flood elevations and even with a four foot increase this project's proposed first floor you know living space um is that elevation 13 i believe so we are still significantly above that flood elevation and and we discussed as a team yesterday if if those flood levels actually became um you know something that this project had to deal with as we get you know closer to the you know that that year 2070 um that the garage entrance and and could be retrofitted with um a deployable flood barrier to protect uh any potential flood waters from entering the garage the basement level of the building so again you know um kind of a long winded um answer we believe we've met the the flood analysis and compensatory storage requirements and and believe that as much as it can be this project has considered um you know longer term um climate change flooding impacts um moving on to stormwater management and i won't go into details but um conservation commission has is asking that we look at data or or require i don't want to call them requirements look at using or meeting standards that haven't been adopted yet there's standards for tss removal and precipitation data that are being discussed by nasty e p right now but they have not been adopted um again our stormwater management was designed um has been designed to meet the massachusetts stormwater standards and the irlington conservation commission local bylaw um the stormwater standards for tss removal is 80 percent efficiency our current project where we're showing 88 tss removal efficiencies so not only have we met um we have exceeded uh the tss removal requirements again i think demonstrating you know trying to be as responsive to um you know the concerns in this in this area is possible similarly the precipitation data nasty e p is looking to migrate to um noah data um we did design our stormwater management system using the cornell precipitation data which is the requirement in the in the local wetland bylaw um and a quick comparison of the cornell and noah precipitation data is that essentially they're very close and actually for the 50 and 100 year storm events the cornell data is is higher so we have a more conservative design using the cornell data for those higher or larger storm events um the wildlife habitat and vegetation evaluation um again it showed limited values out here beta concurred with our findings on that um but the commission is as part of section i believe it's 24 of the local wetland bylaw uh requesting an inventory of the trees that are to be removed within the aura we discussed that thursday night and given that as this project goes through all of the other reviews um not just you know wetlands and floodplain there's a chance that the impacts in the aura might change so we were suggesting that that could be um something that could be done as the project is closer to a final final plan or it could be done as a condition of approval uh for ultimately for administrative review and approval by the conservation commission and and then the last topic that seems to still be an open item is a potential conservation restriction or some type of vehicle to protect the non-developed portion of this this land the mugar property um and you know i think it's been discussed before there's a number of different potential ways to to handle that and i think that's something that just um will likely evolve as again the the the other the reviews of the other aspects of this project continue and um i believe the applicant is amenable to um whether it's a conservation restriction or or deeded or there's there's a number of different vehicles and um that i think would all meet the the goals and desires of um the conservation commission on that particular item and with that um that was maybe not as brief as i had hoped it would be but that's i believe where we feel we currently stand with respect to um wetlands and flood plain review and outstanding items thank you very much um at this um party nova from beta group would you guys like to speak at this point or please yeah yeah i think so um mr chairman um with me tonight is is taught on just he's um a pe civil who um is involved with the uh peer review on the on the civil side and julia stern is a project scientist that has been working on this project's been in the field um on the site a couple of times so they're going to both present um our november 20th peer review comments to add to what sir hessian has been talking about and maybe add a little bit new information um that we feel the zba should should be aware of great thank you this is julia sterns and i'll be presenting the wetland information we conducted a wetlands boundary confirmation and review and um agreed upon the four larger wetland boundaries as far as the isolated wetlands go we still need to collect some soil data we agree to collect soil data at those two isolated pools since there has been observations of um standing water in the areas so just to close that loop we we will go back out and collect soil data just to confirm or deny those areas as being wetlands and um so that pretty much finishes the wetland discussion for me todd um i would uh be happy to give a brief uh synopsis of our our civil site peer review if uh if you'd like i can uh pull up um can you give todd permission to hopefully pull up um the the current site plan yeah um says host disabled participants screen sharing right can you yeah i'm um we're looking i'm trying to locate todd oh give me a glass or a red one okay todd should be good to go all right okay can everyone see the site plan here we go all right so as mr hessian uh pointed out um we uh this is actually our second peer review letter but it's our first one for this version of the site plan the previous version uh was considerably different and basically only brought to conceptual phase this current version we're looking at has been advanced um past conceptual phase and and uh now provides topography storm water utility layout etc so that was the basis of my civil site review so uh in general the uh the applicant uh as far as their storm water management system they're proposing um two subsurface infiltration systems one on the west side of the site building and then a smaller one down here in the in the southwest corner uh the larger one on the west side uh is um collecting and mitigating storm water from the west parking area access driveway and also uh the front um the front entrance uh turnaround area um they're currently showing a roof drain tie-in to the building roof uh this uh this is is not necessarily um a final um a final uh alternative uh the applicant is proposing uh to develop a rooftop storage for storm water um up to and including the hundred-year storm events uh they are um in the process of terminating the disposition of that storm water in the storm water report that was provided for for this current site plan um the rooftop generator runoff was detained but but not um not as yet um directed anywhere so in a sense that it did not have any effect on any of the proposed storm water VMPs um at some point they will um determine where that storm water will end up and at that point we'll be able to evaluate what if any effect it may it may have it obviously is a considerable amount of area it's a considerable amount of water um so uh where it ends up being um discharged to uh will um certainly be very important as far as the overall um functioning of the proposed storm water management system on the project site so uh in my in our letter um um we reviewed the storm water calcs we reviewed the obviously the site plan layout etc um the largest infiltration system uh was shown to um function um for storm events up to I believe the 50-year storm um the 50 and 100-year storm events although they're they're largely Indian frequent events the um uh calculated flood elevations attained within the system were not conducive to the current grading scheme shown so my understanding is that uh that grades you know will be will be adjusted accordingly um basically um under the scenario that I reviewed the the bigger storms had the potential to surcharge out of this proposed catch basin here and actually run down uh this entrance driveway to the lower garage level um obviously that's not a preferred alternative and again the applicant um has in all likelihood been reviewing that scenario and making adjustments as necessary um but again the the main item is you know where will the storm water from the roof end up um we had a working session uh recently with the conservation um and it appears in all likelihood it'll either end up going through this infiltration system or possibly bypassing it and directly daylighting it somewhere on site so when that is known we'll obviously um have be able to um determine what if any effects this will have on the on the site this second infiltration system here much smaller primarily deals with uh the uh site entrance uh driveway down to the lower garage level and um in this particular scenario as currently shown uh there was a bit of a discrepancy between this proposed trend strain that's capturing this um driveway this um driveway generator runoff and elevations attained within the storm water system itself uh so we discussed this in a coordination call a few weeks ago and similar to um the infiltration system number one the applicant uh is reviewing the current configuration of this to make sure that it it will function um as intended um some of my comments also dealt with some uh site constraints such as grading now again this particular version of the site plan is not the final one it is uh it will undoubtedly evolve so um some of the grading as the grading is not finalized I pointed out that's that there was um uh some lacking um in uh cover over some of the some of the structures and piping and stuff like that again this is this is all being currently reviewed by the applicant um as far as the um utility proposed utilities um again those of you know are being dealt with um both by public works and um some of our comments basically incur that you know any proposed utility tie-ins will need to be coordinated with the local um public works department um other than that as was mentioned uh the proposed compensatory storage here flood storage area here those calculations were provided as part of the storm water management plan uh storm water management report and um after reviewing it um the proposed area and uh volume um appeared consistent with the calculations that were provided along with the areas um that are actually being altered those areas uh also appeared to be consistent with the calculations so so um at this stage we feel uh that the the applicant has provided the compensatory storage required to mitigate the impacts from the proposed building and associated grading um I guess other than that um there are just assorted site comments related to the emergency access driveway that's been provided around the building here I know that the town has provided comments related to um its proximity to the building so my comments and just included in general providing um possible turning radius is to demonstrate that um emergency equipment and and access this as intended so again that is all part of the evolution of the plan and I would expect that it'll be addressed in the next go around I think uh I think that pretty much describes uh my my review of this plan and um if uh if there are any questions I'm sure uh I'm sure I'd be more than happy to uh either myself or John to uh to answer them great thank you very much Mr. Chair um just um just to follow up Todd's um discussion on the um the design as it currently stands and you know we realize that there are going to be changes to this design and um we address that in our comments knowing that you know there may be some encroachment into the aura um it perhaps with um an alternative location for stormwater management so we're kind of hold kind of holding our final comments on mitigation and impacts to aura and buffer zone um until we we see the the more final design plans but I wanted to mention that we did go out um site and took a look at um the existing conditions and compared the bsc's of the wildlife habitat evaluation and functions and values um assessment and we concur with their findings on the site um we had our wildlife biologists go out there and um he too you know he agreed with the bsc findings so I think that once the um playing gets more final and you know maybe we can take a look at the location of the floodplain compensation area um and and and maybe find opportunities for some mitigation this site obviously has a lot of opportunity for some um site restoration and improvements um you know of the resource areas including the aura so but I think it's a little premature at this point until the the design is more final and and we see where the limited work actually falls and where um you know some of this stormwater bmp's and other things um fall as well so so we kind of took a more general common approach to it in our 20 uh november 20th letter so thank you um that's uh Susan Chapnick from the conservation commission to um report back on their um their meeting from last week and their findings thank you chairman Klein um and thank you for the opportunity to summarize the Arlington Conservation Commission's comments from our fourth set of written comments on the thorn dyke place submittals um which we submitted in a letter dated november 20th 2020 and from the working session uh held at the conservation commission's public meeting of december 3rd um where bsc group and beta group as they had mentioned um were present to discuss the supplemental materials the purpose of the working session was informational and also to define next steps the conservation commission is pleased that the supplemental materials were responsive to many of our prior comments however an important requirement of the wetland the conservation commission's wetland regulation to protect the ability of the hundred-year flood plain the whole flood waters has not been fully addressed as was discussed and will be summarized um tonight in some of the comments in addition to those issues that were specifically discussed at the working session last week i want to stress that the conservation commission's prior comments concerning the value of the wetland resources vegetation replacement floodplain and stormwater impacts are still valid i'll summarize the issues discussed at the working session as well as a few others and recommended steps and um these will be in the same order that john presented them and thank you john for being very specific in response to our comments from the working session the first issue um is wetlands delineation and as you've heard from beta group they have um uh they have agreed with bsc's wetland boundary delineations um from october um however the conservation commission it does not yet agree with the conclusion of the applicant that the two isolated vegetated wetlands no longer exist um we understand that john said tonight that there were soils taken and they were not indicative of wetland soils and that's not entirely accurate in um the bsc groups wetland delineation report dated october 19th 2020 um it explains that one of the isolated areas the isolated vegetated wetland areas did have hydric soils however it had predominantly upland species not wetland species and vegetation however the vegetation identified were all invasive species so and therefore um it's not really indicative of evaluating that area so there is some evidence of hydric soils there is evidence of standing water as bsc um as beta group uh indicated in their comments and therefore we recommend and beta group has agreed to do an investigation of the soils in this area which is the eastern most part of the area behind um darothy road um where john had shown me before where the isolated wetlands were previously identified um item number two is the flood plain and compensatory storage um again we we understand that beta group has found the flood storage volume lost and compensatory flood storage proposed are consistent based on the calculations provided and um the conservation commission has pleased that the applicant has proposed a two-to-one compensatory flood storage consistent with our town bylaw and regulations and protective of the wetlands and the resource areas we do have some recommendations however in addition to this in this area um we did talk about requiring a flood plain restoration um beta group just talked about the opportunities that might be available on this site for restoration vegetation mitigation plantings and that they haven't gone into detail because they expect that the applicant is going to provide more information in the future we just want to state that um there is the opportunity here if we're creating flood storage and we're going to be grading and removing soil and vegetation um based on our conservation um based on our arlington wetland regulations we require vegetation replacement and we see this as a key opportunity to improve the resource area in addition um the flood plain line that's being used in the project is the FEMA flood plain this was um the FEMA flood plain line is from 2010 which is 10 years prior to now what can what can happen in 10 years a lot has happened in 10 years um the conservation commission included this comment in our July 9 letter about verifying the FEMA flood plain line um the flood plain elevation however we didn't then subsequently say that again in in subsequent letters and I think it might have gotten lost here so I want to make it clear here that the when the conservation commission has valid documentation or compelling evidence suggesting that the FEMA flood plain and base flood elevation is not accurate it can require an applicant to re delineate the flood plain line um and that's in our arlington wetland regulations section 23 where it specifically talks about that and it said that the the bordering land subject to flooding shall be the maximum lateral extent of flood water which has been observed or recorded or the commission may require the applicant to determine the boundary of the bordering land subject to flooding by engineering calculation and then it goes on to explain how these calculations must be done um and what precipitation data must be used so we recommend um that um beta group as a peer review evaluate the the FEMA flood plain line as it is we also recommend that we take this one step further and require that climate change impacts be evaluated in consideration of the requirements of the I quote limited environmental impact that's a term that's used in the zba comprehensive pennant regulations that were adopted july 8th 2015 section 6.2 and 6.3 specifically they request an explanation of how the development demonstrates that it will improve water quality control flooding maintain ecological diversity and promote adaptation to climate change and so we respectfully submit that um addressing climate change is part of the comprehensive permit requirement whether or not the massachusetts storm water standards have been implemented whether or not um the applicant agrees that the NOAA precipitation data should be used or not used um it feeds into the climate change requirement um the conservation commission recommends using data available um from um the arlington poor arlington from the massachusetts coastal flood risk model um and some information from cambridge's climate change vulnerability assessment which i think john mentioned that that they checked and i appreciate that the applicant has checked the cambridge data and has said that there is no change um to the flood plain due to precipitation but there is some change due to sea level rise which can be extremely important i will also say and then this goes into the next um discussion on storm water um that even if the Cornell data were used and the Cornell data um are somewhat equivalent to the NOAA atlas 14 data they are not equivalent to what mass DEP is proposing which is the NOAA 14 atlas 14 plus data the plus data are the 90th percentile of the 90th percentile so it's 0.9 times the upper confidence limit of the range of precipitation at that location um and i did a calculation of the differences between the Cornell data and the NOAA plus data for Dorothy road um because you can put actually exact um addresses into the NOAA atlas 14 online precipitation um database which is great um so you can put i put Dorothy road in there and the differences um are striking there are there um numbers of inches different um so that takes me into storm water management because these are all related in terms of looking looking ahead looking at what is there now flooding now flooding that can happen in the future um the store for the storm water management we understand um what beta group has said in their peer review and they and we understand that the s c is working with finger group on improving and addressing certain issues so we won't go into that again but again we um we strongly suggest that the storm water modeling use the mass DEP storm water requirements that are coming down the pipe which is the NOAA plus precipitation numbers we do appreciate that the TSS that is being removed is very close to what the new DEP numbers are 88 rounds up to 90 and we think that's that's great we really um think that that's forward thinking um and that's the way it should be and then we recommend um to go along with that to use the NOAA plus precipitation data um additionally um i don't know if this was um discussed but i know that um beta group has also made this comment uh to require verification of the existing groundwater elevations based on test test pit data um i agree i believe beta agreed to to this at all working session issue number four is the wildlife habitat and um we agree with beta's peer review and um we appreciate that the s c did a very thorough evaluation of the wildlife habitat and the vegetation we were really pleased to see all the information that they provided um again this is an opportunity for restoration and um we would like to see um numbers and types of trees that will be removed during construction in the aura or impacted in the flood plane being quantified um either uh before the permit is um is decided upon or as a as a as a tally required by section 24 the Arlington regulations um for vegetation replacement planting plan as mitigation for lost canopy wildlife habitat climate change resilience this could also be a condition as was discussed of the permit issue number five is the conservation restriction um and i appreciate that john um also mentioned this um we we strongly recommend an appropriate conservation and stewardship mechanism for the undeveloped portions of the site as the condition of the permit um so that we can um adequately and sustainably manage um we that's that's the big w e um this this lake the land that will not be developed um and and protected as a resource for the town um so those are very briefly our um comments from the conservation commission um thank you again chairman Klein for allowing us to to have the have the time to present them and we're willing to answer any questions thank you so much i appreciate it um at this point i'd like to open up for questions from the board mr revlack yes mr chair i have a total of five questions regarding the stormwater report and the wildlife and vegetation report uh if i could just go ahead and ask them please proceed okay so starting with the stormwater report uh so in section 3.10.7 uh discusses inspections um you know to ensure that stormwater management best management practices are being followed during construction i was wondering who would be performing the inspections um i don't know stefanie if you can address that or if that's a question for john um i i don't have a copy of that i i thought we were really focusing on the stormwater i mean the wetlands and floodplain if that's us operations and maintenance plan that would be the requirement of the owner um to uh you know hire or assign a competent person to do those i don't have the report open in front of me here if i open it on my computer i'll lose you folks on my screen um but that's i mean we can get we can respond to that in in you know specific response but that's a detailed um question for down the road is that typically someone who comes from the construction company or is that like typically an outside vendor you said say uh mr rablack do you mind if section 3.10 is that under long term operations and maintenance or is that on construction period so i uh i rather than um so just my style i tend to scribble notes on printed copies so i have a printed copy uh so three ten point seven so it's under so three ten is under three section three ten is good housekeeping best management practices so that's under the um three construction period pollution prevention erosion sediment control yes so that would be the contractor you know somebody hired or appointed by the contractor or it could be um you know somebody an engineer like like us like bsc as as a representative of the owner developer so that there's there's some flexibility um so three ten seven i i just opened the document so right there you know inspection personnel the owner's appointed representative will be responsible for performing regular inspections of erosion controls in ordering repairs if necessary okay so basically you hire an inspector yep yeah okay and that's during that's specific to during construction okay no thank you uh so next question um so this involves section four which is sort of a long section uh so under four zero it's the one two three fourth page uh there is a paragraph so under b ground water in perennials there is a paragraph labeled replacement and the last sentence and this may just be a typo i'm just looking for clarification it says that old ford shall have a pre-established budget allowance for this type of replacement each year um i'm just curious that's a script news error okay so um a little bit of levity where i grew up old ford was the place you went to get pizza so i'm sure you could understand my confusion yeah um so a general question on section five which contains a number of hydrology calculations um and a number of these charts uh the x-axis shows time in hours and the y-axis shows flow in cubic feet per second and i notice that a major a large number of them have transients at around 12 hours um now my apologies for not being terribly familiar with these type of charts but i'm i'm wondering what that transient is telling us so um without getting over technical um those those charts are graphs or hydrographs so that's the um and if you're looking at the beginning of section five it's existing conditions so that's a hydrograph that's how a you know 24 hour so you know i'm looking i just opened one up here and i'm looking at the the two-year um 24 hour rainfall event so that's how the a two-year rainfall and in this particular using the cornell data 3.23 inches of rainfall that's how it's distributed over a 24 hour period of time so there's essentially no rainfall at at hour zero and then it peaks it um um you know right about hour 12 and then and then trails off to hour 24 so in other words it's a lot of water coming down all at once the transient is rainfall or the area under the transient is rainfall the the area under the under the curve yeah okay okay you know these these are you know they're scaled so it doesn't you know like you would have a similar hydrograph for a very small storm event um they they pretty much take the same shape with just more area under the curve representing the different amounts of rainfall comparing a two-year to a 10-year to a 25 to 100 year storm event okay no that makes perfect sense thank you very for the for clarifying that uh so my last two questions uh are based on the wildlife habitat and vegetation assessment um so in section let me pull out the paper copy here uh okay in section 3.3.1 and perhaps in other places the report mentioned snags greater than four inches dbh um i'm not familiar with the terms this i the all the all the uses of snag i'm familiar with don't make sense in this context and i'm just wondering what a four inch snag is so it's uh there's an example under so in 3.3.1 under AUC 10 uh second paragraph three snags greater than four inches diameter breast height few cavities observed right so again i'm not a you know wildlife uh vegetation expert but a snag in in layman's terms and and i think they might be able to help clarify this for me too is you know it's it's a down tree it's a snag and the dbh is the the caliper or the diameter of that snag so a four inch okay you know would be a four inch you know caliper tree which is the diameter which is not a very big tree 20 inch that's a big tree a large that's a very big tree yep yep okay and then uh so thank you for that and my last question uh so in the same section actually the same page uh under AUD 18 uh the last sentence uh states impact of highway evident and i'm just curious if uh that could be elaborated on or what is so what's um um what's it talking about um can you point me to that oh sure uh so this would be on page five of the wildlife habitat and vegetation evaluation uh the very last sentence so the four lines at the bottom immediately adjacent to the largest encampment on the property survey plot has the least garlic mustard on the site evidence of dumping including concrete and macadam and then impact of highway evident and it's it's just it's more of a question out of my own curiosity so i i would have to you know talk to our um biologist that did that work but in an attempt to i could get back to the board on that but um i mean there's the highway the proximity of the highway um when we're looking at you know wildlife habitat values um that i believe that clearly would you know have a negative impact on okay wildlife habitat and i believe that's what the point he was trying to make there but um i would have to get back to you on that with a specific response okay uh those are my questions mr hestian i thank you very much thank you all right question from the board mr ford yep mr chairman i have a question for um the beta group um uh there's a portion of the building and fire land landing in the construction zone mr nova you mentioned uh waiting to comment on the buffer zone until the plans are finalized can you help us understand what the rules are related to constructing within this buffer zone well the buffer zone in this case is also a resource um air protected resource area under the bylaw so um any work in the adjacent upland resource area the aura or the buffer zone would be under the jurisdiction of the conservation commission so you know they would have to provide mitigation for any work in the aura um so you know we suspect perhaps that there may be some additional work in these areas that will need to be mitigated so um our final well near final comments will address that so can you build in the buffer zone and and leave construction in the buffer zone because part of the parking is in it so is that permitted under the state regs uh work in the 100 foot buffer is permitted it's jurisdictional work so the commission would take a look at this work and make sure that the product impact on the adjacent resource areas so you know you you know they would you know require a buffer um a no disturb buffer um to this resource area in order to protect it um in their aura they do allow work in the aura and susan can comment on this um but it has to be quantified and um it has to um the functions and value of that area has to be looked at so if they're proposing work there um you know what is the impact to the interest that aura might be providing and um if that's part of what the bsc did and we concurred with they went out there and they took a look at these areas see what value they had so that if in the future there was going to be proposed work in these areas we'd be able to take a look at that and advise the zba whether or not um they you know and the conservation commission um they could consider um approving some of that work so and susan you can correct me if i'm wrong but that's my understanding right um you're not wrong i just would like to clarify that um under the wetland regulations for the town that are applicable these are the 2015 regulations um the aura the adjacent upland resource area is a resource in the town so restricted requirements then under the massachusetts state wetlands protection act the 25 um foot zone away from the resource area is a no disturbed zone it's a restricted zone that's the same both in the arlington um wetlands as well as the state so that doesn't change um the remainder of the zone which is is um 75 feet remainder out to the hundred foot requires an evaluation of um alternatives by the applicant now the applicant has already asked for a waiver of that in their list of waivers we didn't go through the waivers tonight that's an exercise we probably should do at some point um but they they they wanted to waive that requirement of alternatives but based on our regulations when the applicant proves that reasonable alternatives are not available or practicable so they have to give those alternatives of not doing anything in the hundred feet when they when they prove that they're not reasonable or applicable or practicable then the commission can and in this case it would be the zba um shall designate areas of the aura to be suitable for no temporary limited or permanent disturbances and that's dependent on a bunch of criteria that's very clearly listed in our regulations it has to do with slope soil characteristics drainage wildlife habitat as marty said you know evaluation of how um you know robust that is etc and um so and and then there's a definition of all these areas so number one you need an alternatives analysis then number two if if the applicant is still proposing to disturb this area the 75 foot area outside the 25 feet then they then we have to help you as the zba define what disturbance areas you're willing to accept um in those in those areas um i will say just as a practical rule um generally um the very you know the outside of the aura um we might accept a little bit of disturbance more than in the close inside the aura so the further you get from the resource area it's more manageable but we always require some mitigation for any work in the aura if we allow it at all i hope that helps no that that's very helpful thank you but so then it um um mr nova does at what point will we be able to to and so i so it sounds like you need more information to make your final recommendations on um on helping us determine if they can build there if if we can waive it or if if what they need to do to mitigate that but at what point in this process does that happen do we know well it really it's really up to the applicant um i mean hopefully the next version of the plan so okay all right we'll we'll keep our eyes out thank you that that was helpful both of you guys yeah welcome any further mr chairman mr hamlin so one of the areas of disagreement consists of uh which precipitation forecast to use and there are a number of of contenders uh one of which is the Cornell precipitation data is that is that properly described what that is uh there are several other possibilities uh noa seems to have a series of options ranging from noa to noa plus plus plus um and there is some element of this which may or may not be incorporated into mass dp regulations and the question i'd like to know is whether you have the inputs somewhere i gather there's also some whithole data that we haven't that at least we haven't seen that the conservation commission has because um they're more linked linked in and whithole isn't it is not really facing us as consumers at this point but on these various forecasts of of precipitation is it possible just to i mean those are input numbers and they're not things that they're they're not things that are going to depend upon going out in the field and in observing this or observing that wouldn't how hard it would it be to know just what difference it would make to use one set of numbers rather than the others so that you can see exactly where the choices are to be made uh presumably you'd have to sort of focus what the key questions are and where to look um but i'm just wondering whether that can't just generate alternatives a through e and and and and we can see uh what what the differences are depending upon which one which one you accept at least that would give you an ability to to know what the consequences would be of the decision one way or another and it might pave the way to working out an appropriate approach that you can't as easily do if you don't know what the consequences are not quite either Susan or John or Marta probably are the ones who are the most best able to deal with that um i can offer my opinion uh the the question regarding the which rainfall data to use um is a little bit tricky because uh there are certain rainfall data that is um that is actually endorsed and or required by current regulations and there appears to be some coming coming down um in the near future that are not currently required so that's really the you know the the first the first hang up is can you can you require um data that's that's that's not that's not a regulation so that would that would be the first thing the second thing is is regards to rainfall data in general the the NOAA the NOAA 14 data the Cornell data those are all big rainfall numbers and and big rainfall numbers require big mitigation so the bigger the rainfall the bigger the mitigation and that applies under both existing and proposed conditions so in order to know how much mitigation you need you're going to also be be increasing your existing conditions information so it may it may not end up being um anything more than just an exercise and an increasing storage volumes or whatever however on a constrained site that would certainly become a potential problem uh it uh would require bigger bigger storm water BMPs it would it would increase cost so that you have to kind of find where the with uh the reasonable probably reasonable medium is figuring out where the challenge is is simply a matter of running the model with different inputs is that correct you can run the model for for pretty much any any alternative absolutely um the regulations though um you know often specify um you know the the the generally accepted model um and um you know that's really you know what what you you know the the applicant may choose to hang their hat on all right so I wonder whether if supposed mass DEP should it over the next few months finalize new regulations using rainfall numbers that are different from the ones that are being used now um and the applicant we of course have no ability to wave uh state law and I guess my question is whether uh whether if then the applicant has to go to the conservation commission for an application of state law uh whether the the new regulations are likely to be the ones that you apply or whether for some reason you would the applicant would would be free to apply the older regulations well as it sits right now my opinion would be the applicant is currently under um the regulations that are that are present well I understand that clearly right proposed regular regulations aren't regulations but the applicant still has got to go to the state has got to go to the conservation commission in order to get a state permit and if the situation should change between now and then my question is whether the conservation commission is free to apply or required to apply uh the new regulations or whether we would anticipate that the applicant would be somehow grandfathered because this process was already well underway before the new regulations were adopted that is it with an issue that would need to be need to be agreed upon sure I wonder if this chapter could comment on that um my understanding is that when it comes to the conservation commission and our our application of the wetlands protection act it would be whatever is is the wetlands protection act as it is um at that point that it the permit is applied for um I don't think there's an ability to waive that certainly we don't have that ability no so right now we're going to bind on a zba um because you're implementing the local wetlands regulations and our local regulations only have the Cornell precipitation numbers in them from 2015 because that's what is applicable when this permit came to the zba for for evaluation so we're locked in there under under that but it has not come to the commission yet so if it comes to the commission as a permit as a notice of intent under the state wetlands protection act and and the massachusetts um stormwater standards have been changed by the time it comes in then it's the new standards that would be applicable thank you i will um also just reiterate though that the zba does have some um some teeth in this from that climate change language that's in your comprehensive permit requirements um to consider flooding out to 2030 or out to 2050 and i will say that the NOAA atlas 14 numbers as i said before are similar to the Cornell numbers but they don't consider what's going to happen in the next 10 years and that's what the NOAA 14 plus numbers are they're trying to be protective out to 2030 then the NOAA 14 plus trying to be protective out to 2070 you kind of a simplified term that's the way you can look at the differences in the precipitation rates i also just want to clarify something i said to Aaron earlier i got a text from Nathaniel Stevens who is on the conservation commission and he's the former chair and has he's my he's my uh uh legal aid um just reminded me that um in terms of the aura we talked about that before the 25 foot no disturb zone that you can't do anything in is in our local wetland regulation not in in the massachusetts um wetland protection act to restrict it doesn't apply that for the record but um did i answer the question patrick on the thank you patrick do you have anything further no i don't any other questions from the board mr mills um a little concerned about the it appears to be a drainage area on the i believe the west side underneath the parking lot there is that true and i'm wondering if that is going to have an impact on the neighborhood that is very close to some of butters and if that's going to change the water table there possibly resulting in basement flooding anybody address that issue please oh this is john hessian i'll i'll take that one yes you're correct there is a proposed subsurface infiltration system under that parking lot to the west of the building um you know we're already is is um todd from beta pointed out we've we've had a couple of conversations on it um and in response to the comment from public works we're going to be revising those infiltration chambers to uh remove them from being over an existing sewer line which will move everything further to the south away from the abutting homes um and with the the data that we have out there is that the groundwater um and everything out there is pretty flat but everything should continue to flow to towards the south to the larger wetland system and flood plain towards the south uh towards l l whitebrook um and you know the other point to make is that that groundwater recharge is to you know to in response to the massachusetts stormwater standards and it's a an effort to mimic um existing groundwater recharge that occurs on the site today so although it will be a little bit more concentrated in that location it's not expected to create any flooding problems especially on the homes to the north on little john okay thank you it's my question you're welcome are any other questions from the board i said a couple of quick ones um sort of following up on that question um so the subterranean groundwater flow is definitely towards the in the direction of the l whitebrook it's towards the south that's what it appears to be yes and how does the installation of structures that stick down into that both the the um the recharge cells but also the parking garage how does that impact the flow and does that um create a backup in the to the areas to the north so the the groundwater you know the stormwater system um really doesn't you know water flows through it water can flow you know kind of both ways through the system um with respect to the building foundation um you know layman's term that foundation is going to have to have foundation drainage uh gravel backfill it will create you know the the foundation construction methodologies will provide a path of least resistance for groundwater existing groundwater to essentially flow around the perimeter of the foundation you know along its normal you know course where it would travel if the building weren't there so it will it will uh take a little bit of a detour if you will but it's not going to change direction um and it should not impact any similarly to the to the little john neighbors it should not have any impact groundwater impacts on the of butters on the north side of Dorothy road so essentially it'll allow for sort of a higher rate of movement around the around the foundation to sort of mimic the overall speed of flow today is that fair to say yeah essentially the the the backfill material adjacent to the foundation walls is a more permeable likely a more permeable material than what exists out there so groundwater water likes to follow the path of least resistance so it'll get to that it's the kind of the equivalent of a french drain um i believe the town has installed some french drains in recent time to try to alleviate some of the uh the the drainage problems in different parts of town so similar the similar um kind of phenomenon if you will how the water will uh flow around the building okay and then similarly uh for the the flood plain itself so the the imposition of the building and the the the pervious the impervious areas so we have the compensatory um storage does the compensatory storage sort of fill at the same rate as the the flood plain did so that though you know water that would normally be you know seeking a level where there now is no longer can flow is it specifically flowing are we the proposals are directed in a certain location um or is it sort of flowing on its own and the the the question is more sort of you know obviously the abutter the abutting properties on little john and dorthy road are we going to is the creation of the building going to be in any way um creating a situation where water will be yeah in a storm water event will be flowing towards the neighborhood where in the past it flowed away from the neighborhood into this property so I sorry I believe I heard kind of two questions one on um you know flood flood flows um and I'll address that one first the the flood plain impacts that this project is proposing are very um there I described to when I had the site plan up is kind of like fingers of flood plain they're at the very very upper reaches of the the flood plain in this area um so you know water flood waters will rise and they'll work their way it's way up those fingers and then when it recedes it'll recede back out towards you know L. Y. Brooke um the the flood plain compensatory storage that we're proposing is you know directly adjacent to you know the more significant part of the flood plain it's not in a little isolated finger with a very very broad hydro direct hydraulic connection so we believe that the compensatory storage that's proposed is is a very very responsive to being able to accommodate you know those rising flood waters and then also um as those waters recede that they will migrate back down um so it'll work in both directions with respect to any stormwater from this site um no stormwater from this proposed project is directed offsite it's all directed um you know to our stormwater facilities which discharge you know towards the wetlands either on the west um west of the proposed parking lot or to the south of the building again all and that all the stormwater flows from our discharge points also continue to flow um kind of south towards L. Y. Brooke so nothing is directed to the north to any of the existing of butters on little John or Dorothy hey thank you for that you're welcome um um those were the questions I had um just one last pass at the board is there anyone else on the board who has questions I'll ask I'll ask a couple if I may Mr. Chairman yes please I guess to the applicant um it looks like of the recommendations from the conservation commission um you've tried to accommodate many of them we thank you for that or it looks like you will as they move along the three kind of sticking points seem to be the uh review the existing FEMA floodplain line the um incorporated climate change impact from the um the newer data that that's referenced and then the DEP possible future standard um of those are there any do does the applicant have a sense now whether there's any that they would be willing to accommodate or any that they have the sense now they just don't think they're going to be able to accommodate so we could consider that now so John do you want to take a first pass at it from a um an engineering perspective and then I'll fill in anything yeah um and you know maybe it's part engineering part regulatory um and you know maybe I'll start with the regulatory you know this is a 40 b comprehensive permit application what this project with the applicant is required to meet are the you know Massachusetts come up with Massachusetts standards for stormwater for flood plane wetlands um you know the various items that we're we're discussing tonight um you know Arlington does have more stringent uh wetland bylaw regulations that you know under 40 b the applicant can request a waiver from those or in our in our case and and I thank you for acknowledging it you know um meeting um many of the local bylaw requirements and you know it's it's there's there's the bylaw and the requirement performance and the bylaw has requirements and then there's performance standards that relate to those requirements and you know as an example the precipitation data under the state requirements the storm water um you know stormwater requirements you know it's we didn't even discuss what it's called you know tp 40 it's a very old rainfall data but the town of Arlington has adopted more stringent um stormwater requirements and and require the Cornell data to be used which is what we use so in in preparing this application in these materials we are you know we have a certain set of um regulations and with those regulations performance standards that we try to meet and and that's how that application was you know this application is prepared the engineering work has been designed and progressed and it's the question was asked earlier about how much how hard is it to you know just do scenarios a b c d e um you know that's not really it's it's not in the state or the town's requirements to ask an applicant to run you know various scenarios on on what if um you know what if d e p adopts the new rainfall data what if they don't um so regulatory from a regulatory respect perspective we're trying to be responsive to the regulations that are in place at this time um or at the time when this application was originally filed in in 2016 so there's a little bit of a regulatory legal side of it and then there is also under 40 b the reasonableness of um you know requiring more and more and more engineering analysis and design um and you know under 40 b it really is a more of a preliminary engineering design and an applicant is not required to do final engineering and expend those design dollars to potentially not you know be granted the comprehensive permit it it is not in the spirit of trying to um construct affordable housing in the commonwealth of massachusetts so i i that's some background i think you know to be able to give an answer of what the applicant is is willing to do i i think we would have to you know convene tomorrow after this meeting and and to be able to you know respond um specifically but you know i i i did touch on the climate change the climate change again there's no specific regulatory requirements that's a little bit you know subjective and and great and we have we have looked at the data we've confirmed that the data shows no significant changes in flood elevation our building is proposed above even the um 20 70 catastrophic um sea level and amalia air heart dam failure uh flood levels um and and as far as the fema flood plain flood line goes um we are using the accepted adopted fema flood information fema is in the process of updating that and they're what they're trying to do from my understanding is coordinate with the flood study that the city of cambridge is doing and some other work in middle sex county um but the preliminary preliminary data we've seen is that there's no even with the most current you know today fema data there's no projected change in the flood elevation for this portion of arlington so um i mean so we we can discuss as a team um you know offline which of these if any but there's from a regulatory perspective um i think we we're meeting and and exceeding what's required of this project at this time stephanie and and i'll just layer on to that although john probably did a very good job of that as he mentioned this is it is a 40p and so it's it's the one-stop permitting process that the that the state law has um designated the the zba to administer and you know kind of the the standard is obviously that when the town doesn't have um uh affordable housing to the uh 10 requirement that there's a there's a presumption that the need for affordable housing outweighs local concerns and so then it's it's a balancing act that you as the zba is asked to perform what are the true local concerns and you know balance those against the the need for affordable housing um as john mentioned um the the the obligation that we have obviously is to adhere to the state and federal standards and then an applicant in a 40p scenario is free to request um waivers from local bylaws and i i think that you'll notice that the original plan as opposed to this current one we severely um just narrowed narrowed um possible waivers that we would be looking for for local bylaws and um um mr ford i think you were asking for instance you know what does this mean about is there is there part of the parking garage that's allowed within that the outer buffer um and so under the wetlands protection act um buffer zone is not a resource area um you need to if you're doing work in the buffer um you need to make certain that it's not impacting the resource area itself in this case bbw um but under the local bylaw um they have designated the buffer zone as its own independent resource area and um as as miss chapter very well explained um the first 25 feet is kind of a no-build zone and if you look at the plans you'll see um we're the exact opposite of 25 feet any any disturbance that's proposed it's it's you know probably in the outer like 15 or i'm not even certain john may be able to tell you the outer 25 the outer 25 okay thank you um um and with respect to that um it's not prohibited even if you were applying the local bylaw it's not necessarily prohibited um but there is an alternative analysis and the um the the point of uh the comprehensive permit and the board serving as the local permitting is you can take the um the the comments that are raised by all of the local boards but at the end of the day the zba with its peer review consultant is going to look at it and determine what what requirements really you know are don't outweigh the need for affordable housing what are just um you know not not consistent with an overriding local need and like i said it's a balancing act and i'm sure that mr havity has probably advised the board on this already um but in designing our redesign here we've taken um a lot of energy and a lot of work and bsc's done a great job i feel in um not only making sure that we've met the state standards but then getting as close to meeting here um the uh the local wetlands bylaw um standards and so um you know and and as john said that the three issues that were raised that you'd want us to consider um we will um discuss them and get back to you kind of what our thoughts are but um there needs to be a bench line and so for instance um with with climate change um climate change actually didn't appear um noticeably in the wetlands bylaw the local wetlands bylaw i think until 2018 and then a lot of that came in but this application was filed before that so we're really subject to the 2015 local wetlands bylaw um and then with respect to what the the local 40 b regulations provide it's very it's just in a laundry list of considerations um and it just says promote adaptation to climate change so it's not a it's not a mandate to to look at NOAA plus plus or or to um proactively adopt standards that aren't even adopted at the state level it's just um a line that says that you know development should demonstrate um promoting adaptation to climate changes and and i think that because you're the master permitting you can look at this from a number of perspectives um one of the perspectives is um it's adapting to climate change isn't just wetlands issues but it's you know is this a transit oriented is it close to public transportation is it using pretty much um a low density footprint for a number of um to provide a number of housing um and so climate change is not just solely limited to wetlands considerations i think there are a broad um consideration that this board's going to be looking at you know tonight's not the night for that obviously but when you're considering the project so i don't know if i've responded to the question more if i've confused you more but you know feel free to ask me a follow-up question thank you very much chairman Klein can i just respond to that uh briefly okay very briefly um thank you um miss keeper i i agree with you about what you said um just to to clarify and i do agree that climate change in the broader sense is an important consideration of the zba i will um point out that um if we expect these structures to last i mean i'll just ask john there's supposed to last 50 years at least sure yeah so so you expect a building housing affordable housing for for a low income community maybe an ej community um to last 50 years you definitely want it to be resilient for those 50 years and um regardless of of the wetlands um the structures are not going to be resilient if they're flooding and if you're planning a project that's going to be resilient for 50 years in terms of climate change um then you need to consider what's going to happen from now through 50 years from now 50 years from now it's 2070 so i would just um ask the zba to to keep that in mind when you're evaluating the project regardless of the wetland resources thank you any last questions from the board um mr chair yes mr alak i i do have one comment um and i should preface this by stating that i live along the alewife brook in the 100-year floodplain and when it came out i consumed cambridge's climate change vulnerability assessment and their subsequent you know alewife district handbook with uh we'll say great interest so one of the things that concerned me or one of the concerns i had going into this project was where the building would sit in relation to the projected 100-year sea level rise storm surge event in 2070 now cambridge's ccva handbook has a nice picture of alewife station where they illustrate various elevations and you know i mean there's a little bit of a translation because that you know their elevations are cambridge based city datum but you know and we're talking in you know feet above sea level but um my best determination and i invite mr unsis to correct this if it's wrong is that the 100-year storm sea level rise storm storage event that over tops or flanks the amelia air heart dam will produce flooding to approximately you know a little over 11 feet above sea level so the first floor building of this elevate first floor elevation of this building is at 13 feet so i mean as far at least on its face it appears that you know the applicants you know have considered you know the effect of very major study flooding events and they are building above them um thank you mr chair thank you and i just like to say i do appreciate that okay now further ado i would like to um invite the the public in um we'll bring back up the participants tab so um the first hand i so if you go to at the bottom of your screen there's a a series of tabs to pop up one of them is labeled participants if you click on that it'll bring up another screen and on that um in the bottom you will have one of the buttons we'll say raise hand it's blue you can click on that and we will know that you want to speak so the first person raise their hand is uh john samba samba and matzoo okay hi thank you yes my sir my name is john samba and matzoo i live on barnum street i used to live on thorn dyke for eight years so i'm very familiar with the imperiled uh wildlife habitat that's in view here i'm familiar with the limited values of the trees and the thousands of individual animals who live in this area the dozens of species who are going to be um either destroyed killed or uprooted and evicted uh in the name of greed i mean the full 40b excuse which is what it is is simply a ruse to uh contravened town conservation and a lot of wetlands protection acts in order to create profit for the mugar family that's what this is about and i'm not sure if the board is aware of this but we're living through the biggest mass species extinction event in 65 million years all the animals on the earth are dying two-thirds of all extant animals on the earth have died in the last 40 years that's mammals avians reptiles amphibians fish insects there is no reason for this development thorn dyke place is 17 acres of habitat and you can twist it any way you like oh is you're going to test the soil well as the soil doesn't have this uh you know uh this acidity or whatever that's just it's it's just baloney i mean this plant is going to destroy 40 of animal habitat and the way uh thorn dyke respect minister hessian the way you make it sound is though this isn't going to hurt anybody or anything it's going to hurt a lot of animals these are conscious beings like your cat or your dog they have no place to go the reason one reason that the extinction crisis is upon us is because of fragmentation and destruction of habitat that's one of the leading causes and here you're just going to just raise this area so that this private family which is already so powerful and has enough money to last 50 lifetimes can make more money this isn't about helping poor people it's ridiculous look at the rents in arlington no one can afford to live here and if you wanted to build you know affordable housing you could do that someplace else that's not on wetlands and in a flood plain um so i oppose this project i'm very disappointed i appreciate everybody here is you know you're doing your jobs but i'm very disappointed with what i've heard tonight uh mr hessian that you gave what i would say is a kind of please direct your comments to the chair please i'm sorry i apologize uh mr hessian made a comment that that uh mr chair um that uh essentially what seemed to me circular is sort of like well this is an insignificant area uh because there isn't like a vibrant uh thriving ecosystem well this is what developers do they destroy everything and then the little 10 percent that remains they take 90 percent and then they say well this doesn't even matter anyway it's marginal turkeys rabbits foxes uh other animals live in this area many and many other kinds of animals they depend on it where are they going to go thank you mr chairman that's all i have to say thank you uh next person to hand up uh jennifer grippett okay hi i don't have a video is my audio coming in you are loud and clear okay great so i'm jennifer grippett i live on edis street um so technically i abut the mugar property i'll um and i will just build on what the previous person commented on that you know habitat is important and in particular the upland areas the parts that don't flood are particularly important so and that's what this development would greatly reduce so um i do very much appreciate all the wildlife but my comment that i was going to make or questions is about the groundwater uh it down in this area the groundwater is very high we get flooding you know with a i mean right now my basement is pumping already um so so i'm just wondering how much that has been considered in this design that you're going to put a parking below ground it's going to be in contact with the groundwater almost consistently uh whatever underground structures you're going to have for storm water and it and also you know over time things don't always uh you know aren't remain waterproof so they'll be leakage and i will also say that where where water flows and the amount that is concentrated when it flows does matter locally to the groundwater and to the neighboring homes i'm particularly concerned about the homes on dorthy road um that are on the same side of dorthy road that that this um element will occur on and impacts there as well as the the neighbor right there you know the neighbors right there on little john so you know groundwater is of high concern and and where and the amount you know the building is going to be in the way it's going to have gravel it's going to divert groundwater around well where it's diverting it is and how much and and how fast is all things that are going to impact us neighbors and our basements because groundwater matters even more than you know the surface water and the things that everybody calculates on but um what happens with the groundwater and it comes up you know we're down gradient from the whole town of belmont and everything so the groundwater when it rains a lot it it it comes up so that's my and i'm wondering how that's all planning to be addressed and considered thank you for that um um mr hesschen i know we've talked already a little bit about the sort of the groundwater impacts um there was a question i think it had come up earlier what has been done to confirm the ground the groundwater elevation on the site um while there's a series of about a dozen historic test pits that were on the original application drawings um but we went out the wednesday before thanksgiving the 25th i believe it was and we conducted subsurface soil testing and obtaining groundwater uh um elevation data um in the specific areas of our proposed stormwater infiltration systems um the so under the parking lot adjacent to the parking garage ramp and then we we did an additional one about midway um midway east on the the rear of the building just for you know data for consistency so we have not packaged that new information up yet and submitted it to beta but that's that was all part of um additional work that needed to be done to advance the stormwater management so but this is jennifer you that's a long time ago i mean there was we were in a drought i mean we've had rain now we're still not out of the drought if you look at the reservoirs out on route two for cambridge they're still extremely low so whatever you did before thanksgiving is not very relevant thank you the next may uh uh robert biasi yes good evening mr chair i have um three or four points i just wanted to bring up i live at 29 little john street i'm a direct abutter of the proposed project here and um at looking at taut's plan that showed the grades around the surrounding areas it doesn't really show um what the elevation of my backyard is to the floodplain so during several major rainstorms we've had encroachments of water two thirds of the way up to our back door so that means our backyard which would be basically about 45 50 feet would be somewhere around the area of 60 you know somewhere around 40 50 feet of water straight out flooded in in the elevation in the backyard is below the street level which kind of puts everything behind my house and behind the fence and what we would call a floodplain i believe i haven't looked on the charts at all um however the the proposed parking area which would be then on my side of my home it appears would be draining towards my home that's one of the biggest points that i have is that i'm really wary about the documentation of that you have the water runoff of the roof you have the water runoff of the parking areas and to me that's not going to be mitigating as it is today as it is today and it falls it dissipates very evenly right now you're going to be forcing all that water to one corner and that corners by my home in addition to that we've brought up um different things about wildlife now it's not uncommon for me to sit on my back porch and find five or six gear trotting through my backyard and then jumping over the fence to go back into the woods so i'm not too sure about the wildlife study on that as well one of the other concerns that we have is is the test holes the test holes i saw them dig in those right before Thanksgiving and as jennifer had stated we're in a major drought if i go to my basement after a major rain storm i have a sump pump and there's the water level right there it's easy to see right now i can see the water level before i could not so doing a test hole to establish water levels prior to Thanksgiving during the major drought is really kind of irrelevant you're not going to get an accurate study on that and furthermore the FEMA map shows different levels all the way around the surrounding areas here so that's pretty much it for right now though thank you sir thank you very much soviet domingas hi um my name is soviet domingas i'm also a town meeting member for district four and um i am just really um upset hearing all of this there's um the degree of vulnerability that you keep uh insinuating and everything you're saying today just points to how ridiculous it is to build in this area um also um there's no consideration of the fact that we already have a ridiculous amount of traffic in this area just think about lake street it's where all of if you could limit your comments to the the wetlands and the flood plain there's actually a discussion coming up very soon on traffic which i'll mention at the end okay um well it just it seems to me that um you know where we had a flood and thawndyke street about 13 years ago um this area is already prone this is already having we're already having problems i just don't understand why this is so necessary and why are we all going out of our heads here trying to justify building on this incredibly vulnerable area i mean all of this all of this time all you're doing is spending time and resources in order to build in this vulnerable area that it doesn't make any sense to me why um this is so necessary particularly when it's clear that mr muler and that family they don't need any more money this is not about um really about affordable housing it's a bastardization of affordable housing to use it to destroy more habitat to destroy more areas for in the name of affordable housing that to me is even worse than not offering affordable housing this is um this is not a sound uh plan at all and um it seems to me that these are it's exactly what we've been doing for centuries and why we're in the situation that we're in i do not support this and i think this is um i'm really disappointed if the town allows us to go on thank you thank you very much looking on the comments or look on the participants list i don't see any other people with their hands raised if there's um anyone who did want to speak um sort of looking at everyone's images here to see if there's anybody waving in particular we might have missed i don't see anyone um i'll just ask one more time if there's anyone else who wishes to to speak this evening in regards to um this topic i will also mention that um two weeks from tonight we are scheduled to uh to meet again to discuss these topics so if something comes up um that you think of after this meeting there is another opportunity um in open hearing to discuss this topic all right so seeing no other hands raised i'm going to go ahead and close the public comment for this evening on this um so at this time um there's no specific actions that the board um these to particularly take at this point um unless there are uh any specific requests from the board chairman yes please the gentleman um excuse me i think that it would be i mean the uh there are two issues that it would be nice if we could have beta and the applicant discuss and and provide advice to us on that both came up in the public comments um one has to do with what is what is there to say about the the observation that uh the testing that for groundwater that took place just before Thanksgiving was at a time of the year uh and in a time of our community life that makes it not typical and what might be done to address the possibility that it would understate the ground that it would understate the groundwater level and the second question it has to do with uh Mr. Dupiazzi's observations with respect to the groundwater flow and in general the flow towards his house and i know that that that has been touched on orally tonight but it would be nice if there were a considered paragraph or two on what the position of the applicant and and of beta would be um so that we have something written to work on and something that's a considered statement more so than a reaction in an oral hearing of this kind can be so this is not an order to do anything but it would certainly be helpful to me as a member of the board and possibly to the other members of the board to have something like that to uh to work with thank you no i agree that having some clear better clarity on those on those questions would absolutely be helpful mr. chairman this is rick valarelli board administrator i hate to interrupt just a reminder that zoom times out at 10 30 oh goodness okay that's probably uh 15 minutes in change thank you thank you appreciate that um well with that in mind just a couple of uh thanks to note so um there are several subsequent meetings um that are coming up on this most of them are available uh on the website if you particularly go to the previous agenda and look at the agenda item four um for schedule i am hopeful that we will have the schedule posted on our new revised zoning board of appeals website by the end of the week if not beginning of next week that we're working with the town on that i got my my first my first glimpse of the updated uh a layout so hopefully this is coming together quickly but the transportation advisory committee has agreed to have a working session on traffic issues in relation to the foreign place development um that working session has been scheduled for december 9th which is tomorrow evening at 7 15 p.m and so that that is specific to the due to the traffic impact study that has been presented um this board will be meeting again on december 22nd at 7 30 to discuss wetland impacts and stormwater management um this board will be meeting on tuesday january 12th to discuss the traffic impact study and um comments from the transportation advisory committee we will be discussing uh architecture and urban design of the building and proposal on january 26th at 7 30 um and then we will be having a sort of a follow-up on um on outstanding issues on on tuesday february 9th and so where to that is as far as we have scheduled out meetings um hopefully we'll have some better clarification by then as to what additional time we may need um currently the comprehensive permits operate under a time frame um that time period is 180 day calendar from when the it opens it can be extended currently the agreement between the applicant and the board has that period ending on friday april 9th so we have plenty of time to discuss and resolve so it's just here in the new year um coming down my notes um i think that is everything we had intended to cover this evening um so i thank everyone for their participation tonight um so thank you all for your participation in this meeting of the arlington zoning board of appeals appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting i especially want to thank uh rick valorelli and vizet lee for their assistance in preparing and hosting some online meeting thank you very much the applicants um to beta group uh to the conservation commission vse group and everyone who has uh contributed to this meeting i really appreciate your attendance and uh your consider thoughts uh please know the purpose of the board's reporting of the meeting is to ensure the creation of an accurate record so understanding the recording made by acmi is available for demand well will be made available for on demand at acmi.tv the upcoming days if anyone has comments or recommendations please send them via email to zba at town dot arlington dot ma dot us that email address is also listed on the zoning board of appeals website um and so to conclude this evening's meeting um mr hannon they have a motion to adjourn so moved mr chairman thank you seconded mr chairman yes please did you vote to continue this to a date certain that is a thank you very much mr harry um we um um so i move that we this hearing is adjourned uh is continued until tuesday december 22nd at 7 30 p.m so moved thank you um second just a quick vote through the board mr revlack hi mr duke haunt hi mr handlin yes mr orwork hey mr ford yes mills hi thank you so moved and approved and then on the other motion the motion to adjourn by mr handlin seconded by mr duke haunt was there uh was there anything further mr happening no that was it okay thank you thank you um all those in favor of adjournment mr revlack hi mr duke haunt hi the board hi mr orwork hi mr handlin hi mr mills hi thank you all very much thank you all for your attendance and your participation thank you mr