 Hello and welcome to conservation commission meeting. It is May 25, 2022 at 704. Jen our chair is out today and our vice chair is also out for the time being so we're just going to go right to Dave for some updates. As I lose my voice. How much time do you need me to take here. Dave, our hearing started 730 so you know you've got a little bit of time today to. I'll do a few updates around town and then we can, you know, there are questions sometimes we just don't have much time for questions so let's see just a couple of updates for you from the field. And again, Aaron and I as best we can try to get out in the field we're coordinating with Brad and Tyler and a number of consultants. Let's see starting with community gardens, you know, we are full at Amethyst Brook we only have 10 or 12 plots there so those are honestly all taken for the year Stephanie Chicarello our sustainability coordinator is working with Brad Tyler myself and healthy healthy Hampshire. So we're going to get Fort River Farm the community gardens going there. We're making progress, but we've got fencing to repair new kiosk to put in the raised beds are there soil arrived so you know we're, we're pushing it in terms of planting but what we've said to any of the gardeners and Hampshire, healthy Hampshire has been great. What we've said to them is this is kind of a little bit of a sweat equity year you may not get the full season at Fort River Farm because we're, we're, we're building it as we go we're flying the plane as we go. But, but I think they understand that and we have a number of people I think there are 12 raised bed gardens and then 20 some odd plots you know in ground plots. As I said compost was delivered today for the raised beds. We have we have a sand point well that has gone in already this is Ryan carb was nice enough to help us from many hands farm. And this is a basically an old fashioned handheld pump. And it's pretty cool it's, I'm going to say it's six state feet deep and we're going to give it a try. And see how that does this summer there is a high water table. If we're farmed so we'll see how it goes. We're also preparing with healthy Hampshire to maybe bring in a sister and use a sister in there throughout the, you know, the summer months July August, September if it gets, if it as it often does gets dry so. Yeah, we'll have we're hoping to have kind of a grand opening down there and of course we'll invite the Commission and the Council, and I imagine that would take place in two and a half three weeks or so. We're getting ready for the season at Puffers pond. Standard things there port of parties have arrived. New beach sand has been spread. And we're beginning testing I believe testing begins a week from Monday so we did have that, you know, hot, hot weekend last weekend I think it was in the 90s and you know we had good, good use of Puffers pond but it wasn't. It wasn't off the charts, which I was a little concerned about. So Puffers pond is kind of gearing up. I wish I had good news on coverage there but I really don't. I might have mentioned this before but you know the pandemic years were so tough to get through for businesses and for municipalities and all of us but it will. We had issue great summers when we had a lot of staff whose offices and departments were not open so we reassigned them at Puffers pond. And so we were really able to do a lot of meeting and greeting and, and, and educating down at Puffers and by all accounts people loved having a presence there so we are not going to have that stronger presence there this year we don't have those extra staff. Honestly, we're having trouble as many places are recruiting summer staff to work on the trails so right now I think we actually hired somebody and lost them to another job that paid a few dollars more per hour. I think right now we're probably at two field staff seasonal field staff plus Brad and Tyler. So we'll make the best of it we're still hiring if you know anybody that would like to work on trails and, and have fun and get a little dirty and, and be out there on the trails with us it's very rewarding or at Puffers pond so if you know anybody have them apply online on the 10 website. So we're planning to support the friends of buffers pond, they were supposed to have the pancake break breakfast a week from Saturday, but unfortunately, unfortunately their volunteer organization was hit with cove it, and they just don't feel like they can pull it off. The pancake breakfast that was planned for Saturday June 4 was canceled. So that's, that's a bummer it's a hit to our budget. We count on, you know between four and $6,000 every year to use on at buffers pond so I'll have to make that up somewhere else. So let's see. We're prepping for the amethyst bridge project Aaron and I were out there with staff with field staff, we can have a go or so and we may come back to you with a we will come back to you with an update and maybe some suggested changes minor changes important changes to that plan and again we're not in a huge hurry there we're going to have to do that obviously during low water and low flow and the amethyst so look for some some information coming back through Aaron on that. Maybe it's your next meeting or the meeting after that. I have all the funding for that project so I would love to get it done this summer. Lots of standard mowing of trails going on trail heads, parking areas, trying to finish parking areas at Fort River farm, podic and Catherine coal out in North Amherst. I'm doing a lot of volunteer work. Tyler P's our assistant land manager has been working with a number of groups on the Robert Frost trail doing some, some all the permitted work and some upland work that you all permitted through that Robert Frost trail grant. It's a wonderful kind of volunteer coordinator David Mullins who's, who's very handy and very good woodworker so it's great to have somebody like that on site. And they couple of Saturdays they've had eight to 10 volunteers out there doing work on the rubber frost trail so it's great to kind of get some of that, some of that unfinished work done. And then Aaron and I, as well as Brad and Tyler we've been spending a fair amount of time on the flow structure, the combination the project flow structure at Plumber upon that is associated and related to the culvert replacement at the Kestrel Trust office. And I don't know Aaron were you going to say more about the flow structure or do you want me to just give a quick summary or feel free to give a breakdown and if there's anything I can add I will. Yeah we had a great day last Friday was the day that we decided to take one of the stop logs out of that flow structure at Plumber upon. We had our engineer on site that we have hired to help us oversee the project. We also invited the town engineer but he was tied up with other things. Brad and Tyler were there actually read two engineers, they're from tie and bond no they're not from time bond. Gza. And yeah we had safety measures in place and extremely well we had the board out in probably 10 minutes. It's fascinating seeing this 55 inch long stop log that has been in there we don't know how long but it is. It is weathered it is worn. You can see the forces of water have have reshaped it from its original shape it's 55 inches long about three inches thick and six inches wide if you will. And we think there's about a dozen of these in this flow structure going down 10 to 12 feet or more. It's a little hard to tell because there's a lot of sediment built up, but it's a very well built flow structure it's a little we do have to be careful when we're out on it because we don't want anybody to end up inside the culvert that goes through the dam that would be a very bad day. We ended the after successfully removing the flow of the the first stop log to lower the pond. We had the fire department out there and we had a nice team four or five fire department staff and they we invited them to see the flow structure just from a safety and emergency response standpoint. We walked them through the project and then we walked them around the Kestrel Trust office so they would familiarize themselves with that and then Aaron gave them an overview of the, the, the culvert replacement which of course is key because there will be some days when that culvert is removed, where they cannot get a fire engine down the long Kestrel Trust driveway. Has everybody been out there by the way has everyone from the commission been to the Plum Brook pond? I've been there before it was Kestrel though. Yeah, we should really know everybody's busy and health issues and kids and school but it'd be wonderful to do a little walk and talk down there there's a lot of there's a lot of stories to be told and and interesting things happening down there. Yeah, it was it was hugely successful so Monday morning we took out the second stop log and why don't I just Aaron maybe you could kind of jump in there those were my updates but could you just remind everybody kind of what our goals why are we taking the stop logs off why are we why are we drawing down the pond before we replace the culvert. Yeah, so. In December, I was made aware of the fact that the culvert was failing or in failure and I went out and looked at it and realized that there's a pretty serious problem they have sinkholes forming underneath the pavement in the driveway. So we had a structural engineer to take a look at it and the issue with the culvert is that the sides are are failed as opposed to usually you see and those corrugated steel culverts the bottom fails which means that there's a little more time because the sides are still holding the weight. In this case the sides are what are failed. And so, because of that it was in structural failure deemed in structural failure and needing replacement. The replacement the replacement pipe was designed we tried to conform to the stream crossing standards as closely as we possibly could. And that culvert is is extremely undersized and also dangerously dangerously small for the velocity of water that come out of that spillway. And so, I think all parties involved recognize the fact that this is an emergency DEP recognized it as emergency the office of dam safety recognized it as an emergency and our engineer recognizes an emergency and we verify the Army Corps of Engineers that the work is going to be starting the real challenge with the replacement is it being done sort of in the wet because the pump arounds are extremely expensive. In terms of de watering the area upstream and keeping the water flowing downstream. In this case we're extremely lucky because there's a really really extreme just downstream of this culvert so that stream is not going to dry out it's going to stay flowing. It's just the segment between the spillway and where the other stream comes in that's going to be dry for a short period of time. We're shooting for the first week of June for the culvert replacement at this point. It's not positive because supply chain stuff is an issue that the culvert itself is is manufactured the problem is the, the flared ends on either side of the culvert, the manufacturer of those is what's holding up the train at this point so are those concrete. No, it's a, it's a sort of oblong corrugated steel that's going to be placed in it's going to be set into the ground so it'll be, they'll be we're going to do it sort of a natural bottoms channel within the pipe itself right about the flares. No, the flares are also steel. I believe. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So, um, Yeah, it's really, it's coming together very nicely again supply chain. Why are you drawing down the pond again. Oh, Aaron, yeah, finished on the draw down. Because we need the, the work area where the culvert is taking place to be dry when the culvert is replaced, so that it doesn't dump a bunch of sediment downstream. So the, the idea would be right now it's still flowing, but the idea would be we're doing an incremental draw down. And once we get it to the water level that, and this is also we already have an order of conditions in place for the we're bored replacement we did that as part of our sweet Alice trail work we recognize that the we're boards or the stop logs were in bad shape, or they might be in bad shape because we hadn't had the inspection done but we confirmed that when we went out there and pulled one of them because I mean the thing was like a sponge. So it's a safety issue that those need to be replaced. And so it's like killing two birds with one stone in a sense like we're replacing the stop logs to put safe, safe new infrastructure in that dam so that it continues to function. And then allowing ourselves a couple day window when the stream will be dry for the culvert replacement. And just so you know the the stop logs. We are bored stop logs are interlocking so they need to be, they need to be milled. It's not just, you know, buy something off the shelf at coals or Home Depot or wherever so we've luckily got an Amherst resident who has some real skills with milling and he's got to work with Brad and Tyler, basically take one of the old ones, you know, basically measure that out and then fabricate those, those new stop logs so that we can put them in place. We're not sure if we're going to go all the way down at this point or how many we're going to replace but we'll, we'll cross that bridge so to speak when we get there so. It's an interesting project and we're watching the, we're watching the pond level it is down a good four or five feet at this point so shoreline is exposed. We just want to make sure that we, we don't take it too far down and, and jeopardize, you know, all the critters that depend on on that pond and the stream so anyway, very exciting interesting project lots of big learning curve. Yeah, Kestrel has been kept in the loop the whole time. By the way, I will say that, you know, the parking lot that we did build out there that caused me great stress when I realized it was on a CR part of our conservation land is being extensively used because there we could go Saturday. I don't know eight o'clock in the morning and it was full of birders would park there for a birding trip around a birding class I think around the pond and up on the Mount Hoyok range so. It's really getting well use when you go by there you just see people running people taking their dog for a walk birders, you know, it's getting getting full use. Anyway, happy to take any questions or on anything else that you see out there on the trails or Puffer spawned or anywhere. Pollocks. I'm sure it's pretty easy to find but it was a volunteer days on the Robert Frost trail at those like. Where's that posted. Um, how do you find out. That's an interesting question. Fletcher I don't know as we reached out too much because David Mullins volunteer to pull that group. Together had a group of it turns out this is a section kind of near Amherst Woods and and they were kind of a group that uses the Robert Frost trail in that section and said man we'd love to. We'd love to work with you so we kind of said David, you know, Tyler will be there on this Saturday and that Saturday at 9am or work nine to noon. We'll bring materials. So yeah, but we will be having more of those I think we're working with Kestrel a little bit on our improving our volunteer organization, because I think we're such a small staff field staff that it just takes takes people to organize other people. Kestrel had an adopt a section of Robert Frost trail, which I signed up for but I think it's sort of like on hold. I think they're waiting for it. I don't know what they're waiting for I followed up just to make sure they got my submission but that's the thing so they have if you go to their website somewhere out there, and they've like split it into different sections and I think you can like share sections of other people. And you just become sort of a steward of a section and take care of it and let people know when maintenance is needed. Right that's a good point Michelle so what we did we attended Brad at Brad and or Tyler actually spoke on that. That virtual meeting. And what we agreed with Kestrel is the rubber frost trail is so long and goes through so many of their towns, and we have staff and we have lots of volunteers so we kind of, we volunteer to organize trail adopters in Amherst and they're going to organize trail adopters kind of to the south south Hadley Grandby etc and then to the north lever it on up into Montague and and and Wendell and you know that way so I think out of that group we had a there was a large group I think it was like 65 people 20 wanted to adopt one section and another or work on the rubber frost trail in Amherst. So we have that list so we're going to begin to reach out and maybe you're on that list. Okay, cool. We're going to reach out to you and others in Amherst to say okay. And part of the reason for that is, you know, we're out there all the time Kestrel is not and we wanted to, you know, sometimes the best intentions of trail adopters or trail volunteers are sometimes, and we've had this happen to us sometimes people get a little carried away, and they go into wetland areas or clear too much or whatever. So we wanted to have our fingers on the pulse a little bit more there and just, you know, again, set people out if you wanted to take this section. Fine just so we know who's doing it and, and we can give some ideas on on how to do it and maybe even provide some tools. That makes sense. Thanks for the update. Hello, Roy. Sorry everybody. Happy to see you. Where are we yet. So Dave just gave us a little update, kind of a little more of an extended update on field stuff that's going on right now on conservation areas and we have about six minutes before the hearing opens for the bylaw rights. I actually had a request for an emergency certification that came in and Dave gave me the green light to issue it today so I don't know if the commission wants to entertain a motion to to issue on that while we're waiting. I'm on Bridge Street and there are two maple trees that are leaning over somebody's roof and the insurance company is really concerned about the safety of the trees and so the landowner would like to remove them with an emergency certification. And I would onsite but I will go out and take photos of them before they're cut and really we would just need a motion to issue the emergency certification so the trees could be removed. I'm okay with that. Yeah, what was the address together. 16 Bridge Street. I move to issue an emergency certification for 16 Bridge Street removal of two maples. I second that. So, right. Do you want to do you want to take the reins you want me to keep going. Here today. I'm sorry. Long day. Larry. Hi, Michelle. Hi, lecture. Hi, Laura. Hi. Hi. Passes. So just to give you guys an update. We were supposed to be issuing an order of conditions tonight because we close the public hearing at the last meeting for 398 and 406 North Hampton Road. It's the UMass five college federal credit union relocation for their community. They actually requested. That we hold off on issuing the order of conditions and they grant they have requested basically a 21 day extension of the commission granting the order of conditions, because on June 1 they have a meeting with the planning board and there may be some minor planner issues that may be incorporated. And again, if it's something like relocating a bike rack. That would be pretty simple for us to, you know, just use the revised plan sheet but I already informed them if they have any major changes that they're going to have to reopen the public hearing so so they're aware of that. And just to let everybody know that 398 and 406 will be handled at the next meeting. So I had checked in with Jen briefly. I don't think there's any reason for us to enter into executive session at this meeting. So what we may want to do is just make a motion to have the executive session on the next agenda in case we need to go into executive session for that discussion. I'll make sure we take time to discuss that. Right, we can cut zero tuckerman lane site. Lastly, we did have a request from the owners at Canton Ave. To be on the agenda tonight, I was kind of hoping to keep it just the bylaw rags, but they are going to be popping in around eight o'clock. discussion about how to move forward on that and I can give you guys or what I'd like to do is give you guys a little update of that discussion before we sort of collectively discuss it just so that you guys understand from a regulatory standpoint, where that permit is at and kind of what the options are. I have a question about the three week extension request that does that put us out into the third Wednesday of the month. We are going to have to meet and vote on that in the eighth. The 21 days no that's not that's not that doesn't mean that. So Michelle just, that's a great question. When we close a public hearing we have to issue an order of conditions within 21 days. That's a state regulation. So, because we're two weeks out from the last meeting that means that we at our next meeting would be over 21 days. And that's a requirement for the applicant to protect them to make sure that we're being timely in the manner that we issue our orders of conditions and not making the applicant sit and wait for it for a month or two. The, what they granted was an extension of that 21 day period to allow them to get feedback from the planning board if there's any other revision so it's not that we have to within 21 days of tonight take some action it's more so they're granting an extension to that 21 days so that at our next meeting we can issue the order of conditions without exceeding that regulatory. Thank you. Thanks for the clarification. That was pretty perfect timing. Lorraine how do you want to handle the hearing for the bylaw regs do you want me to. I assume you wanted to present that. I'm happy to present. I guess I just didn't realize it was actually in the hearing. Does I mean I have to read something to open here. It's not like a well and protection act hearing. I can do really quickly. So yeah it's, it's not the same as opening a hearing under the wellness protection act. What I can do is just open up the legal that you can see it and read that I think that might be the easiest way to go. So I'm just going to take out a piece of this so it's a little easier for you to read. So just this part here. This was a notification commission will hold the bar and the following ritual public meeting on the master law chapter 131 section 40 the reverse act in article 3.31 whittlin's protection under the town of Amherst general bylaws. 30 p.m. Review and approve proposed amendments to the town of Amherst bylaw regulations promulgated by the wetlands protection act wetlands protection section under the town of Amherst general bylaws article 3.31 I can actually probably just share from my screen if that works with your comfortable for you loroy all right guys hopefully I won't lose anybody and there's a long lot and there's a lot of detail here the overall theme is is the first time everyone's staying and I think in whole so the overall theme is please take your time to read it on your own delve into it again this is first time look everything I'm going to be reviewing here are just overview changes or general descriptions of changes I think I listed maybe two or three specific changes so hey again are you supposed to be sharing your screen right now not quite yet let me pop that up right now oops everyone's seeing that so yeah in general I would really like everybody to take their time on a particular section or hopefully with the whole thing so with that I will get right into it so we are the bylaw regulations review subcommittee the committee was made up of two members Michelle was the chair you know myself and then I was a staff member Natasha the three of us met excuse me every first and third Monday from January 7th until April 29th most of the meetings were about an hour long some of them did run close into two the videos of all this meetings and along the notes are on the slide there then both of those links can be found at the conservation commission website so we were a subcommittee formed to revise the regulations that is different than revising or creating a bylaw bylaw does not change has not changed it says that there is a commission that can create regulations so what we did was look at those regulations that we have and decide where and how we could change those the major theme here and for all towns who are committing any sort of changes to their bylaws because they should be by the town for the town should address town specific issues and it should be based in things or ways the town has tried to solve those issues before they should be provable moving to the background on this a little bit is a state wetlands protection act I'm sure we all know that was in the past 1972 most recently amended 2014 under that and we massachusetts protections for home rule it allows for towns massachusetts to make their own more stringent protections not less stringent protections in addition to the wetland protection that's what these are that's what has existed here since 2014 and it's most current version that's the one we're revising and hopefully this will be the ones finalized this year in 2022 the background on these changes they started I believe I can't find my note here I think it was back in 2018 was the beginning of the revisions on this the three main contributors at the time were Beth Wilson who was our former once agent Brian Yangness who was our building commissioner building inspector chair of the concom no I'm sorry former chair of the concom and Rob Moore is our building inspector right so obviously it's been over four plus years when you actually look at the edits on the document all the edits have been tracked there is a total of over 1000 edits on this for various people and a lot of those include Aaron and then of course Michelle myself a few other people but again over 1000 so how we went about doing this this was a page by page effort there's excuse me significant amount of offline research especially with Michelle and vernal pools the process was to review the original page by page and suggest changes to Aaron Aaron would then take those changes write them into a form of draft to send to KP law who's a town attorney they would make any legal revisions any comments there and send it back to us where it would be finalized well not finalized but the version we're presenting to you put into a clean version the two biggest goals here were to make it approachable make it consistent approachable and then we thought that a lot of applicants simply had trouble understanding if how our rules worked and that is understandable if you look at the current version there's a lot of inconsistent wording there is a lot of thing well we'll see as we go on but there are things that I think quite fit where they should etc and it could it could and did create a lot of confusion we've seen examples of that especially around vernal pools making it consistent had more to do actually with lining up with the state's wetland protection act there's a lot that was very different from wetland protection act with our bylaw for instance our bylaw did not actually mention riverfront at all which is a big portion of the wetland protection so those are goals there jumping in this is where we're actually going to start with our revisions if you have a copy of the old ones you can follow along by section title if you have a copy of the new ones it should read pretty pretty like you're seeing here section by section this first page here is just a this is just a snapshot it's not the whole thing of the table of contents the only point I wanted to make here is that the original ones do not have a table of contents at all so we figured that was major benefit also it doesn't show here but I believe Aaron correct me if I'm wrong that eventually these will be clickable so that you can jump in the document that's the hope yep all right excellent part one there are six parts there so hold on with me I hope we'll make it through part one introduction actually part one I should note is called the general provision so section a is the introduction we just moved some language around really and it inserted some reference numbers I won't bring this up every single time but it's a great example of how we try to change things around we put in a direct reference and we try to make the word inconsistent say it shouldn't be is the purpose nothing really changed here but I do want to make it clear to the public and other commissioners that the wetland protectionary protects eight values and our bylaw you'll see is I think 12 so we the other four are additional simply from Amherst or simply for Amherst by Amherst section three is jurisdiction nothing really changed again here but another great example of lack of wording or confusing wording the original it said water valley set forth above the new one says river or perennial stream i.e riverfront area that seems a lot clearer to me I hope to you as well this is part one continued there were excuse me I'm sorry there was some major wording changes and the latter part of part one section D now is exceptions and variances when we pass this by KP law they found it to be unintelligible in some cases perhaps not even legally defensible so we essentially had KP law rewrite the entire thing or reword the entire thing in the end we moved we changed the words exceptions and variances and we moved them through later in the document you will see as we go through let me let me ask a question please Larry absolutely um I assume that if I went and got the the clean version from the wet website it's it's what this version looks like yep and if I found things in there that were mistakes or otherwise I should pass that on to Aaron you should but you're bringing up something I forgot to mention the clean version that you are seeing online the one that you will be able to download you might very well find a lot of grammatical small or spelling errors maybe space is missing punctuation things like that we have not done that clean edit yet so you can hold off on those that's that's what they were there were things like that that I saw in there that was wording that was I mean anyway I definitely appreciate it but we that's the final step so it will be cleaned up again but it was wording wise this is the final right so we're reviewing content right now just to be clear and then there's going to be an editorial proofing following this so I do know that there's errors in there but try and look beyond them but thank you for noting um I was just clarify uh a significant change here is that uh we made it so the nanowire is simply required within 100 foot of resource areas every time uh previously I believe it was required up to 50 feet and then there was the questionable zone between 50 to 100 that is no longer the case uh the third isn't really a change it's more that we just made it clear the burden of proof is on the applicant in all cases they would have to prove to us how something doesn't impact the resource area we don't have to prove that it does um we actually had that come up a couple times so this is an example of uh rules that are being drawn up based on our experience would be tough hey can I ask you a question absolutely these are great and by the way thank you guys for your work on this but when you were developing these did you guys look at other towns to see what they were doing and on experience we did learn actually there'll be some great examples of that a little bit later but that was oh wait uh and probably something else I forgot again I'm a little frazzled today I apologize but um as far as background research things we did consulting local area towns definitely one of them we tried to keep it as close as possible in geographic area but also population because that's sniffing uh talking reading with other experts especially when it comes down to specific issues trying to ascertain context of the original edits from 2019 um and that's actually all we did and then KP Lover again but thank you for that question important note um going to part two so the second part here these are all definitions so it's pretty straightforward you'll just see a list of words and how we define them so I just pulled a few that um we thought were important um alterations uh I'm sorry excuse me uh that was in alterations we've uh included that you can know or the conversion of land cover either temporarily or permanently is a type of alteration it seems pretty common sense go it was not in there before we include a definition for bordering vegetated wetly not significantly changed there'll be a whole section on that later but it just wasn't a definition before likewise uh we included a definition for clear cutting um Fletcher if you have comments we'd definitely be open to hearing from you on this Michelle did a good amount of research on this as did Aaron um but that was one that is brand new and not just Fletcher obviously anywhere from the public or commissioners feel free to take that one out a couple more definitions competent source this is a pretty important one um we define the competent source again you check out the document yourself we get a list of several examples of types of people who could be such but we also give a basis for what any person could be with the correct amount of years of experience and degree uh that is an important one for us because previously uh words like it's having proof or having and a person uh would be good enough evidence it could be anybody off the street it could be someone who has no wetland experience etc we thought it was important to define that especially since we use uh request competence in our sourcing so many times throughout the rest of this document impervious surface um a new one important one nothing interesting but important in new isolated vegetative wetlands same thing um vernal pool is an important definition we will talk about it so much later that i'm not going to now but just want to uh pray to your attention to check out brings us part three procedures um the okay uh we did make some small changes here that i do think are important for instance uh we have added uh but a notification as a requirement to enrads that was not previously the case um sorry can i ask there's not a you don't have to do a butters notification for anirad and the um wetlands protection act i know currently in our bylaw but it has been added to it now yes yeah but it's not in the standard oh i didn't know that well yeah we're trying to make it more in line with the actual wetland protection act so okay yeah oh it's in line with the wetlands protection act okay thank you i was confused and one other point on that which we did get some public comment on like the railroad had requested a waiver of a butter notification requirements and so that was one item that we did add in was to allow waiver of a butter notification requirements if the waiver was requested and there's a provision for if um the commission feels that the work being proposed isn't going to impact the butters that they could waive that requirement but again i mean these aren't things that are set in stone we can we can talk about these changes more in detail um if there are sections that the commission doesn't feel comfortable with we don't have to um you know there there are still changes that can be made but i just wanted to point that out very true and it's uh i keep forgetting things there another thing i forgot to say at the beginning there will be two more meetings on this and that is intentional we want people to digest this and come back with comments it's not finalized yet it won't be until after that third meeting sometime we'll have to be voted on ratified by the full commission the only other bit there i want to mention is that we've added the mullin rule which allows commissioners who miss a particular side visit or a particular hearing to participate in the rest of those hearing meetings we've had that issue in the past it's very helpful all right uh this is we are still this is all section three i mean part three different sections uh section for rda aids with the budding notification we made the way that's an example of how we made the worry consistent with wpa but uh if you go in there there's a lot of uh iron and kp a lot there's a lot of work to make that much more consistent with the state um the biggest addition we made means the commission may require as discretion storm water bmp so best management practices but this really allows for the commission to do is use its judgment to reduce burdens the applicants um if you say that everybody requires uh or we require everybody to do storm water bmp uh long story short it is a lot of math a lot of professionals and a lot of money to the applicants so they can really overburden single family homeowners or even smaller projects however we do want those things to happen on larger projects bigger development etc um so that is why we put it in as may require at its discretion so that we can have the ability to do both sides of that any questions on that one okay notice is of intent this is very similar changes to the idea as far as wording and making it legally defensible the uh first major addition is uh activities which occur outside of the resource area that have negatively impacted a resource area of violations and subject to enforcement uh this is really important and put simply um just because it's not in our jurisdiction if you're doing something that affects things in our jurisdiction uh we can now bring enforcement upon amazingly helpful um we uh the bit this is recording in land court uh this is about and I Aaron correct me if I'm wrong we've been trying to do this is like a rule of thumb practice but we're now putting an end officially to the bylaw which is that when you have an owner conditions it's put on to the deed so that it is in the land court so the future buyers know what they're dealing with is that correct Aaron yeah and that was that was already previously in there but that it was like six paragraphs long um with directions about recording in land court and what we did was remove a lot of um redundant language and extraneous wording that wasn't necessary and now it's much more simplified um and shortened up so it's clear it's required to record it and it doesn't go into a lot of um additional language explaining the whole process of recording all right uh sex is FGH uh most of this is unchanged which is why not going into a lot of details here um oh this is e copy safe paper there for that it's actually a point for the last two as well we decided that we can now legally accept and request actually a need copy in addition to the hard copy before I believe it was two hard copies I don't know when you want to field it but there's a question from the public oh thank you Michelle we can bring that in right now okay okay you see them because I'm sharing my screen hold up hold on one second let me um oh I'm not the host Dave's the host um so I can either reclaim my hostness or Dave could make um Leroy a co-host and he could pull in or Dave can pull in the member of the public to talk can you remind me how to do that oh I'll just do it okay I didn't want to be I didn't want to be rude and um no absolutely take over host um hold on bear with me just a moment um I'm just gonna allow Sarah Matthews has her hand raised I'm gonna allow her to talk hi sorry to interrupt you I just wondered when the public was supposed to be able to I just wanted to make sure I was you know that's all I just let me know I don't need to talk now I just want to know when I can ask a question oh well I see you can ask one now we only have one public hand yes yeah go for it right now well it's but it's not about what you've already done I mean is that it's oh okay well then you know what I mean I think I'm sorry I just didn't know what it was a procedural question about when the public would be allowed to well as it stands now since we don't have a ton of public I would say you can feel free to ask your questions about the subjects as they come up so just feel free to pop your hand up again whenever you're ready to speak about this happen okay thank you very much no problem all right um there is a big change on section F here uh it's a pretty distinct list of reasons why a hearing can be continued the idea here is that we all know that we've had a few hearings that have been open for years at a time and we're trying to put a stop to that by having just a black and white list of reasons it can be continued if it doesn't fit though it's going to simply cannot without hard feelings extensions and enforcement similar to that we have pretty distinct things here on why permits can be extended and denied these are actually not new sections but cleaned up quite a bit and then the violation section we just specified more of them uh give me one second here I think I have a note on this no I do not I have no right on certificates of compliance um majorly no changes here the changes that were made and weren't anywhere to make it closer to the state's WPA due to due to there are some things that people may not be considering that do cost the town money and that includes people i.e. airing going out for side visits on emergency visits or emergency certifications we we have a debate about that a little bit later actually we can bring it up later sorry double down now um elemental p this is rounding out section three again most of these sections unchanged or unchanged in content changed in wording would like to point out that generally speaking if you consider an emergency situation must be an immediate or rapidly or rapidly growing concern to public health um an emergency certification still requires site visit and the work is a work allowed is limited to 30 days um I I think most of the commissions aware of that but since this is public hearing I thought it was really important to the public know that we only emerge we only issue emergency certifications um due to concerns of public health immediate public health uh moving on to part four this is the big part uh it's called standards for inland wetlands so each of these sections is uh one of our resource area types uh the vernal pool or what the riverfront would be uh each of those uh sections will have a preamble the preamble discusses the interests that we're trying to protect in the town the second portion will be we'll just keep going keep going I'm sorry here's the largest and most changed part of the revised bylaw many of the word wording changes came into compliance with WPA um and also many of the wording changes um were done in in respect to experience we've had in the town moving on to the first one this would be an easy way to talk about the rest of these sections so again I said they'll be broken down into preamble which defines our interests protected then uh the definitions and character critical characteristics that's essentially defining the type of area um and then the general performance standards those that do and don't within those areas uh so starting with banks uh it is important that uh we noted that perennial stream banks are riverfront I think that makes sense but uh there was some question about that if you read the original law we put in that stream crossings must be at least 1.2 bank times bank full width there is a lot more in there I encourage you to read but that's the important takeaway and perhaps the biggest takeaway is that there is now officially a 50 foot no disturb for any reason really on riverfronts that's a new that's a full new the 50 foot no disturb I believe it is fully new I believe we had a notice term early uh previously that was 30 foot yeah okay that's why yeah and we can talk about all those all those in more in depth again these are these are putting concepts out there based on what other towns are doing but we can talk about them excellent yeah I was just uh for my clarification because I was remembering the bylaw it's 30 feet but now we're going to 50 okay just an on riverfront okay thank you bbw boarding vegetated wetland most of the information here is the same when I say proper references given to the wpa I mean that when you're reading this you will see uh letter number references is for one randomly right now 310 cm or 10.55 so actual numbers and references you can go ahead and look up on your uh again that's throughout the document and we really hope that helps clarify to people or at least give them the opportunity to go looking at things on their uh the preamble on this one is a good example of our new organization or format there are headers of each uh interest protected for instance agricultural value or agricultural value um groundwater etc and then under those headers it explains what bbw does for that or riverfront banks with each of these sections will have a preamble they're all divided the same way with headers to find the interest and under them the interest of dynamics there we go ivw isolated vegetated wetlands again guys when um when I say this is big stuff these are the meetings that we have for two hours a piece um these are the sheets that kp law had to work on several times over the course of weeks um so I am in no way be attempting to give you any level of detail and this again this is more of just a I'm trying to point you the direction where to look for big changes save you some time but feel free to read deeply in the whole thing um the major difference here on ivw was in the beginning or not in our lat in the current version that we are revising bbw and ivw were connected um um vernal pools were separated off into something different um we decided to separate bbw and ivw and put ivw with vernal pools uh so I believe as it reads is um isolated vegetated wetlands and vernal pools uh so separate but equal we did this uh one of the major issues that we've had at least since I've been on the concom has been uh treatment of vernal pools and basically uh all applicants are willing to treat them as is proper many applicants have trouble knowing what is proper we have hoped that uh we're gonna I'm sorry Erin you have a question finish your thought loroy it's before you jump to the next slide all right um we decided well we were hoping to make this as clear as possible so now again it says it several different ways throughout this document but now in amherst vernal pools whether certified or not will be treated the same and whether or not uh they are within or without a vegetated wetland they will be treated the same in fact later in the document uh we state that all vernal pools are de facto uh land subject to flood because they flood uh so that's that um Erin did you want to yeah I just wanted to um before you move on to some additional resource areas I wanted to just give you guys some sort of concrete examples of what um loroy has been talking about in the previous regulations for the the resource area sections there was some really serious inconsistencies between um our bylaw regulations and the wetland protection act um how just to try to should try to give you an example there were multiple sections of our bylaw regulations where there was say five out of ten performance standards pulled from the wetland protection act and then we had say three that were unique to amherst um what we have done is we've taken now all of the performance standards under the wetland protection act and then reintroduce our unique um more strict stringent performance standards below that so um previously we had a lot of problems where when applicants came through and we were trying to hold them to the same standard as the wetlands protection act they'd say well wait a second your bylaw doesn't say that here um and so I don't know why certain performance standards were used from the wetland protection act and not all of them but now all of those performance standards are incorporated so it's apples to apples and then at the bottom of the resource area performance standards um are more specific standards are listed there that are just just specific to amherst the other thing was our definitions weren't consistent so how something was defined under the wetland protection act versus how something was defined under our bylaw were two different things and they should be fairly consistent except under our bylaw we might allow more leeway for including areas that the wetland protection act is not and so that's how it is now um as as laura I mentioned and I'm sure he's going to mention in the upcoming slides we didn't have a riverfront resource area listed in there and I don't know why riverfront was left out but riverfront is specifically mentioned in our bylaw and so it needs to have its own resource area section so when you see the number of pages that were added that was specifically because of riverfront and then getting to the vernal pool issue I just wanted to mention that vernal pools were previously a subsection of isolated vernal pools and what's extremely confusing was how um under our local bylaw regulations so for example bordering vegetated wetlands and isolated vegetated wetlands were one resource area but under the wetlands protection act they're broken out into two separate ones so we've broken them out into two separate ones so that we again are apples to apples with the wetland protection act similarly isolated land subject to flooding and bordering land subject to flooding were previously separated under our bylaw regulations but they are under one resource area under the wetland protection act so those sections got combined again so that they're consistent with the wetland protection act we don't want our bylaw regs to be so different from the wetland protection act we want them to to align with one another and be very clear where we are more strict and so that's what we've tried to do so anyway I didn't mean to jump in there but I wanted to just give some specific examples of what we were doing no it's really helpful um and again the really important part of being consistent with WPA is not just for easy understanding but for legal defensibility uh but uh moving right ahead uh bottom of that says big thanks to Michelle for her work on this section uh Aaron was just talking about the definitions under this section like I said it will read at the top isolated vegetated wetlands and vernal pools so there are two different definitions in here one for isolated vegetated wetlands and one for vernal pools Michelle I essentially did all of the research for that definition and created it would I seem to be pretty strong work here so we thank her for that thank you all right Aaron did a lot of work on that one too so joint efforts thank you guys all did a great job thanks so much for the time for this it's clear there's tons of hours it's awesome um land underwater uh I I will not lie I was caught a little off guard by the fact that we had this but I was happy that we did um it was probably the least change of the resource area once so that worked out most information is the same again good example of formatting change now matching WPA preamble in the same orders um and again uh we mentioned these stream crossings at one point two I expect for with I feel like uh my short time in the commission two years and so I've seen questions about this probably five to six times so I I think it's really important that it's in there even though it's a little redone okay can I ask actually real quick about the stream crossing that so that's like even like like a culvert or something or you're talking is it it's like a permanent crossing right Aaron yeah I mean any any crossing of a um perennial stream water of the united states it doesn't matter if it's perennial or intermittent um past is required under state federal law to the stream crossing standards yeah okay okay all right yep clarification for me thank you and that's why with our culvert replacement project we had to notify the army core of engineers lands subject to flooding um this uh Aaron said that the document got a lot longer just strictly due to riverfront that's not entirely true uh there were a couple sections that got longer uh because we had to add wording or we had to increase some protections uh that was one of the cases here um we have go ahead Aaron well and that wasn't because we were adding protections necessarily what that was was that there was protections under the wetland protection act that weren't under our bylaw so we added those in so that they're consistent so just to pull that together um I think Aaron just actually mentioned this a couple minutes ago but we now have separate definitions for bordering an isolated land subject to flooding for the same reason consistency wpa um the big one for us here was that uh vernal pools and ivw considered land subject to flooding this is new uh don't think it's that controversial um and I believe it just doubly makes clear that vernal pools are protected any thoughts on that for anybody riverfront uh as Aaron said this is the the bulk of what's been added page was to the document I think the riverfront section where the exaggeration is close to the size of the original that said uh as I said throughout this you'll have to read it through you know on your own time take your time uh I really love the preamble on this one uh in this current format it does not have the headers in it so it's not a great example of the new formatting but it is a great example of how many things uh we should and do protect the big additional change for us or the important part for Amherst is this bottom line says streams of watersheds greater than point five square miles will be deemed perennial um I think we all remember a couple cases anyway where the current law has two methods under which we can determine stream to be perennial with our additional wording here it says that anything deemed with point five miles squared from competent sources so that we may we have a much wider ability to take in sourcing from other areas uh it doesn't mean that we can just go willy-nilly and call something a half square mile when it's not or that again we can pick anybody off the street who will say it's a half square mile that's a important usage of that uh competent source definition uh from earlier but that is the new deal so hopefully we will have a little less resistance in the future I ask um real briefly about that point um so when we're you know obviously like cambrook is obviously the one here that sticks out like a sore thumb what's the stream stats the stat for that again the size of the of of the watershed in order to deem it again don't bring it up okay you know words with that well no so this the the automatically generated stream stats report put it at like point four nine but when we actually looked at the watershed and realized there was errors with the automatically generated report it put it over a half square mile um it the the issue with the half square mile thing and why we added that in was because um the wetland protection act regulations are not very clear and they're not very good in that particular section about overturning the um uh intermittent to perennial factor and so um and also I think it's what's clear is that what's unclear is that you can actually edit in stream stats you can edit the watershed to be more accurate um and secondary to that is that like the second subsection to overturn intermittent to perennial requires um I think it's 75 percent stratified drift if the watershed is over a half square mile so this gives us a little bit more flexibility to call it perennial without having to meet those either of those specific regulatory definitions yeah good yeah I was just uh wondering I forgot what the um threshold was when streams asked so thank you um just gonna ask open any commissioner questions on this one because again this is one slide but probably the biggest question section so if there's any off-the-top questions I'm happy to take them right now but we'll probably have questions more so next meeting once you're ready and again this section is very consistent with the wetland protection act with the exception of that that one detail the half square mile detail um next slide might actually be one of our more controversial again none of this is in stone that's why we're having this meeting so please take a peek at it and tell us what you think um in buffer zones which is actually considered a resource resource area we have setbacks for we have increased I think all but one of the setbacks I'm building setback for commercial industrial was kept the same none more reduced um all these increases uh was it Laura early asked about other towns all these increases were definitely done with an eye toward other towns um and an eye toward our history we have not redone them in some time it says they're 2014 those are the rights we're currently working under but I believe Aaron correct me if I'm wrong that those were numbers were unrevised from the previous version at that time so the version that Beth and Briani and Rob um adjusted did bring the um driveways parking lots and other roads up to the 30 foot no disturb and so all of them were going to be consistent 30 foot no disturb um based on their revisions the the 50 foot came from um so Northampton has 100 foot no disturb unless you're actually working in an area that's you know an an urban zoned district towns like South Hadley have a 50 foot no disturb so we were really looking at what other towns are doing and also um based on my experience looking at sites where we allowed a parking lot to be within 25 feet of a wetland um a lot of times what ends up happening is you have the parking lot and then there's drainage coming out of the parking lot into the wetland and so observing that there are impacts and we're getting extremely close um and and by the time you factor in grading you're actually within like 10 feet of a wetland um so we're really trying to take that into consideration and and firm up our protections a little bit because we realize that now we're moving into more marginal sites there's not as much land area available and as as we develop more and more that pressure is going to be greater and greater on the wetland so we're trying to really um broaden the protections here and and that's why we are bringing this by you for review but um again this is this is what I'd like to see and this is what that you know the the review committee um discussed to to propose to the full commission but if commissioners are uncomfortable with this as a whole we can still adjust these numbers so I want to make that clear I just want to reiterate that um it's sort of overdue for a revisitation of these um numbers and that we're still actually less than many of our surrounding towns in terms of our setbacks so just for some context when looking at the comparison uh for my part during those meetings I would say same thing as Michelle where historically overdue but also they were just in my opinion too small to start with 25 for a parking lots just too small to start with but that was my opinion that's why we bring it to a full commission I also want a smaller note I said near the beginning one of the major goals for this was to make it approachable to the public it's a very small thing but these are actual snapshots of the two tables and you can see the one from 14 was a lot harder to read with no lines etc and um so Lora I'm just going to stop you before you jump ahead there's one point I want to make and Dave does have his hand raised so I want to make sure um that we address whatever he's got um the vernal pool protection is staying the same the 100 foot no disturb around vernal pools we just took it out of this table Lora would you mind just clicking on that table one more time just so I can see it so um this the the header for this is type of project and vernal pools isn't a type of project so that was removed out of there there is a paragraph now underneath this table that explains the setback from vernal pools so I just wanted to point that out and the version I'm looking at it's in there vernal pools and isolated vegetated wetlands so Larry I'm not sure what version you're looking at right now um and and actually I did want to point out that um this evening that I noticed that we're actually having a website issue with the links to these documents so I'm going to correct that in the morning um they have the links have been working for the last month of course tonight they're not working and I'm like why um yeah but uh I don't know what versions you guys have but I will I'll upload the full versions of all these documents the old version the marked up version with track changes and the clean version into one drive so you have access to them um so I'm not sure what version you have open Larry but I just wanted to point that out and I know Dave had a question yeah what's up yeah no just a quick one the Roy and that was going back to something Michelle said a minute ago I think it would be helpful um I believe Michelle referenced comparison to other towns I always find that very helpful to know what other towns around us in the valley have for buffer zone for setbacks and no work areas so you know I think it would be helpful for the public to maybe have that we often do that I know um with zoning with um even with our fee structure in Amherst so I don't know Michelle if you can say more about that or if those if those numbers are readily available or we could maybe put that in a table I think it would be helpful you know here we have the comparison of 2014 to 22 but what what do your proposed 22 numbers look like compared to Hadley South Hadley you know Northampton etc yeah and what I would suggest on that Dave I'll put a note next to that and at the next hearing I think um maybe we could do some comparisons like that so that we can um share some sort of more detailed in-depth reasoning yeah I just thought I'd put it out there yeah it's always helpful to see what what other communities are doing and Michelle had referenced that we're still less than some other community what what other communities require so for comparison to be great thanks a good point Dave I'm just trying to think about how I do that I'm wondering if uh I can make a table just like this so there's probably some on the left in different towns at the top and we can present that in the next meeting that might make it pretty easy any other questions or anybody from the public for that matter because I can't see up now Sarah is ready no I'll meet you once again hi um so thank you first for all that hard work really appreciated as an Amherst person and um that sounds like it was a lot of work and it's great to see the the regulations being strengthened um and I don't on all the regulations I mean I would encourage you to keep a butter notifications on just because I know it may seem burdensome to people but um that's often the way that people find out about things they're not always paying attention to what's going on and so that's on that and yeah it would be really helpful to see that the table of comparisons again yeah I'm would be in favor of the as personally is trying to be you know strict on that um and the main comment that I wanted to have and that I spoke with Erin I was you know participated in the that um ever sourced meetings and about the application of the pesticides and spoke with Erin and she's the one who told me about this bylaw revision that was I mean the regulation revision that was happening um and what I just want to raise for you is um I would really like to see um strengthened uh restriction on the use of pesticides and herbicides well generally but particularly in uh wetlands resource areas like the ones under the conservation commission's jurisdiction I know and um as a lawyer I told this to Erin I work for a social mission law firm um and it's an area that you know we have interest in sort of looking into sort of helping um communities who are interested in this because it's it's a tricky area obviously as you guys are well aware in your position there is a state uh law that gives the um mass department of you know mdard that um the jurisdiction for um deciding what pesticides can and can't be used and so that is and the courts has been held to be preemptive in many situations but I I just want to let you know that um there's a uh Kate a very helpful case that's quite recent out in Stockbridge uh mass where there was an application to uh apply uh aquatic herbicide to millfoil and the Stockbridge concom um decided they didn't want to allow that permit and the and then it got appealed um and the judge actually did not uh you know ruled in favor of the town on that preemption issue um they actually it got remanded because the judge on the facts decided that the decision hadn't that they hadn't applied the um they hadn't done their job factually but on the preemption issue the town actually won and so I just I don't know because I don't know you guys you know I don't I don't know where you all stand with us but um I just want to put out there that it's something that I care you know very deeply about that we that we try to minimize the use of of these things I'm sure a lot of you guys do as well and I'd be you know to the extent I don't know whether there's a way that the public can be involved you know as I said no I think we're going to reach out to the Kate some of the Cape Towns are struggling with this and um there's a an organization out on the Cape that's trying to help towns figure out how to um you know how to restrict herbicide and pesticide use in in towns and I just want to put it out there because it's something that as I said um my firm is you know sort of working on and I'm willing to help with it and I urge you guys to sorry I've talked long enough well I definitely appreciate any offers of help but we will keep that in mind you're you had an original point about the button notifications I'm going to be very clear that there was never any possibility of them going away that's legal from the state from the start what is interesting and new though that I did forget to mention is that the state requires only that a button is being notified that a project will occur and then how to find out more information about it we have added that it is a requirement to add that information the time and place of the meeting as well as the description of the project so our button notifications have increased in quality and as far as quantity will never decrease that's beyond uh as far as um future work with the town and your firm that you would have to talk to Aaron and Dave about that but I know we are always accepting and happy about help any other public questions thank you I cannot see looks like I know any uh commissioner questions I'm sorry we have a really finished check get the wrap up one um part five is almost entirely unchanged write down to the word part six is unchanged part six is important because is the amendments process which is what we're actually currently doing unless for visions by commissioners um somebody has their hand up oh who we got Aaron and Dave can you tell me who's got hands up because I can't see a participant Janet Keller yes I allowed her to talk so she shouldn't be able to all right thank you very much um and I'm in awe of the subcommittee and I just want to say that um so clearly uh I attended two of your subcommittee meetings and I was exhausted um and you held had all these meetings and all this work in between and so um just on the work uh the sheer amount of work and the challenges of that kind of work I I'm literally in awe um and I'm terrifically excited about how you've modernized these um regulations brought them uh uh have them reflect the best practices from the mass wetlands law and the regs of the surrounding communities um and I'm just really impressed by how you've strengthened things I do have one request about the abutter um notice and hope you will take a look at that section that gives the commission the right to grant waivers of abutter notification requirements um and I hope that you will retain mail notification because um notices in the the newspapers are just um not uh the same um they're they're um that if if we want the public to know what's going on um that they have to get mail notifications and there are so many reasons why we want that they're they're right next to the resources they see it every day of the year they have um really important information um to contribute and um I I do hope you will um work on I hope you will look at section D two and three and come to a different conclusion than you have recently um I'm interested to see where you end up on the chemicals but I haven't studied it um they do make me very nervous and I know some you know that um they can be applied they they're often applied on very big swaths um along railroads and electrical lines and roads and stuff so um I think that's very important to look into and um once again congratulations just super piece of work thanks thank you for those very kind words all right would it be okay if I field the abutter question I just want to clarify that I think I need some clarification yeah okay so let me just let me just clarify so that everybody's everybody's crystal clear okay so under this under state law if somebody files a notice of intent they have to notify abutters all those no uh butter notifications are required and our by our bylaw regulations are now consistent with what the state requires which it wasn't before under a notice of intent there is no waving of any um a butter notification requirements okay you you cannot waive a notice of intent um requirement for a butter notices under state law for a request for determination there they the state does not require a public hearing the state requires a public meeting so what that means is that a legal ad is posted for a request for determination but that abutters aren't required to be notified under state law state well and protection act our bylaw does require a butter notification requirements for an rda so our bylaw regulations are more strict than the state that provision that janet is referencing is for the commission to in very specific cases use their discretion in waving the abutter notification requirements for an rda application and the reason that that was added in specifically was because you guys may recall the railroad filing for their five-year operation and maintenance plan they filed an rda for that plan and in the course of filing they asked for a waiver of the towns of butter notification requirements and the commission granted that waiver however we didn't have anything in our bylaw that allowed us to grant that waiver so because the there had been a precedent of the commission allowing the granting of that waiver that's why we added that in was to give the commission that flexibility um now hindsight is 2020 and what what we've discovered was um you know it's it's been a little bit of a rough road with the railroad for for a variety of reasons um but i just wanted to point that out for context here is that we are more strict than the state as far as what we require with the butter notification requirements and that um was added in there because of a a historic precedent that the commission had required now um my personal feeling on it was um i didn't really see any reason why the railroad shouldn't be required to notify of butters when other entities like Eversource notify of butters all the time for their line work um but it's at the discretion of the commission so just for the full discussion of this i think that's just an important piece of context and the notifications aren't by mail is that right yes and it's and it's certified so either return receipt the little green return receipt card or certificate of mailing which is basically a receipt that the post office stamps certifying that a letter has been mailed to that individual so that's what's required um for the abutter notifications under our our bylaw and just because this this has come up a couple times i just wanted to make sure that that was clear and if anyone has questions about that i'm happy to answer but i think it's uh an important thing for the commission to consider that specific sort of subsection of allowing that waiver and whether it's something that they want to continue doing in the future or not i think sarah has another question hi so i'm i'm in the red line which is it am i just wrong and i'm just in the red line that i pulled off the um town website and under request for determination of applicability there seems to be a provision that allows anybody to request a waiver for a butter notifications on a case by case basis anybody may request one on a case by case basis it is entirely unlikely that we would give everyone one but is that new that was added in yes right so i i pretty strongly think that's not a good i that's just my opinion i don't think waivers should be granted and so i don't actually think the commission should have the authority to grant waivers i would i would urge you not to make that change just because it's one more thing that you then have to monitor i mean as a member of the public it's really really hard to keep on top of things and so that's why it's helpful to have laws and bylaws and regulations that pretty much do what you're hoping is going to be done and have you know sort of limit the discretion things and what i'm and i understand in some context that's a you've got to have discretion but the a butter notification it's just it's just an absolutely critical way that people find out about things and as the person who is talking mentioned you know it's the the the butters are the ones who are most affected by someone and are the most likely to want to participate in anything that has to do with something that's going on near them because they're directly impacted so i would just urge you not to make that change and make and just always require but an application can i just make a commentary visit this guys um so and you mentioned that the railroad seems to have like a certain extent like a de facto exemption from this whereas ever source generally does no notify butters that you said i can just keep going with the thought like i i mean i i can think of places where the railroad goes pretty near poems so i don't know like how long of a stretch one of their rda's would account for but like if we were considering it and it went through some homes i mean is that an example of when you would say you do have to notify butters yeah i mean so there's a couple things the first is if if the commission feels this is a controversial item to add to our our bylaw rags there is no problem with us taking it and at this point in time i would be completely comfortable with that so unless anybody has an objection to it um that's just something to put out there i don't want there to be any sort of like sticking points of controversy that would um hold us from approving this something simple that we can take out that would make everyone happy i think it's fine um the railroad versus ever source is a tough comparison so the reason that the railroad had to file was because they file what are called um yearly operational management plans where they spray and they do a foliar spray along the entire extent of their entire right of way going from belter town all the way to lever it and they are required to submit plans to us that show where sensitive areas are and where no spray zones are going to be so the reason that they filed that rda was basically for us to approve or disapprove of their no spray zones um what i have liked to have seen a notice of intent application for that absolutely um does the state standard allow them to file an rda for it they do and um we're one of the more strict towns that does require a butter notices in our rags but we did grant a waiver now we were one of three towns that denied those spray permits to the railroad because their plans were inadequate um and they're supposed to be coming back before us but if the railroad was ever replacing a culvert or something like that they would still need to file um a full application um just like ever source does and has many times over so um like i said i think if if um the issue with the butter notifications is a sticking point that people feel strongly about i think we should remove that provision if nobody on the commission objects to it um the other thing is and i what i would like to do is um for the next round which i think we should probably start to think about wrapping up this hearing because we do have another business item after this hearing tonight but i just wanted to um point out that the next hearing what i'd like to do is to specifically call out a couple areas where questions had been raised so like the the area of um with questions around herbicide applications so i can actually call out that specific section and say what we've done around that issue um if the commission wants to remove the provision about the the waiver for um a butter notices we can talk about that and then comparing what other towns have done i would also be opening open to doing sort of a quick sort of flip through of the bylaw to show some of the examples of of the quick power point overview that laroy did just to provide um a little more um in-depth look at what the changes are a sort of from a public forum standpoint so i just wanted to point out those things all right um i see sarah's going to comment but unfortunately i've gen it before you so hold on just one moment um janet you should be able to speak now just want to say that um i would be a lot more comfortable if it comes out and um and to ask when is the next hearing in two weeks yes it is yeah yep okay thanks a lot and it sounds like janet so far does sound like we're leaning toward taking the we shall see another comment from sarah you should be able to speak now hi yeah i just gonna um yeah i obviously like to see it come out but i mean i just know erin works you know so hard and that that sounds like it was a really frustrating experience with the railroad and so i just wanted to make the point that you know one positive side for i mean one positive side for not allowing the waiver is that then it doesn't put the commission in this awkward position of having them to decide what they're going to do it's sort of decided for you and it's a little bit protective of the commission in the sense that if there's something that something like the railroad's doing and people are going to get upset about it there it's not just all on the commission to have to carry that weight of well how is the town going to feel about that you're going to have you know town people who are affected that are so i don't know i just i just think it can be you know helpful for the the town and it's not just you know you're not just left with sort of erin having to battle these people who are not you know behaving particularly well you sort of have some support that's all i was going to say thank you thank you so is this uh is this something that we're going to be looking to discuss in the future or is this something that we should be discussing kind of developing the discussion further today um to my ear it sounds like all three of these things that erin just mentioned will be discussed at next meeting in detail future but it does sound like we're building consensus toward calling that out but we'll move on tonight for sure yeah yeah yeah as uh more than anything i'm curious i mean i i suppose erin uh what you said earlier was the actual reasons why the exemption was uh was granted is essentially because it's uh it was too big of a project to for them to notify everybody or is that that's what it was right i mean they would have been notifying um you know hundreds if not thousands of people for their yearly operation maintenance for the train track um and and they felt like that was um a burdensome request for the town to put on them just for their annual maintenance and other towns don't require it and so that's why amherst is unique because we do require a butter notices for rda applications not all towns do most towns do not i i i guess um i wanted to leave leave it my comments open but i would uh um i think i'd if uh if i were to uh tend toward having toward allowing uh or toward tend toward having such um exemptions i think it would be helpful to have um they'll uh have the types of exemptions that we would be considering um listed out defined um in order to not uh be getting requests for uh exemptions from all different sides so that um it's not it doesn't have any kind of appearance of being arbitrary yeah i think that's an excellent point andre like if it was going to stay in there there'd have to be some sort of uh um a really solid logical reason why the commission would be granting it yeah like for example like under the wetlands protection act i think there's like for you know financial hardship reasons or things like that that um are called out specifically but um i think i think we should put some more thought to that why don't we all think about it some more and um come to the next discussion ready to look at that a little bit more solidly in terms of is it is it going to get swiped are we going to add some provisions in there for specific examples of when the commission could or could not um issue those um i totally agree yeah but i i agree with all the comments i think i think everybody's made some great points um so it's uh looking like oh more probably comments or hands raised um erin says we do have one more business side to get to so we should wrap this up pretty soon yeah i do have to put out the thank yous though one two kp law who's our territory they did a lot of review on to michelle for the research that she made and went to erin for a lot of things including the inception of this project like i said it's been on the back burner since 2018-19 uh it was her idea to revisit it now and start the process come up with a schedule um and so she is the biggest one to thank at all this and that is that so what is our next business there or do we have to close the hearing somehow yeah so just and just for public who are in attendance let's uh just kind of give a broader overview of what the plan is here which is that um we are going to be continuing this hearing for the bylaw to um the uh june 8th conservation commission meeting and then again to the june 22nd conservation commission meeting the idea being to tease apart some of the things that we've discussed tonight give some examples um talk more detail and also give the public more opportunity to comment so um at the next meeting i'll sort of delve into some of the the things that have been highlighted here um maybe we can depending on how much time we have obviously we'll we'll take public comment as much as possible and then we could potentially flip through the document a little bit and see where the changes have been made um so what we would need basically is a um a motion to continue the public hearing for um the bylaw regulation amendments to the june 8th meeting at 7 35 p.m whole move second moved by Larry seconded by Michelle voice for Larry hi hundred hi michelle hi flatcha hi Laura hi and i'm done laroy do you want to um stop sharing your screen and um what we have on the agenda for discussion um and i'm sorry because i lost my remote computer i've got to log back in but um pete wilson had requested to come before the conservation commission this evening um so he is here and we can pull him in i'm just getting logged back in so i can open our powerpoint so um i don't know if pete has anybody here with him i'm gonna allow pete to talk um i just before we get into sort of like the nitty gritty of what pete is requesting i'd like to just have a chance to kind of go over from a regulatory standpoint what the options are so that we can help pete along so i'm gonna allow pete to talk and i don't know if anybody else is here with pete or if it's just pete on behalf of himself hi good evening yeah thanks erin um no ward was gonna join us but it's my understanding that the board's not gonna work with us on an extension um so board's gonna take up the uh the new uh application uh but the reason i wanted to still get in here was um to find out where we stand with the cease and desist order i raised that question back in march as we provided the last piece we believe uh to the commission and just want to have an update on where that's at so um pete from my perspective your site is in compliance right now um you've done everything that we've asked as far as um addressing the violation out on the site i i guess i i'm gonna just share my screen because this might make this discussion a little bit easier um pete had asked to be on the hearing tonight because or to be on the meeting tonight because it's a little bit of a complex a complicated situation um uh pete owns a piece of property which has an order of conditions that has been in place and approved um it's a an order of conditions that governs a subdivision so there was actually three lots that were subject to the original order of conditions one of the lots has or had already been built completely there's a single family house lot there the other two lots had remained undeveloped in 2019 when i started the order of conditions was coming up on its expiration and um there was a request for an extension that came in for the order of conditions and um when i went out to do an inspection i had seen that there was a violation on the property there had been work done there without a pre-construction meeting um and work had been done beyond the boundaries of what had been approved in the original order of conditions so the commission had taken enforcement action um and in the form of a cease and desist and basically asked for the flags to be rehung by survey for the wet um the flags to be rehung by survey to determine the extent of the impact of the violation and then once we got out there for that site visit it became clear that the wetlands had expanded and so the commission had asked for um the wetlands to be reflagged according to the current condition of the wetland on the site um this was during all during the pandemic that this occurred and um the governor did a permit tolling period so basically it allowed all permits to have an automatic permit extension and so in june this permit is coming up for expiration so it's going to be expiring the the approved permit and so the the questions that we had been discussing pete and i over email and i also talked with tom reedy about which had sort of been a larger overarching question is how to handle this order existing order of conditions um for example when you issue an extension usually the it's just a clean extension of the permit the work is underway and they need a little additional time to get the work done in this case there were some documented changes that occurred to the property um which make extending the permit difficult because if you if you extend a permit you're basically saying that the permit is still valid nothing is changed on the site so the question then became do we need a formal amendment or a minor amendment and it seems as though there have been significant changes on the site where the violation occurred and also based on some reflagging um it appears that there may also be some resource or changes on the other undeveloped lot which made me lean more toward a formal amendment process or a new permit filing and that still doesn't deal with the extension of the permit so in just in all discussions it seems like a new notice of intent would be the cleanest quickest easiest way for pete to move forward with getting a single family house lot on the single lot he wanted to build on um he had talked about getting an extension just for the single lot but unfortunately that's not really how the orders of condition work whatever's approved in the original permit includes everything in the original permit so we can't issue an extension just for one house lot it would be for the entire permit um so i know that's a lot of background i i don't want to give the impression of an unwillingness to work with pete on an extension um i think that from the regulatory standpoint it's very tricky because site conditions have changed and those site conditions have required sort of a redesign of the approved plan so it's it's gotten into like sort of more significant changes than the original permit so anyways that's just sort of some historic background on the situation um but it's been it's been in the permit has been at an impasse since the violation occurred and so um that's where things stand and i believe the permit is due to expire in early june i think you make a good case for and you notice content there and given the substantial changes to the work and the resource area and then moving forward that's just my chime in commissioners and additionally the fact that uh you can't just uh change change a half of it that's where i'm at peter is there any disagreement from your end did you say that you're already working toward new permit with wardsman well we've been we've been working with ward i mean i'll be very candid uh it doesn't really matter what i think um i'm my two senses we've been working good faith with the board since march 13th when we got that uh revision of plan you know we've been affected by covid as well and you know i just look at the time that has passed and i um i i you know i i believe everyone had good intentions um i wish you know i i i wanted ward tonight but after his conversation with erin today he he felt like you know there was no way of working an extension so he said let's just cave in and do what the board really wants but you know i i with all due respect i sit here and say what has the last three months really accomplished and that's why tonight i just felt like you know okay i'll take wards best best judgment uh we'll file and and do that we should have done that back in march the bigger the larger question is the cease and disos the cease and desist order i believe is still in place i'd like to see that removed if everyone agrees we're done so then the slate's clean we've paid our debt uh ward can get on with the new notice of intent and you know we will uh put the other matter behind us and move forward i very much appreciate that um erin seems to think it's info compliance i see no reason to disagree erin is there anything we would have to do to formally release him from the cease and desist i mean we could issue a correspondence that basically says um everything that we've requested to be done to remediate the situation has been resolved and i think that that would that would be fine i think that the big question for me becomes there's there is a active order of conditions for two lots until the beginning of june and it is um may 25th so i don't think i don't think that you know and obviously there are requirements of the order that um like a pre-construction meeting and things like that so it's not as if they could just go out to the site and start doing work on the permit before it expires um um so yeah i don't um i think that there's there's sort of two steps we could issue um the a more formal letter that basically states we're lifting the cease and desist order and then i think um with the new permit filing the question or the only other outstanding issue is what to do with that um outstanding order of conditions that's recorded on the deed and um how to sort of get that off of there so that the new order could come through it's a it's a pretty simple process to request a certificate of compliance um and so that would also release the that permit from those lots so that you could move move forward with the new filing all right i'm sure awards get similar information for you but from what i'm hearing uh you will have to file for a certificate of compliance on your current permit to close it out before you issue the new permit um also what i'm hearing is we are all happy to issue a formal letter saying that you're in compliance now uh if that will do anything for you mr Wilson yeah no i i just think that we have to clear up the other unless i'm misinformed but ward did say we we had to clean up the the other uh cease and desist so i'm i'm um uh happy with that and i'll i think ward is traveling unfortunately there was uh funeral he's got to attend so i mean he's going to get after it as soon as he gets a chance i'll remind him about the about the existing conditions and and p we'll absolutely work with you on a new permit filing out there to to help you move it moving along quickly as quickly as we can um um because you know you've been very cooperative and we really appreciate that and and you know it's not a matter of trying to hold up the permit it's really just a matter of um administratively there's sort of a break in normal process here and so we're just trying to see that through smoothly so that everybody can move forward i understand thank you thank you very much um the letter you were right erin is there anything we need to vote on for that we have to vote that he's in compliance for a certain if if you if somebody wants to make a motion that's fine um but i um he's he's done everything we've asked so i don't really see any reason why we couldn't just state he's in compliance and mr wilson says like you're all set thank you very much for taking some time okay thank you we'll see you in the future by now i do not have an agenda in front of me erin is there oh that's okay um so i guess the the only outstanding issue is that we had an executive session scheduled um this evening for zero tuckerman but um there's really um not much to provide by way of update but at the next meeting there may be so i would just recommend that um the commission state for the june 8th meeting um that somebody might want to make a motion um that we schedule the executive session for zero tuckerman just so that it's like a placeholder in case we have an update at that meeting yep i'll make the motion to schedule um the executive session uh pursuant to gl uh section 30a nanos i don't know what c means c 30a section 21a 3 to discuss strategy with respect to litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the public body executive session to be held what's the day uh june 8th 3 20 3 20 second uh voice for 100 hi hi laura hi laura i mean fletcher sir hi michelle hi larry hi and hi from me and just to be clear that's for zero tuckerman um i just want to make sure i state that clearly on the record that that's for zero tuckerman but that discussion other than that i have no more business for you this evening i'm so glad we were able to carve out a good chunk of time to talk about the bylaw and um we'll continue that that discussion at the next meeting yeah great job you guys that's uh yeah that was such a heavy lift that's really impressive big one yeah totally that's fantastic thanks for presenting you're gonna have a link up link up their errands so we can get at it yes i'll i'll fix the links first thing tomorrow and they're actually working now but they're the correct ones yeah i don't know what i don't know what is going on with the website i tried to message brian at the end of the day today and i didn't get her but i'll make sure that we take care of that in the morning yeah i was trying to find it while we were talking earlier and it kept on saying oops yes i got the all the active interest i did pull them into the one drive as well can we close this meeting air and and stop recording yes yeah um somebody you have to make a motion to adjourn i'm gonna make a motion to adjourn at nine oh nine seconded uh voice for mary hi michelle hi question hi mark hi undre hi so move great thank you guys so much i shout out everyone see you in a couple weeks work everyone have a good good evening