 ACMI productions are only made possible with your support. Visit patreon.com slash ACMI to learn how you can help. The April 4th, 2024 public meeting of the Arlington Conservation Commission will be conducted in a remote format consistent with Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, which extended remote participation in public meetings until March 31st of 2025. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. All meeting materials are available at the link I'm putting in the chat now. And as folks are still joining, I will very likely enter that again when everybody is in the room so that they have access to the same materials. In fact, we're going to take for a couple of people to join now. There's the link. Chuck Tarani is our commission chair. He'll facilitate this meeting. And please note that there will be a public comment period for each hearing. Each vote taken during the meeting will be conducted via roll call vote. And we start with roll call attendance. So Chuck, to you. Thanks, David. Let's start roll call attendance with Mike Gildes game. President. Nathaniel Stevens. President. Brian McBride. President. Susan Chapnick. President. David White. I'm here. David Kaplan. Here. And Chuck Tarani is here. Also, we have associate members Eileen Coleman. Here. Thanks. And Sarah Alferro Franco. President. All right. Thank you. Take this opportunity to quickly review the agenda before we get started. And we'll start out with administrative and review the minutes and then go on to the correspondence and discussion items involve a scope project. And we're going to take that scope project out of order because we're just going to wait until Ben Gregory gets here. And he has a, it's first on our list, but we'll do that when he gets in. We'll have a water bodies group discussion and appoint an appointment. Tree committee update if there's one. Artificial turf committee update if there's one. And then we'll go on to the Arlington High School permit extension. And then two certificates of compliance for 47 spypon lane and 19 Sheridan park. Request for determination 36 Pivity and 88 Coolidge. I believe this has been continued, but we'll get to that. So if anyone's here for 88 Coolidge, that's going to be continued when we get to that spot in the agenda tonight. And then lastly, we'll take on the notice of intent for Thorndike park. And with that, we'll quickly go back to David, but what he's going to do is put up the minutes for review. David, I sent some edits really late. I have them. Yeah. Oh, okay. Thank you. Yep. Sorry, a few more people coming in. Let them before we move on. All right. So there are a few minor edits. Put the data footer clarification about enforcement order that Nathaniel added here. Some reordering clarification about additional work 51 Grove Street. It's pretty light touch. Otherwise there were a few things toward the end here of each hearing where it looks like it was Nathaniel added to each motion that the applicant consented to have the hearing continued. Also a note here about Herbert Munir Brook and sort of status. It's misspelled. I think it's I think it's M.Y.E. Yeah. That's what I felt too. I wasn't sure. Thanks. Chase Bernier's affiliation is WCA. It's Tharn Deck Place. Serials here. And likewise as noted Nathaniel's additions. Sorry, David. Can you go back up to the top? The Dudley, the enforcement for Dudley Street appeared twice. So I just want to make sure that what I did was correct. I deleted the second discussion. It looked like it was left over from prior minutes or something. I think that's the case. Let's try to put the dates together. Right. It looked right. I was, did you check if Brian McBride actually voted for that though? Because he came at 8.04 and I wasn't sure when we did. I don't have my notes with me. My notebook, remote remote. I'm in Florida. So could you just check that Brian was there for the vote of the enforcement order? I'm not sure he was. I don't know if he remembers. Do you remember Brian? Sorry, I'd have to read it. Right. So maybe you can just check the recording. Because I think he maybe was not. I will check the recording. No problem. Great. Thanks, David. Give me a call if you have any questions or can't figure it out. Well, too. Thank you. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes with these edits. In a second? I'll second. Great. Roll call vote. Brian McBride. Approved. Yes. Susan Chapnick. Yes. David Kaplan. Yes. David White. Yes. Mike Gildes game. Yes. Nathaniel Stevens. Yes. And Chuck Taroney says yes. Okay, so that takes care of the minutes for March 7th, 2024. We'll move on to just a note that all correspondence that we received between March 21st and April 26th was available for public to review. And you want to contact the conservation agent at the office. And David Morgan can put in a link to contact himself for any of those minutes. Oh, sorry, for any of those comments. Discussion item first thing on the agenda is that Eagle Scout project, but I don't think Ben Gregory is here. I don't see him at least. Okay. So we're going to move on to David White with his water bodies working group discussion. Okay. We requested for the next fiscal year, $120,000. The FNCOM approved $85,000. So it's below what we asked for. So we have to think about how to economize in the work that we do. So that's a sort of a negative impact, but anyway, it's what it is. Work with that. I also like to recommend Eileen Coleman for the water bodies working group. Oh, there's Eileen right there. I'm not sure. Does this need a vote or is that just a recommendation? Prove it some way. Maybe a vote. Okay. So does someone want to make a motion? It's to move. So moved. Second? Second. So your motion moved to have Eileen Coleman become part of the water bodies working group. Mike Kildes game. Yes. Brian McBride. Yes. Susan Chapnick. Enthusiastically, yes. David Kaplan. Yes. David White. Yes, definitely. Okay. And Nathaniel Stevens. Yes. Also enthusiastically in with great gratitude. Reserving. Thanks, Eileen. Okay. And Chuck Turoni says yes. Great. All right. Sounds like you have found yourself a home. All right. And David, just before you go on, David and water bodies working group, I when is the next meeting? And I hope on the agenda one of the. It's Thursday. It's this Thursday. Next Thursday. Next Thursday. Next Thursday at six. Six. Yes. Okay. Great. Stay there tonight. But you'll send out an agenda. Thank you, David. Yep. And also my note that the we're going to get a new air radar replacement for Hillspond. Great. That's everybody was waiting around for that to get replaced. Okay. So the next on my list is a update for the water for the tree committee from Sarah. Sarah for Franco. Are you there? You are. You have an update for us today. I actually provided a summary at the last meeting. I will be happy to repeat it. But I mentioned that there were going to be 150 trees planted this spring season. And the schedule was a month and a half ahead of schedule because of the weather. I can go back to my notes and certainly do it. Reset restated. There's no new meeting. I think we just covered. Okay. All right. Good. Well, that's good. Okay. Awesome. All right. Thank you for that brief update. So now we're going to move on to Mike Kildes came with the artificial turf update. And Mike could also let us know when the next meeting is for the artificial turf committee. That would be great. Yeah. The next meeting, which probably the final meeting will be the 9th of April. And which is Tuesday. The artificial turf study committee is concluding its work. And we have, as went out with information about this meeting, there was a draft of report that came out. And that report will be finalized with final edits shortly. The chair Jim Ditulio and the clerk Natasha Wade have been working diligently to upgrade update the report, which will be issued shortly. I don't know the exact timing on that, but it will be done soon. May I just add that there is a draft report posted to the artificial turf study committee webpage. Anybody wants to get a preview of what the draft is, but it will be updated as Mike said. Correct. Thank you, Susan. Great. Okay. So moving right along, we have actually the town and the school committee, well, the town and the school is here. And so Jeff Thielman is going to be speaking soon. And so the Allington High School Permit Extension, DEP file number 91-323 is here for an extension. Jeff Thielman, please introduce yourself for the record and your team and bring us up to date with your project. And I think what you also want to do is just let us know who's with you that needs to be unmuted and whatnot, or at least they can turn their camera on and unmute themselves. Okay. Thanks. So we're going to share a PowerPoint so that we guide the conversation and stay on task here. So let's see if we can get that up first. Yeah. So I need screen sharing privileges. I can see Allison Ampe on there. Sure, Jeff. I wasn't sure if you just stated your name for the record. Yeah, also, okay. So can you hear me, Chuck? I can. Maybe that I see so many people in that screenshot there. Everybody should just, you know, for the record introduce themselves. Okay, sir. Okay. So my name is Jeff Thielman. I'm the chairperson of the Allington High School Building Committee. I'm Kirstie Allison Ampe. I'm current chair of the school committee and a member of the Allington Building Committee. Good evening, everyone. Jim Feeney, town manager. Hi, everyone. Liz Holman, superintendent. Hello, everybody. My name is John Amato and I'm with JGN Sports, the sports field designer. Steve Garvin, professional engineer from Sameos Consultants, civil engineer. Lori Coles with HMFH Architects, the architect for your high school. Arthur Duffy, also with HMFH, architect for the high school. Tomorrow's Swiss Ganska, serving as OPM for the high school project. Matthew Janger, Allington High School Principal. Okay. So we're going to kind of use this to guide our conversation so we stay on task here. As I just said, my name is Jeff Thielman. I chair the Allington High School Building Committee, which as you know, is requesting an extension of the order of conditions. This commission originally granted in 2020 for the synthetic turf fields at the new Allington High School, which you see on the screen. The presenters today, the four presenters will be myself and our co-vice chairs, Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Holman and our Tom Indra Jim Feeney, and Dr. Kersi Allison Ampe, who's a member of the building committee and the school committee. And other representatives in the room are here to answer your questions. We're here today to follow up on the specific research the commission asked us to perform after the meeting we had together in August of 2003. When I spoke to Mr. Taroni, we agreed it would be helpful to begin with background information about the high school project. So the building committee and the conservation commission have a shared interest in protecting Millbrook, which runs underneath the fields of our high school. From the beginning of the project, the committee's goal, the building committee's goal has been to build a lead platinum facility, and we have worked carefully to ensure the site's landscaping protects the town's waterways, wildlife, and vegetation. In planning for the use of 174,000 square feet of fields under our jurisdiction, we carefully consider the school's needs and the need to protect Millbrook. Since 2016, the town has worked in partnership with the Massachusetts School Building Authority to construct our new high school, which has four phases, two of which are completed and two of which are underway. Phase three, the construction of the athletics wing, is scheduled for completion in February of 2025 and work on phase four, including preparation of the fields and the connection of the bikeway has also begun. During early community discussions and right up through the 2019 voter approval of the project, synthetic turf fields have always been proposed for the new school. As mentioned in the report, we submitted to you on March 20th, 2024. To remain on schedule and on budget, the project needs to order the infill for the synthetic fields by June 30th, 2024, less than 90 days from today. In the summer of 2020, the conservation commission met several times to review plans for the turf fields, which we explained were planned for construction in 2024. The commission reviewed supporting documents, studied the drainage system that protects Millbrook from crumb rubber inflow, and concluded the fields as designed did not have a significant accumulative effect upon the wetland values protected by the bylaw. For the approved order of conditions by the commission, the scope and plans for the fields were detailed in the agreement the town signed with the Massachusetts School Building Authority. In 2021, the town signed seven contracts for work to be performed on the fields. We locked in prices at rates in place at that time, and by 2023, we had already built some of the systems supporting the fields. In July of 2023, the Yerlington High School Building Committee applied for an extension of the 2020 order of conditions. During the meeting, the conservation commission was told about new information pertaining to 6 ppd and 6 ppd quinoa. When this information was given to the building committee at the August 2023 hearing, we agreed that we would evaluate the costs, risks, and benefits of crumb rubber and alternative infills, and study the applicability of the cited research to the specific conditions on the fields of Yerlington High School. The commission then granted a one-year extension of the 2020 order of conditions. I'll now turn to my colleagues who will summarize our findings over the past eight months. All right, I'm going to get us started. Hi, everybody. Once again, I'm Liz Homan. I'm the superintendent of schools. I want to start by noting that there are pretty significant limitations to any additional changes that would be made to the design in this late stage in the project that wouldn't have a really significant impact on the budget and the schedule. So what you see on this slide is that budgetary impact and the financial implications are listed there as additional costs over the baseline budget of the building project, which would need to come out of contingency. And you can see a number of the alternative options here, as well as what we know about the durability of these products and the athletic impact of different products. And I want to highlight just a few points about those. First is why we initially chose turf fields. We know that the synthetic turf fields provides a better performance environment for our student-athletes. It provides for longer seasons, which gives for more playing time. And that's because there's more manageable maintenance of this product. And its upkeep through free cycles and wet weather conditions is stronger. And we also know that because of that, there are safety considerations attached to the alternatives because they can provide for slicker conditions. They can freeze during free cycles, which can also have an impact on the ability to play on the fields or on the maintenance of the fields. And we also have the ability to mitigate the environmental impact through the design of the system, which I know my colleagues will talk about a little further in a moment. This summary table provides the infill alternatives that we have evaluated. The alternatives to crumb rubber introduce significant additional costs to the project, as I pointed out, and also have drawbacks, including lower athletic performance. We called athletic directors at Minuteman and Watertown, which have alternatives in their turf fields. And they cited less traction, less forgiving surfaces, that those surfaces could be harder on uniforms, on skin. They were more abrasive to the athletes, and that the athletes and athletic directors at those schools preferred crumb to the synthetic surfaces that they were currently using. We also have less data, just due to time and less usage on the impact of some of the lower traction surfaces, alternative surfaces, and what that raises for me, myself, and Dr. Janker, who are tasked with making sure that our students are safe, is we're concerned about additional injuries, the potential for additional injuries, and the research on concussions in athletics, and the long-term impacts that that can have on student athletes as they move into adulthood, is really significant. And so I want to underscore that particular concern for me as an educator, because it is one that I know I think about a lot when our students are going out onto the field. We want more playing time. It's good for our student athletes to have as much time in their extracurricular as possible. And we are directly responsible for ensuring their health and safety. Yeah, so in conclusion, for a few reasons, the crumb rubber is the best option for Arlington High School right now. We have proven data and there have been many successful installations that mitigate the environmental impact of crumb rubber. We know that it has superior athletic performance and better safety conditions for our student athletes, that the project product longevity ensures safe conditions for an extended period of time compared to their alternatives. And that extended playing time through all seasons is going to allow for more of the benefits for students of athletic engagement. That total benefit compared to natural grass is the equivalent of adding four fields to the town. And all of the alternatives we evaluated have the potential to reduce that positive impact to some extent. And so for all of those reasons, most paramount for me of which is safe playing conditions from rubber is the best option for Arlington High School right now. And as time goes on and more research is conducted on alternatives, we might be able to evaluate alternative field materials in future cycles. So I'm Kirstie Allison Ampe and at this point we'd like to move on to the fish toxicity concerns. In August of 2023, the concerns were raised in July and August of 2023. At these meetings, an abstract was cited about the studies showing the negative impact of 6PPD quinone on coho salmon. Since these meetings, the AHS BC and its consultants have reviewed multiple studies. And our conclusion is that the conditions needed to create 6PPD quinone are not present in the AHS field design. So first, I'd like to review 6PPD and 6PPD quinone. 6PPD is used in rubber tires to stabilize them against UV light. The combination of smog, including nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds and UV light from sunlight act upon the 6PPD and form 6PPD quinone. This occurs in tiny particles of tire called tira braid. In heavy rain, tire braid is washed off of the highways and into ecosystems. The 6PPD quinone in runoff has been found to kill fish. Additional studies have shown found that most of the 6PPD and 6PPD quinone remains in particle form. Biofilters composed of leaf mold sand and crushed stones have been shown to protect the fish from highway runoff. In this slide, which is ugly, I'm sorry, I'm trying to show that tire braid is not the same thing as crumb rubber. On the left side of this slide, you can see where I've tried to do a size comparison. The top part is tire braid. The smallest particle of tire braid is one micron, which you can't see at the scale that I had to make the slide. For comparison, a hundred microns circle is drawn and then the largest tire braid particle is a thousand microns. In comparison, the rubber infill sizes are below in gray, and you can see they range from a thousand micron to 23, 360 microns, and so they are much, much larger. For an actual size comparison, if you take that largest part, rubber particle, the 22,360 micron one, that's about the size of a lowercase o is printed in the text of our memo that we sent you. So looking at composition, the compositions are also very, very different. Composition of tire braid, it's actually a heterogeneous composition of rubber from tires, mineral particles from the road, and dust from other traffic where related particles such as brakes. Metals found include magnesium, iron, copper, zinc, titanium, lithium, magnesium, barium, tin, and I forget what that's being in chromium, lithium, and I forget the other ones. They're not very common, lead. It didn't write them all down. I didn't think I was going to read them all. So composition, rubber infill and the rubber infill that would be for the field, it's sourced from domestic tires, it doesn't include SUV tires or truck tires, it's washed, it's free from dust. There's no metals or metal cords, it's independently compliance tested for both extractable heavy metals and PFA's, and it needs the standard consumer safety specifications for toy safety. So this is a diagram I've created to try and compare the production conditions for 6-2-D equinox. On the left is in the road. So in the road, you have cars which create tiny part, minute road of braid particles. You get UV light from the sun, ozone from the smog, and that creates conditions that produce the 6-2-D equinox. Instead on the field, we don't allow cars, we don't have smog. There's less UV light because the particles are shaded by carpet fiber, and the rubber particles are larger, and these do not fulfill conditions to produce 6-2-D equinox. From there, I'd like to move on to the drainage plan, because this also impacts the system. This diagram is what you find in the memo. In the next slide, I've begun stepping through it so that I can show you how the different components filter any runoff that comes from the field. The filtration, first I want to note that the filtration steps are highlighted in green. Step one shows the start of the drainage and filtration. Water falls onto the field and is filtered through a three-quarter inch layer of sand before it seeps into the shock pad. Step two shows how the water flows through channels in the shock pad directly, that direct flow into the trench drain that surrounds the fields. Step three is where the trench drains flow into the trench drain basins. These basins have potentially two filtration steps. The first is the sump, which is the industry standard, and that's where the heavier rubber infill settles to the bottom of the basin while the water flows out. The second part is an optional trench drain filter basement, which we see as a betterment for the system, but is optional. Step four is another filtration step. The water flows through subsurface piping to trench drain inlet basins, which contain another sump. Step five has the final filtration step. The water is delivered through a series of wide shallow chambers, which are filled with crushed stone, causing the water to flow to slow and any particles to be captured. Step six shows the water flowing to an on-site collection system, and then clean water is released to well-brokered. And next we have our financial information. Sure. Hello again, everyone. Jim Feeney here. I sit on the finance subcommittee for the building project. As many of you know, as residents, voters, and taxpayers, this project is funded by the 2019 debt exclusion vote, which provides funding from Harlington's taxpayers. And that is combined with funding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to make this project a reality. So at the beginning of the project, we entered into a project funding agreement with the MSBA. And once that is set, the town is obligated to stay within that project budget and has very limited options for moving outside of that approved budget. Meaning that the town cannot simply, it's not a simple task for the to add more funds after the project has begun. Because of this specific project funding agreement signed with the MSBA, the MSBA would have sole discretion to determine whether any additional funding added to the project is considered eligible. And what that impacts is if the funding is deemed ineligible by the MSBA, it would then proportionally decrease the town's maximum total facilities grant portion. So the town has the potential to lose additional project reimbursement funds by infusing new funds. So as we've talked about before and as is displayed here, any changes to the scope of the project would need to be funded through the use of contingency funds and require a vote of the Arlington High School Building Committee. To date, the total committed costs of the turf fields component of the project are just over $1.2 million. As Mr. Thielman noted previously, the High School Building Committee has already awarded seven subcontracts related to this turf field and any material changes in the plans for the fields will cause the locked-in subcontract values to increase to today's 2024 costs, which will necessarily reflect multiple years of high inflation as compared to 2020 prices. Additionally, if a contract were to be canceled, a subcontractor has a likely case to bring a claim against the project in the town for lost revenue. I will note that site work completed today includes bringing both the permavoid and anchor trench systems to the site and they are currently stored on site. So obviously at the August meeting of the Conservation Commission last year, you asked if we could use contingency funds for an alternative infill. The High School Building Committee did take up that decision and they did not believe there are enough funds in contingency at this particular point in the project to purchase an alternative turf infill. And as Dr. Homer noted, even if sufficient funds were in fact available, the committee, the school district's leadership and the project design team did not believe it was in the best interests of our students to purchase an alternative infill. So with respect to the contingency, obviously it is comprised of both a construction and soft cost contingency, totaling just over $9.3 million. Today, in fact, at the time we published this table, we had already used 72% of our contingency and therefore have a remaining amount of approximately $2.6 million. And that is with approximately upwards of 20 months of construction remaining. So we have used contingency funds for several unforeseen expenses already and we've discussed a few potential uses of remaining contingency funds with respect to the project. I will note the project is entering a phase of construction with significantly higher risks due to existing known site contamination, including hexavalent chromium. The High School Building Committee needs to ensure a healthy amount of contingency funds are available in case future issues arise in that area of the project as we approach the barrier, the handling of soils, potentially contaminated groundwater. There are a number of things that could create large swings in contingency fund usage. So the final thing I will note is that if we were to finish this project under budget and with any project funds remaining, that would result in us borrowing less total dollars and accruing less total interest, meaning less tax burden on Arlington's residents. So for those reasons, the High School Building Committee is not comfortable using contingency funds at this point in the project. Thank you. So to summarize, we've had many discussions as a committee. We reviewed all the information that we have submitted to the Conservation Commission and we recently voted unanimously to reaffirm our decision to select chrome rubber infill for the new fields at Arlington High School. We respectfully request an extension of the order of conditions. We have shared our research into turf alternatives and appreciate the attractiveness of these alternatives. As Dr. Holman said, we have concluded that at this time it is unwise to invest in them until they've had a longer use period. We have time in the future and the superintendent or team does to send people to visit other schools, talk further to our athletic directors, coaches and students and make a good choice for our community at some point in the future. The drainage system you have approved in 2020 has been purchased and designed. If allowed, we can make an improvement to it to provide further protection to the brook. We have also shown that the conditions at the site of the new fields are not the same as those that result in the creation of six PBD quinones on roadways. We appreciate the spirit of stewardship that prompted the Conservation Commission's request and hope this additional work provides the preponderance of credible evidence from a competent source necessary for an affirmative decision by the Commission. We look forward to taking your questions. I think the best way to go forward is for people on your group, Mr. Taroni, to raise their questions and then I'll just select who in the group should answer them. Yeah, hold on a second. Maybe I just want to see if either people have questions or there might be some comments also. So I didn't know, Susan, what you wanted to do at this point. So I'd like to hear from you. You want to take questions or? I see that Nathaniel has his hand up. So let's get questions from the Commission and then if it's agreeable to you, I'd like to put up the correspondence for the Commission that I put up and then talk about a few technical points in response. Thanks. Sure. So we'll get back to you at the end of that Consolidation Commissioner's question. So Nathaniel Stevens. Thanks, Chuck. Just a procedural question. Are we doing a hearing or is this a working session? I think when I spoke with you last week, you mentioned that there's some uncertainty about which this is. So this is not a hearing. We're just having a discussion that will be no vote tonight's meeting. We'll continue on to our next meeting and that would be the hearing. Okay. Thanks. So, okay. Well, thank you to the Wellington High School Building Commission for that thorough presentation and the quite thorough document that you submitted to us. It was very helpful. Thank you for that. And thank you for all the work that you did to investigate the questions that the Commission had. I'm intrigued and would like to know more about this proposal for the basket, inline basket system that you could add to the filtration to the stormwater system, sort of more about how it works. I'm not quite sure how it works. And I would like to know how it would be maintained. That's my second part of that question. And the third of all, do you have, would you be able to spend contingency funding on that? Because I suspect that it would be an additional cost. So yeah, I'm going to turn over to Arthur Duffy. But yet to answer your question, it's minimal additional costs and we would be able to spend about, it's $15,000 to $18,000. About $15,000 to $18,000, we would be able to spend that money on this part of it. Yeah. And it would be additional protection. That's right, Nathaniel. Yeah. So Arthur Duffy is going to take the first two parts of the question. Sure. If you recall the diagram that Kersi put up, immediately outflowing from the trench drains, there are a number, a total of 18 split amongst the two fields of trench drain basins, which are basically periodic collectors of the water that flows into the trench drains. They're relatively small. They're about this big. And they have... Sorry, I just read it so small. You're getting used to this big. Can you give an approximate dimension? They're half a meter long. Half a meter long and a quarter of a meter wide. Quarter of a meter wide. Okay. Thank you. That's great. Yeah. Sorry. And so they're the first passage of the water flow from the trench drains heading on their way to the detention basins. They have a sump, as was pointed out, and that is typically what's installed in those. That's the done deal. That's the first step before it goes into detention. But the manufacturer offers an option, which is a screen basket that just drops down into the detention basin. And it's a filter. It's got small holes in it that will capture any of the larger particles that might flow. It might be chrome rubber. It might be leaves, pine needles, anything that does make its way off the field into the trench drains, flows in the trench drains, and hits this first interception, which is the basin. So the filter is just... It's going to continue to let water flow, but it will capture some of the particles. And the maintenance plan would just simply be... I think we put that maintenance plan in the document we sent you. It'd be several times a year just opening up those hatches, pulling out the basket if there's anything in them, dumping them out and properly disposing of it, putting the basket back, putting the hatch back, and then that's also a way to monitor how much is coming off the field. You might find that very little comes off, or you might find that you have got some debris in there, and you take care of it at the source. Two points, Nathaniel. If you look at the memo we sent on page 10 and 11, talk about the maintenance plan. The other thing is that when we discuss this as a committee, we are feeling... This is obviously not your... This is your jurisdiction, not ours, but we felt this was not a material change. We felt the screen baskets were within the original order of conditions that was our feeling on our committee. Okay. Thank you for that explanation. I guess it would be helpful... Since this is just a discussion, I think when you make a formal application, it'd be helpful to get a cut sheet if we could for that screen, that basket. I'm sure the manufacturer has something that you could attach. You don't have to create something as good as your guys slides are. Hopefully, they can provide something for you on that. That was something that came to my mind just procedurally. We might also have to consider an amendment to amending the order of conditions to include something like that, but I'm just putting that up there. I don't have final thoughts on that, but I think that we essentially... The extension is a pure extension. We can't change your tweak conditions. That's technically an amendment, so we might have that parallel path. And I think one, they could be done at the same time. The other question I had is just escape my mind, so I'll raise my hand later, but thank you very much. Sure. I see David Kaplan's put his hand down. I don't know if you still wanted to speak, David. If not, I'm going to go to Brian McBride. Yeah, I had a similar question to Nathaniel. Just interested more about the basket, so yeah, the more information you can provide at the hearing, the better. Thank you. Brian McBride. Oh yeah, so one question. This is the right time to ask this question, but I think one of the issues that's driving the review of the conditions is this new development with the PPD quinone being toxic to certain fish. And so in your presentation, it was stated that that's an unlikely chemical to be developed given the conditions. So I just want, what is your level of confidence in that? And would a monitoring program be appropriate to make sure that is in fact true? Is that one way to skin this cat here is to watch that particular chemical, and if your data is solid, you might will be confident in accepting that kind of condition. Yeah, go ahead. Kirstie will take that. Okay. So this is based on my review literature, but it looks like right now there isn't an actual approved test for a six PPD quinone in water. The EPA has tests testing out for draft review testing conditions. So, you know, yes, when that test became available, we could look into how we could access it, but we can't promise to do it right now because the testing availability doesn't actually exist. Brian, do you follow up for us? Or do we get your question? Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know if Susan has more to say on that, since she's a person working in this field, I was a chemist at one time and I don't have that kind of knowledge, but I would ask maybe Susan will comment on that later. Okay. Mike Kildeska. Mike commuted. Sorry. Yeah, I'd add my thanks to the committee for their thorough report. Regarding six PPD and quinone, you suggested that or you said that because the grass will be shading out the infill that there's less likelihood of PPD transforming to quinone. My experience in walking across the field at Arlington Catholic is that the crumb rubber is everywhere above the grass as well as probably below it. So, I don't know why you say that the crumb rubber is basically shaded and not exposed to the environment. Okay. Kirstie can take this. Well, we know it's one of the texts about how high when we haven't studied the Arlington Catholic field. So, this is a for the Arlington high school building committee. So, we haven't studied that field and we really can't speak to anything about that field. Correct. I'm just wondering if that's a general condition of crumb rubber infill in our official turf fields. My understanding is that we have a higher amount of fiber above the rubber. Again, I can't speak to what Arlington Catholic has, but in the specs that we have, the rubber comes below a certain amount of the fiber. So, the conditions that you're seeing, I mean, maybe they've overfilled their field. I don't know. I don't know either, but I was just expressing my experience. This is my understanding of how we're building our field. Yeah, we can't comment on the Arlington High School building. I'll try to describe it as, I don't think we're saying that it won't see any sunlight, any ultraviolet light, but it is significantly more shaded than higher grade on a highway. That the fibers of the fabric, you can all picture a carpet and fibers forming a kind of a constant shadow that as the sun moves, it's going to change the angle. But the materials that are at the base of the carpet, halfway down the carpet, are in more shade to light than tire grade on a highway. In addition, as Kirsty mentioned, there are different types of field carpet. The product that we're using has a taller fiber height, and it also has some shorter fibers that will also it grips the crumb rubber in a tighter fashion. So we believe it will have less migration off the carpet. Additionally, as we talked about, it's got a sand filled layer in it as well. And over time, that will, it's set as a crumb rubber on top of the of the sand. Over time, that will start to traction and running. It will start to tamp down and sink in a little bit further. And then it's also worth emphasizing that the other component for the transformation is ozone, oxygen, NOx. And that's equally important to create its three ingredients that would turn 6 ppd into 6 ppdq. Thank you. Okay, Nathaniel Stevens. Thanks. I just remember my question. I noticed in the literature that you guys sent that there was literature from the manufacturer talked about plowing the field when there's snow on it. I don't remember what your plans were for plowing or clearing the field of snow. Okay, so first of all, Dr. Jane confirmed this, but we have rarely had to clear the fields of snow in recent years. I don't think we've had to do that maybe, can you recall? We're doing it once. I think we've done it once. Been there 11 years. And so we would follow the the instructions in the maintenance plan for clearing the fields, which I believe means we have to keep it an inch off the ground. What's the? We actually had it done by our turf company. We did not do it ourselves. I didn't hear what that response was. So the one time that I recall we did it, we had it done by the turf company. We did not do it ourselves. Okay, thanks. And one reason why I raised that question is again, because it's the other known field in within our resource area, which is the Arlington Catholic we did. And I don't know what technique they used to plow it. But when they did plow it, we ended up with there was a lot of crumb rubber pushed to each side. And that did get into the brook. So that was why I was asking. But thank you. So, Susan, before you start, I just figured maybe it would be a good time for me to ask a couple questions, because I thought you would like want to hear. You might could address some of what I'm going to ask maybe. So I was also interested in this filter. And I was I was wondering if it was more of a cartridge or something like that, because I'm trying to understand if it if it would need an amended order of conditions. And so I guess the cut sheet and a little more information about that. But if if the I'm just going to call it a treatment train is in place, and this is an insert into that existing train, then then I'm unsure that that wouldn't be considered maintenance. So yeah, when that comes through, it would be it would be great to get a little more information about a little more comfortable about, you know, what you have to change out to make this work. And then I want to address some of these questions about the crumb rubber. Now, watch a little bit of sports. I noticed that crumb rubber has been in the past crumb rubber has been below the carpet fiber. And but they've most teams have made a move to fill it up to the top. And the reason why they do that is because you can see exactly where that last step is before they go outside the line. And so it flips all the crumb rubber up in the air. So I'm not so much. So my understanding of how this field would work would be it would be filled with crumb rubber. That's kind of what ends up happening. And also, and it would be filled up as much as it possibly can, the wind rain and any kind of weather would also shift around all the crumb rubber. And with that, you need to maintain it. And I wanted to ask, how often you are going to do that? And do you own the equipment to groom the field? Or is that some sort of contract you have? And it's not done so often because without this regular maintenance, we are going to find crumb rubber outside of the area that's being protected. So that's one of the questions that came up. And my thought was, if you could just contain everything on the field inside that area, including any runoff, it would be a better system. My last question is back to the treatment train. Is that an isolated system or does it accept infiltration through other sources? So is it combined? Yeah. Do you know what I'm talking about? Is it combined with some other area also? I think we're three points that you that you want to address. One is what you talked about regarding the trench drains. We saw it the same way you did on the committee, but we'll get the drawings for you, the cut drawings for you, and we'll provide more information about that addition. That's point one. Point two, the maintenance plan, there's a maintenance plan attached in the appendix of the memo that we sent on March 20th. And then on pages 10 and 11 of the document, we summarized the maintenance plan. So we're going to follow the maintenance plan. And so that's what we're going to do in terms of whether we use some of the maintenance will be by our own staff and some of the maintenance will be right now. We have a contract to do that. And the maintenance plan will be followed, and that obviously is something you guys over time. And when this comes up again, for when the order of conditions comes up for renewal, you can ask for reports on how we're doing in that maintenance plan. Go ahead. I was just going to ask if that maintenance contract is available so we could understand the frequency and type of maintenance that is being contracted for. Well, we don't have a contract for this yet. We have for this. The contract we will get will follow this. So we don't have a contract for this yet. We don't have a contract for this product. Yes. Was that what you're asking for? That's what I was asking for. Yeah, we don't have to provide yet. And then the third point is for, I think, Arthur, could you just restate the third point again, Chuck, about whether the drain is an isolated system or about the isolated system? The drain is an isolated system. It only serves the fields. They drain through the shock pads into the trench drain. And then from there, the trench drain basin and etc. And they don't get water from anywhere else. And they don't, yeah, they just go off on their own. Okay. It's upstream of any other drainage structures that also exist on the site. So it feeds into the drainage system that is also collecting other portions of the storm drains from other portions of the site. But nothing is absent. Nothing is ahead of that. It's doing only the fields and then coming into this. So let me ask a different, so when you, when you're, when everything's collected, prior to the elevation that it overflows in a certain storm event, is it collected with other sources in that, I'm going to call it a pond? So at some point before it overflows into Millbrook, is it getting source, storm water from some other source combined with this field? No. No. Okay. No. That's all I had. Sorry, I think we all should go back and check the existing order of conditions to see if the maintenance program is included as a special condition or incorporated by reference that's outlined in pages, pages 10 and 11 of the memo. I think that's the task for the commission as well as the building committee because I guess in my mind, if we're going to, you know, you're representing that as sort of mitigation or protective measure and I, as a commissioner would feel more comfortable if that's incorporated into an order, into the order of conditions. So again, sorry to beat this drum, but it might involve an amended order of conditions. Okay. No need to, just a thought to throw that out there for us to keep in mind. All right, so I didn't think at the end of the meeting it would be great to sort of like summarize exactly what Steve and Arthur have to do to amend anything. So, but yeah, we've got, so thank you. Chuck, if you would just explain procedurally that the extension is on the current permit. I know we're not voting tonight, but as a procedure, could you explain that it's on the current permit and we cannot put conditions on an extension, right? No, so I just want to make it clear to you, everybody. But as I understand, just so I understand what we're supposed to do here, you can do both at the same time, Nathaniel. That's what you said earlier. Well, my thought would be to have a hearing on both at the same time. I mean, technically, I think what Susan is getting at, technically, we would need to vote first to amend the order of conditions to incorporate, say that the basket, adding the baskets, adding the maintenance schedule, and then you'd have a permit and we would extend that one. Because if we do it the other way around, you know, you just get an extension on the existing one and then I guess we could do it the other way. We could do it the other way around, but it may or may not pass with these changes. I don't know. I don't want to get ahead of us. We don't have to do the basket. We'd rather not slow the thing down. Right. And that's what I'm trying to think of a way to do it. And that's why I think you could do it at the same time, but it's getting different. Right. It's two different votes. It's a procedural nuance, but what I'm trying to do is... Which one would you vote on first? My understanding is there's a request for an extension. You would have to vote on that first. And then if there was something that wanted to change, because all you're voting on in an extension is the existing order of conditions. All right. So that is the basis of what you'd then be voting on. After the fact, if there was something that wanted to be amended or changed, whether it needed to be or still met the original submission that the order is based on, then you would decide whether you needed to vote for an amendment or not. Right. What if some of your amendments are going to sway certain commissioners one way or another to grant you an extension? If you don't have those amendments included, then the commission may deny your extension. Then where does that leave you? So I'm just saying, if I was going to do this, I would put the amendment first in the same meeting. It's not going to slow things down. Request an amendment or these specific items and put those sketches in as people have asked and we'll talk about that. But that's what I would do is ask for an amendment first and then an extension. But you can do, I mean, you're the applicant, you can do it whichever way you choose. Do it. Okay. Thank you. Just a comment on that. The system is designed, has met, and was approved meeting all the standards required under the conservation commission by-laws. The change that we're making will make no change to any of those calculations. It won't increase runoff. It will not change the rate of runoff. It will not change anything about the runoff. It's a wire basket that's a screen that goes in the catch basin of the trench train to filter out any debris. It can be used to filter out, as was said, leaves, pine needles, dust. The screen is about a 20 sieves screen and a 20 sieves screen would be 20 holes in the space of an inch. So it's smaller than the smallest infill material that's in the system. And it would be sized that way. It's, it changes nothing. Well, from a, from a calculation perspective, right? And that's what I just want to clarify, right? It would not be credited for any TSS removal, right? It's not an an accredited BMP or that has TSS from DPs perspective, nor would it change the hydrology. So the peak rates of runoff or infiltration, any of the thing of that nature from the original submission would not change. That keeps the performance standards that we're being held to. Yeah, I think the only thing that's not captured by a, this is an insert to an existing system, but the maintenance of that insert is not included in the original order of conditions. So there's the catch. So if we, if we have an amendment, I believe that you can, you can tell me, Chuck, I believe that we also have the opportunity to have a discussion about conditions. So if you have an amendment and the conservation commission decides to have a condition on, you know, snow blowing or a condition on maintenance, that's in addition to what you have, we can have that discussion and we have that opportunity to put conditions on. We cannot put conditions on an extension. Am I not correct there? The one thing I would add in, again, I'm chair of board of my town, is that my understanding is when there is additional conditions put on amendments, they're only to do with what the amendment is for, right? So to do with the basket or certain things were being proposed to change, you would do to that. So exactly, like, what would the operation maintenance change because of something changing? It would not be opening things up on other, and again, while we're focused now talking about fields, in theory then you'd be talking about what's going on for the BMP train elsewhere on site. So that's why my understanding and my experience is that when there's an amendment, you absolutely would put new items in the order that it would be a condition based on that amendment, but only based on that amendment, not necessarily the entire order being opened again. Yeah, I think Susan, I would generally agree with that, and I think Susan was getting at that as well. Yeah, let's go to David, but then I wanted to make sure Susan had an opportunity before this, before we kill more. So, David? Nathaniel had asked whether the maintenance plan was included in the original materials for the permit and such conditions. I took a quick look, I didn't see the maintenance plan included there, so I think we would add that. We can do that. Okay. It's in the memo by not any order of conditions. That's what I'm saying. Okay, we will get that to you. I mean, so I think, David, Steve Garvin will be in touch with you about details. Is that okay about what we're supposed to do so we're clear? Yeah, I think this would happen when an amendment is filed so that we have all the materials that would be germane to making that decision. Right, so Steve Garvin is going to be in touch with you. Is that okay? Yes, that's perfect. Great, thank you. All right, Susan, do you have, are you ready? Yes, absolutely. So please take over and let's hear. So I really appreciate the detail and the thought that went into your memo. I do have some disagreements from the technical perspective. My background is environmental chemistry. So this is kind of in my wheelhouse. So I do have some questions and comments about that. So first of all, under the Conservation Commission purview, where as you know, our concern is our resource areas. And the big resource area here is Milbrook and the storm water from an entire 80,000 square foot field or however big this field is, all that storm water through the storm water system that you've proposed is going into Milbrook. So that we have to be concerned about chemical pollution into our brook because it's potentially going to get in there. To get at that, we had put, as you know, very specific conditions on testing the materials that would be used for the field. Back in 2020, we put conditions on testing the field materials themselves. So testing the tire chrome rubber, testing the shock pad, and testing the blades, I believe. We didn't put in testing the storm water that comes off or a leachate test. That is something that we've done after the fact. We've learned over the years and it's unfortunate we didn't put it in there, but it is what it is. We purposefully put in very detailed testing because tire chrome rubber does have hazardous chemicals. So I think it was a bit of a misrepresentation in the presentation to say that the tire chrome rubber particles have no metals and it sounded like they have no hazardous chemicals. They do. And that's been proven by EPA. There's many references EPA in 2019, a California study in 2022. There's many studies on tire chrome rubber showing they have hazardous chemicals including heavy metals, including poly aromatic hydrocarbons, endocrine disruptors, other substances, plasticizers obviously, and potentially PFAS, which is the forever chemical that many people are concerned about nowadays, the chemical du jour. So we put testing for all of those requirements in our order of conditions, which is commendable of us back then and which obviously the high school will comply with before these fields go in. And those tests have to meet the regulatory requirements that we set forth back in 2020. Some of those methods, et cetera, have changed. One thing we didn't require a test for, because we didn't know about it back then, was 6 PPD quinoa. And we didn't put it in because it wasn't even discovered as a potential aquatic toxin until 2021 in coho salmon and 2022 in freshwater fish. So we didn't even know about it. So we couldn't put it in the permit. So I'm going to go back. So number one, tire chrome rubber does have contaminants that can be hazardous. But I think we've covered all of them in our testing, except for 6 PPD quinoa. So let's focus in on that, because we're worried about what can affect the environment. And I will just segue one minute, because during the presentation, it was said that alternates to tire chrome rubber are not in the best interests of students to use alternative infills, either for playing time or health and safety. And we as a commission, that's not our purview, playing time or health and safety. However, since it was brought up by the applicant, I will just say, and maybe my guildest game can speak on this, because he's a representative to the Arlington turf study committee, that the draft report of the study committee, which is available publicly, has very clearly stated that alternatives to tire chrome rubber should be used because of their negative impacts to human health, safety and the environment. So I'll just leave it there. I'm not going to go there, because I'm going to talk about the environmental impacts of 6 PPD quinoa. But since it was brought up by the applicant, I wanted to make that statement on the public record. Okay, so let's go back to 6 PPD quinoa. I had a question, and I don't know who wants to answer this one. So correct, 6 PPD is in tires, and it turns into 6 PPD quinoa with ozone and oxygen. So when the tires are being used on the roadway, where does the 6 PPD quinoa form? So, thank you, Ms. Chapnick. The first thing I want to say is that we're not having a general conversation here about chrome rubber. We actually have an appendix one in the memo we sent to you are the actual specifications for the synthetic turf infill material. So all of the specifics are right in there. So it's in the appendix, it's appendix one, it's a two-page document, it tells you everything that's in the product. So we should be kind of focused specifically on that item when we talk about product, and what's in it, what is in it. So I take exception to the misrepresent. You're saying that Dr. Nelson had in this representative. I was quoting the specs. So this is from the specs. The specs are from the manufacturer, which we know are not always correct, which is why we put testing in our original permit. We're not disagreeing about the testing. I'm saying the reference needs to be the specs. And if you want to stew them, that's your go ahead. But I mean, for misrepresentation, that's your bracket. Go ahead, Dr. Allison Ampe, you want to answer? Well, there's lots of documentation, especially from EPA 2019. They're part one study and the part two study is supposed to come out this year in terms of toxicology and exposure from tyochrome rubber. But the part one study is very clear about the hazards that are in tyochrome rubber. Maybe your spec in your manufacturer is, is guaranteeing to you that you aren't going to have these levels. But at what levels? And that those levels have to meet what's in your permit. And I'm trusting that that's going to be true. We'll find out with the testing. So we don't have to argue that, you know, we're okay there. Yeah, yeah. The decision has to be based on the actual specs and the proposed, Dr. Allison, it has to be, it has to be based on the testing. Yeah, thank you. The testing is required before the fields go in. Yes. All right. Dr. Allison. No, no, no. I didn't have. Do you have a response? Well, there wasn't a question yet. Oh, yes. The question, the question was the six ppd turns to six ppd quinoa on the tires as they're as you're, you know, cars are using them. Well, where does that form? It's going to be on the outside of the tire, but also on the small particles of tire, which have worn off of the tire and are now sitting on the highway. Right. Yeah, no, great. I mean, because, I mean, not just because they're sitting out there in the outdoors, but because they're small and stuff all around them. Additionally, there's the other stuff that these particles pick up as they're rolling around on the road from brake water particles and other stuff. And that's contributing to the differences in the heavy metals versus the rubber and film. Yes, I agree that tire, that the tire that comes off is different than the tires themselves. The tires themselves have six ppd quinoa, as we all know, it's added. And it and the six ppd is added. It turns into six ppd quinoa on the surface of the tire. I totally agree with that. What's been shown in the literature, I'm quoting the California, California product reference, I have it here somewhere, California product evaluation of six ppd. It's formed on mainly on the side walls, and then the tire tread, which makes total sense because it's got to be on the outside of the tire. And they call it a bloom. And that's where the six ppd quinoa is formed. Tire crumb rubber is made from shredded tires, correct? It's yep. Okay, so these shredded tires should already contain six ppd quinoa. We don't know how much, but they will already contain a small amount. But the thing is they may contain a small amount, but the expectation would be that it will remain attached to them, and they will stay in the field. And if there's any escapes, they're going to get caught in the various drains and basins and everything. And so we don't see that it's going to be released. Anything that's present, we don't see that it's going to be released into the brook. So you're saying it's not soluble? I'm saying in this that studies showing that bio filters of highway runoff have been shown to protect salmon from the negative effect, the toxic effects of the highway runoff. And because it's capturing the stuff as it goes through. That's true. So bio retention basins, which are different from what you're talking about as a filter. Bio retention basins, which have soil and things like that, and microbes have been shown to capture or reduce six ppd quinoa from getting into the environment from tire particles. That is absolutely true. It's not clear that this system does that. It's not a bio retention basin, would you say it was? I didn't say that it was. Okay. So that's a concern. It contains a fair amount of the components of the bio retention basin. Right. And one of the reasons bio retention basins work right, they do have soil and microbes. I mean, they're bioengineering. They're not just inert sand and gravel systems. But it was shown in another study, it was shown that sterilized water, river water, filtered as well as non sterilized water. So it wasn't the microbes that are doing the filtering. I would love to see that study. I have not seen that one. Thank you. I'd like to put up the memo that I created just for discussion points. Could you put that up, David? And I can go through it just real quick. I won't read everything, I promise. Yes, I need a minute to pull it up. Sorry. Okay, no problem. One of the reasons why I wrote this memo, one of the reasons was for the commission to just kind of highlight what is our role here in terms of decision making, what are the regulations that we fall under when we evaluate a permit extension. And we have regulations under the bylaw as well as our wetlands regulations that tell us we have to review several things for an extension. And as we're reviewing, okay, so if you could just scroll to the highlighted point, as we're reviewing the commission may deny the request or at least I'm saying at least review these issues where new information not available at the time the permit was issued has become available and indicates that the permit is not adequate to protect the resource area values protected by this bylaw. So I think it has been established that there may be six PPD quinone in attire crime number. We don't know how much six PPD quinone can be very toxic at part per trillion. It's really, really low. And this is in the literature as well. So even small amounts can be can have adverse impacts if they don't cause fish kills they can cause what that's an acute toxicity they might cause a chronic toxicity effects on reproduction etc. A lot of this information we don't know yet we have little bits and pieces but we don't know if you scroll up I'd like to make a few more points. David so that's just one of these was just the bylaw and the other was where it is in the regulations just to show what our regulations are. Okay, so we all agree that the new information of six PPD quinone was not available at the time we permitted this project which was in 2020. So we know that we already talked about how it's survived. There has been peer-reviewed scientific studies that show it's acutely toxic to certain freshwater fish. And if we go keep going down thank you. This is just a history of it when I said the PPD levels and the PPD levels it just shows you some of the levels very low levels okay and then okay so this is the California report that I'm quoting some of my scientific facts from. This came out in 2022 and this paper states very clearly that uses of tire derived products and materials may directly lead to six PPD and six PPD quinone releases to the aquatic environment. For instance tire derived aggregate can be used as a medium for stormwater treatment and may lead to inadvertent contamination of treated water with six PPD and six PPD quinone. So if you think about that if if they're using so in California they're really trying to reuse tires I mean they want to recycle you know reuse recycle reduce right so they're trying to reuse tires and they have used them in stormwater systems and they're saying the water going over these tires has the potential to release these chemicals. This is California DP. Tire derived materials are often used as we know in outdoor applications that cover large surface areas like an artificial turf field. As such these materials are exposed in stormwater and can leach six PPD and six PPD quinone. This the report specifically discusses artificial turf fields I'll go on. A portion of the crumb rubber used in synthetic turf fields is lost over time we know that it goes in the trench drains or sometimes even off the fields as we've seen. A full-sized field can move between one and a half to two and a half metric tons of crumb rubber in here now you may say well we do better maintenance it's going to lose less than that but this is just an average that's that's been reported. The loss crumb rubber can end up in aquatic systems. It's it's great that you're collecting it in these filters so maybe less of it will end up in the system but that doesn't mean that the chemicals that are coming off it won't get in the system. The report goes on to include if we can go down it will take at the bottom it will take years of testing to determine six PPD quinones toxicity to other species but action on six PPD now may protect other aquatic organisms and then the EPA also recognizes the importance of six PPD quinone ecotoxicity effects to be examined. They've recently put up a website about that and are continually looking at fate and transport. So I'm concluding here and I'll talk about the testing as well that the used tire derived material may already contain six PPD quinone. It may have some opportunity for a six PPD to convert to six PPD quinone when it goes off the field and I will just say an aside that we're not talking about it six PPD itself has phytotoxicity which means that it's toxic to certain plants. We're not going there right now because we're talking about six PPD quinone but I just want to mention that. So from my point of view I'm very concerned about this huge amount of store water that may contain even minutest amount of these chemicals but minutest amounts are hazardous. Now Dr. Christie, Ali Amp I'm sorry if I said your name incorrectly has correctly said that there's an final method to analyze six PPD quinone yet. It is an EPA draft method it's 1634 just came out in January of this year. It's a very rigorous method it uses a liquid chromatography and a mass spectrometer attached to another mass spectrometer. It should actually be finalized this year they're in the validation stage which means they send samples to different laboratories and see how rigorous the method is. It won't change much basically what they do with that is they tweak it a little to make sure it's more rigorous meaning reproducible. Many labs right now I know of other companies that are helping their clients on tests for six PPD quinone and they're using this. So I'll stop right now am I good? You're good. So I just want to try to conclude this discussion. We will be coming back either at the next hearing or I'm going to use the a couple minutes left we have here to discuss what is the next hold on hold on one of the next steps that are needed. I'm going to allow five more minutes for comments from but we are coming back so I want you to understand that also. So Jeff anyone from your team? Yeah so I'm going to ask Dr. Allison Ampe. So the name is Dr. Allison Ampe. So first I just wanted to correct a couple things. One you said that you were implying that all of the material which is lost is going into the drain and I'm citing a literature review called tire granulate on the loose how much is capes of turf and it suggests that only it went through like 20 I don't remember how many articles but it found that only 20 of 125 kilograms of the material is lost through surface water. So that's all that would go into the drains and just as a comparison I also looked up some articles about how much tire wear particles are produced per year and I can get that what is it that one was from tire wear tire road tire road wear particles a review of generation properties etc it would suggest that Arlington residents generate between 135 and 250 metric tons of tire wear particles per year now albeit that's not all in Arlington I understand that's all the driving everyone's doing all around town but that's still a lot you know compared to our 125 kilograms that's a lot. So that was one thing I didn't Dr. Jinger had to leave before I could get him to respond but I didn't ask him if our current turf field Pierce Field is packed to overflowing with crumb rubber and he says no so I don't know what's going on with AC I don't know what's going on with these other fields that you've seen but our field has not been and would these new fields would not be maintained they would be maintained to the standard that we are suggesting and then what was my final point um I'm sorry there are so many points okay I'm about to yeah you you go sorry just okay so to summarize we're we want I guess we need some clarity on what it is you want us to do for the next meeting I mean the um as I said our deadline is June 30th we the the response way the commission is to balance the the wetland the the protection of the wetland with the needs of the project we've outlined the needs of the project for you do you have any are there any questions or anything you're not clear about in terms of the needs of the project at this time Chuck isn't sure could you could you just explain I don't think the commission is required to balance the needs of the wetland resources with the needs of the project could Chuck could you elaborate on that well I'm asking the law says you're supposed to so um you know there's a number of court cases to say you're supposed to do that so I just want to make sure Chuck and I had a conversation before that he said it'd be helpful to make sure everyone understands the needs of the project at this time anybody have any questions about where we're at in the project our process anybody have any questions no questions cool so good we're good now the next thing is clarity about our next steps because I'm not sure what we're doing on the 18th and I want clarity on what Stephen Garvin is supposed to talk to David Morgan about so we're all organized by that meeting yeah I think that's what the commission needs to talk about well what are the next steps here um and here's what I heard you want you want the cut you want if you want to cut sheet so hold on a minute Jeff I just um I think we have some more internal conservation questions first so uh I know that we've had this discussion here tonight and is the commission still looking at a amendment to this order of conditions incorporated with somehow incorporated with the an extension I think that was brought out that um this cartridge which would do some of the filtering is is going to be inserted into the existing uh system so with that I think I heard or saw that Nathaniel has stand up so as Nathaniel please sure thanks um just for the record Jeff I'm not sure I quite agree with you what the legal standard is here but I don't I think we can just agree to disagree at this point my my suggestion I think considering it further is that I would be in favor of an amendment as Susan suggested I would be if if the school committee would apply to amend the permit to add the maintenance specs the um filter and maybe other things that the other members of the commission heard about and want included that aren't in the existing order of conditions I would be much more comfortable uh extending the permit because that would address the new information that has come up since the time we um approved the last permit which is the six ppd and six ppd q which Susan uh briefed us on and the school committee is also discussed as well so that's where I'm coming from so my again my suggestion would be that both of those could be handled at the same hearing it would not be uh slowing down the project in any way which uh although it couldn't it couldn't be at our next meeting uh because of the application deadline so you we would skip a meeting get our facts together get our information that we need to move forward and then we could um take this up in a hearing and as I see it we would amend the order of conditions and then extend the order of conditions the scope of the amendment would be uh what Daniel just mentioned unless there's other things that the commission want to mention right now the maintenance specs and the filter uh inserts Chuck could I make another suggestion or at least throw it out there yep okay um there's been precedent from DEP um when there have been fields in the past that have been contested and then they obtained a superseding order of conditions from DEP to proceed but proceed with conditions one of those conditions required monitoring of the storm water that came out of the field before it went into the resource area so I would I would love the Arlington Building Committee to consider with these additions of the filter of the maintenance consider putting in a monitoring um well to to monitor periodically for six PPT quinoa um using the draft method and then changing to the final method when when it came out I I would like to see that as a consideration Dr I think Brian has his hand up yes uh Brian please yeah it's just a second now everything Susan said recently made me think that monitoring seemed like a reasonable solution I know there are some technical challenges and it may be you know best practices currently available or something along those lines but I'd like the committee to consider that as an option that would give us all confidence that this chemical is not making its way into the water just yeah it's just going to take a second and ask Susan what would be the trigger what is the background you're looking to uh trigger um additional work repairs on this monitoring well yeah I have to go back to my memo because I don't remember but there's what's called a lethal lethal dose or lethal um we're 50 percent have died off and there's a perper billion level for freshwater fish so I'd like to see it under that but I don't remember what the number is right now so I'd have to go back and look at the papers that would be my recommendation so the reason why they're asking you know the school committee for most presented that way is because the conservation commission cannot uh you know require you to amend your order of conditions but you are kind of coming down to the wire on that jeff do you have any thoughts on this discussion chuck um well um do I have any thoughts I just want to clarity on our next steps we are meeting then not on April 18th or we're meeting on May 2nd that correct if you met on May 2nd you'd have an application to amend the order of conditions for the uh that would allow us to add maintenance specs filter and install a monitoring well with some specs on that uh for a lethal lethal dosage when would that be due chuck when would that have to be filed or david we have a meeting date April 18th application deadline for the 18th is uh we passed that already we're not doing the 18th I thought we're doing the second right yeah sorry yeah so we have uh 417 for an application deadline 5 1 all right I'll tell you what which one sounds like you can make it oh you can come back and I gotta reach out to david yeah why don't I why don't why don't we do this we'll confer with the group um either steven steven likely will be in touch with uh david morgan once we figure out what we want to do here but I just can you just summarize chuck the asks the requests of the group sure I have these people can add to them we want to cut sheet for the filter basket um we would like a maintenance plan if you know the product that you're buying the company must have some sort of maintenance plan we would also like you when we can provide this too but the yeah so chuck just the maintenance plan for the fields is is in the it's in the appendix oh it's in there it's in the appendix yeah okay sorry page 10 and 11 I think but you want to you want to it's also well 10 11 is a summary the actual maintenance plan is a is an actual part of the appendix we can attach that to the order of conditions that's what you're saying we can essentially yeah yeah okay we would incorporate that into the order of conditions so we already have a maintenance plan for the field you want that in the order of conditions you want a cut sheet of the of the basket yeah correct and then we'd like some deliverables for the study on uh sand that uh sand filters that filters out 6bbd then the study on the tire uh and then there's the tire road part particulates did I don't I didn't write the whole thing down but maybe you got all those and we have to talk about I mean the top two are pretty straightforward the bottom ones we just have to talk about as a group and figure out I think that's what came up and I sounded like we needed that you just want the references you just want the references yeah I wanted the references if they're in the memo that's fine I may have missed them I just wanted and then um and then we asked for monitoring chuck to two commissioners requested them well for the he wanted to so jeff wanted to talk to david about that but if the amended order of conditions would include maintenance specs the filter uh insert and monitoring well a monitoring well but I think also Susan was getting out of monitoring program uh there's the wilmington school wilmington high school final order of conditions which has a a monitoring program and monitoring specifications I can send a copy of that to david and they can provide to the school committee um which would provide the framework again that that that particular monitoring programs specify different um what what are they called it was just heavy metals yeah that was 10 years ago yeah right but it did same schedule about testing before and then the testing frequency and the testing frequency can be reduced if the initial results show that there's not much there blah blah blah blah so I didn't want to recreate the wheel I think that's what Daniel's saying let's use what what has already been approved by DEP yeah um okay so we're going to talk as I think right so right now we're scheduled for the 18th so why don't we just talk to uh as a group and then we'll Steve it'll be in touch with David no I think you're scheduled for the second right and with your deadline being this the 17th to get materials in David Steve got it so we've submitted an application for an extension okay so definitely for the 18th right we did actually time for this hearing so we've actually made a request for an extension whether or not we have to submit for an amendment or a modification um that would not be able to be on the 18th again we understand and have heard the commission we just want to technically say for the 18th currently we do have an application before you for an extension okay that's great yeah I guess you've heard it's loud and clear that it might be in your best interest to have to handle that same time as an amendment understood we could we could continue the 18th and then have both of those here hearings for an amendment and a continuation on the second that's another option yeah we're making this too complicated well I want to we'll get ready we're ready to clarify technically you're going to be on the agenda for the 18th for your amendment uh we'll have and for a vote as of now and you can talk to David uh this upcoming week if things change is that do I have I captured that Jeff yeah that's right you've captured it somebody had their hand up I think Mike did Mike yeah just a quick question I know in discussing uh six ppd and quite known and all of that we don't know a lot but if we have a test well how do we know when we've crossed the red line and what do we do about it so so I'm proposing the the numbers that are in a peer reviewed paper that caused fish kills as the criteria and in terms of monitoring frequency and what you do about it Nathaniel had recommended a DEP requirement in Wilmington which he can provide information to all of us about um that has those specifications on how to do it okay we don't need a we don't need a vote to move on this is only a discussion so with that I'm going to close this discussion and thank you all for coming tonight and spending time with us uh it was very helpful uh but I would like to move on and I'm going to pick up with scout ben gregory because I've seen you come on and off a few times ben you have a project thank you very much thanks yep thank you thank you all ben you have a scout project uh at um let me find it Alington great meadows that's right yeah please introduce yourself for the record and um let us know about your project okay I have slides to share do you want me to share this too sure if you can do that or I don't know how you and david set it up david you want to chime in I suppose you should be able to share your screen now okay um okay is that good nothing yet there we go okay um so my name is ben gregory I am a 17 year old scout from troop three one three um if any of you know troop three and three we meet at st camillus um yeah there's two troops there's 306 and 303 or 313 um in Arlington so oh sorry so basically I've been working with um like david way uh scout tire on finding an eagle in Arlington which for those of you that don't know like say eagle scout rank is the highest in boy scouts and in order to do it you have to lead a project okay so we looked at a few in Arlington great meadows um and the one we've decided on is to so there's there'll be two parts the first part will be um just like a sign um pretty simple that will read Arlington's great meadows um and this will be at the entrance um sort of near like the Emerson gardens um like um where the like old hospital used to be and then the second part of the project will be to build a new kiosk um which right like we sort of debated where to put it but right now I think we're leaning towards the Sheila road entrance which is not too far from the entrance um so then here so for the sign this is sort of like the the goal here on the left what it will end up like and then it's on the right here is where the sign will actually be located um sort of like so there's like this fence and then it will be just past the fence because as as to where you are entering when you enter the great meadows um okay so for the kiosk this will be sort of the model for the this is the kiosk at the walder school entrance um and yeah so basically we basically just have copied the design just about exactly for the new kiosk that will be built so then I I took a few pictures we haven't discussed this too much since the the idea of putting the kiosk at Sheila road is sort of new but these were a few locations I looked at to put a new kiosk um this is sort of the road on the left here I maybe like we could put it I don't know somewhere along this entrance with the stone wall or then this middle picture is sort of like deeper in the woods and then this picture on the right is also sort of along that same stone wall um and then here here the measurements just for the design of the current kiosk for the one near the walder school that I that we will sort of like be modeling a few changes I'm not sure how much of the wood that they used for that kiosk was pressure treated but we'd like to use all pressure treated lumber um for this kiosk because you'll see on the next slide but there's another kiosk at the emerson gar entrance that fell over because the the wooden posts like decomposed basically um and so for that same reason we were sort of thinking of using six by six posts rather than what they have right now is four by six posts um I wasn't sure or like we weren't sure if this is like permitted but um there's a possibility of using concrete to secure the posts for both the sign and the kiosk employees um and then finally the the kiosk here you can sort of see in this left picture there's like a hinged um covering of the actual information board and so we're thinking that could be another potentially important feature to add um here like I said this is the kiosk that has fallen over at the emerson gardens entrance um I don't know it might be hard to see but the posts that were in the ground are sort of like rotted and that was the reason that it fell over so that kiosk will also like I think the troop would be definitely interested in um preparing that one the in fact like the original plan for this eagle scout project was for that one but the basically the people that reviewed project in the first place said you should do more than just repair a kiosk because that used to be um an eagle project as well I think so they said you need to do more than just repair this kiosk um but that will still be a project that should be that what we'd like to do in the coming future um then finally just some like logistics the cost like I've calculated as of right now it's probably even on the high end but it's five hundred fifty dollars and then basically in our tree for eagle scout projects we generally um basically just send out an email and do some announcements like hey I'm doing an eagle scout project I'll be looking for fundraising from like the the troop community basically so I don't I'm not looking for fundraising from the conservation commission um then timing um I'm I think a lot of the construction of both the sign and the kiosk well I can like work on at my house like elsewhere so that part shouldn't be too difficult but then there'll be at least a couple of days where we'll need to be at the Great Metas to put the sign he asked in place um like dig the holes and put them in maybe it might even only be one day but it'll definitely be a day where we need to probably gather more people as well to do that so but the general time estimate hopefully like mid to late April would be when the project would be finished and then um just the general request from the conservation commission would be feedback on the proposal and then especially of the design um and like what is permitted in regards like the concrete or how the post should be secured in the ground and then just in general permission to begin work on the actual land and yeah that's it all right uh David White would you like to uh I know you're the the sponsor for the conservation commission on this project I think it's definitely something we need um area has changed a lot of the years and it's due interest at Sheila Road it's a lot of use nowadays we need something there to direct people so I think it's a good plan good things to do and I'll put the kiosk back a little bit because there's a junction there that people could confuse about Sheila Road we can talk about the details of that but to help direct people better there it's also not really near resource area the kiosk so I think concrete is not a problem but how does it come into that any other comments from the commissioners I chuck I would just say I've known Ben since he was three or four he looked up the street for me he's a he's a fine young man and I'm sure he'd do a great job here great any I just want to say thank you and that's sounds like a very great project so thank you Ben for taking this on I think the space will be well served I'll echo David's comment sure Mike Gildes game yeah thank you Ben this looks like a great project do you have the carpentry skills to actually construct this kiosk on the sign yeah so I'll be getting help from several adults one of which like my grandfather I think it'll help me a lot he's very skilled carpenter and like I don't know he has a lot of experience with general construction stuff great great looks like a good good piece of work all right I'm thinking too much easier to construct in pieces right pieces to the site it might get heavy yeah well Ben thank you this project was great I enjoyed my time walking around great meadows with you and your dad and David White and I look forward to seeing the finished pictures when you're when you're finished um there's a pictures too there's pictures yeah exactly uh so uh let's does this get a vote I mean it might as well uh it sounds like um we're moving through this project sure uh second second Mike Gildes game yep absolutely Brian McBride we'll spin ahead David Kaplan yes uh David White yes Susan Chapnick yes and Chuck Taroney says yes did I get lost track did I get everyone and Nathan Daniel Stevens yep heavy hitter okay all right thank you Ben uh appreciate that and uh we're gonna move on to can I can I just ask sure oh okay so just like really oh okay so too I was wondering if anyone like had suggestions for design changes but also is is concrete like usage permitted in early congruent meadows it's not a resource area yeah I think it would be fine to use concrete you might want to get that dry mix stuff and my only uh comment I'm curious why the why the roof section was so large yeah uh oh this isn't like drawn to proportion but no no I saw I saw the one on the ground uh again you know I think for shading and keeping the rain off of it yes exactly there's a little bit too but uh yeah if you come up with a new concept you could you know you could patent it anyways no other no other uh comments other than that sure okay thank you all right Ben good luck all right so let's uh we have we have uh two certificates of compliance left I'm gonna throw both of them to David Morgan David Morgan our first certificate of compliance for is for 47 spypond uh lane and uh if you could update the commission and and uh I guess that's the first thing I need and then we could take a vote I'm actually gonna pass this one to Ryan because he did the site visit yeah I was looking for Ryan I didn't see him sorry Ryan I know that you're out there go go fine uh yes so let me see I've got some pictures here that I can share as well uh but this was an order of conditions that was issued in uh 2020 for construction of a single family house at 47 spypond um so a previous site visit had been done here that confirmed compliance with the order of conditions this is just kind of overview of what the site looks like uh except that the property owner had since constructed a chain link fence up against the resource area uh without proper approval from the conservation commission uh and since it went all the way down to the ground it blocked them uh blocked the passage of wildlife I work with the homeowner who cut several gaps in this fence uh those are about four to six inches tall uh and they're about three feet long you can see where it's cut in there uh in that silt fence uh and there are three sections uh in that silt fence the not in the silt fence I'm sorry the the chain link fence that uh show that uh and then I did provide a memo to the commission uh with that uh there were several ongoing conditions um five of them were related to plantings you know ensuring that they are properly installed with two uh with two years survivability uh making sure there were no invasives no fertilizers used it was uh well slow release nitrogen fertilizers were permitted but no herbicides and rodenticides uh there were two conditions related to ensuring that pervious surfaces remain uh pervious surfaces as they are not converted to impervious and then there is one related to the stormwater management system on site that it is checked twice annually and an annual report is submitted to the conservation commission uh so overall it does appear that the the project is within compliance with the order of conditions and I do recommend that the uh commission issue in order of conditions for this project Susan thanks Chuck um and thanks Ryan um for doing the follow-up site visit I did the initial site visit and and I'm I'm supposing because you did the final that that the issues we found had been corrected so one of the ones that I was concerned about was there was a lot of debris in the 25-foot re-vegetated zone of um spy pond and that was in a very important mitigation area on site um did you observe that the debris was taken out uh yeah so in this photo you can kind of see into that area and there's no debris in there um trying to get a good photo that shows that but it is clear of any sort of debris uh yeah this way can we pass the stone fence okay great so great the resolution right now I can see they took out the debris because there was there was a lot of kind of junk in there okay great thank you that's all my questions okay um any more comments or emotions from the commission I'll make a motion to issue a certificate of compliance a second on that last second so we have a motion and a second on a certificate of compliance for 91 317 40 no no no no 47 spy pond that was the oh I'm sorry it's the dp number I'm sorry go for it sorry it's getting late 47 spy pond uh spy pond lane here we go might kill this game yes Nathaniel Sievens yes Brian McBride yes Susan Chapnick yes David Kaplan yes David White yes and Chuck Tarani says yes okay moving right along we have another uh certificate of compliance that uh is for 19 Sheridan Park and I know that we were a little bit confused at our last hearing and uh David had been sick but I've talked to David and he's going to explain all the particulars so hold your questions until David explains all about this project David 19 Sheridan Park 19 Sheridan Park was issued back in 25 in the modifications to the residents they're the only thing that was not completed by the time that the permit had expired was the installation of the dry wells they're supposed to tie in their downspouts to dry wells and that wasn't completed so when they came to us for a certificate of compliance back in 2022 we noted that that work was incomplete we didn't want to issue a whole new notice of intent for dry wells neither could we really with an open NOI or unresolved NOI let's say or open a quarter of conditions for the property so instead we chose to issue an RDA now while they were considering that RDA they thought maybe we could add a planting plan a patio etc into the scope because they were being ambitious at the time thinking if we're going to do an RDA we might as well you know make it worth a while and ultimately during the hearing for the RDA they withdrew those other pieces and we were left with an RDA just for completion of the work that the original order had required so that's the installation of the dry wells Brian made a site visit same day as the other property we just discussed and found it to be in compliance I recommend approving the order of condition sorry the certificate of compliance for 19 Sheridan Park thank you David uh Susan so thanks David for clarifying so I just have a few clarifying questions so this is an order of conditions for the original permit where some of the work was completed as an RDA it's not it's not a certificate I mean it's not a certificate it's a certificate of compliance for the original permit where some of the original permit work was done under a subsequent RDA because the permit expired am I getting that right yes you got okay okay okay I understand it's a little unconventional but it's how we kind of maneuvered it to make make it work okay got it is that is that it that was my question sure any other comments or motions motion to issue a certificate of compliance your second no Nathaniel Stevens so we have a second to issue a certificate of compliance for DEP file number 91 2 3 0 19 Sheridan Park uh Mike Gillis game yes Susan Chapnick yes Brian McBride yes David Kaplan yes David White yes Daniel Stevens yes and Chuck Turoni says yes okay Susan here we go so we're on to the first hearing it's a request for determination of applicability for 36 Peabody Road Susan Chapnick the vice chair of the conservation commission will be leading the commission through this application so we did talk about it already we've been out to the site had a lot of discussion Susan I'm going to ask you to try to keep this to about 15 minutes or less well I'm going to be make it even less than that good so um the site do we have it do we have the applicant here to present the the project or do you want me to to talk about the project you just summarize it real real quickly like I said we did this last at the last meeting yeah no problem okay so so this project is to repair of some failing walls um due to improper installation and the fact that the um the the uh slope is so steep um from the house down to the two spy pond there's also an addition um to the house that that's we talked about at the last meeting um which has a very minor intrusion into the outside 100 foot buffer zone and uh adjacent upland resource area what we call the aura um to spy pond um so on the site visit which we did I forgot the date but it was a week ago um at myself Nathaniel Stevens um my guilder's game Brian McBride Chuck Taroney and the owners were at the site visit and we got to see the failing walls we got to see an example of what kind of walls they would be putting in that are actually they have on another part of the site we got to see their terracing of this very steep hill and frankly I was very impressed with the with the terracing and the plantings they have um numerous and extensive native plantings that are really doing very very well um they like the wet weather we've been having lately I don't know how they like the snow um but um very impressed by the enhanced habitat um value um we were concerned at our last meeting uh that the walls were intruding further into our resource area because they were being um because of I don't know if we have the uh the the figure that you could put up um David but because they were changing the direction of where the wall was going to go and on our site visit I think we agreed that this was necessary due to the erosion that was happening on the site um they're also moving um one tree and removing two trees that are one of them is hazardous um and proposing to plant several new trees um which which seems reasonable to me in my opinion but I guess where I'm coming from here and maybe um you could put the plan up somebody can put the plan up but um what we had talked about at the site visit and and please um Daniel or or Mike or or Brian or Chuck chime in Mike my I'm still on the fence on whether this type of work is an RDA or an NOI and the reason I'm a little bit on the fence is because it is stonework um it's a little bit of earthwork uh however they are going to do everything by hand you really can't get machines on these slopes um and put erosion controls in as it says in the in the project specs so I'd like the applicant to talk about that a little bit but then I'd like the commission to discuss whether whether we think this is an NOI or an RDA um to begin with and then proceed from there did I miss anything Chuck no that's great uh so no it's gonna take no go ahead yeah and then we can talk again okay so hi hi nice to see you again nice to see you as well I'm glad you all got to visit um so as you stated we are hoping to move the wall and repair the staircase um and do it all by hand um and hopefully able to sort of minimize that we you know we're looking at putting erosion controls my now that you've seen the site where I had thought was sort of down by that rounded patio um to catch most of it and then obviously for the building site would have a separate one up top um but for the wall work uh I would actually imagine sort of where the hill gets less steep towards the bottom would be the best place for an erosion control um one of those tube hay barrier things that we had last time um but otherwise I think your summary is completely accurate and I don't have much to add in terms of what we're trying to do um considering what we did before we feel like it's fairly minor um and now you've seen how much we did last time around so that's that's sort of where we're coming from thank you I don't know if it's helpful for the commission to have the plan back up when you're asking questions or do you just want to ask questions I yeah go ahead Chuck well I was wondering if you have any questions I I mean so I don't want to lead off by saying this but I think this this yard and this house is uh is pretty impressive I think that these people have taken great care uh in the property and in the resource area and have tried to do everything they can to um uh you know meet uh the environmental standards that the commission set upon them I don't think that they would be doing this work if the wall hadn't been shifting on them um and they have an opportunity to uh you know put it in one more time and have it finalized at that point because they're going to they have a wall in the far corner that we took a picture of it was up on the on the google drive and it's it's just a more substantial wall and I think if they're relying on that then it's fine the area that it's working in is is a slope it's unvegetated it's dirt um nothing was growing there anyways they're going to create a patio in that area it will hold the hold the wall hold the slope and you know with the amount of trees and shrubs and plants that they've already planted and all the care that they're taking they're on I don't have a problem with this as a um RDA and to issue a uh determination with um whatever conditions come up from the commission thanks chuck um I would like to see a few of the pictures I don't know if that's something that David could put up because several commissioners didn't get to go on the site visit you know it's one thing to say it's steep and there's terracing and it's another thing to actually see it um which I think is helpful in commissioners making a decision personally we were there on a very rainy cold day um so yeah yeah did you have anything to add Mike no I'm just going to agree with what you said and it is an incredibly steep slope there again I think they've done a good job stabilizing and actually enhancing the yard there you go okay so these are some of the stairs going down and you see those two trees in the back that's where things aren't growing that steep steep area over there um I think there are a few more pictures that's showing you the terracing down to spy pond at the bottom um those aren't changing on that side this is a wall that that they built on the other side which is going to be an example of what they're going to redo on the wall that's failing was not built this way and the terracing this is up where the addition is going to go that's that's it okay all right was there anything you wanted to add Nathaniel no I just gonna say to move things along I'm fine with issuing with determination I'll make a motion oh I expected to close the hearing but I'd make a motion to close the hearing second Mike no motion to close the hearing in a second for Mike any further discussion do we do we need to this is an RDA though we forgot to do public comment so I'm going to go back yeah okay yeah an open public comment I know we're trying to get things moving along but we need to do that so um if you're a member of the public and you have a comment on this RDA um could you please raise your hand physically or use your reaction button to raise your hand and we'll recognize you and unmute you and Brian and David if you can tell me if I missed anybody it says a lot of people on no okay so I'm going to close the public hearing and I'm going to ask Nathaniel to make his motion again I'll make a motion to close the hearing on this RDA thank you Nathaniel second second from Mike and any further discussion okay I will take a roll call about David White I think you're amused David but I'm muted the other man okay yes the button didn't work thank you that's okay Brian McBride yes Dave Kaplan yes Chuck Taroney yes Mike Gildescain yes Nathaniel Stevens yes and Susan Chapnick says yes so the um the hearing is closed and now can I get a motion from a commissioner um about this RDA I make a motion to issue the RDA and do you propose any conditions um what do you what do you determine Chuck what do you and what do you determine right so oh um I so the other thing I could say is like a negative yeah oh so I make a motion to uh issue the RDA for a negative three um and I don't think that they need um a lot of erosion control but I would put some down at the where the um additional retaining wall is going down at the bottom of the hill or along the hill if they could do that so maybe a 20 foot section so the I don't know if that was a and have that reviewed by the agent prior to work yeah yeah so we jump so someone has to second my motion yeah and then and then so there's a condition any other conditions I don't I don't hear any okay great so I'm going to take a vote on the motion to um have a it's it's a positive negative determination that's what number three is meaning it's in the resource area but it doesn't require an NOI and we have one condition about erosion controls and I'm going to take a vote on that David White yes Brian McBride yes Dave Kaplan yes Chuck Chironi yes Mike Gildes game yes Nathaniel Stevens yes and Susan Chapnick says yes so you're all set um David Morgan will get you the appropriate paperwork that you need and um good luck wonderful thank you so much thank you yeah thank you so much a lot of great work over there at your house thank you thank you um okay so moving right along we have an amendment to the order oh so we have an amendment to the order of conditions for 88 Coolidge file number 92 91 278 and this this hearing is being continued to the at the Appalachian request to April 18th 2024 do I have a motion so moved and I have a second second so Mike Gildes game yes uh Susan Chapnick yes David Kaplan yes David White yes Nathaniel Stevens yes Brian McBride yes and Chuck Chironi says yes okay we are at the point where we're talking about um the Thorn Dyke the Thorn Dyke hearing so we have the hearings it's the Thorn Dyke hearing and I know that uh David White is going to recuse himself from this hearing and say goodbye and that's great and um let's see if I'll find my some of my paperwork oh here it is right here all right so the conservation commission will hold the public hearing under the Welles Projected Act to consider the notice of intent for construction of Thorn Dyke place a multifamily development on Dorothy Road and Arlington um uh continue planting plan habitat discussion including invasive management plan um and if time allows we'll get back into the storm water uh discussion uh that we started at the last hearing I can see that everyone's here but before we start I'm just going to uh uh just have I have just a few things to say so um I have a few preliminary comments and hopefully these will be uh helpful uh there's a lot of people here tonight and I want to make sure that we have an orderly meeting and importantly I want to make sure that we hear from as many people as possible and everybody who wants to speak and speak tonight and I don't think that we'll be able to have everyone speak uh in the hour that I've set aside for this uh discussion but we'll get to many as many people as possible so tonight we'll be finishing up habitat and invasive management plan discussion and if there's any time left we'll switch over to storm water management I don't think there's enough time to finish that so at the end of the discussion I'm going to ask the applicant to continue this hearing until April 18th and I hope that they agree or accept that so the way the conservation commission works is that we have specific and very detailed proposal from the proponent project proposal that needs to be finalized within our meeting process so we can treat it as a final plan we hear evidence on the wetland issues concerning the proposal in order to help um come to the conclusion on the proposal the commission can ask additional for additional information to help them make a decision we operate under the massachusetts wetlands protection act where we are delegated local authority from the department of environmental protection um that is there are some things in our jurisdiction and there are some things that are not for example there has been a lot of comments in the record about additional groundwater sampling conservation commission does not have the ability to demand action we can only request that action as long as it's as long as our request is tied to the wetlands protection act if the conservation commission requests more information whether it's in document form or further testing results it doesn't matter how controversial the site is the commission can only make a request what we are here to do is to protect the wetlands the principles that are defined in the wetlands protection act and that they include the wetlands the buffer zone wildlife habitat water supply and the 100-year flood zone so what i want to do here tonight is the following and then the following order it's the same as i did at the last hearing the proponent will bring us up to date and i will ask them how much time they need to do their presentation and providing that's a reasonable amount of time i will let them i will let them continue then i will go over the correspondence that we received since the last meeting and then i will take questions from the commission and then we'll hear from the public so with that sorry just one question is our peer reviewer with us this evening and what our peer reviewer i don't see him on the screen if he's there i see chase yes chase chase is here okay i guess it'd be helpful to hear um maybe after the applicant to hear from chase sure so what i thought we would do is um so the way this it was kind of um unfortunate but i think we got our i got our signals crossed and i would like to give matt burn and dominic ronaldi you know a chance to finish up their presentation on the invasive management plan and then take some questions and then i would see chase as coming in after that point so if that's acceptable with that uh could you introduce yourself matt and dominic and introduce your team for the record sure thank you mr chairman um i'm matt burn i'm a senior ecologist with bsc group i'm joined by tom groves one of our senior botanists who has prepared the invasive species management plan and um work on responses to the peer review that that has been received um dominic ronaldi of course is here um civil civil engineer with bsc stephanie keifer is the project attorney um and i haven't looked through all the pages but i i see john hessian uh is is here as well um and sorry if i'm oh and scott oren and marthe duffin all right thank you here as well so i understand you have a presentation tonight do you know how much time you need to make that presentation so we had we had presented a slide deck that gives a general overview of strategy for approaching invasive species management tom can present that um he had a he had an opportunity a couple weeks back to give a quick rundown of that uh if you would like to see that again and and get a sort of a full full treatment of that no problem tom uh if you could speak to how long you need to go through that slide deck um i don't remember how long how long i spent through it last time but i i think 15 minutes would probably be fun sure i think it was right around 15 minutes that you spent the last time so if that's acceptable to the commission if people would like to hear that slide deck again um let me know nathaniel i i remember it from before so i don't feel that i need it but i'm not going to speak for the other commission members thank you anyone else um i'd be okay not hearing it again as well okay same i'm fine with it i mean i might we might have questions and then ask you to go to a specific slide and explain or something and you might go to that slide because it explains it if we have a question but sure i think we need to listen to the whole thing okay well let's let's do that so let's let's start off with just a summary yeah mr chairman um if it if it pleases uh if please the commission on on the 27th of uh march SWCA provided a peer review letter that that we're that would be good to talk through and that was part of the record and it submitted in time uh to for the commission to see that so we could talk through the points that were brought up in that and then uh to this chat next point um you know as we go additional questions would would be great to go through with tom and so if that if that works for you um we we did receive that letter uh when it was posted online early this week we put together a formal response and submitted that today um understanding that you know the timing of that but at least we have the opportunity to kind of talk through how how we took that um that peer review so i think that's a good spot to start you posted something today i i agree that you should probably just at least talk that through uh we had yeah let's just move forward with that great so just to make things simple um that peer review that came out on the 27th stated that so there were 10 original comments that had to do with the planting plan and and the invasive species management back in in a February letter that the march 27th letter stated that all but one of the original 10 comments require no further discussion so so we're we're squared away on comments one and three through 10 and so that's all the planting plan and and so those details the only uh comment that uh sort of was had substance in this report was uh swca response two dash one and that recommended that the isntp be submitted for for review so that was done and chase i don't want to put words in your mouth but you know i i can sort of summarize the response in the march 27th letter that you've all had the chance to see um the swca response two dash two on page two uh express some um you know there the swca's experience in the effective ways to manage sites similar to the proposed project using an adaptive management approach mechanical manual and chemical options appear to be presented as if only one can be chosen for each species um uses the example of common reed and japanese knotweed benefiting from combined approaches to to management um and states that there there appears to be consistent issue throughout the isntp of uh misrepresenting the proposed concentrations of herbicide and not mentioning the choice of herbicide label must be followed so just to to take that chunk first um and i think i i i deferred a tom here in his experience but i want to be very clear that the whole purpose of the the isntp is to be an adaptive management plan to utilize a combined approach to invasive management that ultimately reduces the the need for chemical controls um that is that is the express intent of the development of that plan if i can turn it to tom uh to specifically provide his thoughts and comments in on that particular body of comments i think sure um i'm tom groves senior botanists for bsc um so part of the adaptive management plan and what i've included in that isntp um is you know two main approaches the first one was a chemical approach only um but also included this mulching option which is a basically a suppressant for the garlic mustard that's present there um so that one was you know primarily a chemical approach to invasive um plant control the second one um contained a chemical mechanical and a chemical and so that's combining a mechanical and a chemical approach um dependent on species because a lot of these species that are present in this location have very specific biological treatment times um and methods that help them uh you know help the the applicant get control over these invasive species wherever they're occurring so Japanese knotweed is is one that does not respond well to a mechanical approach first and so in the timeline of that isntp i said that this would have to be chemically treated first before the mulching of the woody's that are present would happen um and then after that mulching control you would then do another site-wide chemical control after that so that is actually combining those two methods together um to reduce chemical usage on that property um and the reason why you don't want to cut Japanese knotweed is that in the 10 years that i was doing Japanese knotweed control um every site that i mechanically controlled first and then chemically treated uh the Japanese knotweed persisted for years and years and years healthy plants are easier to kill they're functioning properly bringing herbicide down into the root system so when you cut a plant the hormones in the plant change and it makes it a lot harder to kill later so in order to get control you know for the city of Arlington um and in this property in particular uh i'm giving the best management practices for this type of control based on the species that are present in this location do you want to do you want to pause and and take you know sort of have a discussion about that or should we look at the the section yeah let's let's see if uh if that if i hear anything anybody any questions from commissioners on that topic so i guess what we're not doing is we're not cutting uh and uh before july and we're not treating in september we're just treating later in a whole plant is that what you're saying no um i'm saying that you know in the in the approach of if you were going to do that the second option where you're doing chemical mechanical chemical the knotweed has to take precedent to be treated before you go in there with a multure or any kind of mechanical control and so you can mechanically knock down your woody trees that are above head height so they're difficult to treat with herbicide when they're that big um and so you want to cut them so they do resprout but you have to have enough time in between to allow those woodies to resprout to be functioning properly again to treat them with chemicals so it's not like you can go in there mechanically control them and then two months later treat them with herbicide and expect to have a good result so it's it's a little complicated when you think about it the chemical control option is a lot simpler because you can just go in there and do cut sump or foliar um and get that to a reasonable stage of um you know not having invasive plants there but when you include the mechanical approach there's a lot more moving pieces so you have to sort of do them at specific times based on the biology of the plants um and when the proper time is to treat for them plus thinking about the growing season as a whole you know you can only treat between uh june 1st and when leaves drop off the plants right a foliar treatment but you can do cut stump a little bit further than that into the uh late fall and early winter and then you have to stop that before uh you can't do it in the spring because the pump the sap is running up and so you can't really treat plants in the spring with herbicide because it won't work effectively because it's not taking it down to the root system does that make sense it does make sense is are you concerned at all about the um construction that's going to be proposed around this how has this worked on other sites has have you um been able to implement this plan uh over i guess the objections of the construction site manager i mean every site is different so you know when you go out and do a habitat management plan or an invasive species management plan you have to take into account everything there and i because of the construction time is a little unknown i've built in the ability to start this at different times so the timetable that i included in that ism p it's really intended for them to be able to say okay we're going to start construction here this is how the ism p is going to fit in with that and so it's you know if they said we're going to do we're going to start construction in uh march then they they could start construction you could still get in there because they're not really going to be affecting that four acres um you know so they could get in there and do the work and there's like the staging option of the staging of the norway maples for the chipping later to be able to suppress the garlic mustard um so there's there's some moving parts there but the access should be fine it's pretty close to the road there shouldn't be any like impediment with the construction going on all right thank you i'm going to go to susan chapnik actually um chuck i think mike had his hand up first so obviously him and then i'll go go ahead susan yeah all right um so so might i appreciate your your your depth of knowledge of of of treatment options and using mechanical as well as chemical i'm concerned with glyphosate we've been concerned with that chemical for a while and i know we've had some discussions about using it around spypond too and it's ongoing because there's new science but i was reading an NIH review study on glyphosate and i'm just going to quote what they said in it they said in analyzed findings it is unequivocal that exposure to glyphosate based herbicide causes neurotoxic effects in humans rodents, fish and invertebrates and um there's been some new science about it i'm very concerned about the use of that herbicide in wetland resource areas what's your what's your um yeah so you know a lot of that information about you know the scary the scary stuff about glyphosate comes from industrial farming and when you think about the industrial farming complex and how they use glyphosate on GMO crops they apply it repeatedly throughout a season throughout a growing season to suppress their weeds um the soil chemistry the soil itself isn't very good on these egg sites so you have a lot of runoff there's not a lot of microbes in the soil not a lot of fungi mycelium all of those things that help to break down and hold on to that herbicide aren't present and so in a natural system um and all kinds of agencies use this type of treatment especially glyphosate because it is it is the longest herbicide that we have it has had the most amount of research done on it um and so that it is really the safest herbicide to be using in these sort of situations it gets another bad rap because you can buy this you can buy roundup off the tractor supply shelf and what that is is that's really an upland herbicide mixed with a surfactant that does harm amphibians and so what we've proposed in this ismp is actually a wetland approved herbicide with a non-ionic surfactant so it's not the same thing as roundup that you buy off the shelf at the store additionally you're in this you know ecosystem application you're only applying it once in a season and you're applying it in very small amounts so you know I recommend rates of like five to seven percent for a foliar application the 50-50 application where you have a 50 percent concentration um you're applying it directly to the surface area there's very little overspray it's going to stay within that root system so the likelihood that there's going to be runoff and your spy pond is a little different because there's open water right there this in this situation you don't have any open water and the wetland is pretty far away from where the treatment would actually take place so and it is by law you can apply this herbicide up to the water's edge so there aren't any you know and then there's other on the label there's also regulations about you can't apply it within 24 hours of a rain event so there's a whole lot of these safety nets that are um employed to like help this be the safest treatment to get really good control over invasive plants and the the alternative is you know these invasive plants are destroying our ecosystem worse than the than the glyphosate a small amount of glyphosate might and I would guess that you know after doing thousands and thousands of acres of treatment with this herbicide in this area you're probably going to use less than a quart of herbicide to actually get this under control which is minimal considering you know how long it would take or how much effort or how much money would take to do it with like a mechanical control and you'd be doing it for decades and it wouldn't it would never really solve the problem so thank you for that I have two more follow-up questions one one is um are there alternatives to glyphosate that might be safer um you know many countries have banned glyphosate I have to look at that you know information I do know that EPA a lot of the the pesticide group in EPA a lot of their science came from the industry EPA is cleaning house now and they're getting new science so I will just leave that there but um so number one is there is there a substitute that can be close um and number two are you proposing I forgot your whole plan so excuse me about that but it's okay proposing any you said foliar can you do you know cut and dab um and foliar not spray the whole thing and then my third question is how long do you have to wait before we have this grand planting plan we're going to be doing this this chemical yeah have the chemical there while you're planting new plants so I have those three questions sure um so your first question um is there something safer glyphosate in my opinion is the safest herbicide to use in these situations this glyphosate ban that's been discussed off and on with other countries and here California stuff like that the possible result of that is that if you ban glyphosate the other chemicals that are going to get employed for that you know the ecological restoration activities are going to be worse than glyphosate so things like amazapyr if you've ever looked up amazapyr it's mobile in water and that's something that some contractors will use that mixed with glyphosate because they want to give it like an extra kick to kill the plants and it's really bad to do that because it can flash kill oak trees and it works in the soil so glyphosate doesn't work in the soil this is sort of your third question can you plant and you know for glyphosate to be active and kill a plant you have to get it on a the leaf surface or into an open wound on the plant so you'd have to actually cut the stem so the return entry interval on glyphosate is four hours so that's when the leaves are dry it's you know by the label it's safe to enter that area and go back into it so I could you know if you were doing this on a trail network that area could be reopened within four hours after treatment so there's also no soil activity so even if some of this glyphosate got onto the soil it won't get absorbed by the roots of the trees so you can plant right after it no problem and your second question was sorry yeah that's okay it was it was asking if you could avoid air spraying oh right so um yeah so what I've proposed is a low volume low pressure backpack sprayer now the the knot weed you there's stem injection techniques that you can use for that there's also cut stump for that and in my experience when you do that um you know your if you've ever cut a knot weed stem inside of those nodes is full of water so what you're doing is putting herbicide into water and diluting it further the concentration of a stem injection situation is usually a hundred percent concentration per the label and what happens is if you do that type of application you go over your allowable per acre amount very quickly and so you can only use seven quarts of herbicide per acre and if you do a hundred percent concentrate you get up to that number right away also the stems have to be a certain if you've ever seen one of those it's like a hollow needle on an injection gun with a hopper on it so like a almost like a paintball gun and you have to the stem has to be big enough for you to get that needle into it to actually inject it and I haven't seen that work really well and it's partially because those stems are so fleshy so for the knot weed in particular doing a low pressure backpack treatment um it is very targeted you can stand certain ways and when you're when you're using your um gun to treat the plants it's mostly only on those plants if you do get some overspray onto the leaves of some native plants in the area it won't kill the entire plant because per the label you have to treat the entire plant to kill it so it may burn a leaf or two off of some other plants but it's not going to kill those natives the same way like a high volume spray would if you like ended up having a lot of drift or something like that um so what I've proposed in that ISMP is actually a really you know targeted approach to invasive plant control in that area right and I appreciate that and I have just one more follow-up sure if if we said no spray let's say we said that could you still do a management program that was reasonable maybe it would take a little longer um could could you make it work I don't think as a you know ecological professional I could I know that that's like a want and that's a pretty common want from people um but you have to you have to look at you know a situation and say what is the real ecological best way to do this and that's what I've included that ISMP and I've tried to include things like like the mulching of the norway maples that are already on site to smother um germinating garlic mustard seeds so that's really intended to sort of like appease sort of meet everyone in the middle like we have to we have to spray the knotweed um we can do some other mechanical approaches where we're appropriate and it will be successful but not on species like knotweed and so you know you could do it you know I've sort of included it as best I can in that situation thank you that's all my questions sure uh I don't uh yeah it's my guildest game sorry you yeah just a quick question uh tom thanks for that information yeah um I know that controlling knotweed takes a while and over what period of time do you expect to be able to control knotweed and basically get rid of it yeah I mean you know as I got better at treating knotweed when I first started it took me like three to five years to get it to 95 percent control but with the methods that I've laid out in this ISMP and you know whatever contractor picks up this contract is going to benefit from my previous mistakes um but if you treat healthy plants so you don't sever them first and you treat them with that five to seven percent glyphosate mix at the right time of year which is the most important part of this is that biologically you have to treat them after they flower um and knotweed kind of forms these layers so you kind of have an upper layer a mid-tier and a lower layer of leaves and you have to sort of treat them all to get a good solid kill on that plant and you know from years four through four through nine when I was doing this I could get it in year one after you're the first treatment I could get it to 90 percent control or better and so you'd have a big stand of knotweed that all went away and then you'd have maybe like 10 small little resprouts or seedlings that would come up and there would be native plants coming back after that so you'd have a lot of jewelry jewelry was the number one plant that I would see reappearing after a knotweed treatment so how what is your plan call for in terms of treating knotweed for how for how what period of time does that have to happen one year two three uh that's so depending on what happens um I've just said that that needs to happen before any sort of mulching work happens so all of the all of the chemical treatments could be combined into one treatment area one treatment time of like august through october and that that'll be up to the contractor when they go in there but you know as laid out in the is mp it's imperative that they do the knotweed treatment between august and october they can do the other foliar treatments for the other plants or the cut stump outside of that between july and december but that one is fixed into that time period um does that answer your question yeah I think so so you're saying basically you could get rid of most 95 of the knotweed in the first year yeah and and there's and I've built in a follow-up so there's follow-ups are always required because you will have seedlings coming back because there is an invasive plant seed bank present there and you have to have a follow-up treatment so that may not happen the year after the initial treatment because it takes time for things to germinate and come back so it might be monitoring is really important so you want to be monitoring that site coming back and saying okay now's an appropriate time to come back and do it because that will also limit the chemical usage if you can time you know get get it when the most number of plants are coming back so you can really be efficient with your chemical use in a certain area thank you you're welcome David Kaplan thanks Chuck thank you Tom I appreciate the the conversation a couple of questions you know follow-up with what Susan was asking about you know I think there's a big concern about drift and overspray when using backpacks I assume the stands that are going to be treated are probably fairly they're monocultures there's probably not much else throwing around them but I wonder if you know if there's another method like the just wiping herbicide on the plant we'll get the coverage at the concentrations you'd need and then also you know if we should be considering some sort of no spray buffers if we're concerned about you know wetland impacts maybe we create kind of a 25 foot no spray zone 50 foot you know or just at some point from the wetland we allow the low foliar spray when we're less concerned about the drift yeah so you know those those backpack sprayers are you know you can dial in how much you let out of your nozzle at any given time the droplets also tend to be very big so you don't have it's not like spraying herbicide out of an airplane you know where it's where it's all air slides and it's just going a gust of wind could pick it up and drop it somewhere else the droplets are so big that they stay within that area and you have you know when you apply and there's a there's a product called Finvert that's a lot heavier than water and that's what they use for the the method that you're describing which is colloquially called bloody glove and so that's the wiping you're describing you have to use that heavier substance because when you do a bloody glove treatment if you do it with water it'll end up dripping out all over your site right so that's the downside of using a drip treatment like that and it really doesn't work on knotweed because knotweed has multi stems and the leaves if you've ever messed around with knotweed the leaves come off really easily so you can't the wiping involves some sort of force and pulling to like get that herbicide out of the plant it really works the best with frag mites because it's a grass and it's you know tall and just like a rod so you can just grip it with your hand and just draw it up and that's the best way to treat frag mites in like a or you have more native plants present because they're they would be hard to hit with a gun but your Japanese knotweed has such a canopy that it's hard to miss knotweed when you're spraying it so there's very low chance that you're going to get it on any other plants in the area and it is pretty much a monoculture in there there are some native plants but they're they're going to be above their leaves are going to be above the treated area anyway and a lot of them are getting you know vined covered in vines right now so there's not a whole lot of stuff to whole lot of stuff to save there but they I mean the applicator when they go in there they should know the difference between invasive and native and that saving the natives is one of those other prongs on that you know adaptive management plan that you want those there to help you outcompete the invasive plants once you give them the leg up okay no thank you for that answer I also wanted to follow up on the proposal to for the mulch smothering or the mulch treatment of the norway maples I mean it does sound like you know an interesting way to sort of repurpose the plant material that's going to be you know you're you're going to be left with when you know removing the norway maples I'm just a little bit concerned that it would prohibit the growth of any other potential understory you know you you know and smothering the garlic mustard you sort of rule out having the ability for any other ground cover to grow can you speak to that yeah sure I mean it's not you know there's probably a massive seed bank of garlic mustard in there based on the number of dead seed heads that I saw and you also have the soil in there it's there's probably a lot of jumping worms which are invasive an invasive worm as well so part of the other reason why I included that was to restore the soil a little bit so you'd have fungi come in and more mycelium and you're sort of rebuilding the soil in those areas and over time you'd have other native seeds deposit seeds on top of that so it's really an effort to garlic mustard is one of the worst invasives that we have and they because they seed so prolifically and they can create monocultures and they they're allelopathic so they'll actually change the soil chemistry so part of what I'm doing is trying to you know solve a soil problem while we're doing an invasive plant problem as well and you know the native plants will still be in the area and present and be you know seeded in there over time so it's a long-term long-term project right I mean it sounds like you're looking at a 20-year time frame to rebuild soil so is there is there like a minimum cover that we can target so we're not just left with mounds of like three feet thick of wood chips or that it can be spread in a way where you know you can get the control of the garlic mustard that you need but minimize the time it's gonna prohibit the growth of anything and it's in it's dead yeah so I think three inches would be fine and it's not you know I'm not suggesting that we put mounds everywhere but a general three inches just in the garlic mustard areas and then let the other areas come back and be able to be follow-up treated in the future. Thank you that sounds good. All right I had one question Tom I was just wondering how how carefully you dialed in the invasive management plan on drift and if you recommended nozzle and droplet size in that document. So you know the backpack sprayers birch mire backpacks generally come with either a wand or a gun the wand is you know long it's probably like 30 inches long so that that usually goes right down to the ground the and those those guns and wands come with nozzle sizes already so they there's not really a lot of leeway there like they couldn't you couldn't just choose to you know like a hose say you know turn on a hose and just spray it all over the place it's not it doesn't work like that so it's it's going to be up to the applicator to to do that when they get there but there's there's old there's parameters on it you know you can't go out of like I said about the plane you can't aerosolize with a low pressure backpack sprayer and have it drift onto like a neighbor's property it just doesn't work like that. So so that field conditions on the day of application determines so they'll try to determine the the nozzle setting I guess it's a setting and the drop the size yes so control drift. For the label there's you know certain conditions that you can't treat under so if you have wind conditions of nine miles per hour or over you're not you can't treat on that day so any applicator who would be doing that would be breaking the law because the label is the law so I can't control you know those that's really like fine grained it would almost be like micromanaging to say that because the label already has all of this stuff outlined and those the rates that they have to use percentages and then the application gear that they have to use is even outlined in the label. Right okay thank you Susan. Just as a point of reference for that we have in the past been micromanagers on this commission and put conditions on spraying that might be a little stricter than what's provided in the manufacturer's instructions just FYI to everybody we could look at that. Sure okay so I see no more hands I don't know if Matt wants to lead us into the next topic. Yeah in fact largely has been touched on the second paragraph of response 2.2 is that states that the ISMP should be adaptive and that sticking to a strict preset and unchangeable schedule from year to year is not in the best interest I think as Tom has pointed out this is very much intended to be adaptive to whenever this project starts it's unknowable at this point when things would begin what windows of opportunity are going to present and so the ISMP is designed to allow a contractor to begin I would I would say under Tom's direction um and in coordination to make sure that the the plants and treatments align with the ISMP schedule and then to to Tom's point in our response things things fall into place from there based on when this project kicks off so so I think that second second paragraph of comments we've really talked about um and the final um the final statement was that uh FWA as WCA recommends that the applicant either check the label or edit percentages of herbicide or revise the ISMP to specify that label rates will be followed and I you know again to reiterate Tom's point the label is the law so it goes without saying that a licensed applicator is going to protect their livelihood by following the law and and not do things that are off-label you know we could we could include a statement that you know the label must be followed but but I think it's it's really for for people that are are professionals that that goes without saying um so and that was that was the the uh I don't again don't want to put words in in uh Chase's mouth but that's the the extent of the comments that are outstanding on WCA peer review of this this project so this might be a good time to bring Chase and to make any uh comments Chase I don't know if you're that yes you are do you have anything to uh reply yeah I mean we covered a lot in the uh last uh 50 minutes or so um and and realistic I don't know how much more I can really contribute um to add to the conversation here I appreciate everything that you know Matt's kind of summarized and then Tom's added and everybody's talked about and whatnot um I will add that you know I agree with a lot of what Tom said about you know it's this is a really challenging site right like this there's a lot of different species here um and it's pretty unique um and a lot of ways that they're approaching you which is which is great um it's one of what's going to work I would I'll just I won't say double it down but I will confirm that you know not only is extremely difficult to control um and I can appreciate the intent of wanting to limit you know the amount of herbicides and stuff that are applied but if there's one species that you really need herbicide to treat effectively um it's it's not lead um so I I really don't think anything that they're proposing is out of whack or you know done out of them um without an abundance of caution um so just you know just wanted to confirm that you know to effectively treat this site um you're going to need to meet herbicide otherwise we're kind of setting the applicant up for failure because you're not going to get really good treatment to our conditions to control the bases without that unless it's going to go over a very long period of time right thank you uh any other questions from the commissioner I'm going to just quickly turn this over to see if anyone tonight tonight's meeting if there are no more commissioners questions has any comments seeing no hands from the commissioner so at the bottom of the screen we have a raise hand function if you use that reaction buttons to hit the raise hand function and ask your comment we'll call on you these questions would be for the invasive management plan AISMP seeing none David Morgan do you see any none I see Lisa Friedman clapped there I don't know I shouldn't need to clap I meant to raise my hand okay great sure Lisa please um ask your question hi thanks very much I'm Lisa Fredman 63 Mott street um I found the discussion on glyphosates interesting and extreme oops hold on extremely concerning and this is why um I'm actually trained as an epidemiologist but I don't deal with environmental epi but there is a theory in epi that really started with drug epidemiology that um causes disease causes were attributed to drugs when actually it wasn't the drug that caused the disease it was the condition that the drug treated and I bring this up because also in epidemiology you know which is based on broad populations big data most studies start with um case studies case examples that's how the woober study started the wr grace study started that's how almost every single environmental epidemiology study started and what concerns me is that my friend's brother recently died of ALS and he was the first of what's a growing number of case series of youngish middle-aged people dying of ALS who are presumed to have had exposure to algae growth to um ponds this is all in Vermont where herbicides were used now we know that the mugar property is right next to the wetland and ever since december every single time that I've walked by thorn dyke field there's been standing water use of herbicides for anything on the mugar property is going to move toward that standing water and that's going to affect our neighbors who live on edith street and it's going to possibly affect the kids who play soccer on thorn dyke field and I think it would really really be important to include some epidemiologists in this discussion even looking just at case series because I think and I know from you know what my friend's brother died of that it's not the exposure to algae it's not the exposure to the pond it's the exposure to the herbicides that seeped into the pond and that caused algae growth and that's what concerns me it would just be terrible to have that sort of um exposure in our neighborhood our neighborhood is under a lot of threat anyway as you've been reading from all of the letters from all of us we don't need herbicides on top of flooding on top of everything else thanks thanks lisa uh susan can i just respond real quick um thank you lisa and um you know i i think that was very important information that will say the conservation commission that we care about human health it's not enough perfume i would totally encourage you however to make those same exact statements in an email to the arlington board of health okay i've said for a long time i think the board of health needs to get involved in some of these decisions where where we can't really act we're really um looking at the impact the aquatic environment to the the vegetation that lives in the resource areas etc um but we care about human health so i so i'd encourage you to to go that way okay thank you very much thank you can i lisa i'd also like you to you should look at lawn care companies in these you know these neighborhoods that you're talking about you can go online and look at as a pesticide applicator you have to report to the state how much you use of what herbicide and in what quantities at the end of each year and so you can look at the lawn care industry and see what they're spraying in your neighborhood um true green or whoever it's going to be fungicides um rodenticides herbicide all kinds of different herbicides and the the ecological industry that's what we're talking about right now uses very few of those and the the amount that they're actually uses using is in very low quantities so not only you know i it's scary to think about our native areas getting sort of grouped in with these other uh you know pesticide license categories because we're really trying to get something into a better place and once you restore a habitat you don't need herbicide anymore the lawn care in the golf industry use these forever perpetually and they're not really achieving anything other than you know something that's not ecologically beneficial i hear you and i appreciate that but i also think i i really appreciated susan chapnick's comments about trying to minimize and perhaps even find alternatives to the herbicides it's our neighborhood you know we really need to protect everything we can okay again thank you lisa and susan and tom um i just want to acknowledge that uh between march 21st and april 20 did i get that right march 21st so anyways between the last two meetings we received 11 emails uh and their correspondence from butters and people throughout the town and most of those uh comments that they made had to do with groundwater testing and so i'll just leave it at that if you want to um see those emails we have a site set up and the conservation division page i don't know if david is uh awake enough to put that link into the into the chat but uh you could go to the thorn dug page on the conservation division page and and uh read each one of those those emails are there any other comments on um this invasive management plan the ism p is are we finished um this is to the conservation commission are we finished these questions uh and then at our next meeting can we dedicate all that time to storm water i'm satisfied with the questions on the planting plan and the ism p sounds good to me sounds good okay so i would um make us a comment that um we're finished with the invasive management plan the habitat portion of this um application and we'd like to focus on the storm water management uh which is you know it's come up a lot we've talked it over a lot but i think we need more time to um really get uh you know a good understanding of all the questions and the answers from the proponent and um i guess from our third powder reviewer who won't be there but um but uh you know i i do know that there are more questions so at this point i'm going to ask the applicant if we uh they would accept continuing to our next meeting um i will not be at the next meeting well uh so take that into consideration please uh so the next meeting is april 18th and uh nathaniel sieven says he will not be able to attend that meeting chuck can i ask a question sure nathaniel nathaniel have you missed any other meetings this matter i don't believe so no okay so you could do the mullin rule you could watch it and do the mullin okay thank you i just didn't i just wanted to verify that he wouldn't be um he would be able to vote so if he did that thank you okay so we've established that nathaniel steven can be mullinized if he doesn't make the meeting and he doesn't seem to be but dominik the question is would you uh grant the commission uh and continue to um april 18th and for that discussion to happen or another date if you so wish uh yeah mr chair thank you dominik ronald which is boss for saint dominik ronald the vsc group um so first up um mr chair commission um so the applicant has uh just recently authorized vsc to actually do some more uh stormwater test pits and install a second well in the area of the large infiltration system the the bigger one sort of behind the town houses in front of the the um multi unit building um and monitor those through april and intimate we are trying to set that up now as as you know whether uh has put some contractors behind so we are looking hopefully not next week but well i mean hopefully next week but probably not next week um more likely the following week in in getting those test pits and that well in and starting um monitoring that well while we continue to monitor the other ones um so what we would actually like to do is continue and i don't have it in front of me but what is your the the meeting after the uh april 18th one the early may may second yeah may second may second or 16th those are the two may meetings yeah i would request for the second um and then obviously if things change uh we could we could push that back to the 16th but we'd like to get on for the may second so that we can have some of that data and information for you uh by then sure when that monitoring well goes in place will you um will you be uh held to the same uh held to the same standards as before and have a uh someone from the town witness these um the wells installation is that i think that's what we asked for yeah i mean is that something we can mention would like i think so uh any everyone's shaking their head yes we'd like someone from the town um to witness the monitoring wells and david um david morgan do you have any comments on that who we should use or um someone from town or someone else i don't think we know at this point whether we would have the same third party reviewer out there or if the engineering division would do it and or i would be on site but when we get a date we could make that decision make that decision what i could do that is um i'll touch base with david probably tomorrow um give you some some dates and then um as we get a firm date keep you uh in in the loop as far in advance as possible so so you can figure out who you'd like to thank you that works for me okay any other questions any other comments about this the applicant is going to install some more monitoring wells and requests to come back to the commission on may 2nd comment i would just say i appreciate that um i i think we i've been an advocate and many of us have felt uncomfortable with making a decision on the data we have so i appreciate that you're going to be doing this i do see a member of the public has a comment on this so i don't know when you want to open sure and so do i so um i see that scott whosley here and i would like to say that i do think that everyone attending tonight's meeting has freed collective sigh relief with the announcement that the additional monitoring wells will go in and scott whosley you have your hand up yes mr chairman i'll be very brief too i think this is good news this is exactly what we've been proposing the only scott can i uh ask you to do one thing could you just uh introduce yourself and who you represent for the uh record i'm sorry mr chairman scott whosley i am working for the arlington land trust and i've submitted a couple of comment letters prior um and my only comment or a suggestion for your consideration would be um to have the applicant or discuss with the applicant to use continuous recording pressure transducers and also to get some clarity on uh when when these wells might get in but the first comment may be more importantly because um water levels do go up and down pretty frequently and it's easy to miss high points any comments from the commission or is this something that david will take up actually is is that i would like to ask um dominik is that something that you can consider i mean i i thought those are easier to put bazaameters in or whatever they're called um at this point in time we are putting in so we have the one well in within the large system um it's center skewed east um we would do several more test pits in that system and put another one in sort of skewed more towards the west um at this point in time it would not be a continuous monitoring while the other wells aren't um they're monitored on site uh but is there a reason for not doing that it seems like it would be easier because i know that you get data loggers and the data just comes in rather than having to have somebody go to the site spend the time to do that is that something you can consider maybe and then and have a discussion with david morgan about um when you set this up or i mean i would have to talk to the applicant but i mean at this point it it's not i mean continuous monitoring isn't something that's required under the wells protection no no i understand that it's it's just a request and i thought it was a easy you know sure um donik do you know how many times you expect to do um to to go out to the site uh over the course of that those couple of weeks to to check i mean i hope is to do it at least weekly through the end of april and intimate okay so checking at least weekly um that's great and i i know that there was a comment so i'm just going to ask this is is there an opportunity for either david morgan or someone engineer from the town to go out there at the same time is that kind of coordination possible oh yeah that's that's sorry that's i i thought i saw that at the beginning yes so that's what i said reach out to david and and as we get firm date and then what david said is um whether it's going to be him or some other member of the town staff or a third party representative sure i was confused i thought that was the initial installation but since you're sorry sorry sorry that i'm confused i that's what i thought you were talking about um during that uh yeah i'm now let's uh talk to the applicant yeah so maybe when you reach out to david on monday we could get an answer to that also um and i'm sure david would make his schedule available to whatever whatever he could do to make that work and of course we have our engineering engineers here in uh harlington also so with that are there any other questions from the conservation commission motion to continue a second meeting have a second second should i could say all in favor but uh mike guilders game yes ethanial stevens yes bryan mcbride yes susan chapnick yes david kaplan yes david excuse me and chuck taroni says yes okay you're continued to may second i appreciate that dominic and uh matt burns thank you very much tom we'll see you thank you pattern thanks trace okay all right so we're done uh i have nothing left on the agenda any commissioners have anything else to say or i'll entertain a motion to close this hearing motion to adjourn okay i'm just going to say just raise your hand so we don't have to go through that again and we're all good so you're unanimous hand raising thank you thanks thanks everybody thank you yeah a cmi productions are only made possible with your support visit patreon.com slash acmi to learn how you can help