 You can just announce that we're opening the meeting on the date and stuff. It's great. Okay. Well, today is the January 10th, 2024. Happy new year, everybody. We're opening the meeting of the Amherst conservation commission. The first step will be. We'll be land management updates. I suppose Aaron or Dave. We were good to go here. Yeah. Dave, do you want to give a little land management update? Sure. Yeah. I'll be very brief because I know you've got a lot on your agenda. Well, it's kind of, you know, that time of year for some planning where I just had a meeting with Brad border week, our land manager today. Beginning to chart out kind of what. 2024 will look like in terms of projects. We are, it's a time of year where, you know, we're, we are planning a little snow where, you know, after the big storm, we did open up many of the parking areas for people to use the conservation land for hiking and cross country skiing and whatnot. And now we have the, the big melt. But we'll be sitting down over the next couple of weeks looking at kind of the backlog of projects and what we think is realistic for 2024. It's also a time of year to do equipment maintenance. So we'll get tractors, trucks, brush hogs, things like that into the shop. And we do most of our, all of our own maintenance, unless it's kind of high level stuff that we need to ship off to John Deere. So we'll, we'll get to that. Equipment into the shop up at Cherry Hill in the next month or so. We will winter is a great time to remove down trees from trails. Again, there's probably 60, 70 trees across trails. All over town. And after last night, I bet there's a few more to add to the list. So Brad and Anthony will be trying to prioritize those. I know right before the holidays, they were working on a really big tree that came down across the trails at large hill. And then there was another one, I believe, over near Amherst woods that was precariously over one of our new boardwalks. So they took care of those in short order. Other things that are going on out there in the, in the world of conservation. We're also getting ready to bid. The trail project at Hickory Ridge. Aaron has been working with a consultant. We brought on board Bob parent. And the project is ready to get out there on the streets and see if there's interest from the, the world of construction to get that done. We're hoping we get a robust response to that. And then finally, Aaron, I think we're going to get to that. We're going to get a robust response to that. And then finally, Aaron and I will be meeting with Brad on Friday. The department of conservation and recreation recently put out their annual call for proposals for the DCR trails grant program. And Aaron and Brad and I will be meeting on Friday to kind of do a little brainstorming on that. I think the likely focus will be the Robert Frost trail and maybe some associated connecting trails, but there's plenty to do on the Robert Frost trail. We've gotten those grants in the past, small grants, 30,000, 20,000, 40,000. My inclination this year is to go kind of go bigger, go home. There's a lot of administration with that grant. So why not try to go for more money and get more things done. So we might be in the 100 to $200,000 range and see if we can get some money for bridges and, and some real trail improvements on the Robert Frost or other, other nearby trails. So, so that's kind of a quick smattering of, of what's going on out there in, in the, in the conservation field work. I see Alex has a question. Thank, thank you. Alex. Yeah, I'm just dealing with my computer here. Those may have a lot of resources. I think you come in. You're coming in broken there, Alex. Is there anything that you could do to, to make it a little better? Yeah, I've been trying to reduce the resource. You know, I'll skip it. We still have you Alex. Can you, can you hear Alex? You could always Alex could always email me. Offline. If, if you have questions. Happy to answer them by email. Alex. You may. You may want to come out. Meaning exit and then try and rejoin. Try another connection. Okay. Thanks. Do you guys want me to sort of carry on with other stuff while we're waiting? Okay. As well. Yep. Okay. Let's see. So just a quick update that town staff are working on the. As I mentioned at the last meeting, the update to the open space and recreation plan. I think you guys could probably expect that for the duration, I'll be doing sort of a, an update for the commission or Dave will of where we're at with the plan development process. Right now we're working on a final draft. Of the survey. It's a community survey that goes out to the residents in town to basically find out what their opinions are relative to. Where things need repair, where, you know, new facilities are, are wanted or new lands for acquisition, maintenance and repairs and all that kind of stuff. So that'll be coming to you guys soon. And when it comes to you, it's probably going to need a relatively long time. Because we're kind of coming up on a tight deadline to get the survey out to the public. So just be on the lookout for that. Well, I'll let you know when I'll need comments back to have them received to incorporate into the, into the survey before it's released. And then I think. Still very broken up, Alex. Looks like he's going to try to rejoin here. Yeah. Maybe you could take his question when he, when he gets back on. Aaron, is there any other updates that you could give us in the meantime? I guess one thing I'll note is that the. There was a request for a minor administrative change to an order of conditions at 30 Kestrel lane. That permit will be that review of that request will be tabled until the 24th. Also, just in case anybody is attending from the public. The. Stonefield engineering and design LLC on behalf of. Valley community development for the ball lane notice of intent. That one will be continued to. 730 on. January 24th. Also the pure sky. Development on behalf of WD Coles. For the. And rad application on shoots, Barry road will be continued to January 24th. At 735. And the SWCA application on behalf of the university of Mass. Massachusetts for the parking lot 13 on Olympia drive will be continued to January 24th at 740. And then lastly, the last item on the agenda, which is a new notice of intent. That one will also be continued to January 24th at 745 p.m. So just in case anybody from the public is on to attend that they know that those hearings will be continued to January 24th. Thanks. Yeah, I don't know what to do about Alex because we don't have a quorum without him. I think we'll have to wait for him. Yeah. Yeah. So for anybody watching, we, um, we have a seven member board and four members make up a quorum. So in order for us to continue with business, we need to have four conservation commission members present. And Alex is having a quorum. So he left the meeting and he's going to try to rejoin. Aaron, he, he could call in, right? I mean, he doesn't have to be. Doesn't have to be. A video, right? And you can still call in and participate, right? He could. He did try to call in previously. And I know he. Ran into some kind of problem with that too. Um, Yeah. No, what is going on? So for those of us just joining us, we're waiting for our fourth conservation commission. Or to. Join us in order to have a quorum to be able to continue this meeting. And, uh, I don't know if you've heard. Aaron's announced already, but in case you didn't hear it, we have, uh, I believe it's a five. Hearings that are, or four hearings that are continued. Till, uh, the next meeting at on January 24th. And that includes the ball lane housing project. The, uh, pure sky, uh, Coles, uh, and rad. The, uh, SWCA UMass. Um, Uh, project. Um, To 60 Leverett road, uh, the NOI for to 60 Leverett road. Um, and I'm not sure if I mentioned 30 Kestrel lane. Um, they're all going to be continued to January 24th. And there's Alex. How we, how are you hearing us, Alex? I'm hearing you fine. Can you hear me? Perfectly. Yeah, I went in and. Got rid of some stuff and free up some space. All right. Good. So you had a question for Aaron when, uh, uh, when you left. Had an errand. Uh, a question for Dave, but. I can move on or just ask them quickly, but I don't know where you are. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Dave, uh, on the trees that came down. Uh, I'm just curious, did the ground lift up? Or did they break? And how big were the trees? Oh, uh, yeah, real quickly. Um, I don't know, you know, until people start reporting them, which probably has already started from this, you know, storm that happened last night. I don't know how many came down on our trails. Um, you know, just last night. Um, my guess is a handful. Um, but we probably have. I don't know 40 to. Not asking about how many I was asking about. No, no, no, I'm answering your question. 40 to 60 trees that are down all over town. I don't know off the top of my head, but I'm curious, do you think that the trees that have fallen off the road, which are the ones that may have broken off or as you. When I come up from the roots, I don't know. Um, it's curious because, uh, in talking with Mr. Cotton, who runs a tree service. Company. He's told me that with the increase in frequency of high winds. Which, um, the, the, the, the winds of topple trees. But they're happening more frequently. So a large trees. The roots fracture and don't have time to heal. Before the next big wind. And so a tree, and I had a big white pine. And back in my house. Like this and, uh, All of a sudden the roots, the real fibrous roots and everything can't support the big tree. And it comes down. So he said, we are losing. Uh, going through a period now where we're losing big trees. Because of this increased frequency of high winds. So I was just curious on what's coming down. Uh, the nature of the fall and I'll get back to you on it. Yeah. Yeah. We'll, um, it's an interesting comment from, from, uh, the folks there at that, that company. But yeah, you know, also I think when you get the super saturation of soil to the roots, just. You know, these things just pop up and, you know, they create great habitat, right? They become kind of mini vernal pools out there in the forest. But, but yeah, I will ask Brad to kind of keep a mental note of what, what he's seeing out there on the trails. I had six trees come down to my road up in New Hampshire where the ground just lifted up and the whole tree came down. And I spent quite a bit of time cleaning them up. So I'm just curious what's happening here. Yeah. Thank you. Gotcha. All right, Aaron. Anything else. In terms of updates or should we move to the minutes? Um, if we could do the minutes, that would be great. Okay. So we have, we have available right now. Minutes from November 29th of 2023. Also from December 13th, 2023. And we have a couple of drafts of minutes from. June 28th and. August 9th of 2023. Alex's comments were incorporated into the 1129. 2023. Draft. Are there, are there any, any further comments or any, anything that we needed wanted to discuss on. The 1129. Minutes. Okay. Then. I guess what we're looking for. How about any comments on the. On December 13th comments or issues with. Okay. Do we have comments or issues with June 28th, 2023. Minutes. And August 9th, 2023. I'm not hearing anything. So we're looking for a motion. I move that we approve those minutes. I second that. Okay. That's a. Alex with the motion and Jason with the second. Okay. Bruce. Hi. Jason. Hi. Alex. Hi. You know, I'm an eye. Great. Do you want me to jump in to get some other business taken care of before the hearings? Okay. So the first is that we had an emergency certification request from UMass. This is on 950 North Pleasant street. I've been monitoring it. So. This is going to be an under way of doing that. Of doing the 1Culvert replacement project. The one culvert replacement project that's underway. This was the notice of intent that was filed in response to an enforcement order out there and they. I've been monitoring it. We've been getting monitoring reports. The site looks. Looks really good. The problem was that in the course of doing their stream restoration work. work was done to create the splash pools that were below the outlets of the culverts. And it basically created what was described to me as a thaw wag that was pushing into the right of way. I went out and inspected it and it basically carved out, I would say, five to 10 feet of the right of way in the stream channel or the stream channel moving towards the right of way because it kind of rerouted itself to the low point. So the request was basically to do some stream stabilization on the right of way side and then some stabilization on the opposite side to sort of reestablish the channel so it was flowing away from the right of way and not into the right of way. So they submitted a plan to us and I issued the emergency certification. They did have one request to change the emergency cert which was to start work on January 11th rather than the date which was previously noted. And that was basically because of high water, they've had to sort of slow the pace of the culvert work a little bit because we've had so much rain. So I would just ask the commission to ratify the emergency certification with the revised start date of January 11th, 2024. Okay, any comments from anybody? Looks like Bruce has a... So, well, take Jason first. I'll try to use my raise hand thing. Okay. All right, Jason. Now my question was just, is that realistic? Are they really gonna start tomorrow with all the creeks and everything being as high as they are or does it matter? Yeah, that's a good point because the request was put in a few days ago to make this change. So they may all coordinate with them and if they do need the start date to be pushed back a few days, that is an easy sort of administrative adjustment that can be made to the order just to make sure. And I can certainly express to the consultant that we are a little concerned about the work being done during the high water conditions. I think they're just, they've got, they're mobilized out there. So they wanna be able to sort of seamlessly start on the work as soon as the water levels allow them to. Well, we have to, are we gonna have to go through this again? To change those dates? No, something in administrative like that, I can just adjust. It's really just to make sure that the commission understands the scope of work and is in agreement that the work has to take place. And so that's basically what the ratification is. Okay. Rose? So is there any chance that what you showed in the pictures is five times worse now than it was three days ago? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there is a chance of that and I wouldn't be surprised in the least, if that was the case. What I do know is that they are planning to dewater because this is a very unique situation where there's two stream channels that it starts as one and then it sort of breaks apart and comes back together. So in this case, they have the ability to dewater the side that's causing the scour. So that's their intention is to dewater that culvert to do the work in the dry. And then once the work is done, they would open both the channels back up again. So the stream flows, no matter what, it's just a matter of what culvert it goes through. Okay. So the question? Go ahead. So they're gonna put a cofferdam in the stream? Yeah, so what they've been doing is putting sandbags in front of one culvert or the other, depending on which one they're working on. Got it. Yeah, we have channel forming flows going on right now. Yeah, absolutely. What time do we have now? It's 7.26. There's a motion on it, right? Yes. There's a motion on the sheet here. Yeah, so what we're looking for now is a motion regarding this emergency certification. Yeah, I will move to ratify the emergency certification issued to the University of Massachusetts for stream stabilization at 950 North Pleasant Street with the noted revised start date of January 11th, 2024, subject change and end date of February 10th, 2024. Second. Okay, we've got Jason with a motion and Alex with a second. Alex? Aye. Jason? Aye. Bruce? Aye. I'm an aye. So that motion is passed and it's ratified. And now we move to enforcement. Yeah, so in your packets this week, you will see an enforcement order that was issued for 11 trillion way. There was two issues. I was contacted by the building department about Phil that was being brought in. And then about a day later, I got an email from Anna Butter, basically raising concern about Phil that was being brought onto the site. I went out and did a site visit and discovered that the limit of work line had expanded about 140 feet from where it had been approved or where the plan showed the limit of work. And there was not supposed to be any work other than tree pruning in the 100 foot buffer zone. And a large amount of Phil was pushed into the buffer zone onto the top of a slope and down a slope. And that material basically carved out rills and gullies and washed down the slope. And washed over the erosion controls, which were not being maintained properly and off the property owner's property and onto property, which is owned by another entity. I was out there and basically ordered them to immediately stay, when I was out there, everything was frozen solid. So there was no removing the sediment at that point. So I, at that point, advised them to stabilize and repair the erosion controls immediately. I sent them a plan that detailed exactly what I wanted them to do. They brought in wood chips to stabilize the areas that were washed out with the intention that the wood chips would stay in place until thaw conditions when they could get in there and pull the fill out. Obviously, we have some thaw conditions today. So, you know, but I think that considering the amount of rain that we're having and the freeze thaw cycle, it would be advised that they wait until spring and until things dry out a little bit for them to get in there and do the full restoration plan. But that's basically what the situation is. There's a pretty good slide deck of photos in the enforcement order that kind of highlight what the issue was. Okay. Any questions? Erin, what, this project, can you elaborate more on what, was it just pruning that was supposed to occur? What was the project actually supposed to be? Yeah, the project was the construction of a single family home on an undeveloped lot on Trillium Way, which is in Amherst Woods. The, the, a request for determination was filed and in the request for determination, the request was to prune, selectively prune trees within the, between the 100 foot buffer and the 50 foot buffer line. There was not supposed to be any work beyond the 100 foot buffer. We asked for a limit, work was not supposed to be anywhere close to the buffer zone. It was supposed to be significantly away and downhill on an opposite slope from the buffer. So it wasn't, there wasn't supposed to be any impacts to the buffer. We asked for a, a limit of work to be installed by way of an erosion control barrier, mostly just so that at the 50 foot line, it was clear where the pruning limits were. And the applicant did come back after the permit was issued and say basically they wanted to cut some additional trees on the 50 foot, within between 50 feet and 100 feet, and the commission denied that, stating they were concerned about the stability of the slope. I went out, inspected the erosion controls. The erosion controls were a little closer to the wetlands than I wanted them to be, but there was some sort of disputing back and forth, shall we say, between myself and their representative about, about that. And I kind of backed off and said, it's, you know, there's not any work going on within the buffer zone. So I kind of stepped back a little bit and said, okay, to keep the, keep the fencing where it is, but you know, they knew what the rules were, but the, the work was significantly beyond where the limit of work line was shown on the plan. It was not supposed to be, there was not supposed to be any grading or fill anywhere near the 100 foot buffer. It was well away from the 100 foot buffer line. And now there is fill that is in that area basically where the tree pruning was supposed to be. So it was definitely a significant encroachment and also a significant step away from what was approved by the conservation commission. This project, I'm sorry, what was that Jason? Did this project have a slip? No. Less than an acre? Yeah, it's a probably a half acre lot, I would assume. So, so let me just kind of put this into a, get a little perspective here. So these folks applied for a, applied for the permit initially? Yes. And were, it was approved with conditions? Correct. And it was, and they were notified what they, where they can do their work and where they can't. Yeah, there are specific trees marked, yeah. And after that they went ahead and essentially violated the, the floodplain or area subject to flooding or the buffer zone? The buffer zone, yeah. So it was, it was a determination of applicability that was issued and negative determination that was issued for selective pruning only within the buffer zone. And the buffer zone was to an intermittent stream and also to bordering vegetated wetlands along that stream. So there's the slope that comes up from the stream going towards the property in question. And that's where the violation occurred. I see. What, okay, so we've, we're looking to issue an enforcement order. Well, it's already been issued. It's issued, okay. We're gonna ratify it. Right, so it's just be basically ratifying what I've asked them to do. And so all of the requirements are spelled out in that document. Did you guys want me to go over what the requirements were that I spelled out for them? Or I don't know, you guys might have it up on the OneDrive as well. I don't need to see it right now. We do have a lot of business. So what they're gonna do essentially is right the wrong that they did. Now, is there anything else that we can do about this? Well, I guess where I'm going is to me, this seems somewhat egregious when they knew they needed a permit initially got it through us. We're kind of given the parameters of what they could, should do and went ahead and blasted through whatever they wanted to do. I'm putting it in certain terms, but to me, it seems fairly like a quite a knowingly type of violation here. So just putting that out for discussion. Yeah, I mean, I, go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead, go ahead. I mean, I think that the site plan wasn't followed. And that for me is the big issue. There was a site plan that had grading existing and proposed conditions. There was a limit of work line that indicated where the limit of clearing was gonna be located and they didn't follow that plan. So I think that's really, by way of additional things that we could do, I mean, you could basically state that you wanna revoke the determination of applicability. You could require them to survey where the 100 foot buffer line is and have them, see if they encroached in the 100 foot buffer with any of the tree removals. You could ask them to do additional restoration in the 100 foot buffer. Again, I've asked them basically to remove by hand any of the fill that was dumped on the slope and all of the fill that went down the slope into the resource area and they've been ordered to repair the erosion controls. So anything that you think is necessary beyond that and certainly we don't have to decide that tonight as well. If the commission wants to ratify this enforcement order and continue to monitor it, we can also modify it at any future time to include additional parameters that the commission wants to see out there. So it's entirely up to you. Okay, that makes a lot of sense that we can revisit this at some other point, probably after a site visit, it'd be nice to see another site visit, see what's going on there. Okay, Jason. Yeah, I was just gonna ask, yeah, this occurred, it appears on the third Aaron you went out there or the third is when you prepared this violation. I prepared it the same day I went out, yeah. Okay, so that was a week ago and we just got hammered last night and the combination of melting snow and rain, this probably looks 10 times worse now. Agreed. I know they were out there the day after doing silt fence repairs and putting mulch down on top of the fill area just to try to stabilize it temporarily cause it was frozen solid, but I 100% agree with you and I'm also very concerned about it. Slopes are, especially with fill on them are I think extremely dangerous. So I'm definitely concerned about the site. Yeah, and that from all the pictures it was hard to tell in the pictures where the kind of hundred foot buffer limit was in the 50 foot buffer, but I got to imagine anything that was even remotely close to the hundred foot buffer at the top of that hill is now at the bottom of that hill. It was making its way, it was making its way, yeah. If we ratified this violation and then we do a site visit and I'm asking for clarification here is there potential to issue another violation based on what happened last night's rain event? Absolutely. So what you could do is ratify it and say that the ratification is subject to change and that the commission would like to have a site visit and I can organize a site visit to get out there and I would love to get your eyes on it, Jason for any suggestions that you have for additional stormwater measures or stabilization measures. I was just trying to get something down on top of the fill as soon as possible that was something that the landowner could manage quickly because it was pretty bad when I was out there. Yeah, all right. Okay, so unless we have any other comments or questions it looks like we're looking for a motion. Could we modify the motion before we act on it? Yeah, there we go. Second set. All right, so I moved to ratify the enforcement order issued to Amir Mkechi and Carl's excavating at 11 trillion way enforcement order will be subject to change based upon a future site visit. Second. All right, so we have Jason on a motion. Bruce on the second. Bruce? Hi. Jason? Hi. Alex? Hi. And I'm an I. So it's ratified. Now we're gonna move on to hearings unless there's anything else that you think we need to do. Erin? So just a quick review about hearings. There's some general, we've got the general procedures for fairness, each hearing has 20 minutes on the agenda. Five minutes are going to be comments from staff. Five minutes for the applicant to present their case. Five minutes for public comment. And we ask that you keep it down to two minutes or less per person. And five minutes for the conservation commissioners to review the issues. Robert's rules of order essentially don't interrupt other people and raise your hand if you wish to have the floor and speak to the chair. For those who didn't realize for today, I'm a chair. Is there anything else that I should review there? Just that if there's any revisions, they should be submitted by November, or no, as of November 1st, all revisions should be submitted at least a week prior to the subject hearing for distribution to conservation commission members. And then anybody who is speaking should just state their name, address of the project, who they're representing if they're a representative, if they have preferred pronouns and members of the public, if they could also announce their name, that would be helpful. Thank you, Erin. Bruce? I just would encourage all of us who are on the call to be as succinct as possible and try to stick to these time limits. We've had a couple of meetings recently where we weren't done before. It felt like the cows came home. So let's just all try to stick to the time limit. Thank you. Thank you. So we now move on to the first hearing, which is for a request for determination by Mass Department of Transportation. Before that, I'm gonna read out, I'm gonna call it to order. This public meeting is now called to order. This meeting is being held as required by the provisions of chapter 131, section 40 of the general laws of the Commonwealth and act relative to the protection of wetlands as most recently amended. And article 3.31, wetlands protection under the town of Amherst General Bylaws. Request for determination was received by mail, I suppose. Is that correct, Erin? Received by mail? Yeah. Yes. Okay, and do we have a date when this was received? Oh, you don't have to go into all that stuff. Just the initial paragraph is fine, Andre. Alrighty. So with that, we go to staff for your initial comments. Sure. So we received the application from Mass DOT. This is for repaving of the Route 116 corridor between Hadley and Meadow Street. The work involves milling and resurfacing, rebuilding and cleaning of draining structures, upgrades to the guardrail and shoulder repairs. So just to give the commission a little bit of background, this type of work generally, the repair and resurfacing of roadways is considered a minor activity and exempt activity as well under the Riverfront Act. In this case, there's a couple of reasons why the applicant came to us, partially because I think the work on the shoulders might be a little bit outside of the road footprint, but also because under the Riverfront provisions, if work is within the Riverfront area, but also within another resource area, then that would trigger the need for permitting. So then in that case, they wouldn't be entirely exempt. In this case, the resource area also contains bordering lands subject to flooding, which is why they've filed a permit. I walked to the site with the applicants and I'll pull up the photos, sure that the applicant would like a few minutes to present, but just really briefly, I don't have any problems with the proposed work. The only sort of, I guess, outstanding thing was that on the site visit, it was expressed that they're not really intending to do any work beyond the road footprint. So there's a couple areas that are paved swales where water flows off of the roadway into the adjacent area and they're not intending to replace any of those paved areas. If they come across a catch basin failure, I was told that they would come back to the commission to update us on the need to replace it, but at this time, we're just anticipating that it would be pretty minor repair work and repaving. So I'm just gonna stop sharing and see if the applicant is here to jump in the room and also I'll pull up some photos. And I think, Billy, if there's anybody else from Mastio T that's here to present, please raise your hands, but I just allowed Billy to join the room and I have photos to share as well. The commission would like to see them. Hi, everybody. My name is Billy Lee. My preferred pronouns are she, her. I am the district environmental engineer for Mastio and district two. Can I share my screen to just share a couple PowerPoint slides? Yes, absolutely. Okay, great. It's saying that I... Oh, no, okay, got it, perfect. Just had to try it one time before it worked all the way. Okay, so I'm gonna keep it really short and sweet. So this project is for resurfacing and related work on route 116 and Amherst and Hadley, but obviously we're just gonna be talking about the Amherst portions tonight. This is a very high level locus map just to show you guys where the portion of the project is. So we're basically going from the intersection of Meadow Street and 116 down to the Amherst-Hadley border. We're stopping just short of the intersection for the repaving. So before it kind of breaks up into that yield and turn into Meadow Street. So basically the need for this project is deteriorated pavement in need of resurfacing. I'm sure you folks drive that road a lot. It's quite bumpy. There's some ruts in the road. So it really needs some repaving in the area. Here's just a quick scope of work which is included in the request for determination application. This is essentially milling and resurfacing as Erin said, while they're resurfacing if they need to adjust catch basin to meet the elevation of the roadway or if they see a deficient catch basin, they would replace it in kind. But when Erin and I were out there just walking the site there were most of the catch basins were in very good condition. So that's unlikely to happen. There are going to be some upgrades to guardrail. I've talked to our designer about this. This process is very straightforward. It doesn't require any excavation. There's basically like a specialized machine that pulls the guardrail out and then pounds the new guardrail post right in. The ground like on the edge of road where the guardrail is in current conditions is not soil and grass. It's actually pavement millings. And so when they go in and kind of scrape and Erin this is like I had conversations with our designer after you and I had our site visit to kind of clarify. So when they're going in and scraping the edge of the road kind of to restore areas of country drainage what is below that debris that kind of piles up on the edge of road is actually pavement millings. So they will not be loaming and seeding that because that would defeat the purpose of it is. So right now that is part of the roadway footprint is the edge of the road where there's milling and pavement sorry roadway millings and then it becomes grassed area. So just a clarification on what that work is. So this is just a schematic to kind of show you guys there is one crossing in Amherst which is the, if you can see the very small text in the bottom left corner, the A-08-025 that's just the bridge code for this roadstream crossing in those areas where the project is going over a resource area we're adding sediment and control barriers. There is curb there so it's not anticipated that water would even go up over the curb but we're just putting the sediment control barrier as like a conservative measure to make sure no sediment goes into the mill river there. This is just the item number in the contract of how it will be communicated to contractor. Again, those bridge codes are in there. The two H's are in Hadley and the A is in Amherst. And then these are the provisions for exemption. So for this portion of the project it's all resurfacing which is considered a minor activity under 310 CMR 10.02 2B2. It is within the riverfront area of the mill river and within buffer zone of wetlands which are two resource areas where minor activities are exempt. There's actually bordering land subject to flooding in the areas adjacent to the roadway but not the roadway itself. But nevertheless we are milling two and a half inches and then paving two and a half inches. So there's no change in elevation or anything like that. So no need for a compensatory storage here. So in summary, this work is exempt but I'm happy to answer any questions that anybody may have. Okay. I guess I'll call on people. Bruce, do you have any questions? It can wait until the commissioner has its time. Yeah, so usually what'll happen is we're going to the staff has given a presentation now you do. Okay. Then the public is going to get a chance for questions and then the commissioners are going to do that. But sometimes questions come up directly addressing what you're saying. And it looks like Jason has a question. You can take public questions first, Andre, if you want. Alrighty, sounds good. If there's any member of the public who has questions regarding this action, please raise your hand now and we'll get you into the panel. And Erin, I'm not sure if I have that ability to do that or not, but... Yeah, I don't see anybody raising their hands. I did make you co-host just in case somebody raised their hand while I was sharing my screen because I can't see them, but I don't see anybody right now. All right, yeah, I'm seeing that now where it says allowed to talk, so okay. All right, so it looks like there are no questions from the public, so commissioners, Jason, may as well start with yours. All right, thanks. Thank you, Billy. You mentioned that there's a number of culverts on throughout the project area, not culverts, sorry, catch basins and let's, are those catch basins, especially anyone anywhere near the resource areas going to have some sort of filter fabric, sediment bag, something in them to potentially catch any... Yes, there will be silt sacks in the catch basins. Yes, yeah, silt sacks respect into the project. I have to, yeah. Yeah, no, the silt sacks are respected. Let me just make sure that I'm saying that correctly, but yes, they are, the items are in there. Yeah, I just wanna make sure if there's a grindings, they can get in this inlets very easily. Yeah, absolutely. All right, thank you. Mm-hmm. Okay, and I thought there was a question from Bruce. Yes. So would it be fair to say that you either have or will talk to the Hadley Conservation Commission in the same way you're doing with us and that the project would then be done all as one piece, not in two parts. You're not doing Amherst one thing and then it's just the whole thing. So can you comment on that? Yes, absolutely. We actually received our negative determination from Hadley last night and this is all one project. Thank you. Mm-hmm. All right, thanks Bruce and Jason. Bruce, your hand's still up. So it, looking fairly straightforward. Any other questions from the, from our commissioners? Okay. Can you put up the motion because I don't have it? Yes, and I would like to also put up the conditions as well because I drafted conditions associated with this. So I'll just throw those up on the screen really quickly. They're, I don't wanna read through all of them but basically that there would be a pre-construction meeting where the contractor would sign off indicating that they've read and understand the order that they would be required, the contractor would be required to install and maintain all of the erosion controls and environmental controls, that there was no change to the elevations in the roadway, no material stockpiling or excavation proposed or approved beyond the road shoulder and maintenance. If any of the catch basins need replacement that we would have additional communication with the applicant, contractor would ensure that none of the materials, trash, debris or any other materials make it into the resource areas. They have the stake contained and then no resource area or buffer zone is proposed to be altered as part of the application. So those are the special conditions and then I included our standard boilerplate conditions. Okay. Is there some way that you can share the page five or tile five of our PowerPoint? Yes. Okay, there it is for whoever's ready to make that motion. I will move to issue the negative determination of applicability checking box to however, special conditions and boilerplate conditions under the wetlands protection act shall be required and attached to the determination as drafted. Second. All right, Jason on the motion, Bruce on the second. Bruce. Hi. Jason. Hi. Alice. Hi. And Emma and I. So the negative determination has been issued. Fantastic. Thank you all for your time and consideration. Thank you, Billy. Thanks for presenting and for taking the questions. Yeah, absolutely. And Erin, I just want to confirm that you'll send it the hard copy in the mail. Yes. Okay, great. Thanks everyone. Have a great night. You too. So we're still on, we're good for hearing number two. Hearing number two is a notice of intent by a Horsley Witten group on behalf of Town of Amherst for proposed reconstruction of Fort River Elementary School. And I'm going to go ahead and start this notice of intent hearing. This hearing is being held as required by the provisions of chapter 131 section 40 of the general laws of the Commonwealth and act relative to the protection of wetlands and most recently amended as well as recently amended and article 3.31 wetlands protection under the town of Amherst general bylaws. Again, like I was saying, it's being brought by Horsley Witten group, Dinizco design and Brown Sardina Incorporated on behalf of the town of Amherst. And with us here, I see we have Janet Bernardo. And I'm sorry that if I mispronounced your name in Amy Ball. So with that, I'll turn it over to Erin for administrator comments, staff comment. Yeah, so just a quick update on this. The applicant did provide some additional information to us, which is in your packet. Some of the buffer zone number calculations as well as some additional details on the project. Just to call to your attention that there was a sort of discussion offline in between the last hearing about the playground surfacing. There was a memo in there. And so at this point, I'm prepared to issue the order of conditions tonight. The one thing that the commission should be aware of is that the applicant has requested that we approve the order of conditions essentially with no playground surfacing at this time. It would be stabilized with grass seed at the current time and that the applicant is still working with the school building committee and other boards and committees in town to determine what the surfacing that will be proposed on the site will actually be. But because of bidding, they need to get an early bid package out. They'd like to get the order of conditions in hand so they can provide it to the contractor and come back to the conservation commission once they've determined what the surfacing will be to get an additional approval for that. So that's basically all I have. The only other comment I would say, as far as the buffer zone alteration, there is an increase in the buffer zone alteration numbers, but I think that the applicant is doing quite a bit of resource area restoration including some restoration of bordering vegetated wetland and also some restoration of flood zone. So there'll be additional compensatory storage on the site and they're also doing some invasive species treatment. So I do think that they're doing quite a bit of mitigation associated with the project. And I think that the commission should take that into consideration. That's basically all the comments I wanna share. Thank you, Aaron. So with that, then who would like to kick it off for the applicants if there's anything that you wanted to add? Hi, good evening for the record. Amy Ball, senior ecologist with the Hosey Wetland Group. I don't know that we have much to add from what Aaron had said. We just had submitted additional information from the, or since the December 13th hearing with the commission, which included the natural heritage letter that we received that required some turtle exclusion fencing. So we've incorporated that into the early site package that we'll then carry through all of the phases. They wanted some cell fence in place. We have also updated our O&M plan for our discussions last time and have submitted a letter of understanding that was signed by the town and school department outlining the responsibilities for the maintenance of the, well operation and maintenance of the various strong water facilities. And also to identify that the DPW would be responsible for mowing and maintaining the playing fields. As Aaron mentioned, there was a separate letter submitted by answer advisory who's the owner's project manager regarding the surfacing of the play areas. And then again, as Aaron mentioned, we do have an updated clarification and breakdown of all of the resource area alterations and buffer sign impacts and mitigation areas that we broke out by phase, including the early site phase, phase one, phase two, and then sort of the net change in condition. I guess I can just turn that back over to the commission. I believe you probably have the table we submitted as that Aaron referenced, but I have a screen of it if you need to see that. Okay, thank you, Amy. Bruce, did you have a question for now? And after the public. Okay. All right, if anybody from the public has any questions, please raise your hand and we'll bring in to the discussion. I see no hands up right now. We'll go ahead and move to the commissioners and then we'll do another check on the public again. Go ahead, Bruce. So, of course, the wooden group is the consultant to us. That the town is actually the applicant here. Is that correct? That is correct. And so I'm sorry I didn't grasp from the materials who from the town is the primary project manager. I believe it with your town manager that is serving as the town's applicant. So not our Dave Zomek who is the assistant town manager. Correct. Okay, that's it. Thank you. Thanks, Bruce. Do we have any other questions from the commission? I'm seeing that there is somebody from the public with a raised hand. Let me do what I can here to get Margaret Wood into, in here, Margaret, you are, you're good to go. Hi, can everybody hear me? Yes, I can. So, Bruce, just to answer your question. So the owners project manager, which is my role, I'm essentially working as an extension of the town. So I'm the consulting project manager for the project, which is why I wrote the memo, providing you with the information you were looking for. But hope that answers that question. Okay. Thank you, Margaret. Looks like Alex, commissioner Alex or has a question as well. Sorry I didn't come in earlier as we fixing my microphone. Last time we met, there was a question about the cost of the schools incur for a whole variety of things. And folks were asked to come back with some information about whether or not the school was prepared to undertake those costs, like this is from memory. So I know Dave interacted on this subject. And Aaron was, I think, about to contact the schools. And Dave said that he would much rather have the consultants contact the schools. So my question is, did you, and what did they have to say? I'll start on that as a response. And Steve or Janet can back me up. I think your question is related to the operation and management plan or the O&M plan. And yes, that. And the town manager and your superintendent of schools have signed this. And this outlines the responsibilities, including the costs and notes that the town is responsible for the financing and the continued operation, maintenance and required emergency repair. School department will conduct the general housekeeping and inspections and removal of trash and minor repairs. And then the DPW will be responsible for more major repairs as well as managing the playing fields. So that implies, I believe, that they would also cover the financial costs that associated with these ongoing maintenance. And I just follow up with that real quick. We had a kind of a team meeting with the DPW, the town manager, the school committee, school department, Rupert, and kind of talked about who was gonna be responsible for which piece. And everybody understood, we kind of went through the strong water management plan and what needed to happen on the site long-term. And everybody seemed to agree. We updated the O&M plan. They reviewed the O&M plan and signed the letter. As I think about this, I might be wrong on the cost, but I think it was something like $23,000 a year. We reviewed it a little bit closer. And depending on who does the work, as a consultant, we kind of assume that the town may hire somebody. So we put in those prices. But if the school department, their maintenance group is able to do some of the lawn mowing, as well as some of the picking up the trash and kind of inspecting the catch basins, which is more a looking in the catch basins. And then the DPW is able to come in and do a cleaning of the various structures when the school department says, we noticed a significant amount of sediment in the catch basin or in the forebay. Can you come with your heavy air equipment and clean that out? That's kind of the agreement that everybody went along with. So even though our price appears high, it's really if they are hiring an outside contractor to do those services, and they will be doing a lot of those services in town. So the last time we talked, can you go back to the previous page? The last time we talked, I think it was said that DPW doesn't have any responsibility for the schools. So this memo says differently. The last sentence in the first paragraph, school department will notify Amherst Department of Works for maintenance from choirs and so on and so forth. DPW will net, will mow and maintain the playing fields. What about all the other stuff that has to happen there? Does the school have the technical capability to do what's required? The school will be doing mainly the inspections, which we kind of explained what that entailed and the operation maintenance plan also further explains. And we have kind of a detailed plan that shows where all the catch basins are and all of the forebays are to kind of explain what has to happen for each of those places. And when we kind of went through it with Rupert, he seemed to think, okay, his group could, I mean, there's some of it is sweeping and that they are picking up a trash that they're already doing. It's just making sure that that's happening. So they are not going to get out the shovels, but they are going to be using the eyes and marking off in the reports what needs to happen so that the DPW can come in and actually do the heavy lifting. And that was agreed upon between Guilford and Rupert. Okay. So forgive me for not having every detail in my head, but... Well, it was a discussion that you weren't there for. Not a problem. That's what you asked us to do. So we went off and did it. Yeah, right. So for example, there's all the geothermal wells and there's other things that don't exist on other schools that presumably the town or the school will have a hand in. And my question is, is can you think of anything where we might not have the technical capability to carry through? Well, so the geothermal wells are not part of the stormwater system. They are installed and then kind of left alone. We were really talking about stormwater management, but in the idea of green infrastructure is kind of low maintenance, easy to manage, smaller projects compared to smaller practices, compared to really large, kind of complicated bases. I didn't mean to drift away from our authority, but it was a... We think that what we are proposing, we're hoping that there is not a problem with them understanding. And we tried to... There's a lot of different practices, but they all basically do the same thing, collect sediment and try to avoid getting it into the wetlands. So it's now clear that the DBW will have a hand in managing, helping the school manage the catch basins and not just mowing and plowing. Right, they agreed that they will come out and the catch basins have enough sediment that needs to be removed, the DBW will come and remove that sediment. Thank you. That's good to hear, Janet. Thanks, Alex. Erin? I just wanted to share, this is the draft order of conditions and I did share this with the applicant. It's pretty extensive, but in here, so part of the revisions that I requested were revised inspection logs. Those revised inspection logs account for every single stormwater structure that's being proposed as part of the project redevelopment. And in the order of conditions, it's required that those inspection logs be kept on site and be maintained and filled out on an annual basis. And those inspection logs have to be held at the facility and they have to be available by request to the Conservation Commission. And so we can verify that they're in fact doing their annual cleaning. So presumably after the first year of operation, we could go and say, we'd like to see all of your inspection logs and who did the inspections and that the cleanings were completed and verify that that's being done. So it's kind of a checks and balance for the commitment that's being made by the town. Thanks, Erin. Thank you, Erin. Jason? I was wondering, Erin, is that like in perpetuity? Yes. Yep. Okay. Is there anybody else who has any other questions? Okay. Well, with that, unless there are any other questions, we're looking for a motion. I think Erin's going to pull that up now. Oh, and I should note that in the order of conditions in the language at the top, I'll just go back to it really quickly. I just want to point something out to you as we're voting on this. There is a note at the top and forgive me, because I'm bouncing between like five screens. There's a note at the top that indicates that per the memo from Margaret Wood, the order of conditions does not approve any playground surfacing and that will be brought back to us for approval at a later date. So just to make sure that the commission is aware that that's built into the order of conditions that they're going to be returning to us for approval for that feature on the site. Just to go ahead on. Yeah. Erin, does that mean that when the bids, when the RFP goes out, they will not be bidding on what we're excluding and will they have to bid on that again? So there's the, so I know you were on the site visit Alex and there was at the site visit, we talked a lot about the phasing. So what they're bidding on right now is the initial phase, just getting the site preparation started for the, so that's what they're bidding right now. They're going to hopefully solidify this and get an answer so that the next round of the bid process, this will be included. Thank you. Okay. So we're looking for a motion. I moved to close the public hearing and issue order of conditions, DP number 089 DAX 0729 with boilerplate and special conditions. As drafted under the wellness protection at and the wellness protection town of Amherst general bylaws article 3.31 and regulations. So we have Bruce with a, with a motion and I'm not sure that I hear Jason. Okay. Okay. Alex. Hi. Bruce. Hi. Jason. Hi. And I'm gonna. So the public hearing is closed. Great. Thank you. Yep. Thanks, Amy. Steve. And Margaret. Good night. Okay. So now we move to our third hearing. Which is a notice of intent. Now just an issue of order, if you would, Aaron. Do I read the. The public hearing. Call again now, right? No, not until we get to the last two hearings of the night. And sorry, my computer, my other computer froze. So I'm trying to get this up. Yeah. So for the, for the project. Which actually the date is wrong on here. This was supposed to be 740, the 740 public hearing for Stonefield engineering. This applicant has requested a continuance to the January 24th meeting. So I've given them a hearing time of 730. So the hearing they've requested to continue to continue to January 24th at 730 PM. We would just need a motion to continue the hearing till that time. I have a question. Procedural question. Sure. The applicants are not with us. That's a question. Is the applicant with us? Yeah. They submitted the request over email and I told them that they didn't have to attend. So I have a question. They submitted the request over email and I told them that they didn't have to attend since they submitted the request. But I don't know if anybody's in the room for the applicant. I doubt it. Okay. So even though we have a motion to continue. Is it. Are we allowed to have any discussion about it? Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah. I just think that the best thing we could do is to put it all together when, when we're going to discuss. When, when the issue comes up rather than now, but. Okay. But I am curious to hear what Aaron has to say. I'm sorry. I'm just throwing in my two cents there. Yeah, I mean, I generally. If there were members of the public. Who wanted to talk about this, would they be allowed to talk now? Or would they have to come back at a later date? So I generally say it's at the discretion of the chair. And really like sort of the discretion of the public, if people have like a burning question that they need answered or a burning comment that they want to share while they're in attendance. That's, you know, always a possibility. In terms of like actually discussing the project. I generally like to wait until the applicant is here, just because it's just in fairness to them to be able to respond to any questions or issues that come up. So chair, I would ask that. If there are members of the public. And if they had information to inform the commission. That they be allowed to do that briefly. And perhaps come back at a later date with any additional. Stuff that they may want to say. That sounds good. Alex. Thank you. Anybody from the public who would like to. Who had any, have any questions on this. Please raise your hand. I see no hands so far. Do we have a. I think we're looking to cause the public. I'm sorry. I'm going to move to continue the public hearing for 20. 40 ball lane and a Y to seven 30 p.m. 124 2024. Second. Okay. That's a Jason with a motion and Bruce with a second. Bruce. Hi. Jason. Hi. Alex. Hi. And I'm an eye as well. Thank you. Hearing number four. Is Wendell wetland services on behalf of Eric all. All sent for a proposed restoration of 2,300 square feet. The pond by dredging and replanting at 20. 296 palm Roy lane. Aaron, would you like to start? Sure. I see that. Okay. We have. Applicants representatives. I'm just going to work on pulling them in while I sort of share my comments and updates on the project. If anybody else wants to speak or be pulled in as a panelist, please raise your hand and we'll pull you in. So I have been talking with Ward Smith offline about this project. You might recall that I did have a pretty significant list of comments on the project initially. And there were. There was a revised site plan that was submitted on. By the applicants. The applicants representative that basically sort of changed the whole concept of the plan. And so. I've reviewed that. And the other thing that I've done in. Reviewing that is to. Draft a pretty. Comprehensive order of conditions for the project. So what this does, and I'll pull it up for everybody to see if I can locate it is. To. Basically provide a. Essentially, like a. A phased sequencing for the work to be done. The 1st, the 1st note on the. I want to give the applicants representative a chance to present this, but I just give you a quick snapshot of it. The 1st thing is that the site plan does not meet all of the plan requirements for notice of intense submission under our local bylaws. I do think that the commission should consider accepting the plan despite the fact that the plan doesn't meet all of the provisions of that bylaw. The reasons are that the pond is only jurisdictional under our local bylaw and not under the wetland protection act. The pond is not a vernal pool. There is no water. There is no contributing upgrading resource areas and is storm water and rainwater fed. The pond is being restored. The pond was human constructed by humans and convey storm water, which requires maintenance. There is a failure in the emergency overflow plight overflow pipe currently, which is causing a public safety concern with water flowing into the road. The pond is being restored. The pond is being restored. It is being restored rather than with machinery. I'm going to pull the order of conditions up on the page. You can see it too while I'm reading. I have broken it out with special conditions that strictly outline what can and can't be done. That the pond can't be drained. That the pond shall be dredged by hand. The pond is being restored. I don't think it's an opportunity to do the presentation, but I do think that it's important that we allow the work to move forward, but also that we condition it in a manner that protects downstream resources and protects the wildlife that are living in the pond. I'll just leave it there and let that representative have a chance. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else with you? Eric to. Who. I can't hear you because you're you're muted so far, but. If you hit that mute button. We'll be there you go. I think is that Ward? I see. I'm not sure. I don't see word. Right here. I do. I think I see him. I think I see him. I think I see him. I see him. I see him. I see him. I see him. I see him. I see him. I see him. I see him. I see him. I see him. I see him. And so on and so forth. Is that word right? He has his hand up and he's waving right now. No, that's not where that's not. It's not Ward. I've never met in person. Sorry. Okay. All right, Mr. Olsen, did you want to? There's words. You got him there. He's, he's, he's just raised his hands. I didn't see him in the audience. My apologies. And there's a man on the phone who I can't, I can't record his name, but I don't see it. I'm sorry. I don't know what happened. I was having trouble getting it getting in. I just raised my hand and that's what changed things. So I'll just give a brief synopsis here. It's a man, as Erin said, it's a manmade pond that's fed by stormwater runoff. I remember when I first came to the area in the late 80s and drove by it was a beautiful lotus pond, but the owner previous to Mr. Olson didn't maintain it. So it's gradually been filled in with leaves and mud and debris and cattail have taken over. So in conversations with Erin, we've modified our proposal significantly. So as she said, there's not going to be any machinery on the site at all. None of the material is going to leave the site. The proposal would be to use a turbidity curtain to split the pond into two sections and work on only one section at a time and transfer any aquatic organisms, which I'm guessing are primarily green frogs, using a hand net into the part of the pond that's not being worked on and to dewater all of the material adjacent to the pond. So there's no runoff from the site. And after dewatering all of the organic material would be used in the gardens and the northern part of the property. After the pond has been, one half of the pond has been done and the water is settled, then the other half of the pond will be worked on, probably next summer. There's a black walnut tree near the pond that the applicant would like to remove because that's the major source of debris in the pond and a couple of other trees that he'd like to limb up. And after we submitted our plan, Erin, speaking with, I think the DPW said that there's an occasional problem with water running out of the pond into the road because the overflow to the pond has been broken. So Mr. Olson has agreed to replace that by hand. That will require sediment erosion control on both sides of the trench and he will do that work by hand and then return it to lawn. So that's just a brief synopsis. I don't know if you want to add anything else, Eric. No, that sounds right. Thank you, Ward and Eric. Now we'll go to the public and I would imagine this gentleman with the iPhone is here to ask a question. Why don't you unmute and go ahead and start with your, if you would, with your name and preferred pronouns and hang on one second and your address, please. You'll have to unmute though if you're there to speak. I think he's working on it. There. Oh, there. Thank you. I'm not sure I'm the person you're referring to. Yes, you are. Are you here for this hearing? Yes, but I wanted to speak to the ball lane project and I couldn't get in. Pardon me. I don't know how to work this. If it's too late, I'll come back the 24th. I'm sorry to bother you. No, no problems whatsoever. I would love to hear you, but I think your efforts are much better if you present on the 24th, sir. Okay. Can you still hear me? Yes, we can. Yeah, thank you very much. I'm so sorry. I don't know the technology and I'll come back the 24th. I'm in a butter just thank you very much for caring and I'll come back. I'll hope to come back the 24th and know how to do this. Yeah, absolutely. No problem. No problem. I was trying to get in back there, but I didn't succeed. Pardon me and thank you so much for caring to do this and I'll go now. Absolutely. We'll see you on the 24th then. Okay. So, it looks like we have no other questions just offhand. How about commissioners? I see Bruce has a question. So, not a question, a comment. I went on the site visit and that Mr. Olson and walked around and saw the things in place and I read the special conditions pretty carefully since I did that and I think they've come up with a really thoughtful, careful solution and I would urge us to move forward. Thanks, Bruce. I agree with you on the fact that they've done a good job of planning this. Alex, you're still muted, Alex. There you go. Yeah, I wanted to ask Mr. Olson if he's been able to read the draft conditions. I just read them very quickly. The only thing I saw in there that I just wanted to make a comment on was that I am trying to save whatever of the lotus that's in there which is not native and then also add anything that gets added would be a native species and I don't know how much of it I can save. It's struggling so by the time the spring comes we'll see. So I saw that one of the comments is it was number six. Yeah, I mean I think I would defer to the commission on that if you're comfortable with leaving the existing non-native species that's growing in the pond, him preserving that and just replanting with native species. I wouldn't see an issue with it personally. I'm not sure about the rest. I don't see an issue with it. So my question I still have the floor I think was I just wanted to make sure that Mr. Olson has had a chance to see what it is we're voting on and read it and agrees with it. I mean like I said I'm just seeing it now. I've read it. It seems like it's fairly close to the stuff that Ward had that I worked with Ward in drafting. The only thing that I saw in there was the you know was the overflow pipe which Ward had mentioned to me in advance and we had you know agreed to over the phone. So as far as I can tell it looks you know like what we talked about. Now Ward did if I could direct the question to Ward then did you see and have a chance to read this before this meeting? I did not but I'm just glanced through it now and it looks consistent with what we discussed with Erin. Regarding the native plantings I think you know I appreciate the commission saying that but I think it's still consistent with this because he wouldn't be planting any non-natives. He would just be moving what's there now. So I don't think the order of conditions needs to be changed regarding that specific item. Yeah out of fairness to the applicant I just felt the need to ask. Yeah it's all consistent with what we discussed and agreed to. I did try to sort of tailor it to all of our discussions and also just looking at the plan and trying to be logical about sort of phasing it. So you know the dewatering would be on one side of the pond while the pond's being dredged and then when the that side of the pond is replanted and you expect to begin on the alternate side the dewatering area would be relocated to the side of the pond where the work was happening and the dewatering area would be stabilized so then you could move to the second half and then just again I don't know how you want to phase it but it's more so just checking in at the phases and making sure that there's erosion control protection for each phase. Yeah and erosion control is silt fences and hay bales is that fine for that trench? So for the dewatering area I specified that you would use a straw bale like a circular straw bale configuration that's lined with some sort of filter fabric for the dewatering and then for the for the just as an erosion control straw waddle would be fine for the replacement of the emergency overflow pipe I specified silt fence and straw bale and the reason for that was because you're probably going to have some water up against the outlet pipe and so I was trying to just give it an extra sort of filter barrier and or you could also reuse the turbidity curtain in that area if you'd like to so like you could you could essentially reuse some of these materials for each phase and I'm definitely flexible on which controls you use as long as they're functional. Yeah that's fine and I've already found the turbidity curtain fortunately so yeah that's fine yeah that's great. Good all right um any other questions or comments from anyone present? If not then we'd be looking for a for emotion. I moved to public hearing an issue order of condition NOI 23-1630 where the boilerplate and special conditions is drafted under wetlands protection town of EMS general bylaws article 3.31 and regulations. Second we have Alex with the with the motion uh Bruce with the second uh Bruce hi Alex hi Jason hi and I'm an I so the public hearing is hereby closed. Thank you very much. Thank you very much have a nice night. Thanks Eric and Ward you have a good night too and good luck with the project. Thank you. We have uh let's see hearing number five uh is a uh is pure sky uh on behalf of Kohl's uh pure sky is going to be moved uh or it's going to be continued they requested a uh continuance to uh the 24th of January at 7 35 p.m with that we need a motion. I moved to continue the public hearing for shootsberry road and rad to 7 35 p.m on 124 24. That was uh Jason on uh on the motion and it looks like uh Alex won the fight for the uh for second uh Alex hi Jason hi Bruce hi and I'm an I and this one's moved uh moved to the 24th at uh 7 35 hearing number seven is it says step number six on the sheets so are you I'm oh yeah I just uh skipped another one here by mistake so here we are at uh hearing number six is uh SWCA on behalf of the UMass and uh this as well is uh going to be continued uh to January 24th at uh 7 40 p.m and then we'll need a motion for that. I move that we continue the public hearing for lot 13 Olympia Drive nose of intent at 7 40 p.m on 124 24 second yeah sorry before I thought we talked about this two or three meetings ago as to why this keeps getting pushed yeah that's was my question too yeah it's completely fine to discuss it um now that there's been a second on the motion I can give a quick update on this so the the situation with this one is uh that we've just been so busy with public hearings and applications that I have not checked back with UMass mostly because I wanted us to come up for air and clear some of these larger projects off of our agenda so that we could revisit that one and also just give them a little time to do their due diligence um my hope was that once we get some of the um projects off of the off of the agenda that we could you know check back with them and get them back um to the table for the to discuss the project and see what's going on but I just um it's been so busy that I have not had an opportunity to check back with them and I was a little afraid to quite frankly because our meetings have been so so long and um just a lot of business on them so that's kind of where things stand thanks Aaron yeah they okay uh any other questions before we go to move to the uh vote yeah just a comment um as a commissioner knowing that we have asked quite a bit of them with regard to this project and some of it might be considered controversial the perception with that explanation is that they're having um internal conversations that haven't ended yet with regard to this project I think that's a cogent way to describe it and Aaron do you have any insights I don't um to be totally honest I I know UMass is is very occupied right now with the culvert replacement project they have a basically full-time monitor out there monitoring the the um culvert replacement and the stream restoration work so I kind of feel like they're focused on that project at the moment and this one's just on the back burner until that project is um completed it's kind of the impression I get thanks Aaron anyone else all right uh let's move uh we'll move to a vote um Alex hi hi Bruce hi Jason hi and I'm an eye so this is uh again this is moved to uh 7 40 p.m. on uh January 24th um now we'll move to uh hearing number seven and Bruce thanks for uh putting me back on the uh on the tracks there um this is a tetra tech uh on behalf of Fort River uh solar LLC for the construction operation of a photo will take uh solar facility um Aaron yeah um so I'm just gonna pull in the um the applicants representative um while we're getting settled in here uh and give the commission a little bit of an update on uh where things were left with the applicant um so um there were some plan revisions that were submitted to us um with some final plan adjustments which included um some dimensions on the equipment pad the addition of the stabilized sewer line access for the DPW as well as um uh notes under where the construction trailer would be located for how that would be stabilized and we did have a meeting myself um Dave Domek uh the fire department in uh electrical inspector uh the town engineer and the applicant and the applicants representative were all present we we discussed sort of where things stand with the conservation commission where things stand with the um the batteries in question um and um there there is a memo from the applicant in the project folder that sort of gives a brief overview of of the um the meeting and and where things stand but to sort of summarize everything um um there is still investigation going on into the um power and battery fires um I believe there's been like four or five of them across the country and so those have been fairly recent like in the last six months and so those are being investigated and while those investigations are ongoing there's not a lot of information um for the applicant to share with us about the cause of the fire or the impacts of the fire and so um because of that the applicant is basically asking the commission to move forward with approving the site plan as it's been presented to you um and allow them time to complete their investigation and um provide the reports back to the fire department and the electrical inspector um and the um town engineers so that they can determine whether the batteries are acceptable to the town of Amherst um at which time um if there's a change to the battery configuration or the pad design or any other elements of the project that they would come back to the commission for future approval I based on all of these meetings conversations I have drafted an order of conditions for consideration this evening which I can pull up on the screen if the commission is interested in reviewing it um but that's just a brief overview of sort of where things stand at the current time and if there if you'd like for me to pull up anything for review I'm happy to do that thanks Aaron um I think it would be beneficial to take a look at that maybe uh we can take a look at it uh before uh before the commissioners have questions if it might help to answer some of those um and now for the uh for the applicants uh turn at the mic um I see we have uh Matthew Moyan here and uh John Foster as well as Lawrence Cook floor is yours yeah I'll take the lead here and Nat and Lawrence jumping anytime uh appreciate Aaron setting up that call yesterday with um or Tuesday I should say with with all the town departments I think it was helpful just to understand what everyone needs um but I think it um at this point I think we've gotten you know kind of closure on a lot of all the items that the commission has asked for you know to kind of reiterate what um Aaron was saying that we're not seeking approval for for these batteries the the approval is purely for the location and the pad uh the approval of the the battery is going to go through the town process to do through the fire department until they're satisfied they cannot be installed so that that process will be separate and much longer so I did but yeah I think that that kind of summarizes it thank you Sean anyone else from your team there have something to say I see that um Lawrence uh has something to say go ahead Lawrence yeah I just wanted to um head off something that Aaron said uh there being four or five of the fires I'm there's there's only two what only one of which was a a battery in operation the other one was uh uh due to a um a non operational reason um so unless she found out some additional power in fires that I'm not aware of I just wanted to say that but also on the on the general point uh yes we that there's lots of things that we want to be able to share with the fire department and with the people in town we've been asked not to buy power in at the moment while the uh they fully conclude the the the ends of the investigation with the town with the fire department we if anything the fire department has has back in front of the zba or the concom we're more than happy to do that um the last thing we want is to have any problems on site so um we will it will be kind of fully uh fully approved by the town and we'll come back if necessary we're more than happy to do that thanks Lawrence um Aaron I just wanted to respond to the um Lawrence's comment it was uh the the um cheat uh the fire department captain sent a link and it was a um uh battery failure link that was uh nation um it was a global battery failure um link where there were documenting sites and there was one in Rhode Island two in New York one in Idaho and there was one which was on the Canadian border they all referenced power and batteries I don't know I I just I didn't know the numbers or where the sites were just specific to that I just looked at it quickly but I don't um I don't want to misspeak but that was just the ones that were referenced on the website excellent thank you I'll uh I'll look into that all right thank you both um Aaron did you want uh well there you go you've got the uh the condition uh conditions up there they are they do look fairly small to me difficult to read um yeah sorry I was trying to get two screens up at once so um just to give a quick rundown of sort of how I framed this there's a finding effect at the start which basically outlines um the discussions with the town um relative to the the batteries and that ultimately you know the the investigation reports were going to be provided back to various town departments and staff for review and that um once the review is made and the town is made a determination if any change to the plan is necessary the applicant would have to come back to the conservation commission for review and approval there is a pretty extensive um order of conditions here with special conditions and um boilerplate these are in your packet as well and I only finished drafting these um late yesterday afternoon early this morning so I apologize that these are like hot off the press um they incorporate I I did speak to the applicant about uh I would say 80 percent of these most of them are sort of a standard boilerplate um that I would include on any project of this magnitude um but we did speak a lot about for example um the phasing uh there's there is a construction sequencing that's part of the project and doing kickoffs for the various phases um meetings on-site meetings with the contractors and subcontractors um and just monitoring the progress of the project particularly once they get to the phase of installing the arrays which is phase seven you can see um under phase seven which is number four um there's oh crap excuse me um under uh number four phase seven there's broken out basically they were hoping to start um on both of the arrays at the same time and um basically what I'm doing is trying to give them as much flexibility as possible but also contain the site disturbance as much as possible and so it kind of breaks phase seven out into benchmarks for making sure that they have adequate stabilization um throughout before they move on to from the eastern array to the western array and working through the western array so anyway I can flip through these while we're looking at them but um they're they go beyond one and two pages there I can't read them um so they are in the one drive if folks want to open them but um I can also try to zoom in a little bit yeah Aaron if these are put in the one drive I didn't have a chance to read them yeah that's fine a lot of this is very last minute so I was just doing what I could to tee it up yeah all right um Matt looks like Matthew has a comment or a question there uh just a quick comment on special condition number two I'd like to suggest adjusting that language slightly something along the lines of providing notification to the wetlands administration administrator a minimum of 72 hours prior to the following phases uh just so that you know obviously it would be great for Aaron to still be around but if something changes uh during construction we don't want to be held up by not having the wetland administrator be able to attend a meeting at any of these phases during construction um so just a minor tweak that I think still accomplishes the same goal but won't hold up construct the construction process thank you Matthew I'm sorry Matt could you I didn't quite follow everything you were saying could you repeat yeah right right now special condition two is requesting that uh the wetland administrator attend a pre-construction meeting at various phases during construction uh and and that's a little tricky obviously uh we still want to make that happen but schedules vacations change in staff can can create conflicts there that could bring construction to a halt or put us in non-compliance so I'm just suggesting we tweak the language that requires the applicant provide notification to the wetland administrator 72 hours prior to each of those phases which would allow adequate time to to schedule a meeting you can keep construction moving so I'm I'm happy to build in some flexibility on that but I do want there to be a meeting um and we we dealt when we started this initially for the sort of kickoff it was working really well we various phases just did a quick site walk with the contractors and subcontractors that were working on the site they signed off on the order of conditions there was a lot of different subs and different contractors out there at that time and so it was just useful for me because they weren't always out there all in one shot at the start of the project sometimes different contractors and subcontractors phase in depending on what phase of the project is under construction for example for the tree removal people there's one group for the earth moving people there's another group for the people who are installing the arrays there's another group and so they're not always on site for the first pre-construction meeting um and so it's an opportunity for me to check in with the contractor that's starting work before they start work but I like I said I'm I'm happy to build in some flexibility certainly if my availability is limiting the ability for work to go on that's not the intention it's more so to just have a open line of communication and presence on site yep understood and agree completely with that just gives a little bit of flexibility for the applicant to meet the condition by providing you notification and then obviously gives an opportunity for a meeting to be scheduled without stopping construction or putting us in non-compliance yeah so maybe maybe something like a two week notification rather than a 72 hour notification or a two week or you know some type of a notification and then uh that a meeting would take place within two weeks but I it's obvious there that um hear that Aaron would like to uh keep you know keep tabs and keep communication lines open there yeah I would agree with that I think that a two week I'm going to assume generally you have a two week look ahead schedule and I think it's important for Aaron to meet with everybody prior to the start of that phase of construction especially uh in regards to to D their inspection of the previous phase stabilization measures I'm going to make sure that if uh each phase gets stabilized before the next phase starts if required and then that as Aaron said that all the subcontractors understand their requirements for that particular phase of construction so I think if if any kind of timeframe is going to be put in there the caveat should be put in there that the meeting has to take place prior to the start of that phase of construction yeah and and uh Matt um if as we move along or as you move along uh things aren't working out uh and you do end up with issues uh you know such as it's uh it might be holding things back then you could come back to us and uh and uh see about an administrative change um you know but I I think that uh to give the benefit of the doubt um and to to make sure that uh you are in compliance I I don't see a problem with uh with ensuring that Aaron's there and Bruce I think uh had a question as well no Bruce does doesn't have a question anything else that you wanted to add Matt no argument on having Aaron there is just about putting a note giving the applicant an opportunity to have a notification requirement so yeah I'll take as well as Aaron's willing to give but uh I echo Aaron it did work very well the early stages of this development um we'd like back then to continue yeah I think it'd be uh the worst thing that could happen is if uh if she misses a meeting and something goes a little sideways and you're gonna have to backtrack all of that uh and that that would be difficult I think uh but I'll leave it at that Alex yeah when it's commissioners time to ask questions I have a couple okay anything else uh from the uh applicant team before we move on okay uh how about from the public is there anybody from the public uh please raise your hand um I see that we've got seven members in attendance right now um please raise your hand if uh you had a question or comment and if you are with us online uh you raise your hand by uh looking for a little hand raising uh icon in the bottom middle of your screen I see no hands so uh let's move on to there was somebody raising their hand it was just like clicking around um but I did try to pull somebody in who had their hand raised okay I don't know if it worked I don't know if it worked I don't see anyone else right now okay I don't know something seems to be funky um it somebody raised their hand uh like Lepinsky Lepinsky is in right now so Mike go ahead please you're muted if uh you're if you haven't realized that I'm not sure what happened there my button wasn't working properly so now I'm a participant yes okay um I just wanted to uh correct something that was said as far as how many accidents there have been involving these phones 750 batteries there clearly was one in uh Idaho on october 2nd or ran to about october 5th the same type of battery that is in question that's had the virus from Warwick and uh basically they were claiming it was the same problem of water intrusion into the cabinet which is consistent with what they were saying in Warwick which was that the battery problem was a water intrusion problem I'm pretty confident through the 750s when you look at the pictures online I sent you guys some of the materials the cabinets look the same I'm pretty sure it's the exact same model um one of the one of the questions about using these particular batteries and actually there's several is why that um pierce guy is so insistent on using these when it's known that they have problems these are relatively new batteries the Warwick site was one of the first places to use the batteries and that's where the first fires broke out and interestingly enough another site this Nova Idaho site used the same batteries and a few days after they actually initiated running the batteries they caught on fire so you have two incidents really close by in time within the six month period pure sky's aware of it we understand there's all these investigations going on they're now going on for six months if you go back to the Warwick one there's still no hard information about what exactly was the problem what kind of remediation is going to occur and how are they going to fix it um if you ask me the town of Amherst is taking a big chance here because you'll be buying a battery or having a battery installed in your property that really hasn't been tested out in the field and the times it has been installed out in the field it's burst into flames um I don't understand why pure sky just doesn't switch to another battery that seems to be the easiest solution here you don't have to wait for an investigation you don't have to wait for a fix for the battery just switch to another battery and then you can just move along there are plenty of batteries out there including ones by poem as an example um pure sky has another facility in new york in Duane'sburg new york they reassured the town there that they weren't going to be using the poem 750 batteries because the people in Duane'sburg were well aware of what happened in warwick and so the project manager there reassured people in town that don't worry we're not putting in the poem seven uh 750s we're using a different poem battery seems to be an easy solution for amherst and an easy solution for pure sky to keep things moving along is just switch to another battery so I have a couple of questions I'm wondering does pure sky already own these batteries and if you do um where are they now and are these the old fire prone models or are these some new improved models and how would we know they're safe also are there any other poem centipede 750 batteries installed at any other massachusetts sites and if there are where are they and if they're not why aren't they installed um so that's all I have to say about batteries but I do have a related issue and we saw it in action once again um over at hickory ridge this morning where the access road was under two or three feet of water again when you tie that into this battery issue with a battery that could catch on fire in an access road that could be underwater you have a recipe for a pretty bad situation this is not an isolated incident of the access road at hickory ridge to be in underwater it's happened three times in the last year it doesn't have to have be a giant storm for it to happen it happened a lot last night where we had a substantial moderate rain in a short period not a long period snow melt and suddenly there's no access for emergency vehicles or for pure sky technicians to get across that river to work on whatever the problem is I really urge pure sky to do the right thing here switch to a safer battery I urge the town to really look at that access road and give some serious thought on how you're going to make sure public safety officials have access to that site no matter what the situation there battery fire other types of accidents ambulances needed to get across it doesn't seem to be a safe situation for me I guess that's all I have to say for tonight I'd like some answers some of those questions if pure sky was willing to do it thank you Mike and I appreciate your concern looks like Lawrence was has his hands up to answer to begin answering yeah I addressed certainly some of the relevant ones uh to uh they were asked so the uh the batteries have already been acquired they were ordered I mean we're very much delayed with this project which was due to start uh we're supposed to be completed a year ago so those batteries have been ordered they're currently sat in a storage facility they are discussions with powings relating to the fires is that the the the build run that that has had the problem is not the run that we've um that we have purchased that the situation when it comes to install time is that there are pre-delivery inspections that they will do which have already been done to ensure that the fire the waterproofing is is there and then there's some additional things that get done during the installation um to to add some some some safety additional safety to that as well so this is why we're confident with what power in have suggested what happened in Duane's Berg we didn't tell them that we weren't using them Duane's Berg project is an older project than this it has the battery technology that was the generation before this so we just explained that it the the type of battery that had the fire and that one was a different different technology there was there was no decision made not to put it there and there was no reassurance it was just just the timing um and uh yeah the as explained as well earlier on in this and in the call with the town we cannot install these batteries until such time as the fire department which is obviously the people that should know the risks better than any of us um they we will not install them until such time as the fire department uh 100 happy and can sign off on on them being installed and whatever that takes whether it's uh inspections or or certifications or or or anything that they want to do to give them the comfort we're happy to do that because at the end of the day we're wanting the most safe and secure battery system as well this is the last thing we want is to have to deal with an issue on site um so it's in our interest as well to do this and we we want to just reassure you that everything that can be done is being done and the town does have the right people uh to make the decision before uh we're able to do anything anyway so that's just all I'm going to say thanks Lawrence now uh just to come back around on the question uh is it the which battery is it that uh you've got on order it's the 750e the power in centipede yet thanks Lawrence um Matthew you had your hand up before you do you still have something to say no no Lawrence uh the second half of what you were saying is exactly what I wanted to point out that you guys aren't committing to anything specific tonight the fire department will have final say okay sounds like you covered it anybody anybody else from the public okay um back to commissioners I think Alex had a question before yeah I I would like to hear some response about uh Mike brought up the flooding of the road and access and um I'd like to hear response to that uh from either the the town or uh here's guys good point Alex thanks I have some I have something else to say but one of Mike's questions was not answered and I think it deserves an answer yeah I can speak to that one and Erin or David feel free to jump in with our discussion that we had on Monday um the the roads that are out there today had already been approved by the fire department we'll be working with them as part of the battery approval and on any other conditions that they require for those battery installs what that you know whether it's secondary access it's changes to the existing access that's all going to be part of the discussion and in our meeting on Monday with all those stakeholders in the town um Pierce guy had committed to working with the town on potential secondary access to the property on the north side of Fort River because it's something I believe both the town and Pierce guy would have some would take gets a benefit from thanks um David so much yeah thanks Andre yeah I think Matthew covered it um I think the the issue that Michael raises is is one that has been you know considered in front and center as recently as our our meeting earlier this week again I think the fire department as has been mentioned numerous times tonight is really you know front and center in approving you know anything to do with public safety on the site will need to be signed off by the fire department so that includes the battery types and we've talked about those in some detail tonight and also considerations of access so as Matthew said we're looking at um we have we have some access from the north and we're trying to refine that at this point in terms of um you know what that would be we know we can get to the arrays from the north it's a question of how easy is it to get through uh properties to the north and does flooding you know um I guess what I want to say is there are parts of the Hickory Ridge property in the northeast corner that also flood so we're looking at that area as well as the northwest corner of the property so we know we can get there in an emergency it's a question of what can we get there with in terms of equipment so we're we're refining that and as Matthew said Pure Sky is willing to work with us on that and the fire department is is of course around the table on all of those discussions so thanks thanks David Alex uh any other did did that answer your question or are there any other questions uh from I I'm I have I'm not done okay um there's a couple of things I'm uncomfortable with one is uh I know that Aaron did a good job of trying to come up with something for us to uh act on tonight I'm a little concerned that it was caught off the press and uh I'm uncomfortable with not having had a chance to read it and part of that might be my fault that I didn't visit the the site uh close enough to the meeting anyways um in my opinion this project being segmented we have a request to go ahead and break ground so they're making commitments there um and then we want to segment it to a battery decision and at the same time we're segmenting it to figure out how the fire department gets to the batteries if and when they catch on fire and the town of Amherst will look very foolish in the papers if there's a if we install batteries there's fire and nobody can get to it and Dave will look the worst because it's his project and so we've segmented this thing several ways and we're being asked to vote on this first advancement of the segmentation I'm uncomfortable with that I would rather see the whole project yeah that makes that makes a lot of sense Alex I I do think that it's that while they try and figure out how to uh how to address the battery issues uh the entire project is uh is is kind of stalled until they figure this out it's not our fault that they bought the batteries they bought the batteries on the comb maybe they got a good price I'm sorry you did interrupt me there Alex I'm sorry yeah go ahead um so yeah I mean it does sound like uh like you've got doubts and and I have doubts um some doubts and maybe it's uh something that we need to kind of take a little let's let's see what other questions come up but maybe we take a quick poll and and we may need to revisit this down the road sorry about the about that Alex go ahead now yeah if I may the project as proposed is the project that Pierce Guy intends to build the only changes that that may occur are as would be as a result of the fire department's input on the batteries themselves which we have indicated we would be willing to come back whether it be an amended NOA amended order or a B request for a minor modification but what we have submitted is the project that is intended to be built in its entirety thanks Matthew Jason yeah um I just want some clarification as far as what we're actually tonight what's on the the slide here is the motion is to to close the public hearing and issue the order of conditions it's my understanding that we as the conservation commission have no say one way or the other as far as what batteries get put in on this project is that correct I think that's a question for for Aaron um I mean we're we're approving or not the application yeah we're approving the notice of intent right yeah so I just I have a couple a couple things I want to just mention here the first is we have two additional hearings this evening and we've already exceeded our 20-minute allotment um I'll defer to you Andre as to how you want to handle that to address Jason's question Jason you know as far as the batteries are concerned from a public safety standpoint it is the fire department from an environmental standpoint it's the conservation commission from us the standpoint of wetland resources it's the conservation commission so that's kind of where our jurisdiction lies is the impacts to surface water groundwater um stormwater systems on the site all of the resource areas that we have jurisdiction over which include the river the riverfront area the floodplain um the wetlands on the site and so um so yes so then our concern is is that there's a fire potentially the fire department can't get to it burns or when the fire department comes they're using water to put the fire out all that stuff runs off into the resources right so we're looking at more of we're trying to right now figure out is there a likelihood that these batteries are going to catch fire and there's going to be some sort of impact to the resources right and I did include in the finding of fact in the draft order that the conservation commission be provided with the reports and the findings from the investigations I don't know if that includes any environmental remediation that might be associated with the fires for example if it causes any kind of you know impacts from the fire suppression or you know that's kind of an aside but I I mean I think that that there's elements and that's one of the Dave and I talked about this one of the interesting things about this project is the interface of of public safety and the conservation commission on this project which is unique I feel like compared to other projects that we might work with so do we have the ability to I know Alex is saying the project or it seems to be segmented and Andre also has concerns about that are we able to is there anything that we can do as far as potentially closing this public hearing or allowing this to project to move forward with some sort of conditions based upon batter you know what I guess also I'm do we have recourse to stop project or do something if we close the public hearing tonight and then what what are the other commissioners looking for as far as what would abate your concerns or like how would we how what do you all want to see to so we can move this forward one way or the other there there is a condition that if additional information is brought to the attention of the conservation commission that they reserve the right to take that information into consideration relative to the order of conditions and determine if there's any changes to the order that are necessary as far as conditions are concerned I guess where I'm coming from as staff and I've been in this position many many times with these permits I know that the applicant is in a hurry to get their permit I know that they've waited patiently for their permit it seems like the conservation commission is feeling a little apprehensive tonight so I would recommend that Andre maybe take a poll to see who's comfortable to issue an approval tonight and close the public hearing and if if there are commissioners so the the other issue that we should explain to the applicant is we have a seven member board tonight there are four members present in order to pass this project you would need a unanimous approval from all four members so it's really important that we get a read from the members present whether they would be willing to vote for an approval tonight if they are not I would highly recommend that the applicant request a continuation to the next meeting in order to allow the commissioners who aren't in attendance tonight to view the the hearing proceedings and be able to vote at the next meeting and it may give the commissioners an opportunity to review the information that came in last minute potentially give the applicant a little more opportunity to review the draft orders of conditions which they haven't really had a chance to see we could wordsmith some changes and potentially consider it at the next meeting but just a suggestion depending on where people are at of different options yeah it's a very good point there and would I just be able to say one thing before we do that poll I think what yeah Lawrence is I think we're here Lawrence you have a turn yeah okay thank you okay so it's not no it's not your turn yet though just just hang on okay you'll get it you'll get a chance Lawrence I I think that's a I think that's a really good suggestion Erin as far as taking a poll and and the fact that there will be more of us hopefully next next meeting and we do we may need a little more time to look at the these conditions and and to discuss we may I think we don't have a lot of time to discuss things right now anyway it Alex why don't you go ahead with your question and then we'll go to Lawrence yeah I didn't have a question I just wanted to just get back to Jason on jurisdiction in addition to what Erin said we labored over batteries on another solar project up on Sunderland Road 116 and we were concerned about containment of materials to put fires out we had drain pipes to make sure that it didn't it didn't go into the groundwater we spent a lot of time on it and it was very clear that it was our jurisdiction so I don't think there's a question about whether or not we have jurisdiction to to talk about batteries so it isn't just anyways that's my comment to to clarify that and to bolster what what Erin said I think we're very comfortable or should be very comfortable uh on that subject and from a from a resource standpoint um our jurisdiction is not public safety that's that's the fire department but um I I'm I'll just that's all I really wanted to say at this point uh if it came to a vote uh I think pure sky has the ability to move this off the dime their choice is to segment it but they have the ability to move it off the dime if the batteries they bought are having a problem with getting approval then pitch the batteries and buy something else it may cost you a lot of money but it'll move your project forward a lot quicker than this waiting game thanks thanks alex okay lauren sits your turn okay I'll I'll kind of go backwards and kind of address what some of that's done the the batteries for this project would not happen until we have the utility connection uh which is not going to be until uh end of q3 so end of september so once that happens we will need to have a witness test for the solar pv and then that would get the power that would run the the batteries to the site so we have 11 months to be able to discuss with the uh the fire department and get the permission the fire department um have said what they need to be able to provide the permission we are comfortable and confident that what they have said uh they need we will be able to supply in due time once we have the release from the battery supplier so that is why we're not we're not sort of saying with we're sort of pushing it we're saying that we do not believe based on third party engineering reports that we have been privy to that this is going to be an issue and that but that process is taken on by the fire department so and then coming back absolutely the conservation commission has the jurisdiction to do with the um any contaminants and things in protection of the resource that's precisely why we have put some mitigation measures in there with the the way that the pad is designed and the channel that runs around the outside and the uh the hydrocarbon barrier and and we've had endless discussions with erin to do with the the actual design of the batteries the fact that there's no penetrations from underneath and there's a there's a four inch sort of base to them so any of the chemicals within it can have got 99 containment for the amount of equipment that's in there all of this has been discussed at length with erin and at the time when we were looking at the batteries last last January and things like that with the discussions that we've been having this this is we we feel that we we've kind of got to the point where the concom doesn't necessarily want to detect dictate the protections but the actual battery itself and that's why there's a the jurisdictional there the protections is is if you don't feel that it's adequately protected then tell us what you what you think is is you're more required because what we've done is what has been agreed by both the fire department and erin um in in those conversations so it's it's really just to kind of put the point that what we wanted to do and we understand that people are going to want to read those conditions we're not asking you to vote to approve those conditions tonight so i'm happy for those to get discussed at the next meeting and we can discuss the conditions but i feel that there's we've really provided all the information that's been asked of us at this stage um no one's come up with anything that we can actually provide at the moment that that is to do with protection of resource or anything that there's in the jurisdiction all the questions seem to be about the the battery provider and and and that's really the fire department is going to make sure that that happens we we want to make sure that this part can move forward and that we've got 11 months to be able to work with the fire department and if the fire department don't approve the power and batteries for whatever reason then they don't get installed but we are confident based on the all the discussions that we have had that what they will require for us to be able to provide for them to allow us to be able to do it we will be able to provide we just can't do it at the moment because we're under an nda from from powering and can't share these documents with the people that's the only reason but we have time thanks laurence i i look i i can sense that um that the some frustration there uh in from your end of things it let me just you know agreeing with you on some of these points let me just also uh point one thing out here is that you know the the what we're concerned about is is the protection and as you said is the protection of the resource now the level of protection that that it's going to take also depends on the threat to the resource to the environment and the threat right now is still somewhat up in the air because we are not sure what as far as the safety of these batteries so understanding where you're coming from i think it's also yes it's also good to to to have a the the realistic perception or the uh but the protection i'm sorry the perception that uh that what we're doing is we're protecting the resource um and it depends somewhat on the safety of those batteries laurence it's this isn't really i don't really mean to do this back and forth thing but yeah no i i mean i i understand what you're saying but the protections that we provided and the protections that have been requested of us to do assumes that it is going to burn that's why we've put the protections in there that that it so if it we we're very hopeful that it doesn't but the reason why it's being put in there is to account for the fact that if it does so that's why i'm saying that it's like it it seems to be not about um it's about the the battery uh manufacturer itself rather than the protection at this point because we we've provided this protection that is assumed that it's going to fail and that the things are going to leak and we're going to be able to protect the resource from it but okay thank you laurence erin um i'm just concerned about time uh so i'm advocating because we have people for the next hearing who are sitting online and we've got to continue yeah please if we can hey laurence um just let's take turns here okay um erin um what uh i what i think we should do here is perhaps if um if uh conservation commission members would like to we can um we can revisit this next week and i think that's uh i i don't think i'm ready to vote at this point uh uh yeah i don't i don't think i'm ready to vote for anything other than that but i'll i'll let's see uh let's take a quick poll um jason what what what are your thoughts i am in favor of a continuation okay alex alex you're muted continuation but i also have a request for next meeting so after the poll please come back to me all right bruce continue all right um so how about we uh how about we leave our questions and comments and so on i know alex you can you do have a you do have a quick question uh go ahead um but let's uh let's let's let's look for a motion yeah so my do i have the permission to speak yeah please we have that other issue of the road being flooded and access if there was a fire and um um i would like to see something come forward before we vote on this project that that issue has been resolved and that sort of i think dav can probably move that along but this seems to be an oversight that could be quite embarrassing if there was a fire and we have to use some sort of uh aquatic vehicle or something to dav says you don't know how they would get out to it and i would like some clarification on that before we vote on it okay so before uh before the next uh meeting you'd like to uh kind of see what kind of plan there uh uh there could be right right all right do we have uh briefly i'm sorry may i briefly before we uh vote yeah please do and lauren see your hands up i don't know if you're looking to uh to say something or no okay as it relates yeah as it relates to the access roads those are not part of this no i filing those have been approved those are in existing condition under this no i filing um so that that that should not be part of the consideration as it relates to the the safety element and the protection of the resource areas and it learns hit that pretty well on the head um this is really no different from a single family home that catches fire the firefighting contaminants that that that can occur under any any project any condition um and the one request i have for the commission as we as we part ways tonight is to provide us with some clarity on what you are expecting the applicant to provide in addition to what we have already provided to date so we can take steps to move forward thanks matthew thank you so yeah and we you know we will we will need to uh have a little more discussion on this next uh next meeting and you may have some better uh some some uh some more uh succinct or concrete uh requests anybody for the motion i will motion that we move to continue the public hearing for 191 west palmaroy lane to 124 2024 at 7 45 p.m second that's uh jason with the motion uh bruce with the uh second bruce hi jason hi alex hi and i'm an i so it'll be moved to uh the 24th um and uh and to uh mike uh lapisky uh laurence and um matthew and john thank you for uh for your uh for what you're uh brought to us today thank you appreciate everyone's time tonight see you on the plane i take care thank you okay now move to the eighth hearing of the of the night and this is a request for determination um like tie tie and bond on behalf of ever source for soil borings um andrew we will need to do the hearing call for this meeting we will need to do it okay yes because it's a meeting tonight hang on one second i'll phone you okay this public meeting is now called to this meeting is being held as required by the provisions as chapter 131 section 40 of the general laws of the commonwealth enact relative to the protection of wetlands as most recently amended in article 3.31 wetlands protection under the town of amherst general bylaws um again tie and bond on behalf of ever source for soil borings and installation of monitoring locations uh to evaluate and delineate the presence of dense non-accused phase liquids dnapl and other potential contaminants within riverfront area bordering land subject to buttering uh at pelham road um at pelham road okay erin yeah so just to give the uh commission a little bit of background on this um this is a an existing site it was a previous um gas manufacturing site and um there's known contaminants on the site that have been monitored for um as long as i think i've been with the town at least um the uh ever source approached me uh about the project um they're looking to do some uh test pits and some monitoring wells out there the test pits are actually exempt under the minor activities um however they are um accessing through resource areas to get to the test pit sites so that coupled with the fact that they're installing monitoring wells um triggered the need to have an rda filing um that being said i have drafted um a determination tonight um with conditions and i do support the issuance of the determination to allow this because it's the first step towards the site being fully assessed for potential future remediation efforts to basically clean it up i have the order available and the site visit photos available to share so i'll queue those up um and give the applicant an opportunity to present anything they'd like to say thanks sir um on behalf of the applicant uh we have uh are am i right that uh saskia hosting and uh seth taylor are here on behalf of the applicants correct and my apologies if i butchered your names go ahead and present i'll read myself uh how you doing guys my name is seth taylor i work for a time bot project manager representing the ever source um for a site for some exploratory borings um 13 borings total um to look for uh didn't apple saskia do i have this right uh dense non aqueous liquid to have that right um so um one of the things we talked about a couple different things at the at the um site walk um and one of the things that i did want to actually show the commission was um i came up with a question about the um tract vehicle that's going to go out and and and do the borings and so um erin juice is okay if i share my screens all right sure yep um so i did want to i did want to actually show what they actually look like um so when the when they're entering the site they're going to have to clear brush there aren't any trees um that are supposed to be removed but as you could see that there is going to be some shrubs and stuff that will have to be removed um that is a tract vehicle um this will again i'll be in upland uh riverfront vlsf um part of it's a buffer some of it's um out um but this is what it's going to look like going into the site um and so they're going to go out they're going to do 13 total borings um i believe it's eight of which nine of which are um well casings are going to be installed uh two inch diameter up to 25 feet uh depth and those are going to be left for a period of time to allow for sampling you know over that time for the four borings that will not have wells the spoils will be put back inside of the hole and for the nine where the wells are going to be installed that soil we proposed to store in 55 gallon drums it's an estimate of about eight drums um and at that time it will be determined um with testing what needs to be done with that soil um afterwards but that'll be disposed of per the you know testing requirements um you know to align way and fill where it'll be disposed of um and so the we um we also discussed installing um erosion controls so there are um three or four um locations in particular that are close to bvw and riverfront on the fort river and so um per ever source standards we're going to install you propose to install um biodegradable straw bottles um straw in particular um that would you know not invasive seeds in them and so they they can um biodegrade over time without having to be removed from the site and anywhere where there's disturbance where there's going to be um rotting this again it will be in upland areas um seed and hay will be installed to ensure that um natural vegetation can grow back over time and those those were the topics that we discussed on the site uh the sidewalk um but other than that um uh i've opened the questions about um any of the process um so maybe sassi can answer more of the technical questions on the actual testing but but um but yeah let me know if you have any questions thank you thank you sir um is um is it okay i say something too yeah absolutely okay um thank you um for your time for this work for ever source um as set said um you know this is this is work obviously that's being done in order to further the investigation this work's been going on by ever source since 2002 so it's um you know it's a it's a long-term project and um we're just trying to get an some additional assessment done after we've been operating some um pumping system that has been removing this denapal for probably about 15 years um and this denapal is uh it's like a an oily substance and it's um it's a byproduct of the gas plant that operated at the site so um obviously this is this is just investigation work it's you know we're not building anything um other than those wells that are gonna you know be there for some period of time while this work is going on um happy to answer any other questions you guys may have thank you um now we'll turn to the public for for any questions or comments from the public i see we do have two members of the public there if you have any questions please raise your hand i see no questions from the public so um with that uh then it's up to uh the commissioners do we have questions alex has a question go ahead ruse and erin and i went on the site visit and um we're involved in this project because it's along the fort river um the the um question i have for ever source is i i just want to make sure my perception of the project and what i've read is what you're trying to do is find how far the tar's if i if they are tar how far they have spread horizontally and vertically um so that you can come up with some sort of a remediation plan is that correct um the question um yes um we have largely delineated where this material has um come to be located but some of the borings that we're proposing around the sort of the more the perimeter um are just uh sort of tighten the the spacing between borings um the way this material this isn't like oil that like floats on water the reason it's called dense is that it's denser than water so when it hits water it keeps sinking until it hits a um confining layer so something that's much less permeable and um out in the emersary there's um the lake bed deposits from glacial lake hitchcock that are basically a clay layer and whatever the shape of that clay layer is is how is is what determines where the material will go because it literally will hit that um that layer and if it's sloped in one direction or another that's the direction that this this deen apple will sort of flow and it's it's it's not um it's more like the consistency of like you know honey or or molasses or something it's not um stuff that's rapidly running in any direction but so some of it is to delineate laterally some of it is to also assess um how much of this material we're going to be able to feasibly get out of the ground um we've been operating these pumping systems um for 15 years and we're just trying to get some additional information to further understand um you know what what more can be done and and um and in some cases when these the um we've got some large recovery wells that have the pumps in them and they're screened not quite to that clay layer so we're trying to put in some new wells that are fully penetrating that um layer um above the clay that has the deen apple in it so um some of the technical things i don't want to bore you too much but um does that answer your question alex yeah and my hand my hand keeps disappearing even though i have a follow-up question um i i'm thank you for the clarification on its uh viscosity so what's the chances that it moves has moved or is moving into the the fort river um but we we haven't seen it in the fort river that i'm aware of um we you know there's no i mean unless you know somebody has been seeing sheens but i you know we haven't seen that like i said it's stuff that um this this material is sinking um when it hits the water table so it it um it's not going with the water table um but it's certainly something that um we will further investigate too as part of you know follow-up studies right now we're um you know just focusing on the you know the mobility of this material and how much more there is in the ground that that we could possibly get out and so i was i was glad to go on a site visit and see that the machine can move easily between the trees and then we don't have to have a lot of um road building or tree clearing i think the machine can go over a lot of the shrubs maybe some of them need to be cut but it could probably just move right over some of them yeah to the extent that they can they certainly will do that you mean we don't you know you know blueberry bushes and things like that they can usually pop right back up and you know if some you know if we need to a lot of us have worked out the Fort river been aware of this deposit for a long time very nice to see every source taking a hand and trying to get a hand and trying to understand it thank you you're welcome thanks alex and sascha uh anybody else from the uh oh looks like the tasting has a question and so it is bruise after uh yes thanks i just wanted to ask about the barrels of the spoils that will be kept on that will be stored where are they going to be stored how are they going to be stored and how long are they going to be stored um very good questions um the northern side so so the the artwork is both on the north side of the road and the south side of the road um the northern side um is fenced um mrs. Luddy's property um you know has a fence around it the south side is not um so the the you know and on both sides as you probably've seen you know you can see and just driving by the road there's a little shed where our pumping equipment is so the drums would be stored on the north side by the shed you know hopefully not you know too visible from the road but um you know near near that shed and it'd be inside the fence so should you know keep people out unless they're really trying and then um the duration at which so uh you know um it probably isn't even eight drums but you know but the duration of storage is until we have um have the the testing that we need in order to get the materials off site you know to a proper disposal facility and then we get a um a truck on site to to get those picked up and taken away I mean we we pretty routinely two or three times a year um have a truck coming by to pick up drums that are generated inside the you know filled inside those sheds from the material that we're pulling out of the ground so that's a pretty routine operation that we do and how will they be stored are they are they going to be in some sort of secondary containment are they going to be under a temporary roof my concern is that if we have this material on the on the barrels or the barrels somehow get um penetrated and this leaks out that it's not just going back into the ground um these these drums um these drums are designed to I mean these are you know they're new drums um you know we're talking storing them for a few weeks it's not months or you know a long-term period um and and um so you know no they won't have secondary containment um but I don't anticipate that that's needed will they be labeled yes there's you know all drums are supposed to be labeled with you know what's in them when they were generated and and they can only be stored on site for you know a certain period of time so um and it's just you know we have to collect the samples get the data back from the lab and we're probably talking like a month or something not you know not much more than that all right thank you you're welcome thanks bruce so we were on the side visit with mr taylor and I'm sorry I don't remember the exact specifics of but he showed us a map of where the flood plain was the land subject to flooding and I just wonder I went out there yesterday morning and the fort river was roaring it was very close to the bottom of the bridge the road bridge and it was much much wider and its extent than when we were out there on the side of the side visit and I just wonder whether the the boundaries on your maps are based on where it actually is going and conditions like yesterday morning or from you know some mapping thing so and I want don't and does it matter whether if the flood waters came up to where your your test pits and test boring pipes are would it matter because it might are you asking whether it matters to our work well to the health of the resource but yes to your we want your your work to succeed too so hey sure I mean the the extent out was quite dramatic yeah I mean those those elevations are determined by femur and so and that was that I can I can put that map up on the screen again if you want no I'm just asking a conceptual question about to the extent that the flood waters are going much further if they are than it was on that map would it matter to the project I don't think during they wouldn't do the active work if it was flooded so while they do it they're going to you know take out the materials and then they're going to put them back in and cap it okay with the benzenite is that right so like an impermeable layer so that if it does flood again if they won't you know the water won't go into the hole grab the denapel and pull it back out and go back here no yeah I would just urge you to go out there and look at how the extent of the distance that it moved out of its normal stream bank and just look at it and make your own determination and then when it rains three or four more inches on tomorrow night maybe go look at it again because this is going to keep happening yeah all right thank you Erin I just had a couple ideas you know if we want to condition it for lower flow conditions that might be a good idea just to make sure that when the work is done and I don't know the exact duration of the work but I imagine probably a couple days at least to do the work but to make sure that it's scheduled during you know conditions when it's not raining and then another potential condition and this was just relative to the barrel storage was whether it would be possible to either put the barrels inside the shed or put some type of construction fencing around the barrels so they're not accessible my concern is um you know there's there is an elementary school right across the street from this site and also um there was previously there was a house it was like a um an abandoned house that was people were getting into it and um causing mischief and so you know just the concern that people would see barrels there and like oh let's smash these or you know dump them out or do something crazy with them um and so at least if they were behind a secure fence maybe that would deter um anybody from messing with them over the period of time when they're there because it's really not a lot of houses or visibility of that site like there's a business kind of across the street but there's no one there at night and there's no one really around that location so just to provide an added measure of security might not be a bad idea Erin they are going to be inside a fence um the northern side of the property where that shed is where those drums would be placed is fenced and the gate is locked unless there's somebody from tie and bond or ever source on site okay because the the the little brick shed is that what the shed you're talking about because that's not fenced in no that's not that's not our shed that's a sewage pump station okay I think you're talking about like right next to the farm field there's like a there's there's um there's a wooden shed inside the fence um like you the next time you drive by the road you'll see it and then you see the fence right there so everything will be inside a fence and okay and it would literally be somebody having to either take bolt cutters or climb the fence and fair enough I was thinking I and now that you mentioned the pump station I um realized that I was thinking for some reason that that was the same one in the same shed but that makes sense okay okay great all right great um and I did I did have a question as well um Seth you were mentioning that these shafts are two inches in diameter um when you're putting a casing in it what about the you said there were a certain amount I think it was four or eight I forget um that did not that are not going to have casing um is that the same diameter as the as these other two inches right so there's 13 total that are going to be dug out four of them will not have wells installed I don't know the diameter of that maybe we saw someone speak to that but those will be filled back in the diameter of the wells that are being installed it's a two inch diameter okay yeah that the drill sorry please okay the drilling technique we're using is something called direct push um so literally they they they push um like a steel casing into the ground and then there's a plastic sleeve inside that so they actually collect the sample so we can see what's in the soil and that material comes out but that that's it there isn't a lot of cuttings um and you know in locations where we're not putting wells in those materials are just going to be put right back into the same hole and um in those other ones we would obviously put in wells and then they would have the stand pipes which are similar to the ones that you've seen out there because if we do something that's flush with the ground we'll never find it again in the woods okay all right great thank you and uh erin do you still uh do you have another question no sorry I just forgot to put my hand out no problem Alex yeah just a dumb question for either ever source or titan bond I take it the barrels will be labeled according to the hole where the dirt came out and the reason I ask is I think you said that depending on the test results they'll either be hauled away or um uh put back on site did I hear that correctly no we just need the test results to um to characterize the material so that the facility where it's going will will have information as to what's in the what's in the material um once it goes into a drum it's not going to come back out on the site the whole purpose for drumming materials is so that then the next place it goes is an off-site facility oh okay my hand disappeared I didn't know that I am I allowed to still talk yeah sure right I don't I don't know what's happening with your hand but uh yeah absolutely I keep getting messages saying it appears that you've finished talking anyways um yeah so all of it is all of it is leaving the site I was not under that impression I thought somehow if the sample from a particular well was clean that it could be redeposited in the hole or something of that sort but uh no need to discuss it further I think I'm clear right Alex thanks um looks like we're uh ready for a motion unless anybody else has anything I don't want to issue a positive determination of applicability checking box five and negative determination of applicability checking box two however special conditions and boilerplate conditions as drafted shall be required and attached to the determination under the wetlands protection act and wetlands protection town of amherst general bylaws article 3.31 and regulations second all right that's uh jason on the mo on the motion and uh bruce on the second bruce fine jason hi alex hi and i'm an eye so positive determination thank you thanks very much to uh to both of you for waiting till the end and to anyone else who's there I see no other attendees other than the participants currently so you all have a good uh good night thanks for your uh thanks for your your uh your testimony or your uh what you've brought to uh to bear here thank you have a good night very much so now we're uh hearing number nine yeah I have good news uh this is a wendell wetland services for 260 leverett road um and they have requested to move it forward to the 24th of january at 7 45 p.m so we'll need a motion I will move to continue the public hearing for 260 leverett road to 124 24 at 750 p.m second that's uh jason on the motion and alex on the second alex did you have a question before yes okay um I had a question about why it's a redevelopment project maybe this is a technical thing that erin can ask her answer why is it redevelopment it looks to me like it's a conversion of use um and maybe that's one of the same I just don't understand the technicalities because you had a single family house or you're going to have a single family house where there was a garage and a chicken coop yeah so under the rear front redevelopment regulations there's a very specific definition for redevelopment which is um basically having a anything covering which prevents vegetation from growing um there's a whole variety of definitions of what that might be so in this case structures or gravel driveways um would qualify as previously disturbed or previously altered areas of rear riverfront on the site um and so those areas can be taken into consideration for new development um so that's that's why it's referred to as a redevelopment project and frequently when there's riverfront redevelopment they will claim that because the requirements are less stringent than the um basically new development um on uh riverfront area um on this one we received an application um the the plan was not sufficient um it was a hand drawn not to scale it didn't include everything that they were proposing to do so I kicked it back to them immediately unfortunately DEP issued a file number on it which I wish they hadn't have done but they did I'm not even sure that they looked at the plan when they issued it um I did speak to DEP about that and said this is kind of unacceptable to issue this when we they're they were proposing a septic system and the septic system wasn't even shown on the plan um so anyways the we had to open the hearing within 21 days which is why the hearing you know is is on the agenda tonight but I did let the applicant know they needed to revise the plan if they were going to be considered so they're they're working on revising it and that's why there's a continuation tonight glad I asked the question that's good all right so we're looking for a motion I think we lost uh Jason there no no okay you know what you disappeared because of the shared screen I'm sorry I move to continue I can't read it now but we already we already made the motion and there was a second we just need a vote that's right that's right okay so uh let's start with the votes Alex yes hi Jason hi Bruce hi and I'm an eye so this has continued to uh the 24th at 750 745 are we gonna have a site visit um yeah we will we will before the hearing opens yes okay and we've gone through the other business already uh so I think minor administrative change that's going to be tabled to the next meeting uh the applicant couldn't attend tonight so okay there's nothing for us to do then right just wait okay exactly so I think we're uh we're done this was a really uh long arduous meeting with a little bit of uh bumpiness there are you guys the great everybody did thank you yes I move we adjourn I second awesome as the chair can I third it um so so note that we're ending the 2018 uh huh yes and so uh let's uh let's vote Bruce hi Jason hi Alex open up stain but I I thanks guys thanks everyone good night