 my role. Oh, that's not nice. No, but sorry. It's okay. On the other side. It's funny, my son got brought home from school. So yeah, yeah, just done. And then like so careful. And that was just like the zinger of it all. But yeah, I wish I got it like dancing at a club or something. Oh boy, that was worth it. So were you actually down in band, etc? No, I felt sick for like two days. So we're all boosted and vaccinated and everything like that. That's good. That's good. There's so many clubs in town too, Laura. Yeah. Well, I'm in Washington, DC right now. So I do have access. That would have been way more worth it than being like, oh, you took your mask off at lunch, a little too close to someone. That's how we all got sick. Awesome. So anyways, we're recording. So yeah, right. I'm ready whenever you guys are. I heard from lecture. Okay, well, welcome everyone. This is the Amherst Conservation Commission meeting Wednesday, February 9, 2020. I think the first item on our agenda is comments from me, maybe? Yep. My only comment is, Laura, I don't think we've been in the same meeting since you agreed to do the Community Preservation Act committee. So I just wanted to formally thank you for that. Thank you for making time because I'm sure it's just time you're making. It's not extra time you have. So thank you for doing that. And I look forward to learning along with you about everything going on over there. And I'm sure Michelle and the Roy, you guys have been working on the bylaws or if you haven't, that's cool too. But if you have, that's another thing I know is going on and probably expanding in bandwidth. And I really, we really appreciate it. So thank you for taking the time for that. And I am not going to be able to be at the next meeting. And it sounds like the Roy is going to be able to be here and lead the meeting just so you guys know. So the next time I'll see you is sometime in early March, the first March meeting. That's what I had, Dave. Or just a couple of quick updates. Speaking of CPA, so, you know, Laura is joining two-thirds of the way through the process joining that committee. They've already made their recommendations. I attended a meeting on Monday morning on the finance committee where the chair, Sarah Marshall of the CPA committee made a presentation to the finance committee on, I want to say there's like 16 or 17 projects. I kind of lost track, but in the various categories, housing, affordable housing, recreation, open space and historic preservation. And so they're working their way through the process. What will happen is the FINCOM will, you know, they had some really good questions for a lot of the, for Sarah Marshall, myself and Sean Mangano, our finance director. And then those projects will make hopefully be as a package recommended to the town council. And then the town council will hopefully vote them. They'll have more questions, I'm sure, but they'll be voted on as a package as part of the overall FY23 budget. You may recall on the open space front, there were two projects put forth. One was money for Hickory trails, Hickory Ridge Trails, and that request is for $150,000. And the second request was for a general trail support amount, which was $50,000. So I'm really excited to move those forward. It seems like a lot of money, but it really doesn't go that far when you actually get right into permitting bridges, bog bridging, depending on the surface you choose. And Hickory is a very big piece of property, as we know. So keep your eye on that. It'll probably be reported in the newspaper. And again, I'm feeling pretty optimistic that that goes forward. The other related thing is that the historic interpretive trail that was proposed for a both buffers pond along the Cushman Brook, this is the project that Meg Gage and others from North Amherst brought forward. That did get recommended by the CPA committee. And it's only part of the project. It's really the research part of the project. Recall, they're looking at historic structures, mill structures along the Cushman Brook. I think it's a great project. And I'd really like us to queue in on it later this spring. I talked to Aaron about this the other day. There's definitely been manipulation of some of those mill sites, which I wasn't really aware of. People are kind of borrowing the stones from some of those mill sites. There's been people up there with metal detectors. And these are really town resources. And so we may, in the interim, figure out a way to at least put up some tasteful signs up there that discourage people from messing with these historic mill sites. And we'll talk more about that as we get through winter and do something up there that at least puts people on alert that some people may not know. They like to make a dam. I don't know if you know where the dam is, where everybody swims their dog. But they're actually pulling stones from one of the mill sites and moving them over. And I think we want to just discourage that if we can. So anyway. How about an article in the press? Yeah, we could easily do something like that and make education and awareness part of it. For sure. That's a great idea, Larry. Just put up a sign and make them feel guilty. Yeah. David, Dave Downer, don't do that. No, not you. Just say the concomit or something says don't do this. I will definitely put it all on you all. I don't want to be the bad guy. I do that too much. Speaking of Hickory Ridge, we are on the one yard line. I assure you it is just down to the wire and the attorneys doing their thing at 1159. We have payments ready. We have deeds signed and various documents signed. So we are this close and we just got to have those attorneys do their last little dance and then we'll close and we'll do some press on the property. Lots of people out there using it for cross-country skiing, hiking, bird watching, you name it. So we'll get that going. Has your blockage worked out as far as things like snowmobiles? I have not seen any evidence of snowmobiles out there this winter, but I haven't been out there in a little bit. So I've not seen any, but we have signs ready to go that'll say basically town-owned property here, at least the temporary rules and regulations. For the time being, there'll be more town rules and regulations. There'll be similar to conservation commission regulations, but in all honesty, we don't know which section of the property yet you all, the commission will have care, custody, and control over. That will be decided in the future once we do the master planning process. Clearly, it'll be the riparian zone, the areas near the river or that kind of thing, but we don't know the extent of the 150 acres, how many acres will be under the care, custody, and control of the commission. What kind of interests is there in their commercial development? Well, I think the best answer to that Larry is if you go on the town's website and you go about two thirds of the way down, they have Engage Amherst and there's five or six projects that we're engaged in right now, and we've had over a hundred comments about Hickory on there, and they range from, I think I mentioned this before, a zip line, a BMX bike trail, hiking trails, an amphitheater, affordable housing, a group, you name it. Definitely one of the strongest themes is for the town to look at the clubhouse area and the parking lot area for some sort of affordable housing. Senior housing has been raised, but that's definitely coming through as a strong theme. I would say the strongest theme is protect the property, protect the river, protect the rest natural resource areas, wetlands, vernal pools, etc, and make a trail system that everybody can enjoy north to south and east to west and connect to the village center. Is the 10th fairway in the area or might be commercial? Oh, Larry, I am not a golfer. Well, I'm a very bad golfer. Well, the 10th is the one that's right along Pomeroy, beyond the clubhouse, toward Hadley, toward the west. It very quickly, if you look at the topography there, there's a little room there for something, but not a lot. It quickly gets into floodplain. It's also wet. There's no doubt about that. It's been wet already this last week and a half. Yeah, if you looked at what happened with the rain and the snowmelt and the ice flows last week, it was pretty covered last weekend. Also, there's a lot of estimated and priority habitat out there, but Erin and some of the planning staff and I are working on all the different layers of mapping, and we've made a lot of progress over the last two months. So we'll begin to share that with you all. And clearly, you, you know, a representative or two of the commission will be asked to be more part of that planning process as we move forward. So that's hickory. And then two other quick things. We are moving forward with the hiring of an assistant land manager. We are very close to making an offer on that. So it'll be great to get some help for Brad. He's been without any help for a couple of months. We'll get somebody trained up and ready for the summer field season. I'm actually meeting with Brad tomorrow, tomorrow afternoon, where we'll talk about summer projects. What are some of those just to give you a preview? We would very much like to make progress on replacing the Amethyst Brook conservation area bridge, you know, the one that's been out for four or five years. We have funding for that. Thanks in large part. There's some of the funding coming from private donors and Aaron's been working on that and the Kestrel Trust has contributed. So we believe we have enough money to replace that bridge. We're also looking at the KC Trail Bridge over near where Jen lives. Jen probably knows that trail quite well and we're not happy with the temporary condition there, but we really need to replace that bridge. So those are kind of the two big lifts, I think. I know Amethyst is going to happen this summer. The other one is a big ticket item when it comes to cost the KC Trail Bridge off of Southeast Street. So in the short term, we've got to make that safer. In the long term, we really need to replace it. So those would be the two big lifts among other smaller projects we do with our limited staff. So that's just kind of a quick preview and we'll have more. And I really want to invite Brad and his new land manager back to see you. I missed that meeting, but I think they had a very good conversation with you and did a PowerPoint for you on the projects they did. So those are the quick updates. Any happy to take any questions on those or any other things you might be seeing out there? Were you able to find for the Amethyst Brook Bridge? What are you using? Did you remember where there was like the hole back and forth about getting the really long telephone poles? Did you find a solution to that? Yes, we have found 55-foot telephone poles. If we haven't ordered them already, they're close to being ordered. We have the funding for them and we will be using three 55-foot long telephone poles. So if we need help lifting them from the parking lot to the Brook, we will call on all of you. That was my next question. How are you going to get those 55-foot poles? Erin's been working on that a little bit. We're going to need some pretty heavy equipment to move those. There you go, Jen. They're brand new poles. We had to buy them. We did ask every source and that kind of led to a dead end. So we needed up. We're going to buy them. I want to say they're in the order of $5,000 or $6,000 or something like that. For the three of them, they're almost 8k. Cool. Great. Half of it is shipping cost probably. Yeah, they only bring them to the location where they're being dropped off and we have to take it from there. So that's the challenge. They won't actually even unload them. We're going to ask Barry Roberts if we can use his draft horses and pull them up. We actually do that up at USGS gauge sites up in northern New England and Maine. We use draft horses a lot to bring stuff in and out. It's not a crazy idea. This is at Amethyst Farm and we've got them at Barry Roberts Farm on Bay Road. Yeah, it's relatively low impact. Yeah, maybe we look into that, Erin. That would be a fun thing for people to observe as well. That's a new one, but hey. Another one is Wait for Spring Flood and Float them down. That's also kind of a Maine, New Hampshire style thing to do, but they do it. You might end up with a bridge in a slightly different location. One or two might get stuck. The commission did, we did permit that bridge a couple of years ago. I think the permit is still valid. If we have to make any changes or propose any changes, we'll bring those back to you. I hope within the next 60 days, if we need to amend that permit and change anything with the design. So those are the big, that's what's happening. How much longer is the permit valid for the KC Trail Bridge? That was about the same time. I would have to defer to Erin. You shouldn't know off the top of your head. That design, frankly, that design is probably going to change. It's all collapsed in more since we did that. We've had an engineer look at it, and that one's more complex than meets the eye for sure. That might be a great place for a zipline. Maybe we do a zipline. You go over the broken zipline. That would be the creative thing to do. Nobody's touching it. A barge on a pulley. We can get really creative here if we're going to start doing that stuff. All right. Well, thanks, Dave. It all sounds good. Very busy. Thank you for keeping us in line on everything. All right. If nobody else has any questions for Dave, I'm looking at the next item on the agenda, sweet Alice. Looks like a land review and approval of minutes. Want to do minutes? We have a couple of people in attendance. I was hoping that we could maybe burn through the items that they came to talk to us for the first one being that application, the land use application for Adventure East, and then we have an application for sort of like an informal discussion for Property 21 East Hadley Road. And then the last one is the UMass one. And then once we get those out of the way, we can burn through the other business items if that works for you guys. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't have the participant bar thing open, so I now see them. So that makes sense. So I believe Brian Pearson is here for the Adventure East application. He might be able to kind of give a verbal explanation of the project, and then we can talk about that. Okay. I just want to make you a panelist. Okay. Maybe we'll see him. There he is. Hi, Brian. Hey, good evening. Thanks for giving us priority on your agenda. No problem. If you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself and giving us kind of a three-minute version of your application, that would be great. Sure. So I'm Brian Pearson. I'm founder of Adventure East, we're a company in Sunderland, founded in 2021. And we do outdoor experiences here in the valley from paddling, hiking, fishing, biking, ski touring, cross-country skiing, all sorts of outdoor stuff. We're working with Amherst College on a winter programming schedule for the next four weekends. And one of the properties we'd like to use is an Amherst and it's the Sweet Alice Trailhead. And we plan to bring groups there if approved on Saturdays and Sundays, starting this weekend through March 5th and 6th. The dates are on the application. We'd bring a group in the morning, we would bring another group in the afternoon. Our groups are topped out at 12 people and we'll have a guide with each group. Okay, that's great. Thanks. So I'm just looking at the application. Commissioner, is there any questions up at the top here? So what would you be doing at Sweet Alice? So we're going to do about a one-hour loop trek up to the Robert Frost Trail and then down the trolley to the Brookbank and back to Kestrel and then the parking area. Okay, and you'll be just shuttling people. So it's only one. Depending on parking there, I guess Kestrel has an event on Saturday, but otherwise Kestrel said we can use their access the rest of the days as well. So there shouldn't be any issue with parking there with our vehicle. So normally this would be a snow process, but you don't have any snow now so you're just going to go up and walk. It's probably pretty icy depending on how packed down it is, but we have spikes for everyone so it should be safer than going without spikes. But yes, we wish there was snow, but you never know these days. And out after dark it looks like and time 4 p.m. I mean now before dark, sorry. Yep. Okay. So my question is though for us about the for-profit part. What's the protocol there? That's a great question. We bring it up every time this comes up. Yeah, and then we say oh we should come up with a policy. But what's the precedent? We've had this discussion. Yeah. So guys, let Dave jump in. Go ahead. So yeah, it's a great question. We really don't have a policy on this. The next discussion we're going to have after this is an introduction to something that Erin and I have been talking about and we are poised to kind of work through and present to you at your next couple of meetings, which is really kind of a comprehensive land use policy that will cover things like for-profit use of down conservation land, agricultural use of conservation land, rules and regulations for the use of conservation land, weddings, fundraisers, etc. So short of that, I don't think there is a consistent policy that you can follow tonight. It's been kind of a piecemeal thing through the years. So I will suggest that I believe in Brian's application and in Erin's communication with Brian. Brian, I believe you had mentioned that when you use land of say the you know a land trust, the trustees of reservations or something, that you make a voluntary donation to trail maintenance or something like that. So I think that's what we put out to Brian in lieu of a policy that said X. We were suggesting that because we don't have that to be consistent that perhaps the program made a modest donation to our trail fund which then can go back into trail maintenance and bridges and you know erosion control and things of that sort along bridges. So was that a reasonable approach Brian that would be consistent with what you do with other landowners? Absolutely, sure that would work fine and you know the average there that I put is $25 per person and typically we're doing 20% so like a $5 contribution per person and we build that into our fees and provide that as a support to the landowners where we're given access. Cool or maybe like some volunteer time or something great. The other question I would have is about sort of liability issues like if the the company has liability insurance and how that would apply to the town of Amherst I know in the past you know for recurring events or even one-time events like weddings we've required liability coverage so I don't know if that's something that we should talk about as well. Maybe Brian could say more about what you've done in other situations because I think we would want proof of of liability insurance and probably having the town listed as an additional insured for those dates is that again a reasonable request Brian? Yes very typical we have a general liability policy and we can provide a certificate with the town as an additional attorney. The one other comment that I would make this is just this is an FYI for everybody on the on the call as well as for Brian that we are dealing with an emergency situation down at 37 Bay Road which is the driveway access coming into Kestrel Land Trust there's a failed culvert under the driveway that has a huge sink hole under it right now there's a steel plate covering that sink hole and we've been working with Kestrel Land Trust to come up with a design and a permitting process to replace that culvert in early March again it wouldn't impact weekend use of the trail system but just so that it may there may be other site impacts if that work is happening in early March I doubt it will impact these dates but just to make sure that everybody is aware of that that that work might be happening in early March okay thanks for that information that that's below where the trail comes into the driveway right it's close to the Bay Road it's between the trail and Bay Road right so if you if you park at the parking area where the the kiosk is located there's a trail that can bring you in to the site and you won't even cross the culvert it won't even impact folks walking in from that direction but if anybody was to try to drive down the driveway when that work is going on it will be there'll be work going on so that you know if a shuttle bus was thinking that they would be able to drive in to drop people off say at the Kestrel Land Trust headquarters they wouldn't be able to do that so I would just recommend that for the shuttle that you drop people in the parking lot and then have people walk walk over on the established trail to get on the trail system sure no problem okay commissioner is any other questions dave and erin thanks for getting ahead of us on kind of a land use policy plan otherwise if nobody else has any questions I think with while accounting for the things we've mentioned a donation to the town in support of trail maintenance etc and making sure that we have liability coverage I think I'm comfortable moving forward with approving this application does anyone have any outstanding concerns okay do we vote erin yeah I would make a motion to approve it make a motion to approve the land use application for oh what an adventure east adventure east on the dates that are on the application with the uh said conditions all right voice vote um larry I was going to say would the stated requirements about yes loroy hi michelle hi lucha hi laura hi and i'm an i thank you brian thanks everyone good luck i hope you guys have good conditions out there that was up on the seven sisters on sunday and it was just cool by clear ice everywhere i mean it's awesome with the micro spikes it's actually kind of fun but erin if you could maybe follow up with brian just in terms of you know he could make the donation payable to the town of amherst conservation department trails account okay when the time comes he could just do that and that way it goes into a gift account and not the general fund okay the general fund it just gets absorbed and we want this specifically to go to trails okay is our next agenda item 21 east hudley road is that um lance yes yes it is yep so if we're ready to move on i will lance i'm going to promote you to a panelist so we can see and hear you know and just say one thing real briefly um that's i didn't know that there's like trails like account trail maintenance account so that is something i guess you guys are probably working on the the land use policy but that's something everybody's moving forward just everything goes to that account that'd be great as an example yeah we yeah if we do more for-profit stuff on yeah we have a number of we have a number of accounts you know cpa accounts but also gift accounts for various projects for bridges for mitigation for you know ever source you know so there's a number of accounts that we can we can draw from as long as they're consistent with the purpose of the of the account well that's useful for us to know about so that we can point things at that those right all right team moving forward um informal approval sought 21 east hudley road i brought in lance curly hi lance we can see you hi everybody we can hear you great um if you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself and giving us a a three minute version of your informal approval question that would be great sure happy to my name's lance curly and i'm one of the principles at classic colonial homes uh we're a residential design build firm based in florids and we're currently underway with a historic renovation of the family residents at 21 east hudley road and we've been progressing steadily through various stages of demolition under the watchful guise of the inspection department mostly david cody and we reached a point where we needed to make some structural repairs to the northeastern corner of the of the building um and uh there's a 100 amp electrical service currently serving the house which will be upgraded to a 200 amp service and it happens to be located in a portion of the structure at the corner um that is kind of in conflict with some of the structural repairs that we are trying to make to secure the frame and so um i reached out to erin jock to get her take on it and explain to her that this is a bit of a time sensitive situation where we're kind of in the midst of demolition and trying to adequately shore the um building during the time of year that it is and um our electrician is uh capable of providing temporary electric to the house for a period of between three and five months we guess um and we are requesting permission to dig a hole that would be in the northwest or northeastern corner off the house in that image that you were just sharing which we sent to erin today upon her request um that uh is the the approximate location for that temporary post would be set in the ground and um that's what this is about thank you um can you remind me what what is the resource is there like a stream or across the road is the fort river and there's also there's also a wetland in the back of the property as well okay okay so this has been 200 feet of the fort river yes yep and if i could just add a little context to this um in my initial conversation with lance um we there there was so there's there is also proposed to be a small mudroom addition um in the sort of central if you can see my cursor this off the central um structure there like kind of in this corner and they do need to put in a footing there for that addition um but i had spoken previously with lance that they're going to be filing a request for determination for that um they were also considering some landscaping improvements and um so my suggestion was to file a request for determination for all of those sort of exterior improvements at once um but this temporary electrical service to me kind of seemed like something relatively minor that the commission could just give a verbal approval on and then once they file their rda they can move forward with um with the filing for the other work um i mean i to be honest like seeing the photos i do see that it looks like there's been a little bit of exterior work going on there like um i don't know if any trees have been removed or there's been any ground disturbance there but it does look a little bit like um i mean maybe it's just lawn and it's because it's frozen conditions and i don't know when these photos were taken but um i don't know lance if you could speak to that like if any if any trees have been removed recently or any um there's been any sort of excavation on the site at all no excavation that i know of the homeowner did do some tree and bush removal around the perimeter of the house prior to us starting okay um and the facade that's wrapped with plywood at the base is essentially covering up a gaping hole around the perimeter of the building where we've been jacking up posts on the interior of the structure and parging the interior foundation wall to strengthen it adding rebar um there's a number of kind of structural repairs that we've been kind of tackling but they're within the boundaries of the building okay i mean my so i guess my only comment then is um that it might make sense to do just a line of erosion controls at the limit of disturbance on the riverside for the entire length of the property from north to south um just to make sure that until that area is stabilized that there's some protection there to keep material from moving into the road and across i i don't think it's going to happen but i think it's also just an important um environmental control feature to have on the site um and and just keep it in place because you're going to be filing an rda anyways so um yeah my recommendation but i i don't have any problems with them putting in the temporary um service whatsoever um and they're going to be filing an rda um in you know the the not so distant future they already have a um board smith out there doing the delineation so i'm pretty comfortable with the board moving forward this with this i don't have any comments or concerns on it yeah my take is that i'm not concerned about putting a post in there for the temper temporary electrical especially if you guys are going to come back with an rda i agree with erin's point about a little bit of erosion control just because we're going to have an extended month season it's looking pretty bad um so it could only help um but i also should say thank you for taking the time to come before us um now so that we know what's going on it will help the rda process be more smooth um so yeah unless so i guess that's just to say um i feel comfortable moving forward on this path commissioners does anyone have any questions or concerns oh okay so erin is this emotion oh dav oh i'm sorry i see your hands now dave no i think this is a great outcome erin you know and i completely agree with with getting some erosion control control on the eastern south eastern um property line um i would say i think it's also an opportunity through the rda to maybe um uh do some education with the owners because i i do think a lot of trees were removed from that property and again i'm not faulting anybody but i think the average homeowner landowner property owner wouldn't realize oh i'm in the river front the river's across east avi road and down in you know in its in its uh you know in in its place so but i think it would be a good thing because in the future they may want to do things and and they they may need to file and there's obviously logical ways to move forward you know on restoring this historic home but i i think that's probably what happened it probably never even occurred to anybody oh i should check in with with the with the conservation agent on this so yeah which is just what i say again thank you lance for taking the time to do this now a lot of the time we come up against this stuff when it's already happened and we're we're left in a trickier enforcement situation which nobody enjoys um so this is a great path forward um from our perspective so thanks thank you and and from the the tree removal situation i mean i also was a little shocked to see the pictures and be like oh wow there was a lot of trees removed because i remember seeing it it was completely surrounded by trees um i mean i i don't know how many trees were removed but i think that that would be a good thing to document in the rda that's filed to say x number of trees removed these were the diameters and also if they could replace a couple of those trees i think that would be really nice like i'm not saying near to the house but maybe on the property they could do some replanting and i think it's something yeah go ahead like i mean i think just in the rda saying we removed this now we know maybe we shouldn't have here other ideas for a planting plan that can help restabilize the property um it can also benefit have many other benefits on the property so it's not to put the trees back where they weren't necessarily but um and when the growing season starts again it should they should be seating down that area and mulching it as well to make sure that it's getting established with some ground cover yeah yeah the uh the landscape work is not part of our scope and uh so we haven't had much to say about that with the with the owner but um i will be happy to mention that you know we had this discussion and that um you know there there's a path forward and uh it should be cooperative and they can reach out to erin um and therefore ask with questions as they go so if they want more detail and have questions please like we're here all right so erin do we need to vote for a temporary room i mean it's not really if it's sort of an informal so as long as as long as everybody on the board is comfortable with it i think that's really all we're looking for okay and we'll get the soap fence up in the next couple days so that's established and uh basically it's going to run from the butters property down east hadley road to the driveway and then carry beyond the driveway to the other boundary perfect okay got it thank you no all right best best of luck over there thank you very much we'll see you soon okay bye um all right i see mickey marcus here yes wca next on our agenda yep umass irrigation yes okay mickey i'm promoting you to a panelist all right okay hey everybody um so uh you you mass brought to my attention that they have a project they're considering for later in 2022 which is um adding irrigation to their agricultural learning center um i think this work will fall under the existing on m notice of intent it's supposed to come before the commission for your review and any conditions or if you want a separate filing so i just wanted to show you what we have um may i share a screen yes please go ahead yeah um okay so um you do you see this uh it's just a google earth still image um so this uh image is before the agricultural learning centers taking place it was in this corner this this is on north pleasant street right here on the left side and uh the top of the photo is looking north um anyway so they have the agricultural learning barn building here um i i did delineate the wetlands but they were in 2006 it was 2012 and then again 2016 and what it is is there's a drainage soil that runs right down through through this uh property it's a bbw but it's like a wet meadow about 20 feet wide and at this point here it becomes a stream channel and eventually crosses north pleasant street in a culvert so anyway they they want to um add irrigation to all these cropped lands here so they would take um an irrigation line bring it up the fields and then have cross laterals um i'm pretty sure the cross laterals will end up being within 100 feet of this drainage soil um as a phase two of the project um they'd like to go across where they have the tractor trail so it would this tractor trail crosses that soil and they had they're starting to develop more um crops they have a pollinator garden they have um some grapes some blueberries so they're starting to develop more work on this side of the project so the idea is basically they're doing a shallow irrigation line um just gets pulled behind a ditch which it just gets covered over and mulched right on top of it um there's no permanent impact but they you know they put a a plastic irrigation hose in this area so i guess there's two questions i i think that for the north side of the field there's no wetland alteration i think uh there may be minimal work within 100 foot buffer um for the phase future work they do the phase two um they would put the irrigation line in the tractor trail but that trail does cross out a drainage soil so you probably want to look at that more closely if they do that in the future but that's the project so they recently add a um on the uh if you're looking south on the main road coming in there they added recently like a it's not a wellhead but it's like they added there was like another like water pipe of some kind yeah there is um it i'm not sure exactly where it is but it's somewhere in here and they had an irrigation contractor look at that irrigation pipe versus the building and they determined that there was more pressure or was it better i'm not sure the reasons but uh the irrigation contractor said it would better off come in off the main building before we do more questions so erin what is really in front of us here like are we making a decision about whether this first phase of the project fits under the umbrella of the of the onm kind of permit is that right so if you guys think it should fall under the umbrella um of the of the onm plan and and from my perspective i don't have a problem with that for the phase one um i do have a couple questions i guess i mean the first thing is if they're going to do it underneath that permit then they would need to post a d e p file number sign on the site um to make sure that it's clear that it's falling under that permit the other thing is an erosion control inspection and i realize that this is cropland um but there may be appropriate places to install erosion control if there if there is um uh disturbance from um the laying of the of the lines um um the phase two i if they're crossing um bvw intermittent stream swale whatever you want to call it that would require a separate filing in my opinion um so that i've already i've already mentioned to mickey um i guess the one question i have is mickey the source of this water is like town town water okay it's not coming out it's not being pumped out of any resource area or anything like that okay yeah so that was where i was what i kind of my responses to it yeah i agree i think the as described phase one i'm comfortable with i agree with erosion control inspection just to be careful um and but then phase two i think we'd have to handle as another a permit yeah i see davier hand is raised go ahead muted david there we go um yeah just a couple of quick questions um i guess one mickey you refer to the the path of water as a drainage swale i don't know is anything under our bylaw really i don't know as we have drainage swales right so it's really an intermittent stream is that what it is it's a bvw it's a wet meadow yeah a wet meadow with with water moving east to west um toward the middle toward the middle river and i guess my only question is and i remember this you know when when umas first proposed putting you know the the agricultural center here is just kind of what's the long-term protection for that bvw to me this is a wonderful opportunity you know it's a demonstration farm you know just you know and obviously you know i'm supportive the commission is supportive of agriculture but what's what's the long-term plan for that bvw it seems like there's kind of expansion i was going to call it creep but that has a negative connotation but there's expansion of the fields but what's to protect that bvw over time i guess is my question um and isn't this a wonderful if this is a demonstration farm for sustainable organic growing shouldn't it also you know are there signs that say hey let's protect this bvw is there you know an understanding operation and and maintenance plan for the farm that says we should protect that bvw because it all goes it all goes west into the stream ultimately into the middle river so i'm just putting that out there what what's the plan long-term to protect that bvw yeah i i don't know the answer to that david so but i i will bring that to the attention of of you nas and they can have some conversations uh with the commission but i i don't have an answer to that also if i'm not mistaken where the cursor is um to the to the south of where the the ag center is now if you go in that that right there i think that's a created wetland if i'm not mistaken i think i think some project in i remember either expanded either created or expanded that wetland i think it was a demonstration wetland some 15 years ago well it worked um it so so there is there is a stream this there is a stream channel in this area it's a very nice wetland and it drains uh under a north pleasant street so if it was a created wetland it worked yeah i think maybe it was there and then then there was some permit to expand it i'm not sure but great thank you so to recap if i can just rephrase what some of the comments were was they should put up a d et file number in front of the farm center uh let the commission know when the work's going to be done and have uh erosion control inspections only work on the north side of the swale no work crossing the swale and speak to the commission about any future work that they want to do in the south part of the area that seems like a great that sounds like a great recap to me the only thing i'd add is just bringing up with UMass like is there a long-term plan and any educational opportunities associated with that um bbw it could be a good opportunity yeah it'd be nice to put in some buffer there some plantings or something to protect it create some vegetated buffer around it or you know some way to i don't know i don't know what it looks like because i haven't been out on this site before but i'm excited to go out there and have a look at it yeah i will tell you that even in the summer uh it's it's wet um i think the reason it's there is nobody's been able to farm it so it's they just stay away from this about a 20 foot wide wet drainage swale which is a bbw okay but even at the very least mickey having said that maybe it would be good to monument that so future generations of UMass farmers kind of get to know hey you know um because i i have seen many wetlands kind of drained on agricultural fields and there's ways to do it um so it might be good to monument it okay thanks mickey thank you i kind of appreciate it yeah appreciate the heads up okay the details at all good night good night you guys want to jump into some other business yeah all right i'm just looking back um so go back to me minutes erin or you go ahead oh there you are yeah um this is just administrative piece if we could i i would feel completely comfortable if somebody wants to make a motion approving multiple sets in one motion as opposed to having to make an individual motion for each of these um the other thing is that the the bottom two are um the minutes from the subcommittee meeting that i just typed up they're very like a one page kind of um brief overview um i'm not sure that the commission really needs to approve those dave i'm not i would defer to you but i mean my thinking was more so do we have the commission's approval to post them on the website um but it's up to you dave i don't know what your guidance is on that if we should have a motion to approve them again i think i think if you did a motion to approve this the following sets of minutes if the commission's comfortable with us okay um so with the regulation subcommittee though that's not a public meeting yeah it is yeah it's a legally posted meeting yet we post agendas and they're recorded and they're they're posted on our webpage okay the only question i'd have there is should the entire commission be approving minutes that they weren't they aren't and never attend versus should the members of the regulation committee approve those vote to approve those separately that would be fine with me i mean i think that's reasonable more logical to me so i want to do two so we're looking for our motion to approve the minutes uh from four twenty two twenty nine seventeen twenty five thirteen twenty ten twenty three nineteen twelve twenty two twenty one and one twelve twenty two the guy in a down blue vest i think is lined up for this one i was hoping i was hoping go larry larry you made it the only thing i've got about that is the fact that the one error that i've mentioned the error in a ready is that on twelve twenty two twenty one my name is not on the list that'll get changed i'm sure by error yes i'll correct that error otherwise i recommend we improve these all right looking for a second second all right voice vote uh fletcher hi larry hi chelle hi laroy hi lora hi and i'm an eye and then we're looking for a motion from michelle or laroy to approve the regulation subcommittee meetings from one seventeen twenty two and one twenty one twenty two so moves second i can second all right and voice vote laroy uh michelle hi all right approved all right um uh an emergency certification request uh for um 38 chapel this was one that um i had to kind of um i guess the pictures are on one drive this is one that i had kind of prefaced you guys on quite a while ago we had another emergency cert a few houses up from here um there is a huge stand of dead very tall dead pines that it appears have been destroyed by like the emerald emerald pine borer and they're a real safety issue so here's a good picture showing them um so they requested to remove basically 10 of these from their backyard a lot of these are just falling on people's houses right now um so um i didn't have any problem with the removal and conditioned it and it was approved by dave so we just need a vote to ratify this emergency certification those are almost like the telephone poles right yeah i saw one of them that fell on somebody's deck uh back deck and it was definitely scary um it damaged the deck it broke the deck so why can't we use them for bridges because they're dead they're red vine or white vine red vine looks like red like a diorama from harvard forest it does it's a little copper guy down there you know wrapped in copper coil are there draft forces muddy brook farm is really the question here um okay so we just need a motion to ratify this emergency cert for chapel 38 road okay do you have a second a second thanks laura voice vote um laura laura laury hi michelle hi lecture hi number nine awesome um okay so this one's a little tricky um you guys might remember this one um single family home construction 74 east levert road let me pull up pictures um oh very nice gentleman constructed this house he i did inspections at this place regularly um i was out there gosh because because east levert road was happening the sewer line replacement was happening so i was out there um quite a bit looking at this project and he did send me these photos um it looks like they established a pretty good grass um in the leach field area it's really around the house and it's tough because he's closing in like three days but um the site isn't established with vegetation yet like i wouldn't even on this site approve removal of erosion controls yet um but he's requesting a request for certificate of compliance and i i did tell him that i thought it was a long shot but um he is hoping you guys will consider it um i wrong one sorry um i was out there and did an inspection where am i um and i took some photos my photos um are a little more up to date they did do some measures to try to correct there was and i'm i'm really glad that we the commission to be honest stuck to uh the uh having the swale along the driveway because it really has been catching a lot of the runoff and preventing the a real basically forming right along the edge of that driveway so especially with snow on the ground that has really served its purpose and so i think that was a very very smart um design feature for the commission to require as it's functioning as it should i don't see any issues as far as violations on the site um everything they've planted they've they've put together um a get there um there's a planting area if i can get to it there it is so you can see the stones and they've done planting area in the area that's their riverfront restoration um that has the plantings in it there's no areas that are unstable there was it in the um initially up in this area there was starting to be a little bit of erosion forming on the um the uh area that they had hydro seeded that's up above the stone swale but they actually repaired the erosion and hydro seeded it again and now it seems to be holding um but even with that um like i said there's no issues with destability the site is stable and they the erosion controls are in place everything's functioning it's mulched it's seeded but it's just not established um seed so i mean i'm sure when the growing season begins that the seed is going to come in and it'll it'll stabilize but the question is right now how to handle the certificate of compliance um yeah so i share your hesitation erin um commissioners does anyone have any questions or instincts on this one i'm i'm hesitant i mean kind of the fundamental basis of issuing a compliance is is the vegetation's taken and grown so i don't really see how we can do that and certainly set a precedent for doing it again from sprisky yeah thanks michelle i agree so in terms of like a process here is just they're asking for this because they're switching owners that's why right somebody's purchasing the yeah yeah it's for sale right now and what i had advised the um the owner who's submitting the request is what we've done previously on other lots is to put money in escrow um for the for the buyer um so that if something doesn't establish if there's a problem if there's a violation there's an assurity there but at the same time if um you know we asked them to come back in at the end of may um that uh and we issue a certificate of compliance at that point that they could release that bond back to the the seller um and that was my recommendation to them but they wanted to run it by you guys and um see how you felt about it first i like your idea of the escrow i agree prudent okay i think it's a great recommendation here and i given the topography there given where this idea is the time of year i i don't think there's any yeah i wouldn't remove those encryption controls no um okay we've got to go through the whole spring rains you know there's a lot of a lot of winter left and a lot of spring left to even get to that point where that's vegetated so yeah come back when you're mowing the lawn exactly exactly yeah no i think that's a good point well um that that is all of the other business i have with the exception of one thing which i'm going to let dave um take the the rains on um if you if that's okay with you dave yeah absolutely yeah i i think so this is the only last business we have right it is yep so yeah we just want to take a few minutes i i know it's still early so we don't want to belabor this but we wanted to just give you a brief kind of introduction erin and i have been having some great very productive conversations about land use policy and you know erin has you know i got to give her um just heap on the the praise and credit to her for for being um persistent with me and also being an incredible researcher to pull together all of these rather disparate documents and policies and and and prior prior actions of of former conservation commission members and and staff to really kind of pull some things together and we're not going to get really deep into it tonight we just wanted to give you a little flavor of of where we're trying to go and and what we want to do is try to pull together um with you obviously with you for you and for the land and amherst a comprehensive land use policy and so what i can say is through the years and and the prior director of of conservation p westover was here for 30 years and and honestly there really wasn't a comprehensive land use policy for conservation land at all um back in those days it was you know Pete was an ecologist and a land use planner and way back then kind of whatever Pete and the commission worked out was what happened on the land and i think so much has changed um our knowledge of of of ecology our knowledge of land management and the world has changed as we've really come to grips with global climate change and and the impacts that that will have on all of us both human and ecology and and critters and and plants and and trees and so erin you know with my enthusiastic uh support began to pull together a whole host of things old regulations dog use policy agricultural use policy rules and regulations for community gardens um and the list goes on and on and so what we wanted to do is give you a little flavor of what we'd like to bring to you in in your meetings and our goal would be in the end to really have one document one place where the commission can come where staff can come and honestly where the public can come to understand what rules and regulations and what policies we are following to both manage the land to acquire new land and when when a new piece of property for instance hickory ridge comes into the town how do we look at that and how do we make decisions on how to manage that land so let me stop there erin do you want to you know let me hand it off to you and and say a little bit more about it because you you're the one that's dug really dug into some of these old documents and and begun to pull out some of the the interesting features of them yeah i mean it's really just been sort of consolidating them and then as we consolidate them trying to come up with what's missing where the holes in this so um a policy on conservation restrictions agricultural restrictions encroachments onto conservation land liability issues and like tonight was a great example with adventure east we have a standard policy like and and even fees and that's something that that we haven't haven't brought into this policy yet as far as fees or donations or anything like that but this is to get like a really strong foundation underneath um in writing that we we can start reviewing and adding to and you know sort of modifying to have it be the framework that we want it to be um land use applications sort of what our standard expectations are also licensing for agricultural and as we'll see in the coming weeks general land use licenses because this has come up um with a program running um at amethyst brook that's like an educational program for kids that was never previously licensed and so we're helping them to become licensed so they can continue to operate and so stay tuned for that um but also leases enforcement um you know another another factor that i thought of sort of as we were drafting it is dam maintenance or dam removal like our policy on that so um it'll be it started out of us thinking oh it'll be like one or two pages super short and sweet but then as as we started to tease it apart we're like oh we need this we need this we need this and so it might be about 10 pages at the end of it but it's going to be a really great document that we can point to whenever a land use application comes in whenever a license comes through whenever there's an encroachment whenever there's an enforcement issue and i think that'll be a really great thing for us to have yeah and if i could just add you know there's a couple of great examples like the brian the gentleman who was before you a few minutes ago there's a there's a there's a program that that his organization wants to offer it's a for-profit or it's a non-profit it's a for-profit or non-profit depending i think i think there are for-profit and they're charging a fee so what is our policy what is your policy and how does staff enforce that policy uh relative to uh folks who want to charge a fee to be out there erin just mentioned what we believe is a non-profit organization running kind of a preschool if you will program out of amethyst brook we've we've made well-intentioned attempts to license a couple of areas for use by farmers unfortunately i think and and unfortunately i think our efforts have been good on the on the front side but not good on the back side in other words what do we require of those licensees do we require an annual just a a report how did it go what worked out at amethyst brook or haskins meadow do we require um a site visit by one of the staff to look at what's happening out at amethyst brook or anywhere else we're licensing for for farmland um and we also want to include kind of the rules and regulations it's really a good time i think in 2022 for the commission to look at what are your rules are you comfortable with the rules for dog dogs on leash and dogs off leash are you comfortable with with or should we look at i believe we should look at things like camping is that something we want to allow historically we did allow camping i have pretty strong feelings about where i'd like to see the commission go but what about camping on conservation land what about horseback riding on conservation land um and what tools do we have to enforce those rules and regulations right now there really aren't any when somebody encroaches on conservation land let's say they take down some trees on down land or they dump a bunch of you know yard waste or whatever we really don't have a lot of teeth um and we you have the authority that you can empower me to to use but there really is no monetary penalty for doing things on conservation land that people shouldn't be doing so these are all the kinds of topics we want to we want to engage you on and it probably will take a few months to work through this we anticipate a a number of public meetings or parts of your meetings being public and encouraging people to come and and engage with us and then there would need to be a public hearing at some point to kind of ratify where you want to go with some of this policy and rules and regulations i will say that brad and other um you know assistant land managers through the years have been kind of frustrated because they just they don't know there's no one place that they can go to gather all this information also if we want the support of the emmer's police department um they need to know what are the rules and regulations that you have promulgated i'll give you one quick example out behind my house is the ken cut a back trail some years ago my neighbors called the police and said there's somebody with a big bonfire out on the ken cut a back trail on conservation land and the police said can you point me to they said to um the neighbors can you point me where it says you can't have a fire on emmer's conservation land and they really there was nowhere easily easily easy to find that we could point that the neighbor could find on our website or anywhere else it said you can't have a fire on conservation land so the police were really hard pressed to enforce that so small examples but they come up repeatedly do we have another slide in oh okay so that's so so we've been working a little bit with town council and we'd love to you know i don't know if this is a subgroup a subcommittee of the commission that would like to work more closely with us or whether you're comfortable with us kind of bringing more detail to this um you know and maybe taking 20 minutes to half an hour of some of your upcoming meetings to really lay this whole thing out for you i'd like the idea of keeping it small you know tight and succinct as possible right just so as you're saying uses something to point at and something for quick reference important to get a dog down i don't want to bring up another thing on here but have you at all been approached by any big companies about carbon like carbon credits on conservation land so specifically selling the carbon on conservation lands for a profit so that polluters can buy those credits and blue more we have not we've not been formally approached although i do know other municipalities yes we have westfield i believe as springsfield watersheds yeah it's happening it's oh yeah so we're gonna come after and they're gonna be calling you about like urban like street trees too yeah but like that like having done so many like carbon credits before like that doesn't make any sense because this is already conserved land so you're not adding any value you know what i'm saying like yeah it only counts it only is a true carbon credit if you're actually doing something new that captures carbon that you otherwise would not do like the un has like rigorous standards here so these are like bs carbon credit people oh yeah but it's like google and microsoft but they're an apple so let me well let me let me throw a little wrinkle i'm just saying it could be coming at you for land policy ideas so so the town of amherst for instance we between conservation land and and watershed protection water supply protection we own let's call it between five and six thousand acres of land a lot all of that land is potentially open for logging we can log conservation land there's nothing that prohibits us from logging conservation land or watershed supply or watershed protection land so the research i've done and people i've talked to part of the carbon credit program is that you put a permanent no much no but restriction and that is in my understanding where you get the credit that's right yeah so that was the only you know kind of difference laura i guess in my understanding yeah and that's true yeah that would make sense along with a whole another litany of criteria but yeah and we and we do log our watershed lands in my time with the town we have never logged any part of any conservation area that i can think of i know prior to me getting here we did do some logging very modest um on some some conservation land but anyway i i think you know it certainly makes them up fletcher we may get approached hey i'm just letting you know that's going to that stuff is in the pipeline and you can actually continue to log and sell carbon credits at the same time and it's going it's coming right down to people down to 10 acre parcels so backyard landowners can still have you have to have a baseline anyway i'm just saying in terms of because you're talking about land use policy here this is big and it's happening now and it's just something to consider because i'm sure someone's gonna ask you about it and you referenced it's in the pipeline which yeah it's back back to the original request about the land use planning things one of the things i like about it is the fact that it allows us to do public education i you know my neighbors my my colleagues don't really know what the conservation commission is responsible for and so forth so something like this even your beginning presentation like this could go on our web page in terms of the conservation commission to talk about what we are and what we are going to do with your support and and and encouragement i think what erin and i would do and she's already made great strides on this we would i think a next step would be to bring to you kind of an outline of the various sections with a little meat on the bone shall we say to at least give you more than we gave you in three or four slides to kind of lay out as erin has some of the major headings and then maybe some of the subheadings i like i like that and maybe maybe a timeline for going through them clearly some of them are more charged if you will i mean talking about camping on conservation land i don't know is we're going to get a hundred people to talk about camping on conservation land but when we talk about dog regulations that may get some interest from people so i think we do need to think carefully about how we go through the various sections so i i agree but i mean part of but but yeah but i think the important part about this is the public education i mean yes we have to have this but i think it's also important for the public education and larry just so that you know i i did take what you said because a couple meetings ago you had mentioned like all these projects like the conservation commission is working on and i created on the conservation commission page and i'm going to find it for you guys really quickly to show you i created a page which is kind of like special projects that the conservation commission is working on and i include on their things like this and and these are things this as well as the the other work that um i'll just the other work that we're doing with the bylaw um so like the the bylaw um committee work and then the um open space um so can you guys see the this this conservation so under other wetlands projects um i just i've just started sort of populating this but um it's got um the kestrel land trust videos on here the macro invertebrate studies that have been going on at umass are on here the streamflow studies of the tanbrook that christine hatch has been helping with and then other projects around town um and these this is a work in progress that like the food bank farm dedication hickory ridge you know there's there from different site visits um like this was the hickory ridge event ridge events that we did um and i still have to i'm i'm working with with uh briana to get the photos on there but part of the other thing of this is that you know a lot of people in town don't know what we are yeah you know even even in the beginning of that page where you talk about the conservation commission some statements about what our mandate is and what we're doing the idea of public education side of this yeah i mean i do i i have been modifying our website um i'm not being critical yeah no no it's it's excellent forward to the positive side of this that that we should we should we should be more out front about telling our neighbors etc what we're doing so they can help us i mean you know people see things and they report in to you but if they don't know what they've got a report how do they do it yeah i've definitely been working to try to better convey that larry but it's the point is is well taken for sure um yeah i think michelle have you thanks ben um i just want to say i think this is really exciting as everyone obviously does to you but um i do a lot of land use application legal and like on conservation lands with very sensitive species and habitats um with like lots of stipulations and all the legal use that goes around or that side be happy to you know subcommittee or have side conversations or anything in the development of that and a lot of experience with easements and conservation restrictions on conservation land so that's sort of my my fees and i'd be happy to contribute michelle just so that you know because michelle and i had talked about this offline was the plantings i did incorporate a section in there on plantings and any plantings done on conservation land must be um native plantings um but i do think michelle made an excellent comment which is like dpw department of public works like their project that they did um over on the the mill lane viewing platform and stuff like i know that we required of them that they do native plantings but like on other sites around town like the playgrounds or you know other other locations where they're putting in plantings are those native plantings and what are the plantings and stuff you know that so that was interesting it's not it's not related to land use policy but it is a important you know component of what we do in town i look i look out my front door and i see three invasive plants that my neighbors don't know any better about what do they do now but i mean you know those kind of things yeah so the one thing i know we want to wrap gen but the one thing i think we do need to to really focus on and i think once once you see kind of the outline call them chapters call them sections major headings is being realistic about how long it might take us yeah actually this is not a that's right reading thing this might take us a couple of months to work through yeah i agree um yeah so also if i can get a word here i think the my comment is just yes i match everyone's enthusiasm for this i think um there will be some benefit to getting something in place even if it's not perfect so we know some of the sticky issues that we're constantly coming back to maybe we can prioritize though those for some a little bit of a living document um to begin with just because i could really see getting super bogged down in some of these for all the reasons that michelle just stated some of this gets very complicated very quickly um so i don't know if there's a way to prioritize or um come up with like a schedule that allows us to have something in place sooner rather than later um i just yeah i'm sensitive to you know it's we're in the quiet season now it's going to get busier we're all busy we're already asking for michelle's any you know whatever volunteered made time for the bylaw subcommittee so um yeah 100 support but 100 percent support prioritizing the issues that we know are recurring as opposed to like getting into things that don't come up as often like campfires and camping um yeah let us yeah that's a really good point let us take a look at the the major sections and and give some thought to that because i you know i hear what you're saying but something like just i don't want to go into detail now but something like dog regulations yeah is probably in the top three most controversial thing that we will talk about and although i'd love to tackle that one there needs to be a lot of lead time and and that's a big one and and we have to really roll up our sleeves on something like that if we're going to touch it it's kind of a third rail yep absolutely and so is there i mean this might be a question for even the town council you know is there a way to say okay here's our you know land use policy section one approved or like something where we can piecemeal approve this i don't think the town council has anything to do with this okay this is all yours um as far as i know we can check with legal counsel but there may be elements but i can't think of any off the top of my head that need to go to the town council this is 98 percent you i think i don't you know we can look into whether i think you even have the ability to institute fines you know so so let's let us we'll do a little more work our hope is to at least bring you the outline in two weeks it might be four weeks but let us do a little work on that okay great um did anyone else any other commissioners have any comments or questions laura and laura this has been an enthusiastic discussion i just want to make sure everyone has a chance to chime in okay thank you dave and erin for taking the time on this um it's perfect timing so you anticipated it so well really appreciated um so i think that was the end of the agenda erin yes yep that was all i had tonight okay i can move to adjourn yeah i think i think so i moved to adjourn second there you go all in favor hi there uh michelle hi lauri hi laura hi laura hi butter hi i'm an eye good night everybody nice good job everyone thank you guys much