 Good evening, everyone. My name is Ryan Klopp. I'm Arlington's Conservation Administrator. The February 1st, 2024 meeting of the Arlington Conservation Commission will be conducted in a remote format consistent with Chapter 2 of the Act of 2023 to extend the remote meeting participation of public meetings until the 31st of March, 2025. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. I'll put the link to all of the meeting materials into the chat right now. Chuck Taroni, our Conservation Commission Chair, shall facilitate tonight's meeting. Please note that there will be a brief comment period for each hearing. Each vote during this meeting will be conducted via a roll call vote, and we will begin with a roll call of attendance. Nathaniel Stevens. President. Susan Chapnick. President. Mike Kildescain. Here. David Kaplan. I'm here. I'm searching for who I missed. David White. David White, thank you. Sorry, David White. And the dog. And Brian McBride. And Brian McBride. Thank you, Brian McBride. Here. Present. Okay, and so we also have Lane Coleman, as associate member of the commission, and... Sarah. Sarah Alfaro-Franco. I think I said that. I couldn't see the red, yeah. So the commission is all here, and I'll go with the agenda first, and then we'll proceed to our first administrative review of minutes. So the first thing on the agenda would be the minutes. And then we have correspondence, and I'm just going to read those into the record. And if you want to read the entire letter or email that the Conservation Commission received, Ryan Kapp will put a link in the chat, and you'll be able to go there. So Bird Cougan, 17 Eden Street, about Thorndike Place, a coalition to save Mugar Wetlands, sent two, one and two, both from Thorndike Place. And then we received one from Janet Cummings, and Janet was from 32 Dorothy Road. Lane, Lane, oh, Lane Light, right there, 53 Dorothy Road. That was also about Thorndike Place. Lisa Friedman, 63 Mott Street, Thorndike Place. And Peter Fiori, 58 Mott Street, Thorndike Place. A lot of these had pictures of flooding. So if you're interested in knowing about what the extent of flooding during the rainstorm was, these pictures can show that. So moving on from that, we're going to have a proposed amphibian restoration project. And then the commission will talk about some EGLE Scout projects that have once been proposed, but we might have some other ones to add to our list. And the Water Bodies Working Group, we discuss the integral port and the SWCA contract, Park and Rex commission, liaison report, artificial turf, liaison report. And then Scott Horsley, hydrogeologist analysis. He's from Water Resource Consultant. We'll talk about the Thorndike Place projects. And then from that, we will go right into our hearings. And the first hearing would be Thorndike Place. The second hearing would be 51 Birch Street. Third hearing would be an amendment to the order of conditions for the Ellington Reservoir and then a request for determination for 35 Beverly Road. ADA Coolidge has continued to our next meeting. So I don't expect to hear from them. With that, we are going to jump right into the minutes. And Nathaniel Stevens has his hands raised. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I have a procedural question. Just on the agenda, I believe if Scott Horsley is going to be speaking about Thorndike Place, that should be within the hearing for the Thorndike Place matter. It should be a separate agenda item. Sure. And it's listed before the hearings opening on the agenda. And I just wanted to assume that you were going to open the agenda for Thorndike Place. And so that's your suggestion. We open the hearing and then let's go to Scott Horsley speak. That sounds fine. Understood. Thanks. Okay. Minutes. Review the minutes. I know there were some comments from Nathaniel Stevens and Susan Chapnick. So I'm not sure if they're going to narrate their comments when they come up. So I had a question here. This is in the 43 Beverly Road determination. And I don't remember what dates we landed on in the meeting because we did have a discussion about this, whether it should be between November 15th and May 1st or November 15th and April 15th. And I thought maybe Brian Klopp could tell us because he got the determination out. What does it say? I haven't gotten the determination out the door quite yet. Oh, okay. I believe you're actually right that it was April 15th though. Yeah, I think we had that discussion and decided it would be April 15th. And then I just added a bullet about Sarah's update from the tree committee because that was just mistakenly left on the minutes. So I'd like to make a motion to approve the minutes as edited. Oh, second. Okay. So moving right along, let's take a vote now. So let's go with David Kaplan. Yes. David White. Yes. Mike Kildes game. Yes. Susan Chapnick. Yes. Brian McBride. I'll abstain because I wasn't present. And Nathaniel Stevens. Yes. And the chair says yes. Moving on to the next agenda item. We have a proposal for amphibian restoration project by Katcha. Could you? Hi. Sure. Could you introduce yourself to the commission? And I don't know if you're sharing your screen to give a presentation, but introduce yourself and then just get right into what's your presentation. Please. Of course. Hi, everyone. My name is Katya Kwaku and I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut studying ecology and evolution. I did my masters at Tufts and I'm from Boston. So I'm kind of familiar with the area already. And I do have a presentation if I'm able to share my screen. Oh, yeah, it seems like I can. All right. So my research is on how urbanization affects amphibians. And my main project is I'm trying to see what limits would frog distributions in urban areas. I've given this presentation to David Morgan. So this figure is from Milford, Connecticut, along an urban to rural gradient that's defined by a forest fragmentation index, so combining forest cover and road density. And it seems like spring peepers do pretty well, regardless of level of urbanization, but would frogs are pretty sensitive. And people have said maybe this is because spring peepers have greater habitat flexibility, but would frogs are forest specialists. Or maybe would frogs aren't in urban areas because they can't get there and they're dispersed unlimited, whereas spring peepers are generally better dispersers, they climb trees, so maybe they could climb fences and are just more adept at navigating the urban landscape. And so to see if it's dispersal imitation or poor habitat quality. My project is to remove dispersal barriers by performing reintroductions of wood frogs to urban ponds to see if we can restore their populations. And this might seem like a kind of shocking experiment to do, but people have done this in Milford, Connecticut and in Bangor, Maine. And they found no difference in larval survival or performance between urban and rural ponds. If anything, the urban larvae or tadpoles actually did a bit better. So I'm trying to repeat this experiment, but then also tracking the frogs even through their terrestrial stages and tracking them throughout their life. And maybe there's something to do with a terrestrial habitat quality that isn't quite great. But we're going to put them in ponds that we think are suitable. And so I have this pretty ambitious project where I'm trying to replicate it in four different cities, so I can see if my results are just a city attribute or not. So in Arlington, your ponds would be the urban ones, and then just a bit west of here in Weston, and there's one in Wayland, would be the source ponds. And I've talked with their conservation commission, and they're on board and think it's pretty cool. And so I would take some wood frog eggs, and I'm also hoping to do with this with spring peepers, but I know spring peepers are, their eggs are much harder to find. So this is an ideal world. Get eggs from both species and close some in Weston and Wayland and put some of them in some. ponds in Arlington and measure their survival. And I've started this already in Milford, Connecticut last year and did a little test run with wood frogs. And so you can kind of see how it works where there are wood frog eggs, and I get some of them. If there aren't many wood frog eggs in the pond, I take way fewer so that I don't take all the eggs in the pond and I count them and I move them to these egg enclosures that are Tupperwares with mesh on the side so water can come in with floats. And then once they're hatchlings, I count them again and then move them to these larval enclosures that are made out of fiberglass window screening. And so I count them at each of those stages to get an idea of larval survival and I take photos of them to see their growth. And then to track them as after they metamorphose. Once they're close to metamorphosis, I can put them in this bath of calcine, which is commonly used to batch mark fish, but it's recently been used in wood frogs as well. And it's pretty cool. If you do this at the right time of metamorphosis, it goes into their ossifying tissue and then later, if you have a black light, you can see the mark In some of their bones and their parietal bones and their foot bones. And so that's how I'm hoping to track them and find them throughout their life. And then, of course, once they're mature enough, if the restoration is successful, hopefully they'll be calling and so these are my predicted results. If there's indeed something wrong with the terrestrial habitat quality in urban areas, wood frogs wouldn't do as well as the rural frogs or the spring peepers. But if we are right and wood frogs aren't in urban areas because they can't get there and they're dispersed to limited, these restoration efforts should be successful. Which is important because if it's poor habitat quality, we are going to want to go with some more terrestrial habitat, more, I mean, more traditional habitat restoration management plans. But if they're dispersed to limited, we might want to take more aggressive conservation measures and perform more reintroductions or just ensure that there are corridors between suitable habitat patches. And so that is the main project I'm presenting. But another part is just seeing how urban and rural ponds differ in their characteristics. And so that's me in a pond in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. At Mount Auburn Cemetery, they don't think that the wood frogs would do super well there, but they're still excited for me to help them monitor their ponds. And then on the right is a pond in Wayland. And I just measure all of these characteristics, so I would measure these in Arlington as I'm doing the reintroduction project as well. And these are my predictions for urban ponds compared to rural ones. And based on my pilot data on some other sites, like in Milford, as expected, it already seems like the water temperature and conductivity is higher in urban ponds. Which is interesting because eventually I also want to see if amphibians show local adaptations to urban ponds. So the amphibians that are there, have they evolved greater tolerance to higher temperatures or high salt concentrations? And so I would do common garden experiments where I put these animals from urban and rural environments in a common environment to see if the differences are maintained and if they're genetic potentially. And so David and I talked about some potential ponds that I could do the same in Arlington. I know Arlington doesn't have any certified vernal pools, but there seem to be some potential ones that look suitable. So there's one at Monotomy Rocks Park that I've been to a few times. It seems like it dries in the summer and I've seen some juvenile green frogs around, which is promising. It seems like it's suitable for amphibians. There seems to be a small off-shoot, a small pond next to the Arlington Reservoir. And then there's kind of a fragmite mighties marsh at MacLennan Park, but along the edge where it's not dominated by the reed, it seems like it could be suitable for wood frogs. Around there, or sometimes there are flooded areas closer to the trail, although I'm not sure how long those stay flooded for. And then by Meadowbrook Park, there are parts of the of the brook seem to expand and flood out and create some well ends that seem like they could be suitable for wood frogs or spring fevers there. And so those were the four places I was thinking of. Let me know your thoughts. That's all I have. Thanks. Okay, thank you. I'm going to turn this over to the Commission in a second, but I was my first question I came up with was these areas, not all of them belong to the Conservation Commission. Did you reach out to other departments and ask, could you let me know, shaking your head, Monotomy Rocks Park? Was that something that you received permission to do this experiment at? No, not yet. So I believe all of them, except for Meadowbrook Park are owned by the Conservation Commission, but I could also, oh, the Parks and Recreation Service. Yeah, Park and Rec. Okay. A lot of them are owned by the Park and Rec. Oh, there they are. And Monotomy. Okay. Meadowbrook is the conservation. Okay, got it. The res also would be Park and Rec. Okay, I think we all have to get permission from them as well. Sure. Susan Chapnick has her hand up. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Chuck. Wow, this is very aggressive, Katja. You're doing lots of different things. I'm wondering when you actually get into it, if you might focus down a bit, because you're looking at urban and rural differences in, you know, adaptations and water quality and different nutrients. And then you're also looking at survival and, you know, whether it's dispersal that they're just not there or whether it's habitat. There's just so many things going on. I'm just wondering if it's too much. That's something for you and your professors who your advisors to decide. But it's very aggressive and you're obviously very passionate about it, which is awesome. I do have a few, few comments. One of them is, I guess you've done this maybe as a pilot, but it seems to me there would be potential for predation on the eggs and how do you, you know, control for that. And also the larval stages. And then I was wondering if there are any other competing species, when you start introducing a species to an ecosystem, as you probably know, there's competition. And how do you know if they, you know, survive, are they out competing something else that would have taken that niche? It's just another question I had. Yeah, so in terms of the predation and the enclosures last year, the egg bins originally didn't have covers on them because we need enough light so that the eggs don't get moldy. They need lots of UV light. Just in one pond, it seemed like maybe ducks ate a bunch of them. And so this year we're going to put some garden fencing over it to just in case there are any like large predators like that, but it would still ensure enough light to get in. And then once in the larval enclosures in the cylindrical window screening, they're closed off so predators don't get in. Because their main predators would be dragonflies, laying eggs in their larvae eat the wood frog eggs. And I do want to keep them protected from predators, because even though there are predators in the environment and it's natural, because they're in this enclosed environment, they can't really escape or swim away. I want to keep them protected. And then in terms of competition with other organisms, it seems like most of the ponds I am putting them in don't already have amphibians. And so I don't think that would be an issue if there are, like I said, the juvenile green frogs or green frogs, they kind of have different niches than the wood frogs and spring peepers. Where They are the green frogs are in the more permanent bodies of water than the wood frogs and spring peepers. And so I don't think there's much competition between the two. And then my final and this this may just come up when you go to Park and Rec Park and Rec is doing a project proposing a project to redo a playground area naturalized playground area and it looked like I couldn't quite tell where you were pointing. In near near Hills pond, it wasn't the pond, but it was in Monotam and Roxxon and I think that might be the same area that Park and Rec is looking at the playground and we've asked them to stay, you know, at least 50 feet away from there, but that might have an impact if they do construction near the area where you're introducing Or it is just something to ask them when you go last mission. It's good to know. Thank you. Sure. I think it would be interesting to have a rental pool in that spot. And the closest they're getting is 25 feet. They're a lot closer than 50 feet. There's a restoration area with walking stepping stones. Sure. David White. And we're You want to keep things moving tonight. So I just wanted to make that comment about when We're at 14 minutes already on this project. So if just, if you can not ask a question that's already been asked. Thanks. I'm just going to mention that the pond next to the reservoir is actually constructed the wetland. It was put in when the dam was reconstructed. So And it has water channel from the Mill Brook into the pond area. So it's David David mentioned that I It's not a problem if it's like an artificial pond, but I was wondering, do you think Our fish able to get into there? David said he doesn't think so, but that would be a problem. It's a lot of flows from the I'm sure there's fish there or not, but there's a refrain from the book. Okay. Yeah. David Kaplan. Thank you. Thank you. That's an excellent presentation. Thank you for that. The work sounds really interesting and exciting. I have no issues with it from the Wetlands Protection Act or the bylaw perspective. So good luck and pending permissions. I would I would support the work. Thank you. Thank you very much. Brian and Brian. I just wanted to ask if you consider the, I guess it's called Infinity Pond in the Arlington's Great Meadows. I know that's a genuine Vernal pond and it does have a lot of peepers, but it's on your radar. I just thought it mentioned. Oh, I have not. So it's called Infinity Pond. I think so. David White might correct me. Infinity Pond. Yes. Northern Edge near the Christian Academy. It's crazy in the springtime. There's just like a jungle with different frogs calling there. Nice little pool. Thanks. I'll look into that. Thank you. Kathy, what's your next steps? You know, after you come to the Conservation Commission, some of the ponds that you mentioned, I was concerned that they had frogs in them because, you know, any, any pond that has a frog in it has a different kind of life cycle and that predation on wood frog eggs would be high with those frogs and and I think you said you were worried about dragonflies. And I think you're talking about Reece Burke right there because it's probably a pretty big area for dragonflies. But what are your next steps from the Conservation Commission? So after the Conservation Commission, if I will get permission from the Parks and Rec department, the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife has already approved of the project. I would go there in March and make sure that there are no wood frogs or spring peepers already there. I did like a bit of scoping around last year and I don't think that there are, but I would verify that. And then I mean, if there are dragonflies and such, that's, that's fine since they would be protected within the egg and larval enclosures. And it's actually like important for there to be dragonflies because once the adults, once they're adults, then they eat the dragonflies. It's just as their tadpoles, the dragonfly larvae will eat them. And I think in the wild, the pond is bigger than the enclosures. And so sure some of the, there would be some predation by dragonfly larvae, but hopefully the tadpoles, some of them would be able to swim away and escape. Sure. Any other questions from the commission? Any motions from the commission about this project? I was going to approve. A second. Oh, second. Discussion. I would be interested in your coming back and sending us with your findings when that happens. Yes. 50 findings. Yes. All right. We have motion. We have a second. I think let's just go down, run down the roll call. Nathaniel Stevens. Yes. Brian McBride. Yes. Susan Chapnick. Yes. David White. Yes. Mike Gildes game. Yes. David Kaplan. Yes. The chair says yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for, thanks for that presentation. Good luck. Yeah, good luck. Thank you. All right. All right. So it's 730. I think that we'll just suspend discussion at this point and move right into our first, first item on the hearings. And so I want to open the hearing for Thorndike place. But before we hear from the applicant. David White. I'm leaving. I'm refusing myself. Oh, getcha. David White's going to recuse himself from this hearing. And so before we hear from the applicant and our third party review, I'm going to invite Scott Horsley to talk about talk about his. I guess his, I guess. So Scott already was a consultant for water resources and he's a hydro geologist analysis on the Thorndike place and Scott, you're online right now. You can do a better job than I can or deducing yourself and please take it from here. Excuse me. Mr. Sorry. Pardon me. Mr. Stephanie keeper, if I, if I may just interject as a point of order. Mr. Horsley has not been retained by the commission as a peer reviewer and I think it should be clear than a public hearing process that he's been retained by someone who opposes the project, the Arlington land trust. Likewise, this is a little bit unusual. I would say to have. An opponent's representative begin a continued public hearing rather than the usual course than a public hearing. In which the applicant or in this case you may want to have your peer review provide there's the applicant and then open the public hearing up to comments from a butters and the public which I believe Mr. Horsley is probably a representative of a member of the public. I would refer to Nathaniel Stevens for a reply that then he would like to. I would agree with Stephanie that it would be unusual to have the someone providing public comment first before we hear from the applicant. And I do agree also that we should clarify that who Scott Horsley speaking for and what his role is, but I think she made that clear. I think that points counter but I might suggest that we get from the applicant and our peer reviewer and then as part of the public comment period have Scott Horsley speak and I think, I think we should all remember that we had. The application had agreed to provide a little more time than we usually laugh public comments for him since he's speaking for several people. Or group of people, but then, and we scheduled that earlier the applicant had requests to continue that hearing so we're so we postponed his presentation as well. So we'll open up the hearing will hear from the applicants consultants and then our peer reviewer, and then we'll open it up for public comment and that's when Scott Horsley will review what he submitted to the commission on behalf of and Scott can you help me with that who did you do your work for. It's the Arlington land trust. Okay, so it's on the record that Scott has presented a paper for the Arlington land trust. And so we'll, we'll take it from there so if there, I see one more hand. Susan Chapnick. Sorry, Chuck. From my point of view, from my edification, it would make more sense to me as a commissioner to hear from our the town's peer reviewer first. And then hear from the applicant in terms of response to the town's peer reviewer, because that's what we requested the peer review, and then go into public comment. If that's okay with you. Yeah, that would be. That sounds fine. Okay, so we're going to hear from our peer review. Then the applicant and then open it up to public comments. So, our peer review is hatch. It's Duke Biscoe, Rob. Can you and Chris. Gormley, and are they here. It's actually, it's actually Ross Mullin. This is Duke Biscoe with patch. We put together the peer review two weeks ago. Commissioner, chairman. Sure, is it Ross Mullin who is the stormwater engineer is Ross on right now. Yes. Can you hear me. Okay. Yeah. As Mr. Biscoe was saying, my name's Ross Mullin. I'm a water resources engineer here at hatch. I completed a third party review on behalf of the conservation commission here at the initial request of David Morgan for the project. Just to recap the project, make sure it's fresh in everyone's mind. The applicant is proposing to develop a 17.7 acre parcel. The plan at this point is to start with in terms of impervious surfaces. Yeah, I think, I think everyone here maybe has access to this memo that I'm just highlighting the, the finer points at the beginning then. The, the, the largest structure in the proposed development is senior senior housing. five or six, excuse me, townhomes that are proposed as well. The applicant primarily plans on using infiltration as their primary mechanism for stormwater treatment at the site. We completed a review with respect to the 10 standards listed in the Massachusetts stormwater manual. Overall, I think my comments can be boiled down into just a couple of categories related to groundwater intrusion. I have some concerns related to observed ground and monitored groundwater levels. Those, the elevations of the groundwater table being inconsistent with the wetland elevation that's on site, as well as the risk of groundwater intrusion into the proposed townhome structures through their basements. The applicant is proposing to make the bottom of the finished floor below what they have identified as the groundwater table, but so the finished basement elevations are proposed, of the townhomes are proposed to be at an elevation of three feet, mean sea level, which is generally consistent with what I've seen for the observed water surface in the wetland. And the applicant has stated that the groundwater level that they believe should be used for the site is at four feet. So I have some concerns about flooding of the basements of the structures. I, on a similar note, I have some concerns about the effectiveness of the infiltration devices that are used, are proposed to be used on the site and their separation from groundwater in order to remove pollutants, like TSS is documented in standard four. You need to have separation between the groundwater and then the BMP device itself, the infiltration chamber, so that that water can seep through the soil column and provide the adequate water quality treatment. And then finally, I think I have some concern on surface flooding that the applicant has responded to separately and we may have resolved this, but the senior living building is proposed to be constructed below FEMA's regulatory flood elevation or excuse me, the parking underground parking garage of that building is below FEMA's 100 year flood elevation. Prior to March of 2023, that was forbidden under federal law, although a lot of times local and state jurisdictions have looked away in those instances, and now FEMA does allow that, but there are some requirements for demonstration that adequate flood protection is provided and FEMA strongly encourages any structure that's built below the 100 year flood elevation, even if it is an underground garage to be built into quote unquote natural ground as opposed to separated from the flood plain by a fill, which they figure constitutes a functional levee. So again, the highlights of my review overall the applicant has demonstrated compliance with most of the standards. However, I have some concerns about groundwater intrusion into basements, groundwater levels limiting water quality treatment effectiveness and surface flooding into the senior living building. Thank you, Ross. I see that Nathaniel has his hand up. I'll take that, Nathaniel. Thanks, Chuck. Thanks, Ross, for that presentation. I just had a couple of questions about your letter. It wasn't clear to me. Did you actually verify that the first stormwater standard to the peak rate discharge pre and post construction are that that standard is met by that measurement? We did look at that. That's a great question. We felt that the applicant was complying with pre and post construction rates for the design storms. Yes, that's correct. Okay, and then your first bullet that was a little confusing because you say the infiltration rates were selected were on the edge of the published values for Soil Group C. Yeah, this is pretty common. Another good question. So broadly speaking, hydrologic soil groups are divided into these lettered soil classifications where A is the highest infiltration rate on the one hand and D is the lowest infiltration rate, highest runoff on the other. The applicants demonstrated that the hydrologic soil group of the site was sort of right on that DC line. And at the surface, they called it a C, which is to say a lower infiltration rate, higher runoff in subgrade. They actually use more consistent with a B, so slightly higher infiltration. We see this a lot and generally it's appropriate. You do get surface compaction at ground level. So using that lower rate at the ground level and slightly higher below that is acceptable and okay. Okay, all right. So your overall conclusion is that they do comply with standard two? Related to rate control, yes. Related to flooding, I have some concerns still. Okay, thanks for that clarification. And also I guess if you could just clarify vis-a-vis standard four where what you think about that is that overall, or do they comply with part of it, some of it, do you need more information to determine whether they comply? It just wasn't clear. I would like more information to make that assessment. They comply based on the information they provided, but the groundwater levels they provided range from a half a foot below sea level to four feet above and it's another thing where it's right on the edge and we really want, I would like a bit more data. And is that in your experience, is it typical or for a site to have such a variation in terms of groundwater level observations between the observation points as they seem to be suggesting is the case here? Yeah, this can happen. I think separately the commission has a habitat review that's ongoing. I would be interested in seeing the mean annual high water level that comes out of the wetland delineations and studies and comparing that to the groundwater elevations that were observed. Generally you see strong relationships between wetland water surface elevations and groundwater. Thanks, those are all the questions I have for now. Thank you. Thanks, Jack. Sure, any other commissioners have questions? I'm just gonna look quickly. I have a quick question. Sure, Dave Kaplan. So this is about performance of the underground filtration and the two foot separation. Could you just provide an example or point us to an example where you feel that that separation wasn't adequately provided and the basis for that conclusion? The bottom of the proposed infiltration basins adjacent to the townhomes is six feet. The applicant's highest observed groundwater elevation was four feet. So that they've demonstrated two feet of separation. Where I question anything is the Massachusetts standard is for the seasonal high groundwater level and measurements of the groundwater elevation were determined in May of last year based on soil redox. So it's certainly a point in time. And again, making sure that we have always have that two feet of separation or regularly have that two feet of separation so that the bottom of the infiltration chambers is not submerged, that's the key. I think I have more concerns about the proximity of the infiltration basins to the basements than I do about their ability to meet standard four. Okay, thank you. Sure, and that's it. I don't see any other hands. So that's a good segue for what I was going to ask. It seemed like there was a lot of, it was a good bit of what I was reading about. Referred back to the fact that the applicant was going to waterproof to prevent infiltration of groundwater. And I wanted to know, I wanted to know just saying that seems to be great, but I can't, I don't understand what that means to waterproof a basement that you're telling us is in the groundwater. So no problems happen in the future. And then what does that do to the surrounding, to the surrounding land with a lot of butters here that are concerned that this is going to exasperate flooding that they already experienced in this area. So if you could start, if you could help me out with that question, I'd appreciate it. I think I would like to let the applicants speak for themselves on their plans for flood proofing. That was not part of any review that I completed. The specific, sorry, the specific technologies and approaches, construction methods for the flood proofing in the basements wasn't part of the review I completed. So in 2.5 and that's standard for 80% TSS, you say that the applicants should provide and review of seasonal high groundwater elevations. And then it goes on from there, but do you, why do you don't feel like you've received the proper evaluation on the seasonal high groundwater? Because there's quite a bit of variation within the site. There is, I would like to compare it to the wetland elevations that were observed adjacent to the site. Infiltration within areas proximal, the wetlands is usually difficult. It's not the preferred method. Most of the time it can work. And really it's just the tolerances we're dealing with are so tight. We're talking about inches or a foot of separation on these structures. And in some cases, it's been acknowledged that the groundwater elevation is above the basements of the buildings, of the townhomes, excuse me. In USA, when they placed the infiltration chambers, the FEMA has a note or requirement that it can't be placed on fill because they don't consider that. It needs to be in what? Yeah, so that particular comment relates to the senior living facility. And I would like to hear from the applicants on that one as I read their grading plans, they're using fill to provide separation between the floodplain and the structure, but the existing Topo contours are very light gray and they're kind of hard to read. So the standard is not to use fill to provide separation. Okay, and Nathaniel Stevens. Yeah, sorry, just to follow up on a answer that Ross just gave. Ross, can you tell me, you talked about wetland elevation. Can you just clarify what you mean by that term or not? Yeah, I'm not a wetland scientist, but in general, wetland scientists will go out and make determinations about normal water levels, mean annual high water levels, which as the name implies, they use vegetative indicators and soil indicators to determine where water gets frequently. And so the thought there is that those sorts of hydrologic responses of the wetland are probably mirrored in the groundwater. You get vocalized groundwater mounding, excuse me, and there's a high relationship between groundwater levels and wetlands that are, sorry, wetlands and the groundwater levels in their vicinity. Okay, right. I appreciate it. I think I understand and agree with that. Your ladder point about sort of the correlation of the groundwater to likely closer to the surface where there's a wetland. I'm just wondering, do the applicant's plans show do they have, I think there's spot elevations where the bordering vegetated wetlands are if I'm not mistaken on that, I mean, Adamson. So I was just wondering. So I did ask that question farther down in this document and I did receive a separate response. I think it indicated that they didn't follow the terminology I used. Let me look where it was. Because I, yes, I called them regulatory, then that's probably, that's not the right nomenclature. It would be the last bullet point of standard four. I suggested use of a mean annual high water level or an ordinary high water level or some other hydrologic indicator as a validation of the seasonal high groundwater level that they were using of four feet. Okay, understood. I think in my experience, a mean annual high water is actually referring to a different type of resource area, riverfront area, which is not present here, versus a BBW. I think, I understand what you're getting at, but I think perhaps maybe that's why there's some confusion because mean annual high water is usually used in the context of establishing the boundary for riverfront area rather than a 40-pitch dated wetland. But I said to you about your overall point, I think it's getting at the fact that where there's a wetland, since there's inundation near the surface and just below the surface, it's most likely that that's the groundwater fed and the groundwater should be higher in those locations. So even though that term might have been a little confusing, I understand, and I think the science backs up your point. I apologize. Different jurisdictions use different terminology for the same thing. In my own jurisdiction, we call that the ordinary high water level for wetlands. I know that places use different language for it. Sure, thanks. Okay. So I think we, I don't see any other hands. I see Nathan's hands still up, but I'm sure. I'll put it down, sorry about that. Okay. So, seeing no other hands, the applicant Dominic, are you here? Yes, I see you. Dominic, could you take over from this point and address the questions that you heard, but you'll probably get a few more from the Conservation Commission? Certainly. Just introduce yourself for the record please. Yeah, for the record, Dominic Bernalde with BSC Group is the Volcide Engineer at Wetlands. Scientists and laborers and landscape architects are the project. So, yes, to answer a lot of the questions, I guess I will summarize again what we used for our groundwater elevations. Well, yes, our actual observed groundwater, as you previously said, did vary and that does happen throughout the site. What we actually used was the reductomorphic features and the highest elevation. I'm actually tiny bit higher because we just rounded up to a nice whole round number found in any of the test pits, which as they mentioned, we used elevation four. We actually observed them at like just a shade under four and we set the bottoms of all of these importation systems, the large one in the back and the smaller ones in the driveways to the townhouses at elevation six to provide that two feet, minimum two feet of separation. Redox features aren't a point in time. Redox features are a permanent feature. They represent the highest elevation that groundwater when it fluctuates gets to with regularity enough to move minerals and other elements of the soil and create that color, the variations in the color that you see there, whether it's depletions by minerals coming out or concentrations of minerals in spots. So that's what we used it, which is the process documented by the stormwater handbook and is the standard methodology to do this. We didn't want to use the observed groundwater in other areas because as you said, it varied. So we picked the worst case, which again, Redox features not a point in time, a permanent elevation. And that's what we used for the bottom and how we set all of these elevations. As far as how it sort of corresponds to wetlands, it actually corresponds pretty well. As I believe Nathaniel said, there are contours generally down by the flag wetlands. For the most part, the wetland boundary is around elevation six and what you typically will find and what I believe we found and we can detail in some more is really particularly at the well and edge, not a lot of standing water, if any, and generally groundwater. We're seeing those same Redox features anywhere from a foot to two feet below the surface, which is, as I said, right in there with elevation four. Is there another way to determine seasonal high groundwater because 2.5 standard four reviewer says the applicant should provide and review the seasonal high groundwater elevation as required by the stormwater handbook. So is there two methods? Is there a confusion on, is there, so what's going on here? Why do we have two different kind of conclusions here? I mean, you obviously would have to ask your peer reviewer for how they came to their conclusion, but what the handbook requires and what you do is you dig the test bits, you do look for groundwater and you note it when you see it. And we, as we said, we noted it when we observed it. We also had a town-hired peer reviewer witnessing these test bits with us in Whitestone Engineering documented the same. We agreed on what we saw, where we saw it, what the depths were. We agreed where the estimated seasonal high groundwater from the Redox features was and that is the practice required by the handbook. If you don't see Redox features and you don't see groundwater, there are other things to do in this case where we saw both and we went with the worst case scenario for us in terms of the highest Redox we found for universally across the site. That is the standard. We actually think we're pretty conservative. Sure, I'm just gonna follow that up with, it sounds like there were two indicators in the hole if that terminology works for you. And maybe seasonal high groundwater. So there was water and there was some sort of Redox features. Was the water higher than the Redox features when you had that observation? No, the water everywhere, the observed groundwater we saw while we were doing the test bits everywhere was in some cases significantly lower than that. Lower, right. And I can actually. So in that, in this, I guess it's an average but we're talking about one situation. The Redox feature was the highest point that indicator of seasonal high groundwater in those test pit holes that you reviewed on this site. Yes. Okay. Yeah, and if you give me a minute, I can find where the observed groundwater in that particular pit we're talking about was. Glasses for this. So yeah, in test pit five, the observed standing water, which was about a foot lower than the Redox features. So we saw Redox at 48 inches below grade and depth of standing water at 60 inches. Sure. Sorry for the interrupted. You can continue. Oh, that's it. That was it. Oh, so, but that, yeah. I mean, that's the big feature and as far as the waterproofing question that came up, as you know, building designs aren't finalized. When the building designs are finalized, the waterproofing for basements and the underground parking will be included in that. It's not uncommon to build basements below groundwater level, but it's not uncommon to build parking garages below groundwater levels. We're not breaking new ground here with construction methodologies. We're doing stuff that is done fairly regularly in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the architecture and structural engineering team will be responsible for figuring out how to waterproof those basements to keep water out. Sure, I was, it just came up so much. I have it down in this report nine times and you say the appropriate waterproofing to prevent groundwater will be determined. I guess those are the appropriate groundwater infiltration. So I thought that since it was brought up so much, there's gotta be something to it. There has to be some reason why having an infiltration chamber so close to a structure would be some sort of trigger for a problem down the road. So I didn't really understand why we were so concerned about the proximity to the infiltration chambers and the foundations. Is that something that you can answer? No, I mean, again, you'd have to ask your peer review with that, honestly, it's not really something that ever particularly comes up within reviews under the ones protection. It is really a building code issue in terms of waterproofing these buildings because they are close. I mean, there are these units are gonna be pretty close to these buildings and therefore it does prompt addition to the groundwater potential, even more reason to waterproof these buildings adequately. I thought Ross talked a little bit about the path of lease resistance along the excavated foundation. Is that a factor that needs to be concerned? It would be if you don't waterproof. You know, if you don't waterproof the basement, it will absolutely take the path of lease resistance, but that is why you go through that extra step. Sure, I don't know if it's okay at this point. It sounds like Dominic, you're finished with your presentation pretty much. You're just waiting for questions. Yeah, I mean, generally speaking, I think that's a lot of our response came down to how we did the groundwater. Sure, so I'd like to have the commission have the ability to ask Ross or Dominic a question. If that's, I'm gonna say procedurally, okay, since we have so many people watching tonight's hearing, but if it's okay, I think that would speed things up and it would be a little bit easier to kind of get your follow-up question answered. So Susan. Thank you, Chuck. I just had a question. I, again, about the basements and waterproofing. And I understand that's not in the wetland jurisdiction, but my concern is water has to go somewhere. So if the basements and or the parking is below the groundwater, then the groundwater has to go somewhere. Is it gonna get pushed into the wetland? Is it gonna get pushed into our buffer zones? It's gotta go somewhere. So that's my concern. Who you asking to answer that? Whoever, whoever can answer that. Ross. Ross, you could answer it and Dominic could answer it. Thank you. Presumably, if the applicant takes all the right steps as part of construction and adequately waterproofs, those systems could involve some pumps that discharge to surface. It could just involve displacement. It's tough for me to say exactly where it's gonna go without the specific plan in mind, but I would concur with Mr. Rinaldi's comment that that sort of thing is usually figured out further into design and can often be a contingency item on advancement of the project. In my experience. So Ross, if we're discharging with a sump pump onto the surface rather than into the town storm drain, which I don't know if it's allowed or not, there certainly would be a difference in where the water goes. There wouldn't, you know, maybe a condition or maybe something the commission needs to think about is where this discharge happening. I'm not even, I don't even know if that's being proposed, but I would say that there is definitely a difference between those two locations. So any other questions from commissioners? If I may, Mr. Chair, as far as sump pumps go, at this point, again, the building design isn't finalized. Generally speaking, as I've said, we're not breaking the ground here in terms of building basements in groundwater. It happens everywhere. I do a lot of work in the city of Boston. You cannot build a building in the city of Boston without being in the ground water pretty much. And if you waterproof a modern building appropriately, you generally don't need a sump pump to be for older buildings with fieldstone foundations or poorly waterproof foundations and things like that. Right, but there's still my question. Water has to go somewhere. So if the water's not getting in the basements, fine. That's great for the people who own that house, but is it getting into our jurisdiction areas? Is more water inundating the wetland and the buffer zone and the BBW because it's getting pushed there from these structures that are waterproof? That's still not clear to me. And I'll be honest, I can't answer that question, but I also can answer that that is not, that that is occurring everywhere that is built. It is not part of stormwater standards in terms of where groundwater goes. It is not generally part of a building code. It is a function of building buildings in the ground water. It happens while we happen to be relatively close to a wetland, everywhere you build in the ground water, you are in theory displacing groundwater and it is going somewhere else. So this is, as I said, it is not new ground we're breaking here. This is not something revolutionary. This is not something that hasn't happened in a lot of places. And for that matter has happened with just about every home that's along Dorothy Road. Those all have, you can tell from the way they're built in their driveways, they have foundations that were built in the ground. So it's the same concept, just a different type of building. So you seem to think that thinking about this, that the water would go from Dorothy down to the wetland. It would be natural to think that. If you're installing some pumps and pumping them out onto the ground or into the riprap areas that you have provided, that seems to me that it would get back into the wetlands. But if you're doing some pumps into the storm drain, there might be some loss of water to the wetlands and some sort of alteration. And so when do you determine what you're going to do? I'm not even saying that you need to do it. And I think that's what you're saying too. Like, look, we don't know what's down there. We don't know what we're gonna encounter. When do you determine that? And then what's the response to the conservation commission? When are you gonna pump this water if you have to? When do we determine if we need some pumps? Yeah. I mean, ultimately that would be in foundation design of the buildings. And that would be something, if some pumps were proposed, it would be part of the building permit plans. They would be part of the plans that get submitted as the final plans for the comprehensive permit. So is that something the conservation commission is gonna say? Because when you said it was the building permit, I know that that would be the conservation process is over and the building permit would be something different. When would there be a point where the conservation commission knows where this water is being pumped? I can't speak for, I don't know offhand if you get copies of building permit plans to review. But again, this is, right? Some pumps and basements and waterproofing basements are a building permit and building code question. That's when that design is done. If do you get, I honestly don't know, do you get a chance to review building permits? So you have an order of conditions and all the conditions are in there. So you'd have to review the building permit and the building plans to make sure that it matches what we approved. But getting back to the sump pump, sump pump in someone's house that's coming, that's going on every time it rains or occasionally is different than putting a foundation three feet into water and then just continually pumping it. And that's why I'm wondering, and you have yay so many houses, where's that water going? I think that's appropriate for the conservation commission to ask. I'd like you to answer that question. Before we close this hearing, it doesn't have to be tonight, but if you could get a little closer to what do you think may happen and where do you think that water may go? Yeah, I mean, we can talk to the architects on the buildings, but again, that's, it's, you know, where it go, you're making this as presumption that we're putting in sump pumps. Sump pumps have ever been referenced was in your peer reviewers letter and no point in time has this project ever stated that we were going to be putting in sump pumps. I can't say definitively that we're not because that foundations haven't been designed. And so. Understood. Any other commission members have a question? I want to give Ryan an opportunity to ask, to speak. Do you have some? Yeah, actually, sorry, Chuck, if I can just jump in. I was going to ask Ryan, we didn't get, because of a technology issue, we didn't get a BSC's response to Ross's letter until I think yesterday. So I didn't have a chance to look at it thoroughly, but I was just, and I'd not put Ryan on the spot, but did he check to see if they provided all the information that Ross said was missing? I guess that would be my overall question of look. When I skimmed the BSC letter, it looked like they were responding and saying that they were providing additional information, but I didn't get a chance to get into the weeds on it to make, to verify. So Ryan, if you had a chance to do that, it would be helpful to hear, or if you didn't, please let us know that you didn't have the chance. Yeah, so I've kind of briefly looked over it. I haven't given it a, excuse me, the most thorough review so far, but it does look like there are a couple more items that are still going to be provided. There's a lot of the references throughout. I'm just trying to see if they're looking for anything specific that's being called out. Okay, thanks. Yeah, not to elaborate. That's sort of just the general overall comment that I was looking for, so that's helpful. Thanks. All right, any other questions? Sorry, sorry, I didn't know. That was my question to Ryan. I didn't know, Chuck, if you were expecting or wanting to say anything more. Ryan, do you have anything else to say? I hope that hasn't really been covered so far, so. Sure, so at this point, it sounds like the commission's had their questions and I want to bring, open it up to the public and I'm going to call on Scott Horsley first right there. Scott, please introduce yourself for the record. I will certainly do that. I actually have a slide to do that. Do I have permission to share screen, Mr. Chairman? Sure, please, Ryan, can you set that up? I think it might be working. Yep, we see that. Does that look like that's in presentation mode? I can't tell. Maybe not. Hold on one second here. Looks like it's just off the screen for some reason. It's on. There we go. There, is that better? That's great. Okay, well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to speak. Again, I've been retained by the Arlington Land Trust to review the project. I've been focused on hydrology impacts, much of what you've already started talking about tonight. Briefly in the way of introductions, I have more than 30 years of experience as the slide indicates. Most of my work has been nationally for EPA and a lot of work for the Nature Conservancy, MAST-EP, other state governments. I've actually worked in all 50 states as a result of my work for EPA. Many municipalities, most of them in Massachusetts, non-profits and industry. I also served and been qualified as an expert witness many times in court, most notably for the U.S. Department of Justice in a Clean Water Act, a federal case, but a number of state cases as well. I've served on many MAST-EP advisory committees. I've highlighted a few here. I'm still currently serving on the Title V advisory committee. And then finally, I do teach and an adjunct faculty member at both Tufts and Harvard where I teach graduate level courses in water management. So I'm gonna go through these slides and I think we'll address some questions that have come up earlier. This is a copy of the site plan and I've highlighted some things that I've put in what I think are the correct proposed water, estimated seasonal high water levels in blue. And I believe that the test pit that was being referred to earlier tonight is over here at test pit five. The applicant's indicating a estimated seasonal high groundwater level of four there. I will quickly add that the primary infiltration facility is highlighted here in gray. So that test pit is not located within or even near the large infiltration system. One of the one of the guidances within the MAST-EP storm understanders is test pits are required within the footprint of the infiltration facility. Now they do have some test pits here, but as you already heard tonight, they're relying on another test pit to determine high groundwater at the location of, I think this, and I think I heard all the facilities, so. But again, I will start by indicating as I did in my letter, if you look at these numbers, they're very highly variable. And in my experience, that is not typical, especially in a sort of geology or setting like this, I would expect to see a more uniform set of water levels. These test pits are actually fairly close together. Now we just, here we've got a test pit two at 0.8 feet and I believe these are all relative to mean sea level, 3.5 feet here, that's a pretty substantial difference. Something, when I first saw these, I was scratching my head, I double checked all the numbers. I believe these are correct. And again, they do not look typical to me and strike me that something is going on here and I'll get to that, I have some theories. This slide also highlights down at the bottom, this is the wetland, one of the wetland boundaries and as the applicant indicated, I agree Dominique said that wetland elevations around six feet, this shows five or six feet. Now again, that federal case that I mentioned that I did for EPA was all about clean water act enforcement of a wetland filling and wetlands are defined under the clean water act as either having inundation or saturation on the hydrology side, inundation of standing water. Saturation is within 12 inches of the surface during the growing season. So I would suggest these numbers we've seen here as surface levels would suggest the ground water along that wetland area would be in the range of four to five feet. And as I get to, I would expect that the upland areas of the site, the proposed would be higher than that. And that would be a typical in my experience hydrologic setting. And I'm gonna use this figure from my favorite reference source I use all the time and that's the US Geological Survey. This is a graphic that shows or relationship most wetlands in Massachusetts are discharge areas, meaning ground water is flowing into them. I can see the middle of the slide, it's the wetland, we have a stream in the middle. And what we see on the sides, the areas draining to the wetland, denoted here by a water table. The water table, just in case of just somebody's on the same page, water table is the upper level of the ground water system. That would be an indication of the so-called seasonal high ground water. So in other words, we'd expect that to be higher than the areas in the wetland. So this is the same slide I showed you a minute, but I wanna spend a minute talking about test pit seven because test pit seven is within the footprint of the large infiltration system. It has a very interesting number of minus point five feet, which frankly, I don't think, I'm not sure I can say this, I don't think I've ever seen this in a ground level in Massachusetts, I might be wrong, but it's, we'd be extremely rare that the ground water below sea level. So again, something is going on here. It doesn't strike me that that's a logical number. I think what the applicant suggesting is let's use test pit five, the 4.0 number. However, if we go to the Whitestone report, this is the report that was mentioned earlier by the applicant that was done, I believe, for the town, and I've just screenshot part of that report for test pit seven. And you can see on the left, I've highlighted the numbers I wanted to focus on. That's been on the left side, looks like the interpretation of this report was to use 108 inches depth, which would put the estimated season of high water table at essentially zero, which is real close to the minus point five number I just showed you. The land elevation, what I can tell from the site plans is around nine feet, 108 inches is nine feet. So that gives you a calculated estimated season of high water of zero or minus point five, which I believe is the number that is stated on the plan. However, if you look over on the right here, there was a note in the Whitestone report at test pit seven that they found some mottling, 39 inches. So if you run the numbers using the mottling, nine minus 3.2, you get an estimated season of high water of 5.8. Let's call it six feet to round it off. And let's go back to this picture. So maybe this is six feet here. Now, again, just looking at this in the context of the wetlands, the wetlands are down here. This is where I expect groundwater at four to five feet. And as you move up in this direction, I expect water table to get higher. There's not enough data to draw water table contours, but it's certainly possible that the groundwater in this area would be higher than over at test pit five. So, but if you did use the mottling numbers, just put you around 5.7, 5.8 feet at this location. So that I think is worth considering as another way to interpret that test pit. And in my mind, that makes a lot more sense to me, just in terms of what would be expected for a groundwater level, again, relative to the well but also relative to test pit five. And by the way, the test pit five is the place where they found the mottling. Test pit seven, again, if we use the mottling at test pit seven, we get 5.7 feet. Now, back to you, you asked some very good questions earlier and so I want to address them as well. And one question was asked earlier is aren't there different methods to determine the season of high groundwater? And I might digress for a second, say, especially for this site, I think this is a critical number and a lot of us spending time on it tonight because the whole site design drives a lot of things, a lot of the, not only the foundations but certainly the stormwater infiltration structures. So this is a quote directly from the MASTEP stormwater handbook. And I might add, I did serve on the MASTEP stormwater advisory committee and frankly was quite involved in drafting the standard number three, which deals with the groundwater recharge number or standard that we're talking about tonight. So you can see here in that as it's highlighted and I've bolded some areas, it basically says where redox features are not available, installation of wells, is another term for wells and measurements through the spring. They also suggest comparing the water levels that are measured with so-called USGS index wells. And there's a hyperlink here, you can go to the USGS site, USGS maintains, I'm gonna guess around 20 index wells around the state. Some are monitored every 15 minutes, others are monitored weekly and this has been going on for decades. And these wells are used for both title five wastewater compliance but also stormwater compliance because we have a long-term track record and we can compare shorter term measurements on sites with the long-term record to see if in fact the water levels might go higher. This is one of the index wells, the USGS index wells, this is the Lexington well which I believe is one of the closer wells to the site and the general guidance from USGS is to use a well that's in relatively close proximity. The Whitestone testing was done May 10th, 19th, 2023. This well, the Lexington well is one that does not have continuous recorder on it but rather they monitor it roughly once a week. So what I've done is I've highlighted these two black dots which kind of frame or bracket if you will, the time when Whitestone was out there doing the measurements and over in the left here these are depths to groundwater. So the estimated season of high groundwater when you use the USGS databases you're looking for the highest one which is really back here. So this point here is about two feet higher than the time of measurements or during the Whitestone study, okay? So just that would be one thing that could be used and as I get to my recommendations later to help really verify the water levels. I mean, I think given the site and the discussion you've already had, my recommendation would be to use any and all methods both modeling and the USGS monitoring well methods. And I might add just, Chris, I have a site I'm working on that's on the Eastern right now where we are routinely measuring groundwater levels above the modeling in the soils. And I can, we can talk more about that later. So that is certainly possible. It's unusual. That site is also a site where it's been disrupted. Some fill has been placed which I think can change hydrology long-term and perhaps even change water level relative to redox. But again, that's another story. We can come back to that later. I think the USGS method is something to consider here. The other part of the presentation I'd like to make deals with groundwater mounding and I made some comments in this and I did see in the peer reviewer's letter, they didn't mention it tonight but I believe they also recommended some additional groundwater mounding analysis. So I think we're consistent on that recommendation. But let me just quickly go through it. First of all, what is groundwater mounding? This is again, a USGS geological survey slide. Basically when you're infiltrating runoff which is shown in the middle here upper and that water infiltrates down through the soils and eventually hits the water table, the groundwater system, you get actually a physical mound on top of the water table. This says, this is temporary. Generally this lasts for a few days around the time of a so-called 24-hour design storm. These mounds can also last a lot longer if in fact, infiltration rates are sustained higher than existing conditions. And I'll get to that in a minute. But in any case, this is sort of an introductory graphic of what we're talking about with groundwater mounding or adding water levels to the existing groundwater system. And as told, this is an excerpt from the stormwater report that was provided by the applicant. Now as part of standard three in the MASTEP standard, one of the requirements, there's actually two parts to that standard. One is one talks about matching pre-development hydrology. Put the same amount of recharge in the ground as exists. But then it goes on to say you can also add more groundwater if you want. However, if you do that then you have to evaluate the consequences of increasing it. So what I've done here is highlighted and in large blue letters made a little bit easier to read the so-called required recharge volume which the applicant calculates. That represents existing conditions. And that number is 1638 cubic feet. Now what they do is they have to design the system to match that and possibly exceed it somewhat as long as they can evaluate the exceeding part. Well, they have exceeded here by quite a bit, Mr. Chairman. The proposed amount is 10,497. So this is a factor of more than six. Not doubling the amount of recharge, not tripling it, but times six. So that suggests to me that we're likely to have not only some groundwater mounting around specific design events, but groundwater mounting or higher water levels throughout the year. Simply because we are increasing, effectively increasing the recharge rate of the site. And I do have a couple of slides to explain this because I've pitched this before and tried to explain this. Sometimes it's a hard concept to understand. So let me just quickly go through it. This is a slide showing a typical site and a natural recharge rate of 17 inches per year. Now again, we got around 40 some odd inches of rain, about 40% of it in Massachusetts has returned to the atmosphere as a dappled transpiration. You can see these trees on the slide. They're removing about almost half of the rainfall and the remaining amount, a lot of it, if it's permeable soil will infiltrate and recharge the groundwater. This site, I would estimate around 17 and a half inches per year of recharge. And again, with the trees currently in place, a lot of that water is going back to the atmosphere as a dappled transpiration. When we construct a site and these little rectangles will denote a infiltration system coming from both roof runoff and also pavement areas. What happens is the existing estimated season of high groundwater condition, which is shown in the dashed line, actually increases post-development conditions. And again, this is something that's gonna occur year round. The whole fluctuation of the water table will be higher because we're adding a lot more to the groundwater system throughout the year. Every time it rains, water's going in there, a lot more water. In fact, according to the applicant's calculations, about six times as much in terms of the volume that they're designing. So this is a pretty significant impact. On top of that, when we get a design event, like a 10-year, 2,500-year storm event, there's this bubble, again, the groundwater amount I showed you earlier, which would frankly be on top of the post-development conditions. So there's really, if we do this right, if we do the modeling right, which we'll get to in a few minutes, there's really two steps. One is, what's the effect of the year-round increase in recharge? And secondly, what happens when we get a big storm? Which in the big storm evaluation is required by MassDEP Stormwater Handbook. So that takes me to what has been done and what I've done. And I will add, my work has been on a preliminary basis. I'm not sure if the applicant is indicating this is preliminary or final. I'll leave that up to them to determine. This is the applicant's groundwater mounting. This is from their report. What they're showing is, and I'll just quickly explain, these are the input parameters that go into this model. And this is the simple cantorice model, which is an analytical model. There are more detailed models that I'll get to in a few minutes that I think might be more appropriate for the site, given the complexity. But in any case, this is an acceptable, I call it a screening model, first cut. But I start here, they've used a time of 0.4 days. That's like, was it about an hour or two? This is a storm event at last 24 hours. So I have not been able to determine. I did try to reach out to the applicant quite a while ago to see if I could simply ask that question and was unable to speak with them because it is a question. I don't know why we're using such a tiny timeframe. Obviously run it out to the 24 hour storm. All of these design events, the 10 year storm, the 25 and 100 year, are 24 hour events. The rains, you get run off for close to 24 hours. You can have infiltration for close to 24 hours. This model run is for 0.046 days. So I'll just leave that as a question. I just simply did not understand it. So I ran a couple of models using the same model. And by the way, I did use all the other input parameters. This is the recharge rate, how much water is going in. This is the specific yield, the hydraulic conductivity, the dimensions of the infiltration system, 98 by 20. And so I've maintained those all the same. I didn't change any of those. What I did do is change the time in this model to two days because you're gonna get the design storm. And then what I did is I looked at the volume of water coming into the infiltration facility and the infiltration rate, X or X filtration rate from the facility provided by the outputs can take about two days to drain. And I'm getting closer to 14 feet of groundwater mounting. Now, that is not physically possible. That becomes what we call a potentiometric surface or a pressure surface. What that means is, and again, you asked a great question before, where does the water go? I forget who said it, but it can't go into the air, so it's gonna go someplace else. And probably in this case, we go as an overflow. But in any case, I think it's obvious that you get a much higher groundwater mound. With a longer time duration than the one used earlier. And I did one other analysis here. I looked at the year round. You see, I've got 365 days here. Year round of mounting before you get to the design storm. And again, it looks like we're getting several feet of groundwater mounting prior to the design storm. So these are, again, I'll repeat, these are not final analyses by me. I don't know if the applicants is final, but there's quite a range here. And I think for me, my conclusion is a little more tension might be really helpful here. And that gets me to my last slide and my recommendations. First of all, I really think it's important that we get some monitoring wells. Wells are a better method, in my opinion, to get groundwater levels than test pits. As the applicant said, and I think the peer reviewer said, test pits are one-shot deal. You look at it, you open up the test pit, you look at what you see and you close it back up. They can try to determine some longer term conditions from the modeling. But again, as I said, there's different ways to interpret that. But in any case, the best way I think we'd agree would be monitoring wells. And there's very affordable, easy to use devices now called pressure transducers. This is the second recommendation. You install those wells, they take a measurement every 15 minutes and you get this on your smartphone. This is pretty standard stuff nowadays. And therefore we can monitor the groundwater levels through the spring months. The good news is we're approaching a good time of year to do these measurements. And so if we can get the wells in there and do that, I think we'd all have some better data to work with, even work within the footprints of these infiltration systems. And then finally, and perhaps most importantly, I think I would strongly recommend that the commission ask or require the applicant to do a groundwater model that's a little bit more sophisticated than what's already been provided. There is, I didn't note it here, but I think I did in my letter. The industry standard is a model called ModFlow. It is developed by the US Geological Survey. It shows up and I'll just say 90% of the studies that are out there from regulatory standpoint is a very common model. I'm sure the applicant's familiar with it. That would enable a much better reliable way to determine what happens post-development. And I think it would answer both questions about will these infiltration systems work? Will they get inundated? You can also, the model can also show effects on foundations and then perhaps most importantly to the commission member who asked the question, what about the wetland? One of the other requirements in the mass DP stormwater is exactly that. What does the groundwater model show at the wetland boundary? So this model can show that answer that question. So those are my three recommendations, Mr. Chairman. Be happy to answer any questions that you or the commission members might have. Thank you. Sure, can you stop screen sharing and we'll get back to the full screen. And any commissioners? Nathaniel Stevens. Thanks. Thank you Scott for that presentation. I was just gonna ask if you haven't sent your slides already to Brian at the commission, that would be helpful. I did do that earlier, Nate and Nathaniel. And I did add a couple of slides tonight, which I can pass on as well. But it didn't- Okay, thanks. Yeah, that'd be helpful because you have presented a lot of information. It'd be nice to look at that again. I'm just going to a couple specific points you made. If I understood your comment about test pit seven, which is where the infiltration, which is one of the two, test pits located where the infiltration basin is located. You're saying that the groundwater is not at negative five as the applicant presents it, but you calculated to be 5.7 feet, is that right? Based upon the test pit that I showed you from Whitestone, they did indicate some modeling. And if I use that number, it comes to around 5.7, 5.8. Okay, thanks. And just remind me, so what does that mean that there's sufficient? Does that mean there's not sufficient separation between the groundwater and the bottom of the infiltration basin, infiltration device, which is required by the sandworks? Yeah, excuse me, it's like stormwater handbook. Yeah, as the applicant said earlier, there is a minimum two-foot separation required between the bottom of the facility and the water table. And then anything less than a four-foot separation also triggers the groundwater mounting analysis to make sure it doesn't inundate the system or cause other problems. Okay, so in this case, we use the five- Sorry, sorry, so just to conclude on that point, the five-point, if the 5.7 number is used, then it does not comply with stormwater handbook. Is that correct? You use that number, that's correct, yes. Okay, thanks. Currently designed. That's currently designed, thanks. And then another point you're making, you have the slide up that quoted the language from volume three, page 12 of the stormwater handbook. And it was taught, it said, I think I'm trying to summarize, it said that you may use redum moxic features and it used the word may, so it didn't require, and it goes on to say if those features are not available, use do one or two or three other things. So to me, I guess, what is required? Because they both seem both, there's a may in that first sentence and then the second sentence said, well, those features aren't available, but at the site they are available. So are we required to then use the redum moxic features? Yeah, so their redum moxic features are commonly used as the estimated seasonal high ground water. In this particular test pit seven, they were discounted, they were shown, but they weren't used, but it could be used. However, as I said, to my surprise, and I'd love to show people this, it's quite interesting, you can get ground water levels above redox levels, they can go higher. So therefore, in my view, my experience, because I can take any of you to the site to show you this, this is not numbers, it's like I can show you in the field that this happens. Therefore, the best thing in my opinion is to use both of those methods. If you have redox, go ahead and also put in wells and get the water levels and compare them and then use the index wells. These are tools that we have, I don't know why we wouldn't use them, especially on a site like this, where again, I think we'd all agree this ground water is a valid issue to be evaluated. So why not use the best tools we have? None of them are perfect, but I think if we use them in conjunction with each other, and I think that's what that text that I showed you suggests in my opinion, that'll be my interpretation of it. Okay, thank you. And then just one, two more questions. You talked about the USGS site called Lexington 104. Can you tell, I mean, you're saying that that's the closest one to this site. And do you have any idea about where that is and then the second part of that question is, is it the same sort of site conditions that are at this site? Is it the same geology, the same soils and things like that? So I have, USGS Geological Survey does provide a map showing the well locations. So I can surely provide that. And again, this is something that's one index well, there may be another one nearby. Typically, if I try to look at a couple of these, I just showed that one as an example. The reason I did it is I wanted to see, somebody mentioned to me when I was looking at the data, when Whitestone was doing their work, was it a wet spring? And I couldn't remember. So I wanted to look back and see. And it looks like it was about one or two feet lower than the seasonal highs at that time. And that's why I was looking at it. And Lexington well is relatively close by, there's not that many of them. I think there's around 15 or 20 index wells across the state. So I don't think that if there is one other, it's probably equal distance. And it's probably a reasonable one to consider. Certainly though, I'm more than happy to look at more index wells and facts, I'll probably do that. Cause I think we should, as we move forward here, more data is better, right? And I forget the second part of your question. I'm sorry. Thanks, Joey. I guess it was more related to that. Yes. I think it was, is that sites are representative if we're going to use data, I think it's right. We want to pull from similar geological sites and not be. Yeah. Ideally you want to do that, but frankly the sites are never exactly the same. I think the point of doing this is, as I was saying, to see whether when you're out there at a particular time, if in fact it's a wet period or not. So just give you a general idea. And I'm not suggesting this site is identical hydrogeologically to the Lexington site. It's an indicator. And it's just the tools, that's all. Okay, thanks. And then my last question, if I may check. Scott, you recommended a more sophisticated type of groundwater modeling methodology towards the end of your presentation. I was wondering, is there a basis? What basis in the stormwater handbook could we cite to require the applicant to do that with the commission to do that? And I think it's in my letter, if it isn't, I'll... I'm sorry about that, I'm forgetting that, sorry. Okay. Excuse me. I believe I mentioned the USGS mod flow method. And it is referenced in the MASTEP stormwater handbook. Both methods, the handshish analytical model and the USGS mod flow model are both referenced. Generally, it's a sort of the analyst call which one is most appropriate. The USGS model is much more sophisticated, allows a lot more detail. The handshish model makes a number of very simplifying assumptions. I think in this case where you've got multiple infiltration facilities, you've got a number of quote sensitive receptors, both foundations and infiltration system and the wetlands. I think handshish is, again, a reasonable screening tool. But I think in this case, and I do have experience on other well-in-depeals that have kind of a shock to me. And they've agreed to require the mod flow analysis for more complex sites. Okay. Thanks very much. I do look forward to hearing from BSC, their response to maybe, you know, their response to the questions. I asked or Scott's response to my questions as well as overall presentation, I guess just up to Chuck's side when that might be. Thank you. Sure. Yeah, so Dominic's hand up, but I think I'll take this opportunity to get Dave Kaplan to ask his question. You know, I'm just trying to get some, you know, with the groundwater elevations that you showed, you know, with test pits seven and negative five, or point five, excuse me, test pit eight at 2.2, and then test pit five, I guess it's the most conservative in that area of groundwater elevation of four. I mean, that to me suggests that this could be a discharging weapon system. And I mean, I'm wondering if anybody, we have enough information that we can comment on sort of groundwater flow direction or do we know anything else about that, this area that could kind of help us figure out what's going on and what's accounting for this variability that we're seeing. Sorry, it's a pretty broad question. And I would put that either to the consultants to the applicants or to Mr. Horstley. Hey, was that a question for me or generally? I missed a couple of things that you said, I'm sorry. I apologize. I guess I'm just looking at the variability of the groundwater elevations that you showed in your figure marked in blue. And also to me, observing that looks like that this system could be a discharge system and that the groundwater flow direction is actually moving away from the wetland system, at least at the time that these observations were made. And but is there anything else that, can we shed some light and account for some of this variability that we're seeing in this area? It seems like rhodoxymorpic features were used in all these test pits rather than groundwater elevation and that's sort of a typical variability that you would see in the small area or is this atypical? Well, if part of it's directed towards me, I think as I said before, this is not something that I typically see this much variability over that much area. It's not uncommon to get one or two points that are inconsistent and there's something funny going on there, but this one's quite variable. More variable and it's getting my experience. Others may have a different experience, but it's quite variable. And but my understanding is there is some fill here too. This site's been disrupted somewhat and that can certainly cause some of this. As I mentioned, the site I'm working on in Easton, the measured water levels are higher than the redox levels. And it's been pretty interesting. We've been out to the site several times, I was scratching their heads and I think we have some theories as to why that is and it has to do with the disrupted site. So that might, and your theory, your question about the wetland functioning differently. Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of possibilities. This is why I think we need more information to understand it better. In my experience, and maybe Dominique and Russ have different experiences, most wetlands in Massachusetts are discharge areas. Brownwater is flowing towards them. It's rare in my experience to have it the other way around. Is it possible? Sure. That would be a unique condition that would require some documentation. And I also kind of want to gain this out in terms of the test pit five, the groundwater elevation four, which seems to be the most conservative in that area. And it's consistent with the wetland elevation out of six and out of five. So I assume that even at the test pit seven and test pit eight were more consistent with the four that's observed in that area that we still have that two foot separation. And that could be a question for Dominique. Yeah, try, would you like me to chime in? Yeah, yeah, let's just game it on, say test pit eight, test pit seven, according to Scott Horsley, you know, figures are now groundwater four elevations. Yeah, so if I can clarify a couple of things on there. So as you noticed from Mr. Horsley's slideshow, the documentation from Whitesone, and just to clarify, the test was actually performed by the applicant with Whitesone observing on behalf of town, which was required to permit. You'll notice they just reference modeling and just to clarify again for everybody else, modeling and redox interchangeable terms. When people call it redoxomorphic features or redox features and modeling, it's the same thing. So you notice the modeling was just through a certain portion of the test pit wall. And when you use this process, which is actually derived from Title V, for septic systems, the estimated seasonal high groundwater to determine that with redox, those redox features that modeling has to go all the way through down into the test pit. If it's just a little portion of the wall, it is not indicative of an estimated seasonal high groundwater, which is why Whitesone also agreed with the elevation and the depth that we used. For what it's worth, if there's a little variation in our elevations and Whitesone's elevations, he was probably pulling them off the plans that we actually sent a survey crew out to shoot location. We staked all our test pit locations. So there might be a little variation in there because obviously interpolating between contours is as good as you can get. As for some of the other questions again, as you were saying, David, we utilized the most conservative value. A lot of these test pits was observed groundwater. In my experience, and I think Ross agreed with this earlier, Ross Mullen, you do see variation on sites. It can be weird. It seems weird, but it does happen. I've had sites with wild variation and I couldn't tell you why with observed groundwater. And that is actually really why in the handbook, they push you towards using redox features because that is not a point in time measurement, as I said earlier, that is a permanent feature. Some of the other items, for reference, the only groundwater mounding analysis referenced in the handbook, and I have it up on my screen right now, is the Handtush method. That is the standard. That is why we use it. That is why everybody uses it when they do groundwater mounding for under the Wildlands Protection Act. So again, that's the process. It's a readily available, well understood model. Is it more simplified than others? Yes, but that is the standard. That is what DPE has stated. They want you to use and driven you to use as well as redox. So a lot of the other things Mr. Horsley brought up, again, these aren't requirements of the Wildlands Protection Act. They're branching out into other areas that DEP and the stormwater standards just don't require. Just one more quick question. Thank you for entertaining me. The large recharge chamber underneath Tespid-8, Tespid-7, that's primarily, is that only serving the roof runoff and there's no water quality that's being, I guess, I'm thinking of, there is temporary mounding that's causing surcharging, saying we get the heavy rain in the spring, maybe the groundwater elevations up. If that does the fails to recharge, it looks like you're allowing for six times more recharge than is required. So let's say you do have a stormwater part that allows that to surcharge a little bit. Is there a water quality component that's not going to be addressed because of that or is it just gonna be a recharge requirement that's not gonna be met if that happens? So the recharge to answer the first part of your question that the big system takes roof runoff and site runoff. There's some of the driveway and that sort of, there's a couple of parking, service parking spaces, the little drop-off rotary, I should call it a rotary, the little drop-off tree circle. All due discharge to the infiltration system. Also, there's a lot of water units going before, what's serving the site? I see a water quality unit. Yes, yeah, so there's water, but there's deep for the site portion of it, there's deep sun-putting catch basins and water quality units to provide treatment. In addition, the treatment measurements are based on that first flush. And this is crazy that I can't remember if this site is a half inch or an inch, it was done accordingly. And so it's that treatment that you're getting from the infiltration systems is really from that first flush. And as you said, we are providing an extensive amount of recharge. So everything that is below the outlet from that system by nature eventually has to recharge. It's only those later elements of the storm that aren't picking up sediments and pollutants because they've already been flushed on the surface. But you would be meeting your 80% TSS regardless. We meet each other at that time. Okay, thank you, those are all my questions, I appreciate it. Okay, right now I don't see any other hands up from the commission. And I think we've gone a long time with this. I see that someone on a phone has had their hand up for a long time. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to give that person time to introduce themselves and ask their question. But then after that, ask for a motion to continue to our next hearing. We're not closing tonight. So anyone else that's participating as in a butter will have an opportunity at the next meeting to ask their questions. But we have many other things on our agenda. So seven, eight, one at the ending six, four, four. Can you unmute yourself and introduce yourself and ask your question? Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Steve Moore, Piedmont Street. I have to say that I was fascinated by the Ehrlington Land Trust's representative there and the data that was very interesting and following the questions and such. I'm glad to see that a very bright light is being placed on water management by the conservation commission because throughout the many iterations and years of this project now, that has always been probably the foremost concern in all of the abudder's minds, as well as density and other things, but stormwater and water table in general has been a very big deal. I guess my first question just quickly is, has any of the design of this current project changed since the Zoning Board of Appeals approved the 40B application? So design is really not the purview of the conservation commission. So I'm not sure we can answer that question for you. So I'm just going to let it stand. Yeah. Okay. What aspect? Well, the only reason I'm bringing it up is in terms of how the building will deal with the various water tables that we've just heard about are projected for this site. I didn't know if there'd been any additional design. So maybe that's a discussion point, really not for your group. And I was very interested to hear the varying of the water levels in the test pits. It sounds to me like the recommendation of the gentleman who spoke to supporting the Arlington Land Trust activity was smart in that some more information here would matter because as I said, this has been the issue for the long-term nature ever since this project and all of its iterations has happened. And to move away from all the scientific data to just all the anecdotal data that came up in the earlier hearings, the, you know, all the butters have flooding basement problems. And this is a constant issue. So I'm hoping that when the Conservation Commission makes an eventual recommendation, hopefully with some additional scientific data for more studying of test pit or more well-driving or whatever it was, I was hearing from the consultant that they potentially put a condition or stipulation that of belts and suspenders, water mitigation plan will be demanded of this project. And I don't know if that is within the purview of the Conservation Commission, but clearly belt and suspenders is needed here in my humble opinion. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're welcome. Yeah, I think we're on the road to trying to understand this ourselves. So turning back to the commission, we had a few comments tonight about from our third party reviewer, we for an additional mounting analysis and some collection of additional groundwater information, those are in 2.3 for the mounting and 2.4 would be about a test pit seven, that's collection, additional information. I asked a question about some pumps and I'm not gonna go through that again. And Scott Coorsley representing the Arlington Land Trust brought up a lot of stuff, but one of the things that he asked for was this USGS mod flow groundwater model. I don't know if the commission wants to talk about any of those tonight or if we'll just get a motion to continue. And my, I guess my last thought about this is I'm not sure that we in our review and if, so when we put out our contract with Hatch, whether Ross Mullen will be coming to our next meeting or not, or it's only one meeting that we had Ross at. Maybe that's Duke, do you know? Or does Ryan, do you know reviewing our? I'm sorry, Chairman, I was muted. Absolutely, if this continues and we need to provide any sort of answers to the questions, we'll be above. Sure, I'd like you to both plan on, well, Duke, but Ross, I'd like you to be at the next meeting and I think there may be some other questions possibly from Butters, which we weren't able to get to tonight. So with that, do I have a motion to continue? I'm sorry, Chuck, just procedurally. So I think if I recall correctly, I think Ross would reply to BSC's response to Ross's first letter, right? Absolutely, I apologize, I didn't say that, but yeah, there were some questions that came up tonight. So we would expect that information. Ross, do you have enough time to get that to us? So our next meeting would be February 15th, and that's two seven, we need supplemental material. Yes, absolutely, I have drafted comments already, Mr. Chair, and in preparation for tonight, I can formalize those and send it over. Nathaniel, you bet with that? Sure, yeah, thanks. I just want to clarify that, yeah, and I guess, right, and that also gives the applicants and anyone else, including Mr. Horsley, additional time to submit comments as well. I think, yeah, everyone, including the commission can submit comments between that time. So our submittal deadline two seven for our next meeting on February 15th. Well, my commotion to continue hearing two, I know I've said April. February 15th. February, do I wish it was April? February 15th. I second. Second. Thanks, Susan, second. We're gonna have a roll call vote. Let me read my list. So Brian McBride. Yes. David White, oh, David's recused himself, sorry about that, David Kaplan. Yes. Mike Kildes game. Yes. Susan Chapnick. Yes. Nathaniel Stevens. Yes. And chair says yes. Okay, got everyone. So we'll continue this hearing until February 15th. And if you have any questions or comments that you'd like the commission to know in advance, please send them to Ryan, Ryan Clap at the conservation office. Outside of that, we're gonna move on right now to our next hearing. And that is DEP file number 913057 for a notice of intent for 51 per street. As public hearing will be considered notice of intent to demolish a single family dwelling and construct a two family dwelling and associated presses at 51 Burr Street within bordering land subject to flooding. And I know that LEC is here and Rich Kirby's here to discuss this. Rich, can you, I hope you can share your screen because I know that's usually what you do. Introduce yourself for the record and please take it from there. George, good evening, commission members. I'm Rich Kirby from LEC Environmental Consultants. And with me tonight, also from LEC is Nicole Ferrara, Project engineer Mike Novak and applicant Albert as he intends. So what we're gonna do tonight, I'm gonna turn it over to Nicole who's gonna run through the presentation. Then we'll turn it over to Mike to talk about the stormwater management design and the town engineer's review of that design. And then I think we'll turn it over to the commission for questions and discussion. So with that, Nicole, go ahead and take it away. Thanks, Rich. Would you mind, could you open up the plans? I wasn't able to get them on my laptop. Sure, of course. Thanks. Hold on just a second here. Hey, yes, many windows open. Bear with me for just a moment. Okay, there we go. So here is the notice of intent application cover and I will scroll down to the site plan. Great. Do you want the existing conditions first? Yep, sure, that'd be great. So these are the existing conditions showing the current single family dwelling on the property. And it is mostly lawn in the backyard and it's right off of Birch Street within boarding land subject to flooding, as Rich mentioned. The boarding land subject to flooding occurs in the backyard area at elevation 6.8. So you can see it kind of cuts most of the property and then there's a little portion of the existing driveway that is outside of the floodplain. The backyard, as I said, is mostly lawn. There's a few scattered shade trees in the back. There's a privacy fence surrounding the property as well and the applicants are proposing to demolish this house and build a new two-family dwelling. They're gonna remove the existing driveway, walkway and porch, thanks Rich. And this dwelling will be constructed atop piers so that the first floor elevation will be around four and a half feet above the floodplain elevation and the structure will be supported by 23 building columns as shown on this plan here. And the project also includes two pervious paver driveways and porous paver walkways on the sides with steps and landings to access the units and there's a deck proposed off the back of the property as well. That'll be divided for the two separate dwellings and then another privacy fence will be surrounding the property and they'll be four inches at the bottom that'll allow for like wildlife passage. And the, so the pervious paver parking areas will occur above the floodplain but some work is proposed within BLSF including elevating the driveways and walkways and the square building columns themselves to support the structure. So in terms of mitigation for this site the applicants propose erosion controls along the limit of work line as shown and there'll be the staked compost filter tubes as well as a construction entrance along the Southern driveway. And Mike Novak, the project engineer has designed a stormwater management plan to reduce peak rates and volumes. And so adding those two pervious paver driveways with the two feet of washed stone beneath the pavers will help capture that stormwater and infiltrate that. Additionally, the compensatory flood storage is proposed within the backyard to mitigate for that proposed floodplain displacement. So grading for that is proposed within the lawn where that cursor is, yep. And the elevations will be lowered between 5.1 to 5.5, it looks like. And lastly, Rich, would you mind scrolling down to the landscape plan? Sure. So on the landscape plan. Hold on, I gotta find it. Here it is. So we included planting native sapling trees, shrubs and ground cover. And they're all derived from the recommended native plant materials list. And it'll be three native sapling trees, 46 shrubs and 107 native perennials and grasses. Yep, as shown on the plant schedule there. And then all five existing trees in the backyard will be protected with tree protection fencing and the lumber boards surrounding it. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Rich if you have anything else to add. I don't think so. I think you covered it. Mike, did you wanna talk about the stormwater management? Yeah, thank you. Can you make, yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Mike Novick from Patriot Engineering. I'll keep it brief as you've had a lot of data, right? Just a couple of highlights of what Nicole's already talked about. We did soil testing in the rear of the site. You can see those two test pits to the bottom of the screen as you look at this right now. Pretty consistent in terms of groundwater where we found it, both holes were at 64 inches. They're slightly different in elevation. So they're essentially at the same elevation, floating between 5.8 and 5.5. So, excuse me, the test pits were at 5.8 and 5.5 with our groundwater being 64 inches below at each one. Oh, geez, that was confusing. And just one other thing I wanted to highlight again, Richard said he did receive a review from the town engineer, and in my opinion, I feel as though that is a very attainable comments, mostly to do with detailing some information on the stormwater system that I wanted to talk about. We're showing the driveways as pervious paper, open-jointed pervious paper, but the actual stormwater management is only taken into account for the length of the building. In other words, the pervious paper that I'm modeling is just the length of the building from top to bottom of the page. Everything else will be built the same, but I'm not actually taking any credit for it to try to be very conservative because we don't have great soil out here, so I wanted to try to make sure that we will really try doing a decent reduction in both volume and runoff. So I feel as though in the review from the engineer, it seems that he agrees, he just wants some details as to understand what's going on. And just the same will be done for the pavers in front as well, as you can see, those are called proposed paper walkways. Those don't say pervies, but they will in the final plant. So again, and then underneath the building is stoned as Nicole mentioned. So I think those are the highlights. Happy to answer any questions. Thanks, Mike. Yeah, I just wanted to go over a couple more things. With respect to the flood storage, if you look at the calculations that we provided, we are providing a 10 to one ratio of commensurate flood storage. The amount of flood storage availability will basically be increased by 10 times by removing the house and lowering the grades. So that helps us promote climate resiliency in accordance with the bylaw regulations. As Nicole mentioned, we're also elevating the first floor elevation four and a half feet above the flood plain elevation, which all the mechanicals and things will be above the flood plain elevation as well. So we're promoting climate resiliency in that way. And I think that was it. That's really all I wanted to add, but happy to turn it over to the commission to answer any questions. Thanks, Rich. Yeah, I reviewed this application. I thought that you've proven that you've been to Arlington a few times. It was well put together. I don't really have any questions, but I think that, well, actually, I'll leave it up to Susan because I know that she's gonna ask the question I was just about to. So Susan, please take over here. I don't know if I have ESP check, so I'm gonna ask my own question. Well, first I'm gonna say, I really appreciate the team putting together a very comprehensive and clear NOI. And I do appreciate you addressing our climate change resilience regulations in our local wetland regulations because sometimes we have to specifically ask for that and continue to get that information because it's not addressed. So I truly appreciate that. I'm impressed with this project, raising that, changing that footprint, taking it out of the floodplain and the compensatory flood storage increase will really help the environment as well as climate change. I just had one small question about roof runoff and is that to be handled by just the pavers? Was that calculated there? Maybe I missed that. No, yes, if I may. Again, Mike, go back. It will be, show an answer. Okay. The stone volume underneath the paver section that I pointed out that runs along the house was specifically designed to capture the roof runoff for all the stone events. Okay, great. That's really the only place that's generating any runoff in regards to solid impervious. So that's exactly what we did. And because of the nature of the size of the site and because of the groundwater challenges, I felt as though trying to force a system, subsurface system in here didn't make sense. So we're just taking advantage of the volume under the driveway. And also we don't have a foundation to worry about putting groundwater against. So we're really gonna have more than what I'm showing. But as I said, I specifically designed and detailed for the roof runoff. Right. And because there's no basement, there's no flooding issue. And then I just had one more comment. Pleased to hear that the town engineer reviewed this before it came to us again. Sometimes that's another step we have to take after the fact. Have you addressed all his comments and recommendations? I have and will be. I don't think you have the final version of that. But I wanted to, since we were up against coming to the meeting, I wanted to corporate any commission comments as well and issue one final plan. Hopefully that makes everyone happy. Great, thank you very much. Back to you, chair. Thanks. So I'm gonna go with Dave Kaplan. Thanks, chair. Yep. And thanks again for comprehensive and well-written, well put together application. Just curious and forgive me if I missed it in the application. How did you determine your groundwater elevations in the area since we've just spent so much time talking about it in the last hearing? Dr. Fedda? Yeah, you sure did. Very similar to how the, for ease of explanation, very similar to how the applicants of your previous project in there and their witness did it. We looked at modeling and I have weeping in these holes. So there was very clearly a set groundwater and there was no evidence that it was there. We did this early, just check early November. So I mean, we had had a pretty decent amount of rain through there too. So I feel comfortable as we were getting an accurate picture of what would be a more of a higher level groundwater. And again, watching the last hearing, having the groundwater be in the area that it is 60 inches below kind of kind of goes with what you're saying because they're a little higher. We're a little higher over here, I think, based on some of the elevations. I don't think we go quite as low, but I was half listening to don't quote me on that. But the short answer is that typically how I've done these many of the past is we had a machine, we excavated, we observed an open hole. And like I said, I had standing water to be able to base my assumption on. Okay, so it's standing water and not bottled, okay. There was no evidence of modeling above where we saw estimating season high. And the soil type indicated that that's pretty much where it stays. I don't think it has a lot of ability to move back and forth. It's not great stuff out there. So. Okay, all right. Thank you. Sure. I think Nathaniel had his hand up. Nathaniel Stevens. Thanks, Mike. Sorry, can you just point me to where I essentially same question David did in light of our discussion? Of course. I was kind of expecting this. Yes. So in that light, can you point me to where in the application you have the test bit data shown that has a soil depth and shows where they're modeling? Yeah, I think Rich actually pulled it out. Yeah, I think Rich actually pulled it up. It's actually on my plan. It's on the second, it's on the second sheet of the, of the plant site and the locations are shown on the first sheet. They're both done. Yeah. So. Okay, thanks. That's a trouble. Sure. No problem. Like I said, it's not great stuff out there. So, you know, the silt loom, there's definitely a layer that's been brought in over there. And then, and then it's just a silty loom, which makes sense as you move away from the site into what you guys were just talking about. You get into a ton of wetlands. So again, that kind of soil transition makes sense. We know it's, we know it's damp over there. We know that area is always somewhat wet. So having, having a not great draining soil, just everything jived and it made sense that that's what we're looking at. It's probably, I would imagine no matter what time you dig out there, we're probably going to find that ground water. That same in and around that same elevation all the time. Okay. But just looking at this now, you say that it was observed based on weeping, not modeling. Correct. There's no, there was no, yeah. So I had, I had water coming into the pool. In other words, the sides showed actual water flowing in and then what, so when I see that, what I do is I leave that hole open. I go to the next one and we dig that one. And we come back 10, 15 minutes later and the water levels out. And then from there, I look above to see if I noticed of any indication of whether or not this has surcharged before. And I know you've got a ton of information for that channel. I'm probably going to make it even more confusing. But, you know, one of the things that we look for is that, that estimated season of high modeling or redox and the redox is an indication that it gets to that level many times, not just once. You know, if the water is up there one time in the, during a year, 14 years ago, it's not going to leave enough evidence to really see. But when it's there consistently, that's when you get the oxidation. That's when you get the mineral leaching. So then you can say, okay, well, the water's here, but wait a minute, there's evidence that it can get up to here. No, it may not be there when you're in the hole at that time. But that's, so that's why it's estimated season high. That's what we're looking for. And I saw no evidence of that in both holes. So I called the water. Yeah, so once the water had settled out in terms of, you know, 10, 15 minutes after we disturbed the soil and you can see that the water has reached level. We've all heard the term water finds its level. That's when I make my call. Okay. So, all right. So I misunderstood. I thought you said you did base your water level on, on modeling, but no, you base it on the actual water without any additional evidence of modeling. Right. So Mike, just to add a little bit of color here. If you saw that weeping at elevation at 64 inches below the ground surface, but, you know, maybe we were in a dry time of year. Maybe if you would have done this in August, perhaps if you, you know, you would have seen weeping at 84 inches, but you may have seen some redox features above the weeping. And then in that case, you would use those redox features as your estimated seasonal high ground water. Yeah, that's a great way to put it, you know, considering the time of year I was out there and not seeing any additional modeling, I felt confident that that's where the water was. Had it been August and we hadn't had rain in six weeks and we were deeper, I would have probably really tried to look for something expecting it to be higher, knowing the area and knowing that that is an area that, you know, thundered field right around the corners holds water all the time. So there's part of it is knowing where you are too and you're surrounding the area. I know that that area of the town is consistently wet with high ground water. So we put all those factors together to make that determination. It's not just one look in the hole. There it is. In terms of actually seeing water present. Yeah, correct. Okay, so that test bit data you just presented, you actually did not make any notation about where the modeling occurred because you didn't see it above. Correct. Okay, thanks. Correct. I could certainly add a note that says no evidence of modeling observed. Right, okay. But that's why, yeah. Yes, it's in black. Correct. Okay, all right. Thank you. Sure. Eileen Coleman, see your hand up. It's always yours. Yeah, I almost forgot what my question was. Can somebody tell me please how big the footings are? And I asked because I've been surprised before by a project that in a different town where the footings ended up being 36 inches and that was actually filled quite a lot of flood plain. And the second one is I think you're gonna have to reiterate this because I just didn't grasp it. If you said it, can you explain how your course pavers are working? I mean, how big are the gaps between your pavers and how much stone is going underneath that's containing? Because I didn't have a chance to look at the stone water or stone water report, please. Sure. The sense of rich is pouring that up. Thank you, Rich. That's the detail on the, there we go. That's the detail of what the paver driver will look like in the portion that, it all looked like this, but this is the portion that is designed to mitigate the stone water runoff. So you see that it has a two inch washed stone for a depth of starting at elevation four going up to elevation six. And then from there, we have a two inch choker course. That's just some smaller stone. What that does is that it slows that initial water. We don't want it flying right through. We want to pull it down, slow it down, spread it out. And then in between the paver blocks, we'll have an inch void, which will just be filled with like a chip stone, but it won't be compacted or there won't be anything put in it for binding agents. It'll just be to fill in the gaps so the stones don't move. So the idea is that it gets through the, it gets to the chip stone pretty quickly, gets slowed down by the choker storm. And then when it gets into the larger stone, it has a bunch of voids. It fills out and spreads out so we get infiltration throughout the whole surface area of that driveway, not just points sort of straight down, which as we just learned, we have to worry about mounting. So we want to spread this out so we don't send every drop of water into one spot. So I hope that sheds a little light on it. Now I've got the other question. Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead, Rich. Oh, sorry. I was just going to add in part of the reason that there's two feet of washed stone beneath the pavers. Normally if this was just a pervious paver driveway and we were just making it pervious so the driveway was pervious, there'd be much less than two feet of washed stone. But because we're directing the clean roof runoff to this area for infiltration, Mike has increased that depth significantly in order to provide additional void space for that water to go to. There's two of them. Sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry, it's Mike here. That just seems to say two inches of washed stone. You're right. That's just the size of the washed stone. Oh, sorry, two inch washed stone. See elevations below. So the material is two inch washed stones. The elevation means two feet top to bottom. Yeah, so Rich, just to kind of put a ball on what you said, this typically you're used to seeing a cross section of an infiltration system. This was basically the stone. The stone box that this would be put in, I just made the stone big enough so that we didn't need any chamber voids in between. So I hope that kind of helps a little bit. And I think the other question was the size of the piers. Yeah, size of the piers because there's quite a lot of them, I think. Yeah, there is. They were accounted for in the flood storage volume. I tried to pull it up, I don't have that far. They're not three by three, like you just said there. I think they're at best 12 inch by 12 inch. Rich, if you happen to know, jump in, but I'm not sure. That would have been on the architectural plans, right? Yeah, I can probably try to dig them up, but I don't have them open and accessed right now. But I know they're not three by three, that's for sure. But I know as well, they were also the 23 of them, I believe the number is, the area of those were accounted for in each flood elevation. Albert, do you know who Albert, do you know who Albert was on board with those piers are? Hey, Rich, yeah, those piers are, they're gonna be about 12 inches. Okay, that's my five. One by one, right? Yeah. Yeah, so we, Just to tie up, I wanna, could you just show the, the progress is to fill, again, as you're talking? Yeah, the plan is here. Let me zoom in. So these little squares, where it says proposed foundation pier, these are the individual piers. So we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. No, I meant the numbers. Do you have the numbers for what that's filling? Versus the- Oh, the, so yeah, so the, yep, the floodplain storage numbers are also on the plan. And I talked with Mike and we're gonna, on the revised plan, we're gonna present this a little bit differently. Right now, what we have is the, the area and volume that a floodplain that currently exists on the site. So for example, between elevations 5.3 and 5.5 on the site, that represents roughly 170 square feet and provides 30 cubic feet of volume. With the grading that's proposed and removal of the house, this land between elevation 5.3 and 5.5 will occur within 302 square feet and provide 91 cubic feet of flood storage volume. So we sort of have an existing and proposed. What Mike's gonna do is revise this table for the revised plan that talks about proposed fill within the floodplain between each of these elevations and then the corresponding compensatory flood storage provided for each of the elevations. All right. So I hope that answers your question. Sure. Thank you. Yeah, I'll send, okay. So I heard revised, incorporate engineering's notes, things like that. Sounds like you're not intending to request closing tonight. Unfortunately, I don't think we're positioned to do that. We would like to request a continuance. So Mike can get the revised plans in, Mike can get the revised plans into you in advance of the next hearing. Sure, that makes a lot of sense. I'm just gonna go over what I heard. We'd like, I don't know if there was one, but if there was, we'd like an engineering memo. We'd like to incorporate like notes on the plan that says there was no modeling. I guess that's on the stormwater report. You're gonna update the plans and you're gonna revise the flood storage numbers. Oh, and then whatever the comments that the engineers and the town had, you're gonna incorporate those comments. That's what I have as well. Great. And continue to the last meeting. Yep. And that's the 14th. And you got a second. Okay. Primary pride. So slow food, yes. Susan Chapnick. Yes. David White. Yes. David Kaplan. Yes. Mike Hilda's game. Yeah. With David Stevens. Yeah. And Chuck Turoni says yes. Oh, great. Thank you very much. And what was the date of that public hearing? The next one is February 15th. 15th, okay. But Rich will need the information by the 7th. That's right. To get to the 7th. Yeah. I have two other hearings scheduled that night. One is in person, one is remote. And given that most of these comments are engineering driven, I think Mike, you might have to, Mike and Nicole will have to attend that one. Yeah. I can do that, Rich. That's fine. Okay. All right, great. Thanks very much, everyone. Have a good night. And... Thank you. See you soon. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. All right. So next on our agenda, we have a amended order of condition for the Allentor Reservoir. It's DEP, file number 91-327. And the public hearing that we will consider an application to amend the existing order of condition that's at the Allentor Reservoir for cleaning of sediment and debris from a bridge surface and milling and overlaying the existing determinist pavement on the bridge and formalizing an existing pathway on either side of the bridge with petuminous concrete within the buffer zone to a boarding vegetated wetland. Who do we have here tonight to represent this project? And could you introduce yourself for the record? Yes, that's me, Danielle Desilets, we have Kyle Zick, landscape architecture, the designer for the Reservoir project. Hi. Nice to see you all. Nice to see you. Do you have a presentation for the commission? And do you have screen-sharing ability there, Brian? Yep, I was just gonna let, I think Leslie is here on behalf of the Recreation Committee too. Hello, Leslie. Joe couldn't be here. I'm representing the commission. Okay. Let's get started. All right, let's see. Whoops. Oh, okay. Oh, you've got it, okay. Yeah, so that's a quick summary here is what Chuck just shared. So this is a kind of complete the project at the Res. There was a little component that did not get installed. It wasn't part of the project. That was basically the connection over the bridge at Drake Village to make the connection. They have since done a gateway project and so we just wanna make the connection from where we ended our previous pavement system that connects from the perimeter loop around the Res to their gateway at Drake Village. If you don't mind going to the next slide. We have a couple of images there. So this is the current condition. So there's some old potuminous pavement on the bridge itself. So we'd clean up all the sediment and the aggregate that's there, remove the potuminous, use that as base material just like we did at the Herdfield connection and then make the connection over the bridge with new potuminous pavement. We can see the edge of the previous pavement is in the top image there. And we go right up this to make the connection to Drake right below the cut, probably cut the edge of the previous pavement just so we have a clean edge. So the next image just shows the view from the other side. That's the Drake, then their new gateway with bench and seating pad. And then the next, it's just a couple more images of the conditions again coming down from the Drake connection, the state of the potuminous. And that's the pathway that was installed with the rip-rope swale for the accessible path, accessible and pervious path connecting to the perimeter trail. So, and then, thank you. The next, that slide is the plan itself. So you can see we're proposing the bridge is a little bit wider, but we're proposing just a six foot wide pathway of the two minutes to connect the width of the previous pavement to the Drake connection. And then infill the edge of the bridge abutments with a three-quarter inch wash aggregate. And then we'll have silt fence and compost filter socks for construction just as we did for the herd fields connection. And that last, those three big Xs, those were removed as part of the res connection. So we're not removing any vegetation unless it's weeds that are growing in the current sediment on the bridge itself. The last page there is just the details for the filter sock, the silt fence, the wash aggregate layer, and then the potuminous pavement. That's pretty much it. Thank you. Leslie, did you wanna add anything to that or should I go to the commission members? No, feel free to go to commission members. Sure. Anyone on the commission have any questions about this project? Chuck, I do. Oh, sorry, Brian. Sure, it's hard to see. But, Susan, if you want to go first, we'll let you. Okay. I just have some comments. So I did a site walk down there just because I was doing a site walk for one of our CPA projects to look at enhancement of the bank and riparian habitat for Millbrook. Up in that area, which is awesome. And I just looked at that area and totally agree it needs to be fixed up. I mean, this is definitely a forgotten child and just we didn't get it in the project. So I just wanna lend my support to doing this amendment. But at the same time, I just wanna put a bug in everybody's ear. And I don't have my pictures here, but I'd like to do that at another time. This is a kind of a culverted underneath this bridge area. It's a pedestrian bridge, there's concrete, and Millbrook gets condensed and kind of moved in a certain way, which I discuss with Hatch Engineering and Duke, this go who's doing that other project, said, you know, that may not be what you wanna do. And at some point you might wanna consider a CPA project to just make a pedestrian bridge and open that up underneath so that Millbrook can have its flow. So I'm just putting a bug in everybody's ear while we've got you all here that maybe something we want to consider as a town later. So just to get this right, Duke was suggesting that we build another bridge that meets stream crossing standards. Exactly, and because it's just a pedestrian bridge, it would be easy to build, it doesn't have to handle any, you know, traffic. And that would be, so I'm just relaying that information. Understood. Thank you. Brian McBride, I know you had your hand up to the town. Just a quick question for Danielle. I don't think you could page up to the pictures of the foliage around the bridge. I'm just wondering what the current status of the flora is around the bridge and if there's an opportunity now or sometime in the future to plant native species and to get it more where we want it to be. There's a pretty good mix of things in there. I know I see the images of Noray maples and it looks like there's some bittersweet in there. So there's some of that, you know. There's a pretty good edge. We're not with the space that we have and we're dealing strictly with the bridge and just a little bit above it to make that connection to Drake. So we don't have a whole lot of space. We weren't planning on removing any vegetation to do that at this point. But certainly if there's a future project in it with the pedestrian bridge that there would be some potential there to create new connections and enhance the plantings. Yeah, okay, thanks. David White. One question. Is there some asphalt or the runoff issues to consider erosion possibilities? So the bridge itself will be fairly flat in the cross, the connection that we're doing. The connection to the res is a pervious material and we have that swale on that side of it. So there shouldn't be, and then we have on either side. So it's only a six foot path to connect with the image. You can see that the width of the pervious pathway that's there, we're connecting with that. So there is a strip, maybe 18 inches on either side and that's where we're doing that three quarter inch wash aggregate, which is similar to what we did at the herd field connection, just so if there is any flow that it would connect, collect it and kind of capture it there. Say aggregate, okay. I don't see any other questions. I don't see anybody else with their hand up is. So with that, is there anyone attending tonight's meeting that would like to make a comment about this project? Please raise your hand or use, you can raise your hand just in front of the camera or you can just use the reactions button and hit the raise hand function will go right to you. And I don't see anyone on my screen that usually popped to the top. So I'm gonna say no one's here for this project. So I had a couple of questions and I just wanted to make sure that who maintains this bridge after it's finished? Is this Park Park and Rec land Leslie? And so if something happened, it would be the TPW, it's... Yeah, I mean, it would be similar to anything that would go along the pathway. It would be viewed very much like the connection that is made between herd field and the bridge. It's not the housing people. They did their project and part of what we did was wait to see exactly how far they were gonna get with their project. So they didn't come across, they didn't come beyond the fencing area and they didn't come across the bridge but much like with the herd project if there's something along the pathway or the bridge, it would be DPW. Okay, so are you gonna mill and overlay this? The machine that gets out there, is that a truck or is there a smaller version of that? And that doesn't really need to be answered. I'm wondering with the culvert underneath, do we need to worry about that agitation making, I don't know, material loose and dropping into the stream or not, I'm not sure. So that's my question. I'll just say that the detail that we use for the herd connection over that bridge is the same. So we have in addition to the compost filter stock, we also have that silt fence detail that wraps around so we make sure that comes down and wraps. It's on the last page there. No, I guess what's happening on the top, I was just wondering inside when you shake the whole thing. Did you notice any of that on the last one? Was there any about that? Okay, yeah, it's culvert. So they're pretty much solidly filled with soil above that. You know, I understand that. Okay, that was my, trying to move it along. So that was my question. So I'm gonna, can you take down the screen sharing, please? So I'm trying to- I think it's like a motion to approve the amendment, right? Yep. Approved if you're requesting more conditions under the bylaw and the Weapons Protection Act. Great, can I get a second? Second. Sure. Any, so, okay, let's take a vote. David. Can you just do one discussion item? I just wanna make the record. We have standard special conditions that have to do with erosion controls and sedimentation and things like that, which will be in place on this. They're nothing new to you, Leslie or Danielle, you've seen them before at the previous projects, right? If we need to- It's part of, we're amending, right. We're amending, so it's probably already in there. So it's probably already in there. We should just take a look and make sure because we have modified our special conditions. You can add a condition right now if you want, but if you don't, it's what was in the old order. It's in the order already. Okay. Yeah, so I- I rescind that. I just- I thought there was a close and an issue, but if this is just an issue, then if anyone has any conditions, you know, speak now and we'll just, and we'll add it in. Okay, I'm okay with that, with Nathaniel's reminder. Okay, seeing none. Thank you. I'm gonna run down Brian McBride. Yes. David White. Yes. David Kaplan. Yes. Mike Gillis game. Yes. Susan Chapnick. Yes. Nathaniel Stevens. Yes. And Chuck Turoni says yes. All right, you're all set, amended order of conditions. You can call Ryan tomorrow or reach out to him through email and he'll let you know when he can get that information out to you. Excellent. Thank you very much. Good night. All right. So then Susan, get ready. So the next one is our requested determination for 35 Beverly Road and Susan's kind of run this agenda, but I figured I would just look at her and see if she's ready and she looks ready now. So take it away, Susan. Okay. So this is a request for determination of applicability at 35 Beverly Road. This public hearing is considering an application for a seasonal floating dock at 35 Beverly Road along the bank and land under water of Mystic Lake. And Ryan Clapp and I did a site visit for this property. I believe it was the January 14th. We were supposed to have the hearing for the meeting of the 18th. However, our public notice didn't get out in time. So that's why this has been continued. So Ryan's put up the plan for the seasonal dock and those of you who remember the seasonal dock just right down the street that we permit it that we did an RDA for previously that one was already there. This one is non-existing. This is a new dock that the residents, the applicants want to put in. And you'll see the dock is kind of an L shape. It will have pilings that go in and the applicant has explained that those will be hand put in. There will be no machinery that's pounding those into the water. And then there's a small ramp to get to it. This is a very, very steep property. There's a steep slope down to the water and that's something to consider. I think it would be helpful if you put up our pictures, Ryan, and our discussion. That might be helpful. So Ryan did a small summary of this project and he and I walked the site just so you can see. So this is looking down towards, you could get an idea of the steepness. That's Mystic Lake. That's the other edge of the property. Whoops. Okay, so this is down right near the water. That's kind of what it looks like now. There's some stone on the edge and then there's also some concrete stones on the bank existing. And there's a small kind of fence that was just put up there to prevent the geese from coming up, but it's kind of not quite anchored in there. This site, oh, you could put that up, Ryan. I just wanna say that the, so this is a proposal for a seasonal dock and as we've discussed before, seasonal means it goes in at a certain time of year and it comes out at a certain time of year. If you scroll down a little bit, as I said, the site is steep. The applicants also talking about doing some additional work on the site, which we explained to them would be another RDA or NOI depending upon how much additional work they wanna do. And this RDA is just for the seasonal dock. Currently, the property owner has also installed a gravel pad directly adjacent to the lake shore, which I'd like to show you, Ryan has a picture of it, which has their jet ski sitting on it out of the water. And this might be something that the commission wants to consider requiring the applicant to move. It's right on the edge of the water. And as we've discussed with seasonal docks coming out of the water, they should come out and above the 25 foot no disturbed zone. And I would recommend that we consider asking the applicant to move this as well at the same place that the seasonal dock would be going. I don't know if you have any more pictures. That's the edge of the problem. Other side. That's somebody else's dock next door. If that's what I'm about to say, you can see the pile. Okay, you can see the pilings on that one, and that's what these pilings. Susan, I'm a little confused. You're presenting this project for the applicant or are you just doing a... I was just explaining what we saw on the site visit. Sorry. Oh, sure. Can you just get to the applicant? Sure, sure, sure, no problem. So, and the applicant is here, I see them, I think. Oh, I'm sorry, yes. Hi, and if you could please introduce yourselves and I'm sorry if I stole your thunder, I was trying to be thorough about the site visit. No, we appreciate it. Yeah, I'm Thomas Schnaudhofer and my wife, Maylene Chew, is here. Yeah, so I just want to preface that something as well. We actually have been living in this location since 2010. When we actually bought the property, there used to be already an existing dock on this property. Not when we bought it, but there was one, we actually have photos of it, but there was one a dock there, I think in the 70s or 80s, and that was removed, not the owners had removed it, but not because of the commission or so. So there was an existing dock on this property previously. So just to preface that, but yes. So we are looking at a seasonal floating dock to be placed and yeah, I mean, there are a lot of homes already on this lake that also have docks and the dock company that we have looked into actually placed a lot of these docks that are on this lake as well as the upper mystic lake with the Winchester Bullet Club. So they're very familiar with this area as well. Okay, I think between that and what Susan did, we have a good understanding of the project. I only had one question, when the dock comes out, was there a distance from the water where you're gonna store it? Was it outside the 25 foot area? Do we know that measurement? Yeah, I mean, as you can see, there's plenty of space to put it. So we can absolutely put it 25 feet away from it. That's not a problem. Okay. Okay, and Susan, does that concur with your site visit? Like 25 feet away would be adequate for storing the dock? Yes, and I did wanna ask the applicant since one or two questions. One is, are you willing to move the jet ski pad? If the commission, I'd like to hear from other commissioners, that's a concern of theirs. And then what were the dates you were considering having the dock go in and come out every year? Well, we don't have anything set in stone because the weather always changes as well. And since we're not necessarily doing it ourselves, this company that we're using, WM Docks, they've been doing this for over 20 years and they can do the install and the removal. And that will also depend on their schedule. So depending on what the requirements are, obviously we can let them know so they can incorporate that into their schedule as well. But we are bound by the schedule as well. Sure, sure. I see that Nathaniel has his hand up, Nathaniel. Thanks, a couple of questions. I'm sorry, just to understand, so this is a floating dock with piles. Piles that are aligned where the dock is floating, is that correct? They're kind of twisted into the ground, the piles. Okay, so those are twisted into the ground, but so the dock's not reticent, those aren't supporting the dock, they're just placing the dock. Floating away, right. Floating away, okay, got it, thanks, all right. That makes sense. What type of decking are you proposing to use? It's aluminum frame. Aluminum frame. It's aluminum decking too. It's also aluminum decking. Aluminum decking, okay, because there's floats underneath it, right, okay. So there's no opportunity for light to penetrate. Is this solid? There is, it's... The aluminum decking has some kind of like opening, so there's some light that goes through. Okay, awesome, thanks, okay. Those are my only questions about the dock. For that it seems, we just also commented that we did give permission to one of your neighbors to have, we set conditions on the dock that need to be pulled out, reminding November, by November 15th of each year, and then kept out until April 15th of the following year. So just wanted to make sure you can live with those. April 15th, this has been November 15th, correct? Yeah, exactly, yeah. Then you could put them, obviously, after, you know, but just not. Yeah, yes. It can be in the water, it needs to be out of the water from November 15th to April 15th, that makes sense. Okay, great, thanks. So that's all I had on the dock comment. I think, I agree with Susan, I think after we discussed the dock, we could address the jet ski ramp issue, but I don't think those two should be, those two are necessarily related to the, necessarily combined, but I could be convinced otherwise. So that's a good question, Nathaniel. I didn't know, so they didn't ask an RDA for where the jet ski should go, obviously it was just a seasonal dock, and then we noticed that the jet ski is here. Should that be included in this RDA or not? Well, it's not, I guess they could seek to continue it. I guess in my mind, I guess one thing to ask is if they get approval for this dock, did they anticipate that jet ski would be removed? Yeah, so just to clarify, it's not a fixed structure. These are just rails that lay on the ground. And so we looked into that option. So these rails are basically allowed the jet ski to be pulled in by hand. And so there are no rails that are 25 feet long because you couldn't pull it that far by hand. So the only suggestion that was brought by the company, which honestly doesn't make any sense to put it, build in a crane to do that. We're obviously not going to do that. And they didn't have any options. I've seen other people have sort of attachments to their dock that they could pull the jet skis onto. I've been flying to my cape who had that, but that was on the ocean. Yeah, I asked the company and they said they don't have anything that long. And it would also kind of be a concern in terms of the strength on it. So they basically said they wouldn't recommend it. Okay, all right. So it sounds like, I guess we need to deal with that. The railings separately would be my thought. I mean, before I say have the dock up the request for the dock, I guess we've never seen railings before like this placed on a bank. Is there a better picture of those railings? I saw a stone. A stone under it. I think there is a better picture. And while we're trying to find it, Mike, did you have a question related to this or is it in a different? It's related to this. It's about the no disturb zone that you mentioned 25 feet. I'm wondering if, and I'm not familiar with this, but if the regulations also include impact to that zone by the actual moving of the dock because that's gonna take some muscle or some machine or something. And is that gonna be consistent with the no disturb zone because of compaction or whatever it may be from the moving process? Good question. We did discuss that briefly at the other hearing and we aired on the side of the importance of a seasonal dock coming out of the water at a certain time. And we said that they have to have minimal disturbance to the bank and the 25 foot, but Chuck or Nathaniel, do you remember differently? I don't remember differently. No. I had a different question. Oh, okay. The more I'm thinking about this, I think we should deal with the dock and then deal with, I think we need more information about this jet ski. Okay, and do that completely. Because I'm seeing more things in this photo that are not making me comfortable about it. Right. So I think if they want to, either the commission can decide to take enforcement action about it because it's not permitted. It's work on the bank within the buffer zone that's not permitted. So taking enforcement action, we can work continue very levels of enforcement or work with the applicant to see about filing a separate application to get this thing permitted. But I don't think that we should necessarily hold tie or connect this pending request with this issue. That makes sense. So I don't know if that makes sense to you. What Nathaniel's saying is, in the process of permitting the dock, we see that you have a jet ski here, which is in an area that's protected in the town and in the state. So it's really not allowed there. So we could deal with it two ways. One is you do a step. Well, it's not, they don't have permission. No permission to put it there. Sorry, yes. No permission to put it there. So at this point, we can deal with it one of two ways. I think Nathaniel is saying, one is through a separate letter of enforcement and one is through a separate RDA, which you're doing now for the dock, but it would be separate for this jet ski and structural storage. So at this point, I think we'll just focus on the dock. Like because that's what this RDA is about. Right. That makes sense, yeah. Yeah, I was just gonna suggest if we can put on our agenda discussing this as a potential enforcement action at our next meeting, then we can, I think given the late hour. Yeah, we don't wanna discuss it now. Okay. And we need more information. Sure. And then we can certainly invite the owner to attend that meeting and participate in that discussion. Sounds good. Sounds good. Leave it at that. Sounds good. So are there any other comments from commissioners? Oh, my hand went down. Sorry. That's okay, Chuck. Sure. So I was gonna ask something about this jet ski also. I'm just gonna do it real quickly. You know, there might be another way to store this and you might wanna look into it. But it looks like to me that maybe you could tie it to the dock during the summer and this area wouldn't be needed so much. Don't really need an answer to that question. But Michael, I wanna let you know when I called DEP and asked them about the docks, they do want them out of the water and that they thought that any damage to the bank, there would be minimal damage to the bank. And since these, this applicant's hiring a company, they wouldn't expect any damage to the bank for that. And I guess my final question would be, why can't the company move the jet ski? If it's, I don't know how they're moving it. Maybe they won't lift it for people moving it. You know, I don't know if that was an option. I'm just gonna leave it like that because we're not gonna talk about it at this meeting. But those are the only things I had. Thanks, Chuck. I'll make a motion to issue a positive negative thing. Yes, we have jurisdiction, but no for the permitting as needed. But we have conditions. With the condition, sorry, yes, with the condition that is. So I would recommend two conditions. Are you gonna do the conditions? No, go for it. I think there are the two that I'm gonna do, but. And I have three additional ones. Oh, you have three. Okay, one is that the, the dock, it's a seasonal dock that has to be removed between November 15th to April 15th, that we would acquire erosion and sedimentation controls for the bank during installation of the dock to make sure that we don't get any construction debris or anything in the lake at that time. Those are the only two I had. Did you have another one, Chuck? Yeah, when they're removing the dock, they're not gonna need erosion control. That's, that's not. No, I'm saying constructing it. It's not there. You don't think they need any erosion controls when they're constructing the dock and bringing the materials down? I don't. The dock, as long as one piece will come and it's basically putting there as the same as every season, you would take it out, take it in, there's not like any, there's no constructions. So it's no construction? Okay. I take them back, there's like Legos, they connect them, they slide, it's two pieces, they slide. Okay. And they just put like the ponds and the hinges on it. So there's no. Okay, understood. Thank you. It comes already made, I think the ramp just sits on the one. So yeah. Susan, you got all my conditions, except for one, if the bank is damaged, I would like you to install erosion control and reseed it, fix it and reseed it. So that would be an observation you make and just to make sure that the dirt doesn't, during rainstorms get into the mystic. So erosion control and then seed it. And those are observations that I think that you could cover. And then we said, so there are three, that when the dock comes out, it should be outside of the 25 foot zone and your bender should be able to do that for you. Yeah. Seize me. Okay, Nathaniel. So you still have a motion. That's my motion. I got you for like a second. Well, I'll second. Who did that? Dave Kaplan, I think about it. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. Then I will take a roll call vote. So I have David White. Yes. Thank you. I have Brian McBride. Yes. Thank you. Chuck Taroni. Yes. Thank you. Dave Kaplan. Yes. Nathaniel Stevens. Yes. And I say yes. So. I'm calling the client. Oh, I forgot Mike. It's Mike Gildes game. Sorry, Mike, I brought it on my screen. And you know, it's like who's where I'm in the little boxes. Thanks, Mike. So that means that you can put the stock in with those conditions. Ryan Klopp will get you the appropriate documentation for that. And we would ask you to come to our next meeting. Likely, Ryan Klopp will be in contact with you to discuss further what to do about the jet ski. Okay. Thank you very much. I'm sorry, it's so late. Appreciate it. Back to you, Chuck. Okay, Susan. So we're back to the administrative information. So I think the most important thing that we talk about is the water bodies working group. So I'm going to throw this right to David. Do you want to take a motion to continue ADA Coolidge? You've been voted. Oh, is it? We're on to ADA Coolidge? I thought, okay, sure. Let's take a motion. Let's take a motion. Good. So moved. Yeah. So I can do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. David Kaplan. Yes. Mike Gildes game. Yeah. Susan Chapnick. Yes. Daniel Stevens. Yes. David White. Okay. Yes. And I've lost track. So Chuck Tronney says, yes. And if I missed anyone, just sing out now. Brian. Brian. Sorry, Brian. Okay. I thought you said Brian. I was like, I don't need to vote. Brian, Ryan. No, I didn't see it. Are we continuing this to 215? We're further out. 215. Okay. 215. At least for the time being. Okay. Okay. So getting back to the discussions, David White, we're going to do the anti-report and then the contract on the water bodies working group. David White and David Kaplan. Okay. We're still trying to work out the contract and budget issues along meeting last night about that. I said around the current draft water bodies report. And there's several water bodies that need some attention in some ways. I mentioned at the reservoir, basically we do a partial job for years and years. So we really need to think of doing a full job to really control the water chestnuts. The spy pond is always a problem with us in some ways. We're trying to be more proactive in deciding how to do that in a minimal way, but still manage things. And because it comes a budget issue, how much money we can spend as well. And we had a talk last night with our person from the finance committee who said basically, we should figure out how much we're gonna take to do the job right and bring it forward to the finance committee for our next year's budget. And how much that is, we're not quite sure yet, but it's definitely more than we have in the past. Other comments, anybody? Anyone else have anything? I think comments about the annual report. Sure, I sent my comments in. They weren't very substantive, but I know that didn't Mike Guild's game, didn't you have some comments that? I did have just a couple of questions. One is, I think we talked about this in the past. Does it make sense for the town to purchase or purchase with renaming down a harvester that we would have on hand when we need it? And I don't know what the cost impact of that would be, but that way we could do the good job more. That's a good idea. David Morgan explored that last year and think a much traction with DPW, which definitely explore that going forward as a cheap option. Helpful to share with Lexington or somebody, but I just don't know if that's a more official way to go about it because I agree that you do it once well and you get a much better bang for your buck. The only other question I had was about Hills Pond that I know there's a constructed wetlands there. And I don't know if there are other sources of pollution or rain water coming into the pond and I don't know how effective that constructed wetland is. And I don't know if any water quality testing has ever been done there. I mean, it offers a great idea around there, but I don't know about the other parts. Here's a stormwater drain that enters into the pond. Right. Through that wetland that was constructed. Right, but my understanding too is that water and wetland is doing phosphorus testing because that's part of the permit. I haven't seen, I don't know if the two Davids have seen that data, but I haven't from last year. So that would be interesting to see. I actually, yeah, I actually asked Ellen who's kind of leading the friends group there if we could have that report from last year because I don't know if it was widely distributed. I didn't see it. So at least we know what's, you know, what they're monitoring and what they said at the end of this. We can send it around, I think. Yeah, that would be helpful. And I think if I guess there are some of our questions, Mike. Yeah, we just want to get back on track here. We're reviewing the annual report. I know we could talk about every site, but that's not what we're doing here. We're just making sure that it has the stuff in it for the annual report because it needs to go to the finance committee. I also mentioned in a comment the showing the harvester and the cost for a harvester and probably breaking it down and how long it would take to pay back. So that's come up a couple of times, David. You guys might think about that. Any other comments about the annual report? I thought it was very well done. So generally, I mean, I appreciate your comments, Chuck and Mike, but I think generally it was pretty comprehensive. We talked about that last night as long terms of what it would cost to do the job right at the reservoir. Talking, we estimated $55,000 per year for four or five years to bring the water chestnuts down to the management levels. That's the number we should think about in terms of actually buying a harvester. And I know David Kaplan looked in some of these things last year. So we should... You had like 110,000, but the problem was no place to store it and we don't really have a crew to run it. So those were a couple of hurdles that need to be discussed if you want to bring that up again to the finance committee. Well, otherwise, I mean, what we can propose is hiring the current contractor for four weeks instead of two weeks, that's twice as much. So we got to 55,000. We're just doubling the current kind of change. So I guess your budget that you're gonna put to the finance committee will have all the final review of all that, whether we're going up and down or wherever things are going and that'll be presented to the conservation commission at that time and we'll get more into this. We had to add money and why and why it makes sense. And that was gone. A lot of that was discussed last night, but it's still conceptual. We need to get that on paper and back it up. But so it sounds like the water bodies report is accepted. Can I get a vote to accept it? The water bodies, is that what we do? Anyone says no, it's fine. I'll take a vote. Accept it, accept it. And a vote to accept the water bodies. And it'll be some minor editing along the way, but it's special. So moved with the edits as given to David, it's sent to David White and Dave Kaplan. Second. Okay, Mike Gildes game. I'm just going loudest. We go loudest sometimes. Okay, so Daniel Stevens. Yes. That was loud. Prime hide. Yes. Okay, David White. Yes. David Kaplan. Yes. Mike Gildes game. Yes. Did I see Susan? Susan, did I see you? Susan. Yes. And Chuck Tarani says yes. Okay, so we accepted the annual report. So there was a discussion also at the water bodies working group about the contract. I don't know if there's a brief update. It's still, it's still being discussed. I'm still trying to look at the details with a spy pond contract issue. We're thinking about maybe taking out the Fagmades out there, SWCA contract and having another person do that, another contractor do that. We also talked last night basically of having some sort of environmental monitor help us manage these contracts. And this is not basically, it's a sketch can. It's Folger Foles and David Morgan who assume other things going on as well. So it's sort of not really been tightly watched. I put it that way. And things sort of slip away. So that's one thing we're thinking about in terms of having someone hired to be responsible for sort of overseeing some of the work. And so one of the very next thing, the first thing that was decided that needed to be taken care of is I need to call Misty Ann Merrill and ask him but it seemed like there was an SWCA email today, David and maybe Naomi was going to call Misty Ann. So I kind of hung back and didn't make that phone call because you asked her if all these things from 2003 were completed. So no reply yet, but when that comes in, we'll know what to do. So that's the very next step. And what's the step after we find out that we're as good to go? So maybe that gets us a little further down the lane. I think a little further down the lane, but I think we're probably gonna go with SWCA for the coming fiscal year. We don't have a choice because we still have, we have a three-year contract with them and it's- So you think about somebody else for the next round. Okay. All right. Well, that's great. Thanks for that update. No. Moving on. You good? Okay. Park and recreation is, should we just need to know who's going to the next meeting on 2, 824? And I haven't been out of us three so I can do that. I guess if that's okay with Nathaniel because I know that he really likes this going there. You do. Sorry, I did, yeah. And I thank you again, Susan, for covering for me last time. I'm out of the, I'm not here on the 24th. So otherwise I'd go, but- I'll volunteer. That'll be my night. Thanks. Okay. And I'll just do a quick update of the parking rack if you'd like me to. There really was- Did you go to the last meeting? I did. Okay. Yeah, I did. And there wasn't anything that intersects with us except for Monotomy Rocks Park where there are, and Chuck, you've seen this as well, where there are, they're down to two options that they're considering for the playground and both the options have, one of them has 100% of the structures outside of the 50, the big structures from that wetland area that was recently defined back there in Monotomy. They're having another public meeting with these two options. I believe it's on the 18th. So we'll keep posted. So you probably will have more information, Chuck, when you go to the next meeting, but that's the only project that's getting advanced right now that affects us, our jurisdiction. Exactly. But you won't hear too much from me about that because they'll come from front of the Conservation Commission so really there's a project just out of Monotomy Rocks Park. And it'll be in front of the Conservation Commission soon. I think we already reviewed it too because there was a wetland scientist was from the Cape and it seemed like Nathaniel recognized that person's name down in that area. Ryan, did you raise your hand? I saw something, yeah. I don't know. It's related that the CPA meetings have been going on for the last three weeks and I put in the chat the current proposed projects for CPA if someone wants more details, I'm happy to give them. But I think the only one that's sort of wetlands related is that Monotomy Rocks Playground Upgrade. There are a number of others, but they're not touching wetlands as far as I can see. Thank you, Leslie. Yeah, thank you. They're probably gonna think about next week which ones get funded. So that will be the big meeting. They've got 3,500,000, maybe 2,500,000 requested, 1,500,000 in available funds. So that's a challenge. That's it. All right, thank you. Oh, Leslie, Leslie. Leslie. Hello. Very late, please. I know. I just wanted to correct some information that was put out. Our next public meeting is February 8th on the Monotomy and Parallel Park Projects. Thank you. I had the wrong date. That's OK. But I didn't want to even... No, it makes sense. Thank you. I miss it. Yeah. All right, thank you. OK, so we got through park and recreation, liaison discussion. We're gonna go to the artificial turf and that's Mike Gildes' game. And I'll be fairly brief. I will say that we're making progress. So everybody can tell you as well, I think. The three subgroups of health, safety, and environmental, I think are making progress in terms of narrowing down our field of vision for what the individual reports are going to be prior to submission to the town. And thanks to Susan for some help on that. And I think we're also narrowing it down in terms of speakers. I have identified one group agreed to speak. And there is another one or two who may come into play as well in terms of the environmental group that is composed of myself and Joe Barr and Claire. I think we're getting down to the main bullet points that we want to cover. Obviously, given our short time frame and the huge amount of information out there, it's a selection process. But I think we're making progress. So I'll leave it at that unless you have some questions. OK. I had some questions. The only thing I want to ask is, when you do that, when those people come in, you finally pick your discussion group, is that going to be a regular meeting around 5 o'clock? Or is that going to be something that you want to try to get more counts people to? So it's going to be at 7 or something like that. The way it's going to work is probably starting at the regular 5 o'clock. And the way it's foreseen as far as I know at this point is that there will be a short introduction to the speaker in terms of that individual's expertise and experience. And then there'll be open questions for the committee. These are not going to be open questions to the whole community at this point. There will be opportunities for the community to comment on draft reports. And I think they are foreseeing at least one public meeting prior to the final. And then something happening towards right before town meeting when we have to submit our final report. So that's still somewhat up in the air, but that's what I recall at this point. Not unless they have any edits on that. All right. OK. So it looks like most of our items are finished off. Artificial turf is done. And the only other thing is the commission's suggestion for EGLE scale projects. But we can put that off. That's not unless there's anything for trees. No, I asked. Sarah, would you like to come on and give us an update? The next meeting is February 14th. And during our last Comcom meeting, I gave a brief overview of what was covered. So no news. OK. David White, you had a hand up? So I'm in contact with the scout. I have some ideas for him. Now report back to what he has to say. Some ideas to me. I hope he's back to me. Do you want to have a quick discussion now? Sure. My ideas are always good. I'm focusing on the Great Middles right now, but. OK. So this whole idea was about. So scouts come to us all the time. And usually they're bringing in a project. So I was thinking that maybe we should put a top 10 together. So when they come in, we could just say, you know, have you ever thought of these spots? So if we don't have enough to put 10 together tonight, maybe we can just bring this to the next meeting and everyone can think about what's around town. I think about it. Next meeting is good. Yeah, I did think the bridge that he proposed at Great Meadows sounded like a great idea. And you know, the walking bridge. And I thought that maybe we want to adopt. And maybe there is one who knows and adopt a size and a construction kind of detail. So we're consistent throughout town when scouts come in and say I'm going to build something. So we know what we're getting. And if something they only do half, then we'll have the plan and the details do the second half. You have a sort of standard design for steps. Any, so it looks like I don't see any hands raised. So let's just put this on the next agenda and everyone think of their ideas. But if something comes up in between, David said, please reach out to him. So with that, I'm going to ask if there anything else from commission members that they wanted to talk about, maybe something they saw around town that needs to be addressed. If not, I'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Yes, let's do it. Wave, everyone wave. That's all we need. Good night, all. Thanks, Chad. Yeah, didn't say David Catlin, but OK. We got it. We had a quorum. Have a good night. Good night.