Minutes of January 18, 2001

[Approved 2/1/01]

Present: Robert Boisselle, Paul Locke, Peter Mortimer, Nancy Naslas, David Valade

Minutes:

Voted: to accept the minutes of November 16, 2000. There were no meetings held during the month of December 2000. The January 4, 2001 minutes will be approved at the next meeting.

Secretary's Salary:

Voted: to grant Nancy Pritchard, Conservation Secretary, a $2 hourly increase from $10 to $12 per hour, retroactive from January 1, 2001.

Bob: For clarification, a quorum is needed to do any financial business and to do any legal business on this committee. This commission only does things by a quorum vote.

Correspondence:

From the City of Melrose: Patrick Guerriero, Mayor

Re: Capital Improvement Program Fiscal Year 2002

Dear Bob,

Fiscal Year 2002 will be in the 8^th year of the City of Melrose Capital Improvement Program (CIP). In the seven years since the Capital Improvement Program was reconstituted, sixty-nine projects have been funded at a cost of $29,000,000. As in past years a rank CIP list will be maintained through fiscal year 2002. Enclosed are CIP materials for fiscal year 2002, and included is your department's priority list from fiscal year 2001. To simplify the process, you do not need to update this form or resubmit it if you do not have any additional projects or do not want to reprioritize your list......

Bob: At this time we do not have a priority list. Does anyone else have any ideas for a CIP?

Nancy: I think that since the city has received all that grant money for improvements around Ell Pond, anything we would be interested in would come through those channels.

Workshops

Comprehensive Permit Law/Chapter 40B

Upcoming DHCD-sponsored 40B Workshops:

Saturday, 2/3 - Billerica Town Hall and 2/3/, Middleborough Town Hall

Comprehensive Permits (Chapter 40B) and Community Experience in Shaping Good Projects

A special forum for planners, planning and zoning boards, housing committees and other local officials: UMass I-495 Center for Professional Education in Westborough.

Learn how to be most effective on behalf of your community from understanding the basics to writing a good decision; from successfully dealing with abutters to negotiating with the developer. Find out the latest legal case law and its implications. For planners, ZBA members, Planning Board members, and others interested in how to manage the comprehensive permit process.

From: 23^rd Annual Preservation Awards, Nomination Form

The Mass Historical Commission, a Division of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, serves as the federally designated State Historic Preservation Office and the Office of the State Archaeologist. The Commission identifies, evaluates and protects important historical and archaeological assets of the Commonwealth. To honor the challenge of preserving our national legacy, the Massachusetts Historical Commission created the Preservation Awards program in 1979. Awards are presented to individuals, organizations and projects that display an exemplary commitment to historic preservation in MA. Preservation Award Categories: Archaeology, Building Restoration, Education & Outreach, Individual Lifetime Achievement, Landscape Preservation, Local Advocacy & Planning. Deadline for Submission: February 16, 2001. Nomination Guidelines, Requirements & Checklist are included in this correspondence.

From The Bridge, a School Community Partnership

Dear Bob:

It is time for the Annual Melrose Community Reading Day. As someone who cares about education, we hope that you or a representative of your commission will volunteer to read on Friday, 3/2/01. The Bridge, a School Community Partnership, the organization that recruits volunteers for the Melrose Public School is arranging this event. This year our Melrose event will take place on "Read Across America Day". We believe that a reading day is an outstanding opportunity for very busy people to be part of the Melrose Community Volunteer effort and let the young people in Melrose know that you value education. The idea of Community Reading Day is this: people like you and others who are active in either Melrose Business Community, Professional Community, City Government, State Government, or Faternal Organizations are invited to demonstrate their commitment to education by coming to school and reading a story to the students in one of Melrose seven elementary schools, or in our Title I Preschool Program. Volunteers who chose to read in preschool kindergarten, first, second, third or special education classes are asked to pick a favorite book and bring it with them to class and read it. We are happy to offer suggestions. Readers in fourth and fifth grades will be asked to read something specific that has been selected by the teacher. Those volunteers will know in advance what they will be reading. It will be great if every reader brought a book to donate to the class. However, doing this is not necessary to participate. The day will progress much as it has in prior years. When you say yes, you will be paired with a class at one of the elementary schools. We will invite you to come school at 8:30 a.m. on Friday, 3/2. At that time you will be treated to coffee, greeted by the school principal, and have a chance to chat with the other readers before reading to the children. We hope you will spend a few minutes telling the children about yourself. The children will enjoy learning about who you are and what you do for work. Also, they will better understand

on how much you value learning in a year that you have taken time from work to read to them. We really want you to participate so we plan for you to be able to leave for work by 9:30 a.m. We hope that this fits your schedule. Please say yes and be one of the many community leaders involved in the 4^th Melrose Community Reading Day. You can let me of your volunteering by mailing the attached form to The Bridge, 360 Lynn Fells Parkway or by faxing it to me to 979-2285.

Your truly,

Emmy, Coordinator of Volunteers.

At least three of the conservation commissioners agreed to participate in Melrose Community Reading Day.

Wetlands (WOW) Program for schools.

Bob: As we are talking about donating books to schools, we have close to $900 for books and periodicals and I would like to begin the process to start ordering some books for the schools and also bring up our library and your library concerning updates for the Blue Book.

Voted: to begin the process of purchasing books and periodicals for part of our Wonders of Wetlands (WOW) Program for elementary up through high school levels.

Postage and Photographs

Voted: To pay for postage totaling approximately $15 for mailings of negative determinations, and also to reimburse Paul Locke and Bob Boisselle for photographs of Mt. Hood.

Mt. Hood/Big Dig Project

Bob: Since we had complaints at our last meeting from the public concerning what was going on there at which they brought some photographs, we went out and did our own photography.

David: I left Bob a message on his machine, having visited and walked Mt. Hood, and finding a couple of things of concern. In first ILSF, there is enough silt filled up behind these areas, that when we have a spring melt it will run off it and it probably is going to overflow the barriers into it; and the 2^nd is the northerly ILSF, the one they said they are not going to do any work here, they had knocked the barriers down with their fill. When I was walking the course, there wasn't snow on it. What I did see well beyond it down the center of this fairway, there is crushed stone and you could see in the crushed stone about 2/3 of the way down it was discolored with silt that had come through from the runoff from the clay, and it sounds like from the comments that I read at the last meeting that had progressed even further.

Nancy: Through the crushed stone?

David: You could see the crushed stone was coated with it. It was sometime from early to mid December when I saw it.

Paul: Right now it is definitely into this wetland.

Nancy: What is the Parks Department doing about it right now?

Bob: Nothing is going on that I saw. I was there one week ago.

Paul: I was there Saturday.

Bob: Nothing is progressing from looking at Paul's photographs, because the shots I took look exactly like this. Right now in the center of the fairway there is 3 - 5 inches of water in the fairway itself.

Nancy: What was proposed that we as a commission do about this? Did you have any ideas at the last meeting?

Bob: Well, the last meeting we had pictures of a giant pump in the middle of the fairway pumping water everywhere. I guess they were trying to de-water the fairway itself.

What they are trying to do is basically move the tractor to the area, and the tractor was having difficulty moving to the area. It is trying to build a trench at the bottom of the hill which you will see on that picture right there, trying to curtail the silt coming down and the small avalanche that occurred at that time.

David: What I saw was a crushed stone trench, well it is actually kind of level, but down the center of it is crushed stone that runs all the way almost to the wetland back here.

Bob: But that is only about 2 ft. wide, right?

David: That is the hay bale size around the wetland. But what I could see down about 2/3 of the way down the fairway, the stone was clearly stained with the color of the silt. I don't know if it had gone any further down, but it didn't go all the way to the other part. I think they hay baled down there anyway.

Bob: From the pictures that were presented to us at the last meeting, the impression was that they were pumping water away from the fairway, and it looks as though they were pumping water into wetland 2.

Paul: I didn't see any signs of the pump when I was there.

Bob: There were no pumps there when I was there either.

Nancy: Was that silt water that was coming off the fairway?

Bob: When I walked into the center of the fairway which you see in that picture, the water is clear as a bell, but you dive in with a stick, you will see the silt come up like that? Any place that you went into wetland 2, this would puddle up. If you go into the center of this area, it would do the same thing.

Paul: In this photograph I am standing on the pond side. There is another picture of material, and as you are coming up the road here right before you hit the jersey barriers, the ILSF right in here is evidence of people bulldozing material....

David: Or when they plowed the snow off the road, they went that way.

Paul: Pushing it in this way, there is a lot of material behind the barriers. It is all clay behind here going down this way. The barriers may or may not be keeping stuff coming out of this way.

David: Did you climb down to there when you were here?

Paul: Not much further down.

David: What I observed that you probably can't see, is at the base of that where the hay bale line is around the water, silt is built up almost to the top of the hay bales, and in the spring it is going right over the top of it unless they add another layer of hay bales, which probably won't do much good anyway.

Bob: Well at the wetland 2 area, we are recommending a double one on top of each other. The first row will be 2 high and the second row would be on 1, and plus there will be a fluorescent "green" or fluorescent red, whatever they want to put up there for these equipment operators to show that there is a barrier there. They ran over that last time.

David: How many times have we issued Cease & Desist Order, then talk to these people? Do they not get it?

Bob: They don't.

Nancy: What should we do next?

David: I think we ought to issue a Cease & Desist Order and fine them. This is getting ridiculous or turn it over to DEP for enforcement, or do something. We keep issuing a Cease & Desist Order all over the city, and they keep violating it and getting worse.

Nancy: Why don't we just tell them to do something specific, and if they don't do it, then we can proceed from there.

Bob: What do you want done?

Nancy: I think they are trying to do something.

Paul: They are trying to do something, but what is clearly disturbing is that you have a wetland here and they haven't even come close to working near wetland 2. They are still on the other side of the fairway from that and they already have impacted the wetland clearly.

Bob: They have impacted it. Basically, they are pumping into it, that is my problem.

Paul: We don't know where the pumping went. I don't know from discussion two weeks ago discussion whether it was clear whether it was wetland 2 or wetland 3.

Nancy: It seems to me we do have a lot of questions about what has happened and what still needs to be done. Shouldn't the first thing we do is to invite the Parks Department in or the Engineering Department in and see what it is they are doing, and on what basis.

Bob: Engineering Department is not involved. It is basically the Parks Department.

Nancy: Well, then we need to know on what basis the Parks Department is doing certain things. Is it under the direction of a wetland biologist and an engineer, or are they just trying to shore things up, and if what they are doing doesn't sound reasonable to us, then either we require them to get the appropriate designs or we spend some of our budget and figure out better what we need to tell them to do. Regarding silt in a wetland, do we even need to try to remediate that or are we just going to stop there and try to prevent any further damage. I am not a biologist, I don't know if we have already caused an irreparable harm. Salamander eggs may not be able to hatch if they get a layer of the clay and silt on it. Not having that understanding I think that: 1) we should see what the Parks Department is doing. We have the advantage of it being January; and 2) if we don't think they are doing enough, we either require them to do the study or do the study ourselves and tell them what to do.

David: I am just not comfortable with the answers we get from them, either someone is not being honest with us or they don't understand what they are doing. On this ILSF they deliberately and specifically said when Mr. Amirault came before us, that they were going to do no work anywhere there, and then I walk up there and found out they breached the hay bale lines with their rubble and stuff that had come down the hill, and there were indications that they knew when they put this in that they were impacting that and should have come before us and they did it anyway. I just keep wondering when does it stop.

Nancy: We need to have a good understanding of what is wrong and how it needs to be fixed to base any enforcement or any requirements we send their way.

Bob: Alright, shall I request Mr. Amirault be here at the next meeting?

Paul: If they are not here at the next meeting, it is definitely a Cease & Desist Order.

Nancy: Suggest to him that he bring in some sort of plan showing how he is addressing the impacts that have already occurred to the wetlands.

David: We are to the point that I think they need a wetland biologist that comes in at least two or three times a week to review all of their work, one that has an understanding of the law and report back to us on a weekly or otherwise basis. This is well out of hand.

Nancy: I think if we don't get a satisfactory meeting in our next conservation meeting on February 1, we should go ahead and hire our own consultant to assess the damage, then we will know what we are dealing with better. We haven't hired a consultant for a long time and we have the power to do so in our budget. It is January, so we have a bit of time to give the Parks Department a chance to respond to us before we go ahead on our own.

Bob: Because the Parks Dept. will probably be beginning the second run of filling that valley at this point, and their track record is getting worse and worse.

Paul: Have they stopped because it is winter or have they stopped because they are not getting any more fill from the central artery?

David: It is probably winter, but they haven't filled this fairway.

Bob: In big construction trades there is a slow period in January up to mid February because then you get that January thaw, and you can start moving things around.

David: Would you need that when you are working as far in the ground as the big dig, that is below the freeze line so they wouldn't have work around that.

Bob: But you have to move those trucks up hills, and you can't move those trucks when the roads are too slippery. You have to keep those roads really salted or heavily sanded to keep those trucks moving without causing bigger problems.

Public Comment:

Priscilla Hook, 10 Elmcrest Circle: I am glad you are moving on Mt. Hood.

Voted: to adjourn at 8 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Nancy Pritchard,

Conservation Secretary