Meeting Minutes of February 7, 2002

Present:  Nancy Naslas, Paul Lock, Bruce Rider, David Valade

Guests - Prospective Conservation Commission Members:  Susan Murphy and David Carpenter.

Voted:  to accept the meetings minutes of January 3, 2002 and January 17, 2002.

Voted:  to pay Nancy Pritchard/secretarial services for January 2002, $303.44, including supplies.

Correspondence

·        Mystic River Water Association

·        Middlesex Conservation District Spring Tree & Shrub Sale – Nancy will copy this to the Ell Pond Restoration Council since they plan on doing plantings every year.

·        Tuesday, March 12 – Conference in Marlboro, The Environmental A Judicatory Appeals From Start to Finish for attorneys, engineers, consultants and conservation commissioners involved in wetland disputes.

Nancy:  We do have a budget for sending people off to conferences, although I think a priority interest would be more on the order of the MA Association of Conservation Commissioners (MACC), a statewide group that holds conferences twice a year, and they have training programs within the conferences.

·        There will be an MACC Annual Environmental Conference on Saturday, March 2.  If you are able to attend, you should pay for it yourself and the City will reimburse you once you submit your receipt to us.  There are conference registration forms here.  It is at Holy Cross in Worcester and the Conservation Commission training program is offered, Units 1 & 2.  Unit 1 is Overview of Conservation Commission, and Unit 2 is Participating in an Effective Meeting.  It is very interesting and there are also display tables.  Nancy will make a copy of this information.

·        As a cost cutting measure and to save trees, MA Wetlands Restoration News is now electronic.  They have their web page. 

·        Mass Wildlife News

·        Citizens Forester from the MA Urban Forestry Program

·        Via Email, information regarding a grant opportunity, originally from Ruth Clay, who passed it along to Linda Benezera, who passed it along to Nancy Naslas.  The MDEP grant to municipalities is to promote environmental stewardship.  An information session is Wednesday, February 13.  Grant deadline is March 1.  There are 2 web pages for more information.

(The above correspondence will be available on the conference table for members or the public to review during this meeting)

David Valade:  Regarding the environmental stewardship grant and applying for assistance, it sounds like it could be a good way for us to watch long term what they are doing in Mt. Hood, maybe get a grant to have some professionals in.

Nancy :  Exactly.

David:  I will look at the web pages and see what it says.

Nancy:  Bruce Emailed me a couple of letters regarding the Olive St. Extension that we discussed at our previous meeting a project that started and stopped just over the border from Melrose in Malden.  Some of it is infringing this one brook that runs into Melrose that filled in, that shouldn’t have been filled in, and we are also adjacent property owners.  The Conservation Commission still has a lot of city owned land in that area.  This is what we talked about last week.

Bruce:  Yes, these are the letters, one to the DEP telling what we did at our last meeting, and the other to the Malden Conservation Commission, thanking their chairman for appearing and helping brief us on what was going on at 197 Olive St. Ext., and also offering our assistance if they have any problems that they want to come and discuss.  So I am leaving it open.  If they want to attend, they can feel free to attend.

Nancy:  We also received a Request for Determination of Applicability from Matthew Schaepe, which we discussed at our last meeting and David has been out to see his property.  Could you fill us in on that, David? 

David:  I went and looked one week ago Saturday, and they have a culverted stream in the back of it.  In looking at it there is no storm water entrance or any kind of drain that goes into it.  In this backyard there is a manhole cover well over probably 200 ft. up gradient from him.  It is not open.  I walked through it with his wife and she said sometimes it kind of floods in the backyard, and the guy that lives up there opens the manhole cover and it all drains out.  The next yard is fairly overgrown, and I asked to check and see if there are any entrances to it the next yard over.   If there were it would make sense to do some hay bales.  If there is not, it is at least 200 ft., I think in excess of 100 yds. to where the outlet is in a wetland.  The next yard is pretty well overgrown grass wise.  It is overgrown to the extent that when it starts flooding the backyard, the water can’t flow to the next yard, so if there is no storm drain in that yard I don’t think he needs to file anything.  We would do a positive determination with no filing required. I did ask that they check just to find out if there is a storm drain in the next yard because you cannot see because of the way it is overgrown, and I said if there is he would want some hay bales at the edge of his property.  I also asked that he talk to DPW because the low point in his backyard I assume is probably where the culvert stream is, and from about the age of the house, it is like a clay type pipe or something like we had problems with on Slayton Road.  I suggested it would be in his best interest to find out from DPW the construction of it, whether or not the equipment he brings in the backyard to excavate, to redo the foundation, could collapse this pipe, because we would prefer not to come back with a wetland violation, and I am sure he would prefer not to have to deal with DPW to rebuild a pipe.

Nancy:  There is no significant change in the footprint anyway to have to redo the foundation?

David:  It is exactly the way he described it.  They are having a breezeway between the house and the garage and the 3-season porch on the back.  The footprints are staying the exact same way, but they are rebuilding it so it will be a family room or something.  I am not an engineer or construction person, but I can look at the foundation and say “that definitely needs to be replaced, it has deteriorated”, but it is going right back in the same place, it is the same footprint and if they don’t collapse the pipe and there is no storm drains in the next yard, there is no real issue.

Nancy:  If you could contact him and let him know that we place an ad in the Melrose Free Press at his expense.  Our next scheduled meeting is February 21 and that is school vacation week.  Who will be able to attend our meeting on February 21?

Response

David:  Barring an appointment of one or more commissioners, we won’t have a quorum for a meeting.  If the new commissioners are approved as scheduled for February 18, they still have to appear before the City Clerk to be sworn in.

Nancy:   Our first choice would be March 7.  I don’t need to place the ad for a couple of days, so if you could just Email me and let me know when he would like to have this meeting.

Nancy introduced two prospective commissioners, Susan Murphy, Esq. and David Carpenter, Esq.

Nancy:  We have lost 3 commission members.  One moved out of town and two have become alderman, which is nice to have two former conservation commissioners on our Board of Alderman.  The Mayor is appointing four new members.  Remaining on the commission are the four of us and Nancy Pritchard is our secretary.  Three of the four new members will be full members, and one will be an associate.  I am not sure who will be the associate.  It just means you don’t have voting privileges.  That is how Bruce Rider started out, serving as an associate for a few months and then when the next person stepped down, Bruce jumped into his spot.  I am a new Chair as of this last month.  Prior to my doing this, Bob Boisselle was our Chair for more than 5 years.  We have all been around for a while.  My background is Geology and Civil Engineering and I am an Environmental Engineer and Consultant.   

Bruce Rider:  I went to the University of MA in Boston, and I have a degree in Geography, concentrations in GIS and Park and Hydrogeology.

David Valade:  I qualify as an unqualified political appointment.  I ran for the School Committee in 1990.  Dick Lyons was running as Mayor.  Part of the reason I lost the School Committee was because I publicly supported him which some people got mad at me for, which was okay, because I figured I was better off with him as Mayor than with an opponent, or the City was better off with him than they were with me on the school committee, so it didn’t bother me.  I have a legal studies background from UMass.  I work managing computer projects and became involved because partly from the misconception that the Conservation Commission actually protects open space.  It gets frustrating because every time we have a project that starts building in an area that is wooded or wetland or near wetlands, neighbors come in and expect us to stop it.

Paul Lock:  I studied chemistry at Harvard and have a masters degree in Civil Engineering/Public Health from Tufts.  I work for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, where I do risk assessment and set standards – mostly for the Waste Site Cleanup Program, although I work with almost all the DEP programs, except Wetlands.

Historical Minutes

The minutes on the web commence with mid 1999.  The secretary is not finding the time she had hoped to be able to type and enter the earlier minutes on the web.  Since we have the minutes in the files, we can direct anyone who wants to view them to the files.

Voted:  to reimburse Bob Boisselle $4.63 for a certified mail receipt for the Order of Conditions for the Confalone property, 36 Slayton Road.

Budget - Nancy passed out the prospective budget.  She put in all the items she could think of and after the commissioners review/revise it, in turn it will also be reviewed/cut back by both the Mayor and the Board of Alderman. 

Voted:  to approve our budget request as edited.

Conant Park, Spot Pond Brook

Nancy:  Regarding the Conant Park area, Spot Pond Brook.  This piece of property  was given to the city more than one year ago.  Someone I know from my children’s school mentioned there was a whole bunch of drums on the property and they were unsightly and shouldn’t be there.  There are about 5 or more very rusted drums.  They are just sitting there and so I went out and looked at them and told the Engineering Dept,. who asked the Fire Department to go out and look to make sure it wasn’t a fire hazard, which they did.  It would be so much easier to clear out those drums in the fall, so the fire dept. went and took a look in the fall and I wondered why the DPW wasn’t removing the drums.  They said the Fire Dept. said it wasn’t a hazard, so we are just going to leave them there.  It is hard to get those drums out.  They are surrounded by private property and it is next to a brook and it is all overgrown.  There is no vehicle access, but there must have been because they got them there in the first place.  When I started asking did the Fire Department actually do something to determine it wasn’t an environment hazard, and  they did not.  I said I really don’t want a DPW guy to go in there wearing his blue jeans and work to get those drums out without knowing more about it.  I wrote a letter to the previous acting mayor since it was handed down to the current mayor.   Our first choice would be to get the previous property owner to come and take care of their drums.  The city is still talking about it. The mayor, his executive assistant, and Joe Lynch are now thinking maybe the city will do an assessment of the drums.  The drums were probably used to store away oil and cleaned out before they were put there, but they are right at the wetland boundary and they are pretty rusted and have probably been there in excess of 20 years.

Mt. Hood

Nancy:  I went to the Parks Commission meeting a week ago and they have deferred any decisions regarding how to move forward on Mt. Hood until the transition team gives them their report on what the transition team can contribute and expect.

Paul:  Have they heard from the enforcement action?

Nancy:  No they have not.  I have heard from the EPA Wetlands Enforcement Section.  There is a woman there I talk to every now and then.  She was one of the ones that went over to DEP to look at the files and she said that Mike Able, who is at the DEP and came out and visited Mt. Hood, was frustrated with his superiors because they were not willing to issue any type of enforcement letter at this time.  He thinks they still are going to move forward here, so they are not issuing their letter.  When we visited the site with Mike Able last fall, Ray Blanchard who is the Parks Commissioner; one of Ray’s assistants and another DEP employee named Larry, we had asked Mike Able very strongly could you please write up a letter of noncompliance until the city realizes that things are bad out there and they need to clean it up and he said absolutely, we will write the letter of noncompliance and recommendations on how to sure things up to get through the winter.  He never did anything.  So that is still sitting there, and in the meanwhile at the Parks Commission meeting, Ray said things are starting to get pretty nasty up there, more so than they have been.  The ILSF which are next to where the Haul Road was, are starting to get to where they are going to overflow and send silt-laden water down the hill to Route 99.  If it hasn’t overflown yet, we still have a lot of winter precipitation and melting to go.  At concrete block retaining wall on the 12^th fairway, they have stopped the measure that was put in, and now it is even more precariously leaning toward the wetland than it used to be.

Paul:  If we go there and identify a threat to the wetlands,  should whoever goes there immediately issue a Cease & Desist Order to the Parks Dept.?

David:  I think that is an appropriate action based on what we are hearing.  We haven’t had a report above the state though.  We can issue a Cease & Desist Order, but part of it says you can’t do the work until you take corrective action, but they are not doing anything.

Nancy:  What other types of enforcement orders do we have?  They put fill in our wetlands.  The EPA looked at DPW files and they knew Army Core of Engineers was going to be doing some aerial photography in the area, so they took pictures to see how much silt we have dumped into the wetland.  I don’t know what the aerial photos are going to look like.  I think they did that in December.  So the Army Core of Engineers is aware of the problem, as is EPA.  The EPA wetlands enforcement in this region has 2 technical staff, and they had 10 anonymous calls this month or 10 tips this month, so since we already have a lot of Cease & Desist Orders and there are others looking at it, the EPA is kind of starting to lose interest. 

David:  We would have to hire the city solicitor to sue the city to complete the work according to the law which reads “A civil law suit is initiated upon the municipal counsel filing a complaint.”

Nancy:  We have in our favor that all the golfers are really ticked off that they have lost their 12^th hole for yet another season, so I think that is going to be the biggest incident to get things back to normal up there.   At the Parks Commission meeting the company that runs the golf course mentioned in a very friendly way they wanted to let the City know they had talked with their lawyers, but they didn’t bring them with them, but it is part of their contract in managing the golf courses.  The City has had a significant drop in revenue as a result of lost play. 

Paul:  I am going to visit Mt. Hood sometime this weekend. 

(Note:  Paul made plans to meet the two prospective commission members, Susan Murphy and David Carpenter, at the Mt. Hood site on Sunday morning at 7 a.m.)

Voted:  to adjourn at 8:35 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Nancy Pritchard

Conservation Secretary