November 17, 2025 – Board of Health – Video & Transcript
November 17, 2025 - Board of Health
let's see 632 all right one may watch or may participate remotely with the meeting like that
can be found on www.wayland.mass.us public body meeting information virtual in person and hybrid
chapter two of the acts of 2025 this meeting will be conducted in person and by remote means in
accordance with ethical law this meeting may be recorded to be made available to the public on
wakeham as soon as and after the meeting as is practical let's do a roll call uh john story
here dr genevieve and i'm yeah dr brett mortis here catherine steth here dr bobby francesco here
all right let's see if we have anybody for public comment
okay i do not see and look like it looks like it's not the right agenda sorry
okay that's 169 rights road yep so this is uh the um project at the coptic church
located on rice road for the mixed use septic system expansion your view proposals for the hydrogeological evaluation as per local septic system regulations for systems with greater than 5 000 gallons per day and so um this is something that is in our local regulation for a septic system with greater than 5 000 gallons per day we have a section in our regs that requires a hydrogeo review of any uh paperwork and title 5 clients groundwater mounding analysis and any other studies done related to groundwater uh soil evaluations and perk tests and so um we're here here tonight to look at the proposals and make a recommendation for one of them and then what will happen next is the town manager going to make the final decision and then sign the agreement for the work together we do have plans for the project so they are um anxiously awaiting to have this part of the review related as well and so what we did was we had some information higher similar reviews in the past it's not something that is done that frequently um as we haven't had that many septic systems with large flows in the recent past so um i got some names of people with that background and experience from linda and conservation and also from projects that we've had here in health department and also we've had ty and bond who does work for dpw so um i think you know for a due process we probably should have uh the chair uh read out the names of the peer reviewers of that right so it would be this is their summary so that's not a peer review but these all are of course that's what how would you want to do this so probably the name and the company yeah so it's from this person and then their proposal and then um probably just a um mentioning the costs okay and then something there should be a cost
first proposal for review hydrogeologic work related to prospect septicis um mick um mary max hodge hodge water resources llc um proposal cost at the labor rate of two hundred dollars an hour and total cost of work will be four thousand eight hundred dollars that's proposal number one and just to um um they could know the proposed scope of work is the same you know for each um it should be the same that was what we had asked for um okay so we have four proposals for the the same job yes okay and so i mean we we should probably read the scope of work out just so that we have um a general understanding in the minutes okay hwr understands that the board of health is requesting support and evaluating the submittals from an applicant who wishes to install the mixed use septic system hwr is prepared to provide that support hwr proposes to review all submitted documents that are relevant to coder massachusetts regulations um title five and relevant to the town of whaling subservices disposal and wastewater treatment facility regulation hwr will review the documents and provide comments to the board of health in the form of technical memorandum hwr will also be available for email correspondence phone calls and participation in one board of health medium hwr has conducted a preliminary review of the documents submitted to the applicant to the town of whalen hwr notes that there is no report that details the data collected the assumptions made or the calculations completed approximately one-third of the level of that further in this proposal is based on the assumption that hwr will need to pollate the and summarize the available information hwr notes that even after that work we are still need to make guesses and inferences about the analysis and rationale views by the applicant again the total cost would be 4800 and just um to go back to the um paperwork and review and paperwork to be reviewed that was provided by um oak consulting group by sean p malone the professional engineer who did the septic design and the mounding analysis he did provide us with a cover page as i had requested and so i think it just sort of outlines um the work that he did to come up with the conclusion he made for the mounding analysis and so that will be provided to um highlight that to the bureau viewer who's chosen just to you know as an added document that wasn't initially available okay so that's hwr uh proposal one right so he's going to be two this is um yeah this is um yeah this is yeah and uh uh yeah and uh stephen smith is there yeah okay proposal two is ghc geohydro cycle incorporated wastewater disposal water supply um stephen smith compensation is four thousand one hundred seventy four dollars so ghc hydro cycle incorporated 4174 number three is j matthew davis department of earth sciences university of new hampshire james hall college street new hampshire a scope of work is to review the documents provided by email on november is that it provide a written report of geologic evaluation yeah i know it's one minute scope yeah before it was to provide recommendations for the board of health in the context of the town's local septic regulations available to me with and answer any questions of the board he is 175 dollars an hour and estimates that would be no more no more than five hours okay that's proposal three j michael davis matthew davis excuse me is tying bond the fee of six thousand dollars seven hundred and fifty dollars per hearing i think it was 750
in addition to the six thousand okay so six thousand with additional public hearings beyond yeah the money that included space services bill that's 750 per hearing okay so six thousand dollars the scope of services review the hydrogeological report and supporting materials prepared by the applicant review letters from concerned neighbors if any review relevant regulatory reference material evaluate the appropriateness of the applicant's hydrogeological assumptions regarding recharge rates selection groundwater mold it's consumption use estimates wells inferences review whether the applicant's hydrogeological conclusions are technically sound and sufficiently supported prepare a written report of findings attend the board of health meeting virtually to present findings and respond to questions again that's tying bond and that's six thousand dollars those are the four proposals
so does anyone have any questions i mean in general they might be written differently but they're basically the same work um including a board of health hearing or meeting to go over the report and then recommendations or suggestions comments whatnot um probably some back and forth with staff and um potentially us reaching out to the engineer if there's additional questions um so darren and i went over the proposals today and um we do have a recommendation for the board if the board would like to hear it yes
unless there's any questions initially i just have a question i need to put a range of processing
yes that was perfectly there's a wide range of yeah yeah yeah for ghc they specifically they say they would not include an evaluation of the engineering design is that similar across the proposals um i think in general um we can do the design review ourselves and so i think that's basically what was meant by that they don't have to do you know basically a peer review of the whole septic design just the components related to the groundwater that are mounding and analysis along with that do you have any more questions or we'll listen to the
sure so
being that they have you know the peer reviewers have all have experience in hydrogeology and engineering we did get a recommendation from linda who um who um has worked with j matthew davis before and she shared a peer review that he had done on a prior project in wayland and his price is very reasonable and so we thought with his qualifications we would go with his peer review um both if the board is an agreement we would make that recommendation based on the board to go is there a need for anyone to come to a hearing for what we we're hiring them for it's possible it might not be um that critical it could be a hybrid meeting where someone just zooms in and um answers any questions that the board may have so i don't know that a in-person visit is necessary yeah i noticed on um j matthew davis there is some history in west and and wayland doing some work so and we'll have these you know available if anyone from the public is interested in seeing but seeing that no one's here and there's no other comment i'm guessing but uh they the engineer who did the design was interested so i'll probably just send them all the quotes that we got because some of them actually came in today so so he says so he says 175 for no more than five hours right oh okay it's pretty reasonable it's pretty reasonable um does someone make a motion to accept that proposal i make a motion to accept j matthew davis and associates proposal for the uh the review do we have a second second let's do a roll call um dr jenemy and under yes yes dr brad mortis yes captain steps yes dr bobby francester that's approved so it's it's a recommendation from the board and then um we'll bring it to the town manager for his final review and signature to move forward um i'd like to recommend that we hear from laura next i wasn't sure if she was going to be able to be here tonight but she is so take advantage of that all right hi laura yeah and i said fred and gg i didn't get the chance to meet with the last meeting but i'm more of carter public healthers nice to meet you cool so so the report is fairly extensive i don't know if you guys i'm happy to read it through um but there's a little bit about communicable disease those numbers are pretty small and straightforward given that the tuberculosis case is a late tuberculosis infection result the seasonal vaccination update is next and uh just talks about community clinics the homebound visits that have been done the off-site clinics at schools and public safety and then most recently i opened up some vaccine office hours um so those started last week and uh have been going well we had another 15 people attend uh this afternoon so numbers have ticked up from what are listed as well and we did submit a grant proposal through emerson health and in my previous position i had worked uh with community benefits and uh still attend their mental health working group and so we applied for their grant uh in an effort to um make some progress towards mental health health advancement in the community and uh but with the idea that we would do so through enhanced communication and some mobile sign boards that could be used uh to connect residents to resources and to uh for a variety of seasonal efforts as well but have some leeway on how we can use them but be able to reach more people to take them in highly visible areas so we'll see uh next month uh we should have an answer they had a record number of applications this year but we'll see if we get chosen and then a bunch uh of things to report from school health uh expert which stands for uh screening brief intervention and referral to treatment at the high school as we can um and there is a picture of the data summary from the spring of this year and that is related to the wellness coach who works part-time over at wayland pay school as well so there is an effort to improve attendance for students and enhance their attendance and therefore their overall performance with school so
we partnered with the nurses to have vaccine clinics for staff at that time we only had the blue vaccines available from the office hours right now for covid vaccine as well and then uh grant utilization for clay pit will have a focus on social emotional learning and then uh we've been having ongoing meetings between uh the health department and the schools in terms of uh both an updated mou between the board of health and the school committee because the current mou is from 2004 and could use some updating so we've been trying to do some initial uh edits to that and more to come on that later on also a school physician contract dr ellen pahony from wayland pediatrics has been serving as a school physician uh most recently and uh so trying to get a contract and stipend uh set up for her and then uh lastly there has been uh an expanded obligation for nursing coverage for all school activities including after school and extracurricular programs so we've been meeting about how best to bridge gaps there as well so more of all of those things but just an fyi that's a lot of questions for me is the so the the grant proposal is for the for basically a mental health and substance use initial so they their strategic plan has a number of efforts but two of them being uh mental health and financial stability so the grant asked that uh proposals be focused on one or both of those subjects and so we have more of a mental health
thanks so mgh is the overall um running the study was a partnership between mgh and harvard medical school and i decide um the center for social behavioral health it always says but um the screenings are partly a survey but also the uh um wellness coach that part-time wellness coach hiate was in is was helping to um see those throughout change because yeah they're not there's no 50 percent of like you turn about the person who was doing so yes i don't know if maybe your younger person could do it they said they were nearly so i don't know yeah but hyacinth is is pretty young um so and i don't know this is the first having just come on this is the first summary that i've seen of results so i don't know how that would then compare and i would then wonder how it compares to other schools and other wellness coaches because uh in my mind part of me thought that might be somewhat typical of a response to have a higher neutrality with that particular question but um and it's maybe high schoolers talking to sort of an adult for the first time
it's interesting it's interesting to just find out and things like how how helpful and accurate even maybe teachers so the guidance counselors think you know the stats are yeah because it's a huge problem i've been in the high school just for my kids having gone through it like you you don't know what's going on the last feels compact like now i hear more because they feel more able to communicate like it's like five to thirty now right um so just something to think about it yeah because i think this is when a lot of their habits are set and then they go to college and it's like the wild west right the group hasn't the group meets every two weeks or so and we haven't we were sent this most recently but we haven't actually met as a group since this was sent to be able to discuss it more but that's a good point to be able to be part of the discussion for our next meeting i also wonder like how covid played into it it would be really interesting to like track the data free and post covid these kids would be like whatever most of their covid and like the formative years right most of their formative years and of course it right right absolutely thank you it's gonna be thanks i'll see you in that picture sorry that's okay good questions thank you ma'am thank you all right to move on to uh update on 10 short drive as an expansion yes so we had a meeting which i thought was pretty positive with um a number of staff including myself um our outreach coordinator and the council on aging our regional inspector the fire chief our new clinician works in the police department and um the resident and their friends and um also uh representative from clear path that's an organization that um assists residents who helped with um various types of things um and in this case you know uh collecting and having um you know an abundance of items and so um we did have a good discussion regarding um leading up to a progress inspection that would be done hopefully by someone in the health department not necessarily myself possibly our regional inspector or the health agent and um probably the fire chief and someone from the building department although we haven't come to an agreement yet yet on when that would happen and so um we do have information that was talked about related to some electrical work that has been identified by um lynn faust who's the representative from clear path and so she's been helping this individual um collaborate with town on moving towards a progress inspection so that we don't have to um seek other options that aren't as desirable you know so given that we are aware you know that there are some issues with this um condition of this property and so we did conclude that we would um circle back mid-november which is now and so um it's been pretty crazy because darren was on vacation last week as you guys know and i was sick and so i haven't i've been you know checking my emails but um currently looking to figure out what our next steps will be um regarding this situation i just wanted to make sure the board was aware there could be something that comes up with work would need to be involved with in the near future so it would be during the um pre-planned board meeting questions for you speak on adu's update from foreign information from town council council and discuss general guidance so i have to apologize i was not well and could not speak last week so i wasn't able to go to the forum and made that decision the day of because i was really hoping that i could because darren and i had done a lot of work to be ready to attend and there's a lot of confusing information that most people don't understand about title five that is something that's a factor on wayland because we have septic systems here so we did i mean i can sort of as the board knows we've had several meetings and have talked about baby years a number of times we've come up with some ideas to support them we've talked to town council not that long ago we have met with dep and talked to them as recently as um a couple weeks ago at our annual conference where they basically reiterated what we already knew and reinforced our already you know understanding of what the adu guidance is from the state um when we talked to count uh town council uh carolyn murray from kp law we sort of went over all that stuff and really she's of the understanding that we are that you know to put together a document that really sort of explains every scenario is impossible for us because every property is different every septic system is different the land area is different the location could be nitrogen sensitive or not um wetlands and conservation um so that's really not the direction we wanted to go but we thought a general guidance document would be helpful on you know some basic information and how our reviews would take place since we have local regs we have to look at the state regs and the local but you know we are that is our job as an enforcement authority through the board you know that's what we're here for is to make sure that septic systems are in compliance with title five both state and local so there's been there was a lot of discussion about removing a closet door and making it a home office and then building an adu
would that require a deed restriction for the main house that would then reduce its legal bedroom it may i mean that's the only way to keep that yeah not put the door back on and sell it again as yeah and darren and i have sort of talked through some of the basic um principles of how we would do these reviews and already have been doing these reviews and we really haven't had anyone who's banging on the door saying you know i'm upset because of how you did my adu or you you know we're fair knowledgeable we have a lot of experience with title five and i think the deed restriction option is one that can be used well i think you'd have to if you're yeah if you're allowing them to convert a bedroom to an office and then um and i because i've been sort of brainstorming trying to think about how from the board of health as a skeptic how we can help them and i was at first wondering whether there was a way to have a a variance that you didn't need to have you could build a larger septic system without having um the reserve area but that's at the state level which you can't really be yeah there because be nice to build to upgrade your your septic some of the lots are small and there's other constraints on it and to be able to put a five bedroom in a place you now you need two spaces for a five bedroom not just one within reserve area correct right because they yeah so i was thinking about that and then realized that wasn't working and then my next question is how long has wayland had their one and a half times title five flow rate a long time and um it was in place when i first started working here 25 years ago so why do you think it's there and we talked about this as well um you know really it's for the longevity of the system especially in areas with poorer soil conditions also for the reason that you know ultimately most people do put in a garbage grinder eventually even if it's not designed for one technically it is because it's designed as a larger system and garbage disposals do shorten the life of a leach field significantly yeah and the larger the system is the more time you have you know before it will fail prematurely all the um fine particles from the garbage grinder get into your tank your d-box and then your leach field where it just eventually gets plugged up i mean you can take preventative measures by pumping your tank on a regular basis basis and more often to prevent that from happening having an effluent filter that also um removes some of the filters out some of those solids but people don't always pump their tank as you know that so there's there are reasons for um that being part of our regulation how how many surrounding towns have that same same i would have to look into that yes um i mean i'm just wondering if it's a common thing or not i i can find out easily because we have sudbury weston we're kind of lincoln we're surrounded by towns and i'm just wondering i'm not familiar with personally whether they're i can find out that's um not a hard thing to do i mean this is old it's before you so yeah so does it relate to wetlands
no because that was my next thought is that if you've had it for so long if you changed and went back to what title five recommends for the sizing specifically for the sizing then you've got all the septic systems that have an extra bedroom capacity it really depends on whether they will design for a garbage grinder because you can't do that if it was so when you have a garbage grinder
so would you add a can you add a garbage grinder in in valent well you can but it's not recommended but do you have to increase the flow not from what not from the one and a half already no okay unless your soils are so poor that your system is even larger so you know once you have a slow perk rate yeah and your loading rate requires a much larger system then you know that would make a difference on those types of scenarios but if you have good soils then the size could be pretty basic you know based on the best loading rate yeah i just i was curious thinking about it and wondering like how many other towns don't go by the guidance of the state and and put their own sort of number on it that is a question that i can easily find out about because i'm in touch with our peer towns that are part of our collaborative on a regular basis and um pretty easily get that answer um but for a system that was designed for a garbage grinder you can't remove the grinder and then out of it that's part of the dep guidance document that is not allowed so so we i'm trying to pick pick so if you if a septic system was built in wayland five years ago is it built for a garbage grinder and that's why it's one and a half times bigger it's not necessarily for a garbage grinder but how do you how would you do differentiate whether it was built for a garbage grinder or not that's what i'm trying to order you're just still sitting aren't you it would i just get in the dry throat and i'll start talking a lot so we can talk about this you would look at the design yeah and that that was approved and it would say on the design and then um if it says no garbage grinder then i guess the question would be do they have one at the house or not you know because some people do install them they're popular yeah so how would you um police that i don't know um it's sort of like policing somebody you know sleeping in the office right yeah i mean so you know obviously we um aren't here to go that far i don't feel like but if we were making changes on a property due to an adu request and we go down this path it's something that might need to be looked at i mean darren and i really didn't talk about that so it's something worth um having just i think of having a discussion about if you want to pop in and chat us up well i went to the i went to the meeting and there was a lot of people that were very about that specifically um no i went to the adu no i mean about the the sizing thing where they we didn't they didn't talk about that i mean a lot of people thought it was based on bathrooms and so it's there's a lot of misinformation out there okay okay and i didn't correct everyone so sure um there is a lot of that um but there's a lot of interest and you know i kind of think about if you've got a four bedroom and you want an edu and you make it a you get a one-bedroom edu and now your four-bedroom house is legally only a three-bedroom house and you have a deed restriction to that is and you've now put four hundred thousand dollars into your adu that they want to do um low-income rentals you know and the economics just don't you can't justify putting building an adu for three hundred thousand dollars and renting it out if you're having to deed restrict your house and devalue it that way yeah i i don't think that the assessing department was there the town assessor to chime in on some of that stuff yeah um i don't know what their feedback is yet on how the implications of some of these things would they did say that it's going to raise the assessment oh okay have you and darren gone and approved any adus yet darren has been proven oh yeah they're building yes so you know that's why what we've been doing has been going okay um you know he's been using the idea of having a closet removed from an office if there is one yeah we do a review of all the rooms on the house that's existing and then the bedrooms obviously and then the adu also separately you know so we do a floor plan review of both the existing property and the proposed and then um if they're able to do this office idea i mean some of these proposals i don't know what they're all um all the details of all of them you know maybe they already had a larger leech field and they could just tie in i know that has happened because i remember at least once or twice where that has happened and they just needed to have a tank or they needed to tie into the tank or you know things like that yeah so um some of them could be simple if people had already um installed a larger septic system and didn't have the extra bedroom spore there was a way to um remove the office and you know probably i'm sure in those scenarios um a deep restriction was probably implemented but i don't know each one so something else that they came up that i didn't realize is when you add an edu you're adding a housing unit to the town and that counts against you as far as affordable housing so it's like whether it's an edu or a five-bedroom house it's still considered a dwelling unit so it counts against you as far as your percentage of affordable housing real unless it's an affordable yeah you know how they have to have a certain percentage of affordable housing yes so if if you add an edu that's a housing unit which is the same housing unit as a house oh i understand so it you know it makes it worse for that percentage that we have to hit well it takes away is that what you're saying from the so is it what is it what percent do you remember honestly right now i don't know because we st ann's is not where it was supposed to be at this point so we're not protected yeah we're not protected but i think our safe harbor is and so i think they're still planning on building samians but i think there's a whole new calculation yeah where we are at with that again i don't know what it is because we had originally planned on saint ann's being part of that and i'm quite sure that or it is not part of it well so that that's what they said is that if it's not an affordable edu then it counts against okay i don't know what the affordable number is but it's it's uh has to do with your income level at probably to rent it um pretty big questions oh so if it's even if it's and it's an apu that's somebody starting to live in if it's not the law of certain is that what you mean yeah so if people are building them and renting them and if you're not ready if you're renting it at market value then it's not affordable and it counts as a as a home that is the opposite way we want to go and done right so um it's just interesting yeah i mean as the numbers go up it's like more houses that's not i'm sure encouraging for a ton but i mean does it make a difference on about taxes it's affordable or not i don't know actually what because i'm just thinking i mean if you are building it for your child or your parents when you like your bread that we do with the child's investment i don't know what you're saying yeah i'm not sure about those parts of it um what i do know is technically if they trigger a variance for some reason from our local regs then we would have to come to the board still that would still be the method of approval which we haven't seen yet um so if we do start seeing some scenarios we'll have to discuss that further but it would be a case by case because i don't think there's any way that we could put something together with every scenario that being said if there was a wish by the board to consider something like you've mentioned john um regarding the um gallons per day design flow um calculation that's i first want to know whether we're the only town or whether yes that's i can certainly find that out um that would be a a regulation change i mean because i was thinking like is is wayland more apt to have more people in a bedroom than what it's designed or is is it is it less likely in wayland that we're over filling a house than another town i mean wayland's pretty affluent and is it generally that there's less people living in a five bedroom house or more people living in a flat bedroom house than another community that has septic and what do those towns have for a regulation if any right i mean i'm guess i'm pretty sure that weston and sudbury both have septic regs of their own i don't know about that carlisle has a um garbage grinder one and a half so it's similar to what we have okay so the one and a half is like a protection for these people to put in a garbage bag because that's part of it but it's also for the longevity of the system you know so it's an added prevention or protection measure for your leach field will last longer and that's that seems to ban out for the leaders i mean it it also depends on use and pumping and soils and you know and water table those all um impacts you know the system which you know based on if it's designed properly then um it should function for a long time but you know there are different soils and there are different types of systems that are installed as well and then how are you using your system are you you know using a garbage grinder often and there are there are a lot of fats oils and grease going down the sink and um do you pump your tank you know so there's a number of things that go along with that um and some systems can handle a beating more than other systems you know but there's a number of things that impact whatever you're doing i'm going to have it to be longer because it's designed yes assuming that it'll take some kind of a beating you know somewhere but you know sometimes there's people doing work in a house and they don't paint down the sink or you know other um things that shouldn't go down the sink well i think there's something in cleaning chemicals or something because d-box are just falling apart these days yeah they don't last at all and it's right at the water line that they're getting wrecked i don't know that's probably not garbage grind something's going into it's bad yeah i mean you know just for informational i mean the 165 is really it's for new construction and so if someone's doing a repair and they're replacing a system and they have a smaller lot or they have bad soils you know or um appropriate that requires a lot of area to meet title five you know that is where we allow people to build what they can and do the best that they can with local upgrades yeah and so you know we don't mandate that 165 on some of these properties that have you know environmental complications with wetlands and you know streams ponds uh limited area where they can install a system so um something just to keep in mind although the adu would always trigger new construction if they're adding a bedroom right if they're if they're moving a bedroom then they would use what they have but that has something different as well uh wayland when you do soil testing do you think you typically have good grain well-drained soils or what what do you see more of i mean right now darren is doing the majority of the soil testing but i've done enough soil testing in town to know that we have a lot of areas that are good sand and gravel with um park rates that are um you know not requiring less than two minutes per inch yeah exactly so less than two minutes per inch or somewhere you know that's not expanding the size of the system significantly although there are some areas of town but we we have ledge we have some poor soils high water tables we have all those things but there are a large majority of areas that have good soils so we have some soil maps as well i think everyone wants to look at some of where some of those areas are how to read one of those you know does it have minutes per inch on it or what does it have no it's basically kind of a map that just shows you where the parts of town are that have better soils it's something that actually steve kalichman put together years ago um it's a visual you don't have to like to see that yeah i can show you cool um and you know i mean generally around deadly ponds and um certain areas where you know we're both on the same page oh that's going to be a long part or the you know like we sort of already know in our mind depending on where it is in town ledge you know so or whatever it's um just something that you learn over the years so each one is going to be an individual evaluation basically yes so if um for the adu yes yes yeah um there really is yeah and that was something we talked with carolyn murray about um you know because we are regulators and that's you know the the job that we have is to enforce the code to make sure that systems are septic systems are designed and installed to protect public health in the environment but as we've talked about we want to try to be flexible and have an open mind on how we're looking at things and try to help people we also agreed down and i um you know as far as people needing help asking questions you know we would give those somewhat of a priority so that there's no delays in process for people where initially there's a lot of questions about how do we do this and can we do that and um you know at least every week um you know because it can get kind of bogged down with like this time of year where there's a lot of work trying to be pushed through but regardless of whatever is in front we wanted to make sure that every week we prioritize looking at any adu requests to make sure that like any questions are answered to help people figure out what they're going to do with their projects what are we charging for that sort of review that is a good question so um we should talk more about that because i don't know if darren and i agreed that we thought it was a good idea to just use what our current application is or if we should have us a different application the current application for a building review for a project on a home is 150 dollars
the adu review requires someone to go there do an assessment of the house well if they're working on so what we initially had talked about was and carol and marie agreed that if someone is thinking oh i think i want to do an adu that you hire someone to look at your all the information the the house the septic design that you have to say you should do these steps to to move forward or you can't move forward you need a new septic system and then come to us with all your questions and we'll help by going over they come and stay to you they in some cases they might but a lot of people um do have someone that is experienced and knows title five because a lot of people do not unless they're a builder themselves and they may know already oh based on what i know you know that can be the case um it sort of depends it's been i think both ways you know people come right to us that's fine too it just might be take a long a longer time you know because we have to sort of go over some of the general guidance um questions that i think we'll put together would help sort of walk through some of that are we doing a title five inspection yes so that's a requirement yeah okay 150 sounds cheap i mean that was another thing that's on my list of things to do is look at our fees hope we have talked about so
i vote for making it warm so making it well the one thing um not that it's our department but it's still a town the building department's fees were just raised significantly so i don't know um keeping that in mind you know how we compare to that but i can certainly ask what other towns are charging for building fees as well for reviews in general i mean you have to read do you like if you're doing it do you look at the title five report other than just did it pass or not pass if we were doing you're doing the the 150 adu review right you know they're handing you a past title five report do you have to really read it and look at it or are you just taking their word that i would say we would definitely look at it yeah and then do you have to go out to the house and do a room count make sure that we would do that based on the plans that they provide to us of the existing house okay and then of their proposed adu if there was a one-off that you know something comes up and there's a discrepancy or a disagreement then that could happen we have done that before i i thought you i heard say darren was checking to see that they were taking the door off the bed you know on the plants oh okay yeah i i i read that i heard that as he was going out to the house i mean if we did that walking through well that's why we never get anything done that's why i was like this isn't enough money yeah no we um if there was a case where we needed to do that for some reason but that's not going to be the norm for sure because we would never get anything done that would be a lot yeah so
let's move on to the director update if any yep so um i wanted to give you a brief update today i went to a meeting in framingham on our tobacco control our regional tobacco control director held this meeting there were a number of towns there there's 16 towns in the collaborative that we have and so um it was interesting you know the state was there asking questions um regarding how our program is going and just you know because the state looks at everyone in the state so they're like oh how's your collaborative going and how do you manage this and how do you manage that and there's a lot of towns talking about um different things like flavor bands or doing a sniff test on certain products that are not being sold as flavored but have a smell to them and so that's this new trend that is happening in not every town but um some boards of health do what they call a sniff test now is that you or darren it goes up it's the board oh it's the board get ready so we talked about that i have a lot of allergies just a certain sense so and they did mention that that was a very time-consuming initiative and so um sniff training that is something that harry who's our regional director he may try to get people on board he's very motivated and good at what he does regarding tobacco control and um he oversees the staff who do our clients checks in town so um really the state is trying to as always encourage local boards of health to modify their regs to be more stringent for some of the tobacco problems that are out there with youths and um some of these flavored products vaping um and um the new initiative that if you're a certain age um you adopt this regulation then you'll never be able to buy tobacco in your town
i know that's a big one i don't know that i'm ready to take that on but it's um it's another uh there's a word for it it's a buzzword and i can't think of it off the top of my head but if you've heard it you'd know um i didn't i missed what you said basically it would be a regulation that the town would adopt or i'm sorry the board of health could adopt i believe um someone oh if they're doing what if just getting rid of tobacco products basically for certain age group that if you're if you're of that age when this regulation is adopted i think you can grandfather you can't can never buy tobacco oh i i what is it called yeah it's um let me just google it because i can probably come up with it forever if that um the word too i can't think of it let's see tobacco 21 uh refers to the federal law that raised the minimum age to purchase tobacco products in 2221 in december 2019 which is effective nationwide um no i'm sorry that's not it um yes actually it is anyway if we decided we were interested in um i can share information from parry on all these things is basically what i'm getting at that you know we sort of touched on um a number of things that are sort of the new wave of boards of health and how they're managing tobacco and some of them include um basically limiting your number of permits that you issue although we did allow someone to have a permit we had an expired one um but you know having more stringent rules for where you can open a tobacco store um you know distances from certain places like schools like increased distances to eliminate more opportunities for other stores to open although we do currently have a cap i think it's currently 13 that we have um originally it was 15 so it's good that we've gone down but um some of the towns that are similar to us have much fewer um that's another thing we could look at how we compare with some of the communities in our collaborative but uh that was a pretty interesting meeting that we had today and um just sort of talked about tobacco for a couple of hours and just tobacco the products are okay flavor bands um all those types of events and so we could have harry join us for our meetings sometime to give us a full um presentation on some of the ideas that he has and um the trends that are happening where local courts are making changes in their regulations so that was uh today and um thankfully darren's back from vacation and um back to the work that he does all the work that's been you know i was i was covering for him last week so we did have a number of installations septics going in because everyone's trying to you know get work done before the weather changes significantly so um you know it's been busy with a number of things but one other thing let's see did get something i think the board um received this from klinefelder the long-term supply mwra interconnection and happy hollow water treatment facility was that um does that sound familiar that was sent i thought that jalen had sent this to um the board but um basically it's a lot of paperwork that i just printed out a few of the documents and haven't really had a chance to dig into it but it looks like um you know this was prepared by klinefelder um and it's being submitted you know basically um on behalf of the town for this um long-term water supply connection project to move forward and so um it i'm sure outlines all the requirements for different um attachments related to environmental information fema wetlands zoning wells usgs maps so um that is something that the town is moving forward with um for the long-term connection as you may have heard through some of the meetings that have taken place with the dpw um did we talk about a lawsuit yet we have not and so um that is a good topic to bring up to finish the meeting with yeah um box ready to go so as i lose my voice um bob's named in the lawsuit yeah just that i don't know so yes we did receive a lawsuit um um it's regarding um septic system design that was um suspended i believe was the words that were used um i'd have to dig through to see exactly how many years it has been now but um we believe that you know they would like to move forward with their projects and um at the time we had submitted a letter saying reapply and we'll look at your plans because there were serious questions about wetlands and soils and ordering vegetated wetland areas that were identified that were not currently available at the time when we issued the original apartment and so they have not reapplied um and i think they would like to move forward we do have council um representing us um and linda and i are working on um some paperwork that we're responding to them with regarding the history of the project because it's been quite wild did i read it was an incredibly small system one bedroom maybe it's the design the original design was for like a one bedroom i don't think so okay um we have the file available anyone's interested i can share the file and you know all the different correspondence um that has been gone you know back and forth um when we were in communication and um the lawsuit as well which i printed out so anyone is um welcome to pop in to take a look at that but we do have representation for the town so will this be exactly so what i'm doing i'm sorry exactly so it's pretty long but um you know it sounds like they want their permit issued um for a dollar sum of money but we don't have a permit to issue you know that's the whole thing is that the permit is not valid anymore as far as i can you know recall because it was suspended but what does that mean you know at this point in time it's been a number of years and septic system permits don't last more than three so um those are questions that i think would be answered by someone else you know but right now we're just gathering information to um be prepared but thank you for bringing that up because i uh should have included that as an update to the board and um how often do you get sued i mean the town gets sued frequently the board of health not that frequently um i was wondering if this volunteer job is going to cost him some money um well the board has uh representation um from town for this for this specific project um you know obviously linda and in conservation and myself are the conduit for information that we have in our files and any historical um knowledge that we have regarding the development um there is a history of um debate that has gone on between the um property owner of eight hill street for the applicant i'd have to look back to see exactly what is and the existing house that is on um east plain street that would be abutting that property there's a history of neighbor debates you know over this development and at one point in time um the owner of the house that's existing the sami otis property was um planning to build a well a private potable well and so that was kind of eliminating the ability to design a septic system you know so there have been some back and forth things going on i don't know if you remember yep so um um currently there is no well there to our knowledge if there is one that it doesn't doesn't have a permit from our office because we did not see one on well list when it was a valid permit but so it's all coming back together right yes so that's you didn't have enough stuff to do right right so i have to go through a thing about this thick and go through and answer questions on something so that'll take a little bit of time and i have to do that this week so thanks for doing that welcome just doing my job
so um minutes yeah did everybody read the minutes oh i did print them out and here they just noticed because it was folded i know it's very long but right so that was actually the title of the agenda oh so that's why it's still there because i can't really change that no but i did get into you know basically all the debate about who was who was the actual okay yeah perfect did everybody read the minutes yeah if everybody has we can make a motion this what's the date on that one june 14 7 14. oh yes um the june minutes are finished so we'll have those at our next meeting yeah so we just need a motion to approve the minutes for 7 14. so i make a motion to approve the minutes from 7 14. okay you have a second okay uh dr genevieve and on dr brett mortis yes john stoyer yes catherine stipp yes and dr bob de francesco with minutes for 7 14 25 are approved and the bills are being looked up not done already
oh i have one more um our grant manager brandon gulnick from the ctci grant we did that nice presentation with the other folks katie brines and um kimberly garcia is resigning although it's a good resignation i mean i'll share the letter he wrote it's kind of long but um he's basically you know very thankful for you know being involved in our collaborative and all the work that was done um he's offering to be available for any questions um but he has you know personal and business pursuits that he wants to um work on and so he's not going to be doing this work anymore so we're sad although he is recommending that katie blinds could take on some of that work for um the duration of the grant which will um be ending on june 30th and now that this project is completed it should be a lot less work basically um we would probably work together on making sure that um the financials are in order for any um expenditures that we have so anything else the next meetings 12 16 that's it we have a motion to join do you have a second i'll second okay okay dr brett mortis yes dr jenna m yeah john stoner yeah kathleen stoke and seconded kathleen stoke and seconded kathleen stoke meeting the jury
located on rice road for the mixed use septic system expansion your view proposals for the hydrogeological evaluation as per local septic system regulations for systems with greater than 5 000 gallons per day and so um this is something that is in our local regulation for a septic system with greater than 5 000 gallons per day we have a section in our regs that requires a hydrogeo review of any uh paperwork and title 5 clients groundwater mounding analysis and any other studies done related to groundwater uh soil evaluations and perk tests and so um we're here here tonight to look at the proposals and make a recommendation for one of them and then what will happen next is the town manager going to make the final decision and then sign the agreement for the work together we do have plans for the project so they are um anxiously awaiting to have this part of the review related as well and so what we did was we had some information higher similar reviews in the past it's not something that is done that frequently um as we haven't had that many septic systems with large flows in the recent past so um i got some names of people with that background and experience from linda and conservation and also from projects that we've had here in health department and also we've had ty and bond who does work for dpw so um i think you know for a due process we probably should have uh the chair uh read out the names of the peer reviewers of that right so it would be this is their summary so that's not a peer review but these all are of course that's what how would you want to do this so probably the name and the company yeah so it's from this person and then their proposal and then um probably just a um mentioning the costs okay and then something there should be a cost
first proposal for review hydrogeologic work related to prospect septicis um mick um mary max hodge hodge water resources llc um proposal cost at the labor rate of two hundred dollars an hour and total cost of work will be four thousand eight hundred dollars that's proposal number one and just to um um they could know the proposed scope of work is the same you know for each um it should be the same that was what we had asked for um okay so we have four proposals for the the same job yes okay and so i mean we we should probably read the scope of work out just so that we have um a general understanding in the minutes okay hwr understands that the board of health is requesting support and evaluating the submittals from an applicant who wishes to install the mixed use septic system hwr is prepared to provide that support hwr proposes to review all submitted documents that are relevant to coder massachusetts regulations um title five and relevant to the town of whaling subservices disposal and wastewater treatment facility regulation hwr will review the documents and provide comments to the board of health in the form of technical memorandum hwr will also be available for email correspondence phone calls and participation in one board of health medium hwr has conducted a preliminary review of the documents submitted to the applicant to the town of whalen hwr notes that there is no report that details the data collected the assumptions made or the calculations completed approximately one-third of the level of that further in this proposal is based on the assumption that hwr will need to pollate the and summarize the available information hwr notes that even after that work we are still need to make guesses and inferences about the analysis and rationale views by the applicant again the total cost would be 4800 and just um to go back to the um paperwork and review and paperwork to be reviewed that was provided by um oak consulting group by sean p malone the professional engineer who did the septic design and the mounding analysis he did provide us with a cover page as i had requested and so i think it just sort of outlines um the work that he did to come up with the conclusion he made for the mounding analysis and so that will be provided to um highlight that to the bureau viewer who's chosen just to you know as an added document that wasn't initially available okay so that's hwr uh proposal one right so he's going to be two this is um yeah this is um yeah this is yeah and uh uh yeah and uh stephen smith is there yeah okay proposal two is ghc geohydro cycle incorporated wastewater disposal water supply um stephen smith compensation is four thousand one hundred seventy four dollars so ghc hydro cycle incorporated 4174 number three is j matthew davis department of earth sciences university of new hampshire james hall college street new hampshire a scope of work is to review the documents provided by email on november is that it provide a written report of geologic evaluation yeah i know it's one minute scope yeah before it was to provide recommendations for the board of health in the context of the town's local septic regulations available to me with and answer any questions of the board he is 175 dollars an hour and estimates that would be no more no more than five hours okay that's proposal three j michael davis matthew davis excuse me is tying bond the fee of six thousand dollars seven hundred and fifty dollars per hearing i think it was 750
in addition to the six thousand okay so six thousand with additional public hearings beyond yeah the money that included space services bill that's 750 per hearing okay so six thousand dollars the scope of services review the hydrogeological report and supporting materials prepared by the applicant review letters from concerned neighbors if any review relevant regulatory reference material evaluate the appropriateness of the applicant's hydrogeological assumptions regarding recharge rates selection groundwater mold it's consumption use estimates wells inferences review whether the applicant's hydrogeological conclusions are technically sound and sufficiently supported prepare a written report of findings attend the board of health meeting virtually to present findings and respond to questions again that's tying bond and that's six thousand dollars those are the four proposals
so does anyone have any questions i mean in general they might be written differently but they're basically the same work um including a board of health hearing or meeting to go over the report and then recommendations or suggestions comments whatnot um probably some back and forth with staff and um potentially us reaching out to the engineer if there's additional questions um so darren and i went over the proposals today and um we do have a recommendation for the board if the board would like to hear it yes
unless there's any questions initially i just have a question i need to put a range of processing
yes that was perfectly there's a wide range of yeah yeah yeah for ghc they specifically they say they would not include an evaluation of the engineering design is that similar across the proposals um i think in general um we can do the design review ourselves and so i think that's basically what was meant by that they don't have to do you know basically a peer review of the whole septic design just the components related to the groundwater that are mounding and analysis along with that do you have any more questions or we'll listen to the
sure so
being that they have you know the peer reviewers have all have experience in hydrogeology and engineering we did get a recommendation from linda who um who um has worked with j matthew davis before and she shared a peer review that he had done on a prior project in wayland and his price is very reasonable and so we thought with his qualifications we would go with his peer review um both if the board is an agreement we would make that recommendation based on the board to go is there a need for anyone to come to a hearing for what we we're hiring them for it's possible it might not be um that critical it could be a hybrid meeting where someone just zooms in and um answers any questions that the board may have so i don't know that a in-person visit is necessary yeah i noticed on um j matthew davis there is some history in west and and wayland doing some work so and we'll have these you know available if anyone from the public is interested in seeing but seeing that no one's here and there's no other comment i'm guessing but uh they the engineer who did the design was interested so i'll probably just send them all the quotes that we got because some of them actually came in today so so he says so he says 175 for no more than five hours right oh okay it's pretty reasonable it's pretty reasonable um does someone make a motion to accept that proposal i make a motion to accept j matthew davis and associates proposal for the uh the review do we have a second second let's do a roll call um dr jenemy and under yes yes dr brad mortis yes captain steps yes dr bobby francester that's approved so it's it's a recommendation from the board and then um we'll bring it to the town manager for his final review and signature to move forward um i'd like to recommend that we hear from laura next i wasn't sure if she was going to be able to be here tonight but she is so take advantage of that all right hi laura yeah and i said fred and gg i didn't get the chance to meet with the last meeting but i'm more of carter public healthers nice to meet you cool so so the report is fairly extensive i don't know if you guys i'm happy to read it through um but there's a little bit about communicable disease those numbers are pretty small and straightforward given that the tuberculosis case is a late tuberculosis infection result the seasonal vaccination update is next and uh just talks about community clinics the homebound visits that have been done the off-site clinics at schools and public safety and then most recently i opened up some vaccine office hours um so those started last week and uh have been going well we had another 15 people attend uh this afternoon so numbers have ticked up from what are listed as well and we did submit a grant proposal through emerson health and in my previous position i had worked uh with community benefits and uh still attend their mental health working group and so we applied for their grant uh in an effort to um make some progress towards mental health health advancement in the community and uh but with the idea that we would do so through enhanced communication and some mobile sign boards that could be used uh to connect residents to resources and to uh for a variety of seasonal efforts as well but have some leeway on how we can use them but be able to reach more people to take them in highly visible areas so we'll see uh next month uh we should have an answer they had a record number of applications this year but we'll see if we get chosen and then a bunch uh of things to report from school health uh expert which stands for uh screening brief intervention and referral to treatment at the high school as we can um and there is a picture of the data summary from the spring of this year and that is related to the wellness coach who works part-time over at wayland pay school as well so there is an effort to improve attendance for students and enhance their attendance and therefore their overall performance with school so
we partnered with the nurses to have vaccine clinics for staff at that time we only had the blue vaccines available from the office hours right now for covid vaccine as well and then uh grant utilization for clay pit will have a focus on social emotional learning and then uh we've been having ongoing meetings between uh the health department and the schools in terms of uh both an updated mou between the board of health and the school committee because the current mou is from 2004 and could use some updating so we've been trying to do some initial uh edits to that and more to come on that later on also a school physician contract dr ellen pahony from wayland pediatrics has been serving as a school physician uh most recently and uh so trying to get a contract and stipend uh set up for her and then uh lastly there has been uh an expanded obligation for nursing coverage for all school activities including after school and extracurricular programs so we've been meeting about how best to bridge gaps there as well so more of all of those things but just an fyi that's a lot of questions for me is the so the the grant proposal is for the for basically a mental health and substance use initial so they their strategic plan has a number of efforts but two of them being uh mental health and financial stability so the grant asked that uh proposals be focused on one or both of those subjects and so we have more of a mental health
thanks so mgh is the overall um running the study was a partnership between mgh and harvard medical school and i decide um the center for social behavioral health it always says but um the screenings are partly a survey but also the uh um wellness coach that part-time wellness coach hiate was in is was helping to um see those throughout change because yeah they're not there's no 50 percent of like you turn about the person who was doing so yes i don't know if maybe your younger person could do it they said they were nearly so i don't know yeah but hyacinth is is pretty young um so and i don't know this is the first having just come on this is the first summary that i've seen of results so i don't know how that would then compare and i would then wonder how it compares to other schools and other wellness coaches because uh in my mind part of me thought that might be somewhat typical of a response to have a higher neutrality with that particular question but um and it's maybe high schoolers talking to sort of an adult for the first time
it's interesting it's interesting to just find out and things like how how helpful and accurate even maybe teachers so the guidance counselors think you know the stats are yeah because it's a huge problem i've been in the high school just for my kids having gone through it like you you don't know what's going on the last feels compact like now i hear more because they feel more able to communicate like it's like five to thirty now right um so just something to think about it yeah because i think this is when a lot of their habits are set and then they go to college and it's like the wild west right the group hasn't the group meets every two weeks or so and we haven't we were sent this most recently but we haven't actually met as a group since this was sent to be able to discuss it more but that's a good point to be able to be part of the discussion for our next meeting i also wonder like how covid played into it it would be really interesting to like track the data free and post covid these kids would be like whatever most of their covid and like the formative years right most of their formative years and of course it right right absolutely thank you it's gonna be thanks i'll see you in that picture sorry that's okay good questions thank you ma'am thank you all right to move on to uh update on 10 short drive as an expansion yes so we had a meeting which i thought was pretty positive with um a number of staff including myself um our outreach coordinator and the council on aging our regional inspector the fire chief our new clinician works in the police department and um the resident and their friends and um also uh representative from clear path that's an organization that um assists residents who helped with um various types of things um and in this case you know uh collecting and having um you know an abundance of items and so um we did have a good discussion regarding um leading up to a progress inspection that would be done hopefully by someone in the health department not necessarily myself possibly our regional inspector or the health agent and um probably the fire chief and someone from the building department although we haven't come to an agreement yet yet on when that would happen and so um we do have information that was talked about related to some electrical work that has been identified by um lynn faust who's the representative from clear path and so she's been helping this individual um collaborate with town on moving towards a progress inspection so that we don't have to um seek other options that aren't as desirable you know so given that we are aware you know that there are some issues with this um condition of this property and so we did conclude that we would um circle back mid-november which is now and so um it's been pretty crazy because darren was on vacation last week as you guys know and i was sick and so i haven't i've been you know checking my emails but um currently looking to figure out what our next steps will be um regarding this situation i just wanted to make sure the board was aware there could be something that comes up with work would need to be involved with in the near future so it would be during the um pre-planned board meeting questions for you speak on adu's update from foreign information from town council council and discuss general guidance so i have to apologize i was not well and could not speak last week so i wasn't able to go to the forum and made that decision the day of because i was really hoping that i could because darren and i had done a lot of work to be ready to attend and there's a lot of confusing information that most people don't understand about title five that is something that's a factor on wayland because we have septic systems here so we did i mean i can sort of as the board knows we've had several meetings and have talked about baby years a number of times we've come up with some ideas to support them we've talked to town council not that long ago we have met with dep and talked to them as recently as um a couple weeks ago at our annual conference where they basically reiterated what we already knew and reinforced our already you know understanding of what the adu guidance is from the state um when we talked to count uh town council uh carolyn murray from kp law we sort of went over all that stuff and really she's of the understanding that we are that you know to put together a document that really sort of explains every scenario is impossible for us because every property is different every septic system is different the land area is different the location could be nitrogen sensitive or not um wetlands and conservation um so that's really not the direction we wanted to go but we thought a general guidance document would be helpful on you know some basic information and how our reviews would take place since we have local regs we have to look at the state regs and the local but you know we are that is our job as an enforcement authority through the board you know that's what we're here for is to make sure that septic systems are in compliance with title five both state and local so there's been there was a lot of discussion about removing a closet door and making it a home office and then building an adu
would that require a deed restriction for the main house that would then reduce its legal bedroom it may i mean that's the only way to keep that yeah not put the door back on and sell it again as yeah and darren and i have sort of talked through some of the basic um principles of how we would do these reviews and already have been doing these reviews and we really haven't had anyone who's banging on the door saying you know i'm upset because of how you did my adu or you you know we're fair knowledgeable we have a lot of experience with title five and i think the deed restriction option is one that can be used well i think you'd have to if you're yeah if you're allowing them to convert a bedroom to an office and then um and i because i've been sort of brainstorming trying to think about how from the board of health as a skeptic how we can help them and i was at first wondering whether there was a way to have a a variance that you didn't need to have you could build a larger septic system without having um the reserve area but that's at the state level which you can't really be yeah there because be nice to build to upgrade your your septic some of the lots are small and there's other constraints on it and to be able to put a five bedroom in a place you now you need two spaces for a five bedroom not just one within reserve area correct right because they yeah so i was thinking about that and then realized that wasn't working and then my next question is how long has wayland had their one and a half times title five flow rate a long time and um it was in place when i first started working here 25 years ago so why do you think it's there and we talked about this as well um you know really it's for the longevity of the system especially in areas with poorer soil conditions also for the reason that you know ultimately most people do put in a garbage grinder eventually even if it's not designed for one technically it is because it's designed as a larger system and garbage disposals do shorten the life of a leach field significantly yeah and the larger the system is the more time you have you know before it will fail prematurely all the um fine particles from the garbage grinder get into your tank your d-box and then your leach field where it just eventually gets plugged up i mean you can take preventative measures by pumping your tank on a regular basis basis and more often to prevent that from happening having an effluent filter that also um removes some of the filters out some of those solids but people don't always pump their tank as you know that so there's there are reasons for um that being part of our regulation how how many surrounding towns have that same same i would have to look into that yes um i mean i'm just wondering if it's a common thing or not i i can find out easily because we have sudbury weston we're kind of lincoln we're surrounded by towns and i'm just wondering i'm not familiar with personally whether they're i can find out that's um not a hard thing to do i mean this is old it's before you so yeah so does it relate to wetlands
no because that was my next thought is that if you've had it for so long if you changed and went back to what title five recommends for the sizing specifically for the sizing then you've got all the septic systems that have an extra bedroom capacity it really depends on whether they will design for a garbage grinder because you can't do that if it was so when you have a garbage grinder
so would you add a can you add a garbage grinder in in valent well you can but it's not recommended but do you have to increase the flow not from what not from the one and a half already no okay unless your soils are so poor that your system is even larger so you know once you have a slow perk rate yeah and your loading rate requires a much larger system then you know that would make a difference on those types of scenarios but if you have good soils then the size could be pretty basic you know based on the best loading rate yeah i just i was curious thinking about it and wondering like how many other towns don't go by the guidance of the state and and put their own sort of number on it that is a question that i can easily find out about because i'm in touch with our peer towns that are part of our collaborative on a regular basis and um pretty easily get that answer um but for a system that was designed for a garbage grinder you can't remove the grinder and then out of it that's part of the dep guidance document that is not allowed so so we i'm trying to pick pick so if you if a septic system was built in wayland five years ago is it built for a garbage grinder and that's why it's one and a half times bigger it's not necessarily for a garbage grinder but how do you how would you do differentiate whether it was built for a garbage grinder or not that's what i'm trying to order you're just still sitting aren't you it would i just get in the dry throat and i'll start talking a lot so we can talk about this you would look at the design yeah and that that was approved and it would say on the design and then um if it says no garbage grinder then i guess the question would be do they have one at the house or not you know because some people do install them they're popular yeah so how would you um police that i don't know um it's sort of like policing somebody you know sleeping in the office right yeah i mean so you know obviously we um aren't here to go that far i don't feel like but if we were making changes on a property due to an adu request and we go down this path it's something that might need to be looked at i mean darren and i really didn't talk about that so it's something worth um having just i think of having a discussion about if you want to pop in and chat us up well i went to the i went to the meeting and there was a lot of people that were very about that specifically um no i went to the adu no i mean about the the sizing thing where they we didn't they didn't talk about that i mean a lot of people thought it was based on bathrooms and so it's there's a lot of misinformation out there okay okay and i didn't correct everyone so sure um there is a lot of that um but there's a lot of interest and you know i kind of think about if you've got a four bedroom and you want an edu and you make it a you get a one-bedroom edu and now your four-bedroom house is legally only a three-bedroom house and you have a deed restriction to that is and you've now put four hundred thousand dollars into your adu that they want to do um low-income rentals you know and the economics just don't you can't justify putting building an adu for three hundred thousand dollars and renting it out if you're having to deed restrict your house and devalue it that way yeah i i don't think that the assessing department was there the town assessor to chime in on some of that stuff yeah um i don't know what their feedback is yet on how the implications of some of these things would they did say that it's going to raise the assessment oh okay have you and darren gone and approved any adus yet darren has been proven oh yeah they're building yes so you know that's why what we've been doing has been going okay um you know he's been using the idea of having a closet removed from an office if there is one yeah we do a review of all the rooms on the house that's existing and then the bedrooms obviously and then the adu also separately you know so we do a floor plan review of both the existing property and the proposed and then um if they're able to do this office idea i mean some of these proposals i don't know what they're all um all the details of all of them you know maybe they already had a larger leech field and they could just tie in i know that has happened because i remember at least once or twice where that has happened and they just needed to have a tank or they needed to tie into the tank or you know things like that yeah so um some of them could be simple if people had already um installed a larger septic system and didn't have the extra bedroom spore there was a way to um remove the office and you know probably i'm sure in those scenarios um a deep restriction was probably implemented but i don't know each one so something else that they came up that i didn't realize is when you add an edu you're adding a housing unit to the town and that counts against you as far as affordable housing so it's like whether it's an edu or a five-bedroom house it's still considered a dwelling unit so it counts against you as far as your percentage of affordable housing real unless it's an affordable yeah you know how they have to have a certain percentage of affordable housing yes so if if you add an edu that's a housing unit which is the same housing unit as a house oh i understand so it you know it makes it worse for that percentage that we have to hit well it takes away is that what you're saying from the so is it what is it what percent do you remember honestly right now i don't know because we st ann's is not where it was supposed to be at this point so we're not protected yeah we're not protected but i think our safe harbor is and so i think they're still planning on building samians but i think there's a whole new calculation yeah where we are at with that again i don't know what it is because we had originally planned on saint ann's being part of that and i'm quite sure that or it is not part of it well so that that's what they said is that if it's not an affordable edu then it counts against okay i don't know what the affordable number is but it's it's uh has to do with your income level at probably to rent it um pretty big questions oh so if it's even if it's and it's an apu that's somebody starting to live in if it's not the law of certain is that what you mean yeah so if people are building them and renting them and if you're not ready if you're renting it at market value then it's not affordable and it counts as a as a home that is the opposite way we want to go and done right so um it's just interesting yeah i mean as the numbers go up it's like more houses that's not i'm sure encouraging for a ton but i mean does it make a difference on about taxes it's affordable or not i don't know actually what because i'm just thinking i mean if you are building it for your child or your parents when you like your bread that we do with the child's investment i don't know what you're saying yeah i'm not sure about those parts of it um what i do know is technically if they trigger a variance for some reason from our local regs then we would have to come to the board still that would still be the method of approval which we haven't seen yet um so if we do start seeing some scenarios we'll have to discuss that further but it would be a case by case because i don't think there's any way that we could put something together with every scenario that being said if there was a wish by the board to consider something like you've mentioned john um regarding the um gallons per day design flow um calculation that's i first want to know whether we're the only town or whether yes that's i can certainly find that out um that would be a a regulation change i mean because i was thinking like is is wayland more apt to have more people in a bedroom than what it's designed or is is it is it less likely in wayland that we're over filling a house than another town i mean wayland's pretty affluent and is it generally that there's less people living in a five bedroom house or more people living in a flat bedroom house than another community that has septic and what do those towns have for a regulation if any right i mean i'm guess i'm pretty sure that weston and sudbury both have septic regs of their own i don't know about that carlisle has a um garbage grinder one and a half so it's similar to what we have okay so the one and a half is like a protection for these people to put in a garbage bag because that's part of it but it's also for the longevity of the system you know so it's an added prevention or protection measure for your leach field will last longer and that's that seems to ban out for the leaders i mean it it also depends on use and pumping and soils and you know and water table those all um impacts you know the system which you know based on if it's designed properly then um it should function for a long time but you know there are different soils and there are different types of systems that are installed as well and then how are you using your system are you you know using a garbage grinder often and there are there are a lot of fats oils and grease going down the sink and um do you pump your tank you know so there's a number of things that go along with that um and some systems can handle a beating more than other systems you know but there's a number of things that impact whatever you're doing i'm going to have it to be longer because it's designed yes assuming that it'll take some kind of a beating you know somewhere but you know sometimes there's people doing work in a house and they don't paint down the sink or you know other um things that shouldn't go down the sink well i think there's something in cleaning chemicals or something because d-box are just falling apart these days yeah they don't last at all and it's right at the water line that they're getting wrecked i don't know that's probably not garbage grind something's going into it's bad yeah i mean you know just for informational i mean the 165 is really it's for new construction and so if someone's doing a repair and they're replacing a system and they have a smaller lot or they have bad soils you know or um appropriate that requires a lot of area to meet title five you know that is where we allow people to build what they can and do the best that they can with local upgrades yeah and so you know we don't mandate that 165 on some of these properties that have you know environmental complications with wetlands and you know streams ponds uh limited area where they can install a system so um something just to keep in mind although the adu would always trigger new construction if they're adding a bedroom right if they're if they're moving a bedroom then they would use what they have but that has something different as well uh wayland when you do soil testing do you think you typically have good grain well-drained soils or what what do you see more of i mean right now darren is doing the majority of the soil testing but i've done enough soil testing in town to know that we have a lot of areas that are good sand and gravel with um park rates that are um you know not requiring less than two minutes per inch yeah exactly so less than two minutes per inch or somewhere you know that's not expanding the size of the system significantly although there are some areas of town but we we have ledge we have some poor soils high water tables we have all those things but there are a large majority of areas that have good soils so we have some soil maps as well i think everyone wants to look at some of where some of those areas are how to read one of those you know does it have minutes per inch on it or what does it have no it's basically kind of a map that just shows you where the parts of town are that have better soils it's something that actually steve kalichman put together years ago um it's a visual you don't have to like to see that yeah i can show you cool um and you know i mean generally around deadly ponds and um certain areas where you know we're both on the same page oh that's going to be a long part or the you know like we sort of already know in our mind depending on where it is in town ledge you know so or whatever it's um just something that you learn over the years so each one is going to be an individual evaluation basically yes so if um for the adu yes yes yeah um there really is yeah and that was something we talked with carolyn murray about um you know because we are regulators and that's you know the the job that we have is to enforce the code to make sure that systems are septic systems are designed and installed to protect public health in the environment but as we've talked about we want to try to be flexible and have an open mind on how we're looking at things and try to help people we also agreed down and i um you know as far as people needing help asking questions you know we would give those somewhat of a priority so that there's no delays in process for people where initially there's a lot of questions about how do we do this and can we do that and um you know at least every week um you know because it can get kind of bogged down with like this time of year where there's a lot of work trying to be pushed through but regardless of whatever is in front we wanted to make sure that every week we prioritize looking at any adu requests to make sure that like any questions are answered to help people figure out what they're going to do with their projects what are we charging for that sort of review that is a good question so um we should talk more about that because i don't know if darren and i agreed that we thought it was a good idea to just use what our current application is or if we should have us a different application the current application for a building review for a project on a home is 150 dollars
the adu review requires someone to go there do an assessment of the house well if they're working on so what we initially had talked about was and carol and marie agreed that if someone is thinking oh i think i want to do an adu that you hire someone to look at your all the information the the house the septic design that you have to say you should do these steps to to move forward or you can't move forward you need a new septic system and then come to us with all your questions and we'll help by going over they come and stay to you they in some cases they might but a lot of people um do have someone that is experienced and knows title five because a lot of people do not unless they're a builder themselves and they may know already oh based on what i know you know that can be the case um it sort of depends it's been i think both ways you know people come right to us that's fine too it just might be take a long a longer time you know because we have to sort of go over some of the general guidance um questions that i think we'll put together would help sort of walk through some of that are we doing a title five inspection yes so that's a requirement yeah okay 150 sounds cheap i mean that was another thing that's on my list of things to do is look at our fees hope we have talked about so
i vote for making it warm so making it well the one thing um not that it's our department but it's still a town the building department's fees were just raised significantly so i don't know um keeping that in mind you know how we compare to that but i can certainly ask what other towns are charging for building fees as well for reviews in general i mean you have to read do you like if you're doing it do you look at the title five report other than just did it pass or not pass if we were doing you're doing the the 150 adu review right you know they're handing you a past title five report do you have to really read it and look at it or are you just taking their word that i would say we would definitely look at it yeah and then do you have to go out to the house and do a room count make sure that we would do that based on the plans that they provide to us of the existing house okay and then of their proposed adu if there was a one-off that you know something comes up and there's a discrepancy or a disagreement then that could happen we have done that before i i thought you i heard say darren was checking to see that they were taking the door off the bed you know on the plants oh okay yeah i i i read that i heard that as he was going out to the house i mean if we did that walking through well that's why we never get anything done that's why i was like this isn't enough money yeah no we um if there was a case where we needed to do that for some reason but that's not going to be the norm for sure because we would never get anything done that would be a lot yeah so
let's move on to the director update if any yep so um i wanted to give you a brief update today i went to a meeting in framingham on our tobacco control our regional tobacco control director held this meeting there were a number of towns there there's 16 towns in the collaborative that we have and so um it was interesting you know the state was there asking questions um regarding how our program is going and just you know because the state looks at everyone in the state so they're like oh how's your collaborative going and how do you manage this and how do you manage that and there's a lot of towns talking about um different things like flavor bands or doing a sniff test on certain products that are not being sold as flavored but have a smell to them and so that's this new trend that is happening in not every town but um some boards of health do what they call a sniff test now is that you or darren it goes up it's the board oh it's the board get ready so we talked about that i have a lot of allergies just a certain sense so and they did mention that that was a very time-consuming initiative and so um sniff training that is something that harry who's our regional director he may try to get people on board he's very motivated and good at what he does regarding tobacco control and um he oversees the staff who do our clients checks in town so um really the state is trying to as always encourage local boards of health to modify their regs to be more stringent for some of the tobacco problems that are out there with youths and um some of these flavored products vaping um and um the new initiative that if you're a certain age um you adopt this regulation then you'll never be able to buy tobacco in your town
i know that's a big one i don't know that i'm ready to take that on but it's um it's another uh there's a word for it it's a buzzword and i can't think of it off the top of my head but if you've heard it you'd know um i didn't i missed what you said basically it would be a regulation that the town would adopt or i'm sorry the board of health could adopt i believe um someone oh if they're doing what if just getting rid of tobacco products basically for certain age group that if you're if you're of that age when this regulation is adopted i think you can grandfather you can't can never buy tobacco oh i i what is it called yeah it's um let me just google it because i can probably come up with it forever if that um the word too i can't think of it let's see tobacco 21 uh refers to the federal law that raised the minimum age to purchase tobacco products in 2221 in december 2019 which is effective nationwide um no i'm sorry that's not it um yes actually it is anyway if we decided we were interested in um i can share information from parry on all these things is basically what i'm getting at that you know we sort of touched on um a number of things that are sort of the new wave of boards of health and how they're managing tobacco and some of them include um basically limiting your number of permits that you issue although we did allow someone to have a permit we had an expired one um but you know having more stringent rules for where you can open a tobacco store um you know distances from certain places like schools like increased distances to eliminate more opportunities for other stores to open although we do currently have a cap i think it's currently 13 that we have um originally it was 15 so it's good that we've gone down but um some of the towns that are similar to us have much fewer um that's another thing we could look at how we compare with some of the communities in our collaborative but uh that was a pretty interesting meeting that we had today and um just sort of talked about tobacco for a couple of hours and just tobacco the products are okay flavor bands um all those types of events and so we could have harry join us for our meetings sometime to give us a full um presentation on some of the ideas that he has and um the trends that are happening where local courts are making changes in their regulations so that was uh today and um thankfully darren's back from vacation and um back to the work that he does all the work that's been you know i was i was covering for him last week so we did have a number of installations septics going in because everyone's trying to you know get work done before the weather changes significantly so um you know it's been busy with a number of things but one other thing let's see did get something i think the board um received this from klinefelder the long-term supply mwra interconnection and happy hollow water treatment facility was that um does that sound familiar that was sent i thought that jalen had sent this to um the board but um basically it's a lot of paperwork that i just printed out a few of the documents and haven't really had a chance to dig into it but it looks like um you know this was prepared by klinefelder um and it's being submitted you know basically um on behalf of the town for this um long-term water supply connection project to move forward and so um it i'm sure outlines all the requirements for different um attachments related to environmental information fema wetlands zoning wells usgs maps so um that is something that the town is moving forward with um for the long-term connection as you may have heard through some of the meetings that have taken place with the dpw um did we talk about a lawsuit yet we have not and so um that is a good topic to bring up to finish the meeting with yeah um box ready to go so as i lose my voice um bob's named in the lawsuit yeah just that i don't know so yes we did receive a lawsuit um um it's regarding um septic system design that was um suspended i believe was the words that were used um i'd have to dig through to see exactly how many years it has been now but um we believe that you know they would like to move forward with their projects and um at the time we had submitted a letter saying reapply and we'll look at your plans because there were serious questions about wetlands and soils and ordering vegetated wetland areas that were identified that were not currently available at the time when we issued the original apartment and so they have not reapplied um and i think they would like to move forward we do have council um representing us um and linda and i are working on um some paperwork that we're responding to them with regarding the history of the project because it's been quite wild did i read it was an incredibly small system one bedroom maybe it's the design the original design was for like a one bedroom i don't think so okay um we have the file available anyone's interested i can share the file and you know all the different correspondence um that has been gone you know back and forth um when we were in communication and um the lawsuit as well which i printed out so anyone is um welcome to pop in to take a look at that but we do have representation for the town so will this be exactly so what i'm doing i'm sorry exactly so it's pretty long but um you know it sounds like they want their permit issued um for a dollar sum of money but we don't have a permit to issue you know that's the whole thing is that the permit is not valid anymore as far as i can you know recall because it was suspended but what does that mean you know at this point in time it's been a number of years and septic system permits don't last more than three so um those are questions that i think would be answered by someone else you know but right now we're just gathering information to um be prepared but thank you for bringing that up because i uh should have included that as an update to the board and um how often do you get sued i mean the town gets sued frequently the board of health not that frequently um i was wondering if this volunteer job is going to cost him some money um well the board has uh representation um from town for this for this specific project um you know obviously linda and in conservation and myself are the conduit for information that we have in our files and any historical um knowledge that we have regarding the development um there is a history of um debate that has gone on between the um property owner of eight hill street for the applicant i'd have to look back to see exactly what is and the existing house that is on um east plain street that would be abutting that property there's a history of neighbor debates you know over this development and at one point in time um the owner of the house that's existing the sami otis property was um planning to build a well a private potable well and so that was kind of eliminating the ability to design a septic system you know so there have been some back and forth things going on i don't know if you remember yep so um um currently there is no well there to our knowledge if there is one that it doesn't doesn't have a permit from our office because we did not see one on well list when it was a valid permit but so it's all coming back together right yes so that's you didn't have enough stuff to do right right so i have to go through a thing about this thick and go through and answer questions on something so that'll take a little bit of time and i have to do that this week so thanks for doing that welcome just doing my job
so um minutes yeah did everybody read the minutes oh i did print them out and here they just noticed because it was folded i know it's very long but right so that was actually the title of the agenda oh so that's why it's still there because i can't really change that no but i did get into you know basically all the debate about who was who was the actual okay yeah perfect did everybody read the minutes yeah if everybody has we can make a motion this what's the date on that one june 14 7 14. oh yes um the june minutes are finished so we'll have those at our next meeting yeah so we just need a motion to approve the minutes for 7 14. so i make a motion to approve the minutes from 7 14. okay you have a second okay uh dr genevieve and on dr brett mortis yes john stoyer yes catherine stipp yes and dr bob de francesco with minutes for 7 14 25 are approved and the bills are being looked up not done already
oh i have one more um our grant manager brandon gulnick from the ctci grant we did that nice presentation with the other folks katie brines and um kimberly garcia is resigning although it's a good resignation i mean i'll share the letter he wrote it's kind of long but um he's basically you know very thankful for you know being involved in our collaborative and all the work that was done um he's offering to be available for any questions um but he has you know personal and business pursuits that he wants to um work on and so he's not going to be doing this work anymore so we're sad although he is recommending that katie blinds could take on some of that work for um the duration of the grant which will um be ending on june 30th and now that this project is completed it should be a lot less work basically um we would probably work together on making sure that um the financials are in order for any um expenditures that we have so anything else the next meetings 12 16 that's it we have a motion to join do you have a second i'll second okay okay dr brett mortis yes dr jenna m yeah john stoner yeah kathleen stoke and seconded kathleen stoke and seconded kathleen stoke meeting the jury