December 2, 2025 – Surface Water Quality Committee – Video & Transcript
December 2, 2025 - Surface Water Quality Committee
uh so at 7 0 5 p.m we'll begin the meeting and let's have a roll call acknowledgement of who's
online so tom clem present tom largie present carol plum present thank you all let's uh let's
get started first of all hope everyone had a uh happy thanksgiving and if you travel there were
no delays and uh you know hopefully it was good times and good food and you know good good long
weekend tom you retired so that's it's always the weekend for you but for me it was oh well
i don't know could be yeah there's always something luckily there's i i always have
something going on when i wake up in the morning so no tedium and boredom
all right rest for the way that's right uh first item of business uh as usual is to approve the minutes uh from last meeting 21st of october uh i sent those around did anybody have any comments if there are no comments and i will make a motion to approve but i'll open the floor to any comments on any shortcomings i think i thought i sent you something but i'm already okay i read them anyway okay i'll take that as it might have been about something else not about the minutes i didn't i always set them i think this past weekend yeah all right hang on my dog is okay she's making some noise over there all right uh let's make a motion then to approve the minutes of october 21st uh like i said yeah i move okay thank you tom and let's well tom beats it to it carol so let's start now i have to second it right well tom tom seconded it thank you yeah no you're right sorry i've been listening to too many board meetings where somebody else the chair talks the second person makes the motion and then somebody has to second it so anyway sorry well no i'm the person who makes the motion that's the first person then the second person seconds it so tom second we don't need a third so carol you're just not as quick on the draw as tom hang on many these meetings are at a bad time because my wife is in the back room so i've got to be in the main room but the dog always goes off right after dinner she starts barking and whining bad timing all around okay anyways uh having made the motion to approve the minutes let's now take a vote on the minutes i vote to approve them uh yeah carol plum i tom clam i thank you all right all right what do i have here for next uh lake chichuit um so last time we met uh we were talking about orders of conditions on lake chichuit and might they pertain to anything we want to do on north pond around yellow irises purple loosestrife um and so the answer i got back i think carol i sent this to you is uh that there is there are there is an order of conditions that covers um all the ponds of lake chichuit they are uh through the state uh and uh the but regardless uh none of them uh the order of conditions does not specify anything about yellow irises or purple loosestrife and north pond so if we want to do that we'll have to get permitted and after we run through tom flannery because or well it doesn't have to be we can choose to um go through tom flannery or we can do it ourselves but we just need to keep tom in the loop so he knows that we're going to have a separate permit for these other invasives you're saying we can just go through concom alone well we so the question that we had was if we're going to do any kind of plant management on north pond we need to have a a permit through concom and the question was is there anything already existing that would cover this and the shorter answer is no yes but but the answer from linda was that we could just do it with her no i didn't hear anything back from from linda so in fact i think i went through uh linda or and or emily in her office emily is sort of the office person there and i asked them because emily said there wasn't existing order of conditions she didn't have the specifics on that so i asked her for those specifics and then um seemingly out of the blue there was an email from tom flannery explaining there was an order of conditions uh that uh the state has for lake constituent yeah no i got all that because i did this like two years ago okay and i never i got to the point where i never got an answer about if we put something in who would we have to go through and i thought at the time linda told us we'd have to do it with the state so the answer just is if we want it we have to start the process right right we can either start the process ourselves through linda um or we can go through the state but i would advocate for doing it ourselves but regardless we there has to be we have to get permitted for this specific application it's only it only covers the usual things um milfoil and so on yeah let me interject here it seems to me that before we start worrying about permits and things like that that um there'd be some kind of formal survey uh just to um understand whether those uh what kind of problem is out there as an example you know uh loosestrife is always out there always it's been there for decades uh i don't know um you know in the case of herd pond i'm uh i've i've observed uh two or three clusters of yellow iris um and i don't think uh there's been much progression but uh you know how much yellow iris uh is there on uh north pond and the wayland area and is it a problem i i you know is it advancing i i i would think would uh uh do some kind of survey there's only one specific area that brought it up for me because again and i don't have a boat but i know that you know the heavily trafficked area around the boat loading dock oh where they're running the crew and the sun fishes and all that that area is getting like more and more um filled with like every invasive you can imagine so that's the only reason i bring it up is like you might as well clean it if you just sort of in a what do you call it like getting vaccinated you just clean up that area before it goes anywhere else but again i don't think we're going to have the money to do this right unless we do it it's just it's at this point it's kind of like we we can think about it but i'm not even sure we can actually fund doing it in any way right because if we have to have people be professional to do it or whatever because lyndon's going to insist that that something like that i don't know like i said it's a as far as i know it's that one area yeah it's probably in other areas well i've um you know i'm uniquely the only person who's been out on lake cachituate uh this year in the spring and the fall um the fall probably the yellow irises are gone the loose strife tends to uh be up on the shoreline but um i uh we uh trolled all the way down um you know from uh where the uh waterworks were on past the town beach and um considerably north of there i didn't see any yellow iris but i know that cove has always been uh uh always been uh plants and weeds in there my my opinion is um that um if the uh if the crew people running the cruise felt they had a problem then bring it up either with park and rec or with us uh is in a way that's kind of under the purview of uh wayland park and rec um i uh i just don't think there's an issue there well this initially came up from from carol because carol you had noticed uh what appeared to be an abundance of these plants and you know it wasn't that we necessarily had to do action but we should be poised to do something if these were to uh spread and so i i have no idea if these are that this is a normal amount of these plants if they're spreading but the idea and you're really only going to see them in the spring anyway when they're flowering because they're buried in deep with the rest of the stuff that's the other part so did you say you went out in the spring tom
pardon when you were on lake attituate you were out in the spring like yeah in the spring but we don't go into the cove we're well off uh we we skirt the uh shoreline uh actually in some cases uh uh north of the town beach quite quite close to the shore um you know a yellow iris would jump out um that's although that you know i'd have to see i was either there late april early may um but um they jump out on the herd pond that's all there is to it uh so um uh well you'd have to be there when they were flowering to see them but i think the other thing though too is if i i don't know what you want to do if anything about the snake brook cove which i think as far as i can tell from the maps it's still within wayland because that the algae and all the rest of the stuff on that didn't actually crash out until i think i'll have to go back and look at the date on the picture but it was still floating out there at you know at the end of october it was it was so much of it this year so that in terms of being poised to do something i don't know uh if so so let's let's first then finish up with regards to uh the initial agenda item which was the yellow iris and purple loose rice so carol you had brought this up so it's you know have you this is probably it must have been almost two years ago i know we've been talking about this for quite some time have you noticed it to be uh any worse or i mean is it it doesn't appear to be the same kind of problem that for example milfoil is on on dudley pond so tom's suggesting that this is the natural ebb and flow of these plants does it appear to be expanding beyond that limited area that we should be thinking about management or is this more just an informational thing that just to keep an eye on and we don't need to do any action right now i didn't look that hard lat this year so i'm going to just say it's probably not like blowing out like a water chestnut or milfoil okay this is the kind of thing so i i can check in with with katherine brennan because i imagine she would be more is this kind of near the this is near the beach area right so that's not she wouldn't notice it okay right i mean the only people who are gonna even like probably look in that direction on a regular basis are the crew people and the people taking their boats in and out okay and the other thing that's that's probably slowed some of the whatever issues we're going to have down is they closed off the what used to be like a boat launching ramp next to the the gatehouse so dpw is using that last i looked when i walked back there as like a like a like a loading area whatever you want to call it where they leave stuff like rocks and dirt and they've closed it off so people can't get back there so the people that were coming over from lake kuchichwa state park have that that flow of people has slowed down because now that it goes they can't drive in you have to go into the cemetery so that helps keep whatever invasive things that are coming that way out okay so let's leave this as we know what the status of orders of conditions that may be applicable to that area are in short they don't specifically cover yellow iris and purple loose strife but there's no immediate action that this this committee will take um other than to be aware of the potential for this yeah yeah carol when you say they closed off the the boat ramp that's really a fishing area and parking has always have been difficult there's um hardly ever uh the the boat ramp there is um whatever you want to call it is almost unusable that was never an issue i i yeah it's off of a it's off a granite wall right so you have to go around yeah there's a granite wall there yeah yeah people fish there uh but i used to go there and people would be hanging out so people would drive in and like picnic and like swim off the granite wall there was yeah yeah they've always done that but that has nothing to do with a boat ramp um people don't put on boats there there never was um uh a really easy way to do that uh um it's just a difficult area from a parking point of view that's that's about what what it what it amounts to um are we talking about the same place next to the stone yeah the granite wall yeah the granite wall and the uh okay because there's a turnaround in there it's not hard to park i mean you're saying it's hard to park your boat or is it like what are you saying is hard to park i've been in there when there's been like at least 10 cars back there oh you mean cars can't go in there anymore right on the route 30 side they've taken that thing that looks like an aqueduct uh closure the big yellow bars and it's now closed from route 30 where they get you goes the cemetery entrance and then there used to be the whatever you want to call it the gatehouse entrance and then you'd be driving up over the bridge over lake attituate heading towards spean street why don't we why don't we we can we can leave this i mean the point is where there's no action to take on this right now and whether you know whatever the access is you know there's no immediate action for the committee to take we know what the status of the orders of conditions are and if we need to if we do need to act we'll need to go through concom with tom flannery's awareness to get permits as needed but carol you were segwaying from that into the snake brook discussion from at least a couple of meetings ago about uh eligible growth and do we need to do water chemistry testing so this is you're not talking about plant management this is more about water chemistry testing and is it creating an environment for algal growth yes and i saw that the pace invoice that we're going to talk about later um it you know for a couple hundred bucks we could i don't know who's doing the testing on dudley pond if steve garone actually went out and like scooped the water himself or what but yeah that's that's how we're doing it now so there's ben weatherill who goes out there and takes his meter and does some measurements no no this is well those weren't meter measurements those were chemistry measurements right but i was gonna i was gonna say that if ben weatherwell does that part but then steve uh you steve goes out used to be mike lowry now and then norm now steve he collects the actual water sample right that gets delivered to now pace labs and they do the water chemistry testing so we don't need to do the same panel of analytes but someone needs to be out there to do to do the collection um yeah it's just phosphorus um free nitrogen kenginal nitrogen and um i think they were doing chlorophyll as well was the thing that's on the pace one but the other reason for considering it now and thinking about it is because they should be starting work at sometime soon on the snake brook dam at the old reservoir okay and if they stir everything up and stuff comes flowing down i mean eventually it'll have to right so that'll be later in the probably in the spring linda said that they want to wait till everything hardens up like freezes up better in case the dam is really loose because they have to go across the dam from the right the rice road side and take down all the trees that are on the wrong side of the spillway and they didn't want to bring equipment in there until they had to so it's just a safety factor and if we're being responsible we'll just check it and maybe linda wants to consider that too but probably not so the part you were mentioning so carol when you first noticed this this was by as not street but you were so you could see it from the shoreline this is not going out okay um you know carol uh this is a snake brick cove uh business i think is ludicrous uh frankly uh uh snake brick cove is nothing but a um a clogged up waterway uh heavily sedimented uh uh lots of uh uh trees that have blown down uh the mouth of it um is a very healthy place in fact we were fishing there just uh in uh in october uh we were also fishing there in the spring no problem lots of fish in the cove down below there i simply think there's uh no issue and um you know kayakers go up into it it's extremely difficult to get up into there um i i see kayakers come up go up there i took my boat up there well once um decided i wouldn't do it again but it's a simply a sedimented i'm going to just i'm going to push back on you because you're thinking about it purely from the terms of like fishing and i know like i guess it was 10 years ago no nobody swims there nobody the smartest ones there at all ever i can assure you wait a minute just wait tom snake brook runs right down the side of my neighborhood and i know that the kids go back and play in there but my point was i was down there when i was trying to like check out to see if something was a vernal pool and i happened to be standing in snake brook when a whole raft and i do mean a giant raft of soap came down like soap bubbles and then linda uh i mean i told linda about it and actually told mike lyra about it and they went out and they checked and after that they went and they went to make sure everyone's septic systems were working properly so this isn't a question of fishing or swimming this is a question of like health and ongoing things for the brook um and that's why i keep raising it so at least if we check it we know where it is that's my whole deal is it's maybe we don't act maybe everything's fine you know but you don't wait until it turns into a mess yeah when it comes to brooks far more important uh and i've mentioned it over the years from time to time is a pine brook which has a population of native brook trout probably 10th been there 10 000 years and um uh you know there there are issues on that brook as an example uh proposed uh development along route 20 but um you know snake brook is just uh one of the yeah it's um so we'll talk about pine brook in a bit where we're again we're we don't have to talk about it uh today but it's a it's a more important issue i i just don't get it snake brook cove which is what you've been talking about is simply a um it's a long uh uh you're so you're telling me it's a ditch right you're saying it's just a ditch that collects water that happens to be attached to lake contituate so snake brook flows into it in the springtime uh there's quite a flow in the summertime there isn't uh i mean can i interrupt here can i are you talking about the same part because tom you're talking about being on the water and kayakers and fishing and carol you're talking about something you walked into and you saw it's not you were closer to shore like are these two different areas of snake brook are we talking about the same place i remember i live down here right so there's snake brook dam runs down right behind local school right and it comes out um right and crosses route 30 where the yankee um craftsman used to be the big red barn yeah and it rolls down a side of my neighborhood hits the mass pike opens up into that giant marsh area that you can see while you're driving down route 30 that's across from a little bit further down heading if you keep heading west from the villa there's it opens up into that big marsh and then it comes back in there's all conservation land back there and then it rolls through past donlins and then there's a whole trail on snake brook that runs the snake brook trail that runs along there from donlins to the lake cuchituate slash snake brook cove so it's not that far a distance i don't know maybe it's like a mile or two from the snake brook dam down there uh and tom are you talking about it from the from the other side from the lake cuchituate yeah i'm talking about uh you know i i don't uh see a snake book uh uh we've we haven't worried about the brooks very much uh almost all brooks and wayland uh have marshes um associated with them as uh you know schoolhouse pound and uh hazel brook up in the north part of wayland uh trout brook uh pine brook kayward yeah we have a lot of brooks the uh mill brook there are issues uh but uh there is there is an estuary uh you know that from uh just uh so i guess it's uh the route 30 and uh uh that's it it winds up quite a ways and like i say uh that's uh that's uh that's water that's ponded water back there it's not uh it's not the flowing brook but that's the one that's um i i i think that's what you're talking about uh uh otherwise um it's just a brook
no different than any of the others okay well i'm i'm hearing the one perspective and then carol tom that's your perspective tom and then carol you're saying that they're gonna be doing this work on the dam um you're concerned miles upstream um yeah but my point is stuff that comes out they're gonna stir up everything on the bottom of the dam whatever has been like accumulating in the bottom of the dam is going to go over and we've had septic issues that has pushed stuff i'm thinking more water quality i'm not thinking fishing or swimming i'm just thinking water quality that's coming in and it's going to unload down into snake brook cove and we have more algae just like even you know you're saying that it doesn't matter it was schoolhouse pond and i haven't been back there for like two years the last time it was wall to wall with it was wall to wall with like you know duckweed and all sorts of algae as well so as the water heats up and the world heats up we're going to have more issues my just point was you know speaking science wise can't hurt to have a baseline to find out what's coming out of let me take as an action so carol you said you've been talking to linda um blank hansen about this yeah okay um not recently no okay let me take as an action to to follow up with linda get her feedback on this i'll look into you know we carol you mentioned pace um i imagine somebody a volunteer would have to collect these samples let me i can reach out to them and see you i'm perfectly willing to trot down across the street and pull a sample out of the middle of snake brook right off here or down because you realize they're stripping all the trees out of the spillway on woodridge right do you guys you know where this is on woodridge at the where woodridge hits rice road snake brook comes down right across there uh i'm not okay anyway by the way i'm i'm the only one on this committee or one of the very few in wayland who've actually put their boat on the snake brick reservoir i know a little bit of about that as well it's so simply uh a reservoir that's sedimented heavily weeded um i mean it's not not a whole lot different than other things when dams go silt and sediment go downstream i don't um well we're not talking about instituting uh uh the kind of water chemistry testing program that we have at dudley where we do it twice a year this is to get a baseline and when they do they haven't tested there since 78 when they put all the main stone condos in no no one's looked at no what they looked at it then because lowry wanted to look at it to see what the water quality was back then and it hasn't been looked at since to the best of my knowledge from the stuff i've looked at and um if you're gonna mess with the dam i don't know seems like that would be the time to look it was also it was definitely heavily vegetated i'll give you that much this summer it was almost like i'd say what half covered at least except right up in front of where the dam was so it'll be good that they're pulling up all the sediment because it'll knock a lot of the growth back you know what carol uh this comes up every time i'm uh uh we're spending way more on this and we do in any meeting on dudley pond or herd pond uh we'll probably do herd pond in 10 minutes i know you're excited about this i'm ready to uh with my ipad just to uh close the cover and leave the meeting i think this is ridiculous uh well you know we don't meet that often we we talk about herd and dudley so i think it's good to have somebody like carol who's yeah but we've been on snake brook for a long time well we've touched on it for a few months i think it's worth giving it just move on i don't care just move on like i'm not gonna fight it you know we're only gonna do herd and dudley let's do it so i will let me follow up with linda get her thoughts on the matter i think it's it's worth you know tom yeah we're spending a lot of time on snake brook uh maybe it's you know but how often are we going to talk about it right so let's just give it room to breathe and discuss we have one you know opinion opinion against one in favor let's let me get some information as to what uh conservation department thinks what's the you know if we want to do this testing this one-time testing what's the stress on the budget so let me take as an action to get some more information and follow up on this
now speaking of which uh herd pond and remarkably uh some good news actually so at long last after trying to get uh jeff and the solitude team to send us reports on the the weed the water chestnut harvesting and the clearcast uh after radio silence for a long time it just popped up in my inbox a few days ago so i sent that to the yeah yeah i saw that and tom have you have you looked at it what's the uh yeah yeah i i have and uh you know have either of you looked at it uh at all i i saw it a few days ago i had to do some work stuff so i've not had a chance yet well essentially uh it's uh two parts and um one part uh having to do with the hand pulling that's uh i'll call that jeff's uh report and then uh uh part two uh having to do with the uh clearcast uh treatment and uh my comments on uh you know as an example on the hand pulling um and uh you know i i i did a survey early on and then uh uh uh there's a graph and uh so the hand pulling uh and this is uh you know it's really regrettable um uh 2025 i'm looking at it right now 13 775 plants that's a huge number of plants and uh then if you look at the uh the graph underneath um it uh shows that uh 2025 was more than double um uh 2024 it's many times higher than um in uh 20 uh 22 21 uh uh it's uh just uh uh uh you know i've i've been doing this for 23 years and um it's uh it to me it's uh it's uh quite disconcerting i i don't know um whether these uh high number of plants are uh uh just uh a residue from the uh blow up that we uh had in uh 2016 uh or what uh but uh if you look at the graph that was uh you know that was uh after many many uh
excellent years where we thought we were coming to a close and all of a sudden inexplicably it blew up in 2016. uh many thousands of plants were left unharvested who knows how many seeds um were into the uh of the pond and into the sediment uh in the hundreds of thousands in the millions i don't know well anyway uh but that worked that was uh successful meaning the uh they mentioned 61 acres uh the 61 acres were uh cleared and then um and going over the uh the clear cast and that's uh a little uh uh you know they uh did a survey they uh did a treatment they did an interim survey a follow-up treatment late season survey by the way my opinion is what we spent that all of that is uh quite a bargain but um there the comments uh are difficult to um uh it's you know since we weren't out there tom clem and i did a uh survey uh late in august uh but uh you know as an example uh the first one they did uh uh four acres and then i should have uh underlined this uh uh so uh okay here we are interim assessment revealed uh that approximately four acres of water chestnut targeted during the initial treatment had been successfully impacted observations indicated clear signs of browning and decay however the survey also identified an additional four acres of healthy untreated water chestnut chestnut within the effect affected area indicating um need for further intervention then the question that occurs to me because you and i weren't out there tom we have no idea um why weren't the four acres spotted the first time around um i i just don't know what their mindset was when they went out there because uh when i went out out there in um in june i saw plenty of acres that had plants took photos of it so i don't quite get it um are they saying that those four acres were not impacted at all by the herbicide because we saw a lot of green out there so my question yeah yeah well no it says the survey also identified an additional four acres of healthy untreated water chestnut within the affected areas indicated the need for further intervention so then they uh went in and uh did um follow-up foliar uh vegetation treatment and uh for management of the remaining four acres and then a late season survey uh mentioned um it says approximately one acre of water chestnut persisted in the southern cove under the purview of the water quality committee um that's the growth that you and i saw that we came out with and we couldn't do anything with and um so i had talked to uh the fellow who was doing the uh the pulling uh his name was rocco uh a very diligent guy i'm glad we had him out there and uh he uh you hear that uh meowing going on in the background no now she's walked away well we've got a 17 year old cat she thinks she wants to go out until the door is opened and she sees the snow out in the deck yeah and she sniffs and backs away but then 10 minutes later she's at the back door again uh all right yeah our dog is the same way um yeah anyway uh back to this um so under the purview of the water quality committee meaning um um that was on september 18th um i think that um and i forgot what our actions were after that uh after you and i did the survey i i don't know if we um i honestly don't remember whether we uh sent a note to keith gazelle on that or to jeff but uh uh so there was another acre so from their point of view that area must have been outside of what they felt were the contracted boundaries uh and there were plenty of plants there right so what i recall and uh through you i don't recall hearing seeing this in writing from keith or tanner that they didn't treat that because that was uh u.s fish and wildlife no no that's uh that's different uh the uh no i'm talking about when you and i and my boat went into the pond and um uh and were hand pulling uh areas uh uh to the east of uh the treated area the treated area was uh you know is uh very very evident what was uh treated but uh we just rounded the peninsula and um there were lots and lots of uh plants uh not not to the far south or west of it uh they have a comment uh further down um on the uh fish and wildlife area consider a quote consideration should also be given to obtaining u.s fish and wildlife uh permission to uh treat the remaining acreage which would allow for effective management of the seed bed meaning if uh if they can't treat it uh it's just going to be uh uh a reservoir for uh what's called a seed bank and uh it's never going to end just know my take away from this is that we don't really have any conclusive uh determination of that this was successful or not they didn't treat they saw areas that were not outside the area to be treated areas they couldn't treat because it was u.s fish and wildlife and it seems to me like what they did treat there were still some green plants there with with seeds so maybe the timing was off um yeah so it's terribly hard to say uh you know in short my conclusion is uh just uh two things uh just uh two things or just one thing do exactly next season what we did this season that is contract for uh uh hand pulling uh of uh the uh the majority of the pond the um open uh area and um again um you know there's some verbiage up front uh uh in here that well we don't know what it's going to be like uh where okay uh it says uh continued monitoring and management uh recommended while full treatment may not be necessary next year my opinion is full treatment will absolutely be necessary next year i have enough experience with water chestnuts so i i i simply uh think that um we have a contract for full treatment and and and also uh back to the uh acreage uh and how they perceive it uh uh there's the open water the the 61 acres and then the eight or nine acres by the way on the arithmetic uh um i think the pond is i've seen it i forget whether it's 65 or 85 acres but um uh they they when they're out there and they see a good sized patch that may not be absolutely in that area we should ask them to uh treat it anyway no uh that's that's all there is to it so i um you know uh but again uh i think we do next year just what we uh did this past season and uh one of the problems we have is that uh uh there's uh really not very much uh it's very difficult to communicate with them uh in process uh during during the summer um they're they're incommunicado and um we don't know what the we don't know um what the heck is going on or what they saw until we get some kind of report later on yeah and so i don't know if we just want to treat the same smaller area we did this year or try and treat uh tom when you say the whole area you mean that whole southern cove part yeah yeah we we have to treat we have to treat the whole thing yeah uh uh uh they may say a smaller area i don't believe it i've uh reached out to to stephanie at u.s fish in the wild to find out about our ability to access yeah yeah yeah i've heard nothing back so tom if you feel like maybe you have more of a personal uh relationship you can reach out to her but i'll try again but i don't know maybe i'll i'll try to contact her on that then with stephanie and um uh she's been back at work for what two or three weeks um who knows what they uh what life is why like oh yeah wildlife uh i i can't imagine the first with the the new administration now with uh the shutdown what a mess uh anyways uh yeah if you can reach out to her tom that would be helpful i think i cc'd you in the email i wrote to her a month or so ago i've heard nothing back but that would be good to know if we can access that part of the shore um yeah yeah because um it's uh it's simply um uh means that uh work on the pond is um going to be persistently uh ineffective the fact i'm i'm dismayed by the uh very uh high uh hand pulling count uh this year compared to uh a number of years uh besides the a couple of blow up years this uh this uh this plant is uh just uh just very difficult in herd pond you know i'm 85 years old now i'm uh i'm not tired of doing it but um uh uh my oh my um it's um i i don't see an end to it i just don't see it it's not going any easier on you as in your yeah leg up on it but no and um i i i see um if we get thirty thousand a year and uh we hand pull and then we um treat we're right around twenty thousand dollars every year we're gobbling up uh two-thirds of the budget right there and we're not even um coming up you know from the point of view of uh the selectmen uh the reason for uh our committee is um more uh to quell the noise on dudley pond and um they'll do anything uh to do that they might question why all this money goes out year after year and well i'm i'm glad to speak to to the why of that i mean it can't just be you know to keep one faction quiet i mean herd pond is a large pond uh in the community we can't just let it you know without a fight just let it go to to to waste yeah well there's no constituency for right well that's the select board or a very small constituency for mill pond for snakebook cove um there's no constituency except for carol uh well the the select board needs to be that constituency and recognize the value of herd pond so yeah for starters um so to your point about the the funding um as carol pointed out uh last month is when cpc submissions were due i didn't put one in for herd pond uh under the uh recreation clause and tom you had mentioned that you had successfully done so before i was communicating with susan weinstein about this and she explained that recreation doesn't mean for example weed management it's really more about building a boat launch for example something of that nature so i nevertheless put together a package to submit unfortunately i wasn't able to be there in person to advocate for it i was traveling and i was online but the online thing was muted you had to be in person to present your case um so cpc is not going to be a source of of funding uh for this yeah they basically said goodbye right well they were not that rude about i mean susan was playing her emails but she she's you know she had talked with her uh colleagues before i submitted because i had inquired about that and she said it was unlikely but go ahead and submit it i had all the documents so it wasn't too much effort to do so but uh it's you know it was already outside the box of this the certain parameters they look for in this so uh she confirmed that it's not going to be something that is you guys were the only ones that were actually said or maybe there was one other one that they said no to everybody else or like yeah we want to hear either you didn't finish it nor you need to bring back more information so there were like 10 items on there yeah so when i joined when i logged in i don't know if they were giving precedence to people in the room but i think it was uh gretchen schula i think she was right after when i was on i was supposed to be there on at the meeting so did they sort of get to the herd pond one they said no and they moved on to the next ones is that is that what they were doing okay so i think i came in there a few minutes late for that there's also a conservative concom meeting that night which we'll talk about in a minute so i was juggling meetings okay so they but they at that meeting carol they just said you know this is not a candidate okay so so it'll be through through our own budget process so tom i'll be advocating uh with the select board i'll see what our what we can do for next year but let's get stephanie on board find out what she if she's amenable to us going closer to shore if that might require additional permitting but i just need to hear from her and get some idea of what our next steps are besides just proposing a budget to put some more herbicide in the pond well when do you have to turn that in i mean like when do you have to turn that proposal in which proposal to do whatever you're for hand pulling whatever is going to happen on herd pond you mean that well it's simply a matter of getting the contracts my my assumption is that this uh coming year we uh we already have monies uh allocated to uh surface water quality um and um uh you know you know what is it thirty thousand dollars so i wasn't worrying about that i was worrying about the timing of it making it through the town processes because we now have two trained i forgot there's a now a certification that they have for procurement and so they're going to be a lot tougher about when things get turned in and when things get done that's why i'm asking like that we make sure that we actually leave the time we need to turn it in oh it's seeming the things have to be planned earlier than we might have planned for in previous years well i guess so you know historically i've uh uh uh asked for uh a contract in uh around february or march uh which uh i think uh and tom uh would you uh you know from a contract point of view uh uh uh you know i i i've always just written a note to uh to uh jeff castellani uh it would be a identical uh contract uh would be identical to what we had last year and uh probably uh the herbicide uh would be uh just about identical would you mind handling that i don't i don't mind handling that uh carol makes a good point about timing of all this so we're going to go we'll do a budget review um you know there's not going to be very much left on that for this year so because the other one is are they going to make you go out for a request for proposals for a bid uh that could very well be i know last season in fact to this point because we had been using solitude for years for the water chestnut for the hand harvesting and kelsey had mentioned or somebody in her office had mentioned that every it's it's fine to do that but every few years you've got to do an rfp and sort of refresh on you can't just keep going back to the same person so let me go ahead and do that tom i can take care of the rfp business because i think it's going to be salted again but let me initiate that process now so but yeah carol you're right because it's the i guess maybe it's part of this process but every so often as i understand it um even though you've been using one vendor for a certain number of years to do a certain task it has to be revisited to see if there's maybe somebody else out there who could do it for a different price so i will i'll take the lead on that let me that's a good reminder carol thank you let me go ahead and do that the rfp part or at least check with kelsey if we have to uh but tom to your point about the water the hand harvesting that's fine my concern is uh the budget for herbicide uh i don't know i don't think we have to do worry about procella core next year on dudley pond steve was sending mixed messages about that last time um nevertheless let me do the first part which is the rfp i think let me check in with kelsey because for the hand for the hand harvesting i understand the other reason for try maybe trying for it early is that if solitude knows it's on the docket maybe they'll have enough people and we won't miss any deadline you know seasonal plant
variations they'll have people to go okay yeah that's a good point good idea all right water cessna and herbicide so so tom i have i'm not concerned about the the hand pulling part it's just the it's more the the budget for the herbicide but let me take the first step which is to confirm with kelsey if we have to do an rfp process if we have to uh tom i can take the lead on that and put together a proposal that will go out there for vendors to look at so i'll take that as an action to do uh i'll look into that be certainly before christmas just to see what needs to be done because i know that i don't think it takes particularly a long time but it just builds more time into the whole process so let me take the lead on that for both the uh the water well definitely for the hand management the water the hand point yeah i i i i can uh you know ask uh jeff for a contract but it turns out you know contractors um whatever he sends back is uh uh generally just turned over to kelsey or whoever's in that uh office and right and they uh they uh they they finish it up uh and uh uh but but don't do that now because we can't do that now we have to go through the rfp process and jeff and solitude have to say yes we'll do it and nobody else will do it and then we sort of reset the clock on using them so that's okay well i have to check with kelsey first because i think that's a that's a good point that carol make as kelsey had alluded to it about a year ago so let me take the first step which is to find out if we need to do an rfp that just builds in more front end bureaucracy that we have to negotiate so i'll take that action again that's all just timing and again red tape stuff the herbicide treatment i'm just concerned about that but let me take the first step first you know if we get a because these contracts will probably need to be a deposit paid because it won't be done until next fiscal year um so just things to consider but tom let me take the first step let me do checking on the rfps and if that's not an obstacle then we can think about contracting for this stuff but again i don't know how we can find out from solitude how they're how they'll manage the contract whatever the deposit may be as you'll see from the the budget i'm going to present we're going to be close to 25 000 in uh after this new invoice and so that's basically and we still have six months in the year to go i know we don't have a lot going on during the winter but we're going to be um you know up against it and uh i wrote to kelsey i don't recall we paid invoices for the herbicide treatment i don't recall getting the big invoice for fifty five hundred dollars for the initial treatment so if that has been overlooked by solitude somehow that's going to basically uh take care of our budget for the year but we can talk about budget in a little bit but let me first tom uh find out about the rfps and if we have to factor that timing into our whole planning process for next year on herd pond okay uh okay dudley pond uh so two quick things first good news uh we did get that extension of the order of conditions uh steve has had pointed out that the current one expires march of next year so if we do have to do priscilla core that would be in the summer of next year and we wouldn't have a uh an effective order of conditions so i uh made it made linda and the team aware of that and this is carol this is these are the meetings i was juggling a few weeks ago so i finally logged into the concom meeting and they said that they said tom we took care of it for you i didn't even need to be there for that thing so i lost that on my chance to advocate for the herd pond thing at cpc and showed up at the concom meeting they didn't even need me there so but it was good to check in with those guys so we had the extension on dudley pond for five more years um covering our next priscilla core treatment so that's good news uh the next thing i wanted to do was uh address that invoice so i sent the invoice that carol mentioned earlier for the uh fall water chemistry testing on dudley pond is a thousand dollar thousand and nineteen dollars and forty cents uh i'll make a motion to approve that invoice to pace analytical for water chemistry testing on dudley pond second carol second and let's go around the virtual room for a vote tom largie i carol plum i tom clam i thank you all so that's fifth that's a thousand more dollars against our budget so that's about two thousand twenty two thousand dollars of our thirty uh i'll call that up in a minute here let me just check my the agenda oh okay so right on time so steve's not here so just those quick updates on deadly pond let me uh but by the way uh yeah um this issue of uh reports um it seems to me we never did get a report for the uh spring and i'm not certain um that's uh you know that's uh more in steve's area but my oh my uh we should um certainly uh have reports uh are you talking about the money are you talking about for the uh the aquatic restoration thing arc no no the uh testing uh oh that okay right oh for the testing yeah yeah we never see the test results oh let me circulate those and then steve yeah and then what steve and beforehand norm would do is they would put those reports together um so let me send you so i've got the data files i can i think i do anyways i'll steve send if i don't send data water chem report okay thank you uh the other report that i was mentioning from arc the aquatic plant survey that i checked in with uh ken gendron and he said that that would be sent um this week so i'll follow up on that but yes good reminder on the data for this water chemistry testing and i'll see if steve's put that report together and then yes steve uh tom to their point which was about just a report on the uh uh the weed management that um allison and tree put together just looking what i've got is the the second survey from arc came at 9 30 on september 30th that's the bill sorry yeah that's not the report yet because i did ask specifically about that in fact uh yeah we don't have an invoice for that yet but yeah that's what we i'll follow up with ken gendron on that one all right let me
share my screen so budget review hang on a second here okay i'm going to share my screen there it is
actually i do have a june 25th dudley pond water quality assessment report that's got steve garone's name on it so you're waiting for the fall one as well hit the last date on that report is august 3rd i mean data sampling is august 3rd sorry no it's may i'm wrong i'm reading the numbers wrong got it it's okay anyways yeah so that we have the spring report but this is the fall report yeah all right so here's here's what i wanted to show uh the group so i've been going through collating all the invoices and i i i don't have these in order of date of receipt but what i have here is uh what you see can you see this table by the way yeah yeah see no problem all right so uh these are the invoices we've received for uh fy26 and side note we've had some discussions you know we got 30 000 every year and our contracts our invoices paid out of the year that uh the fiscal year of the contract or when the invoices are received i've never gotten any clarity on this from the town so i'm gonna live life like i'm just pulling you know the budget's coming out of whatever fiscal year we're in so some of these invoices if they were contracted in fy25 whatever i'm invoicing them out of fy26 so these are the invoices received so far again but and what you won't see here is that big one for the herbicide the first treatment on herd pond the 5500 but that one aside and and these aren't in order i apologize for that but just going down from the top here uh let me open this the second here we go purpose so here's what we've received so that's this top one this is uh from ben weatherill uh his company is a ksac uh this was for his part of the water testing for the fall um 1100 uh so this was an invoice received in october this is one that we approved by hand i took it around to um i don't know if it was you caroline tom or steve might have been on this one but anyways so that's 1100 for the fall water chemistry testing and i'll make a note to find out about the spring testing that was hopefully out of fy25 do we have an account number in munis uh i don't get this from munis this is i'm just filling this in myself by hand so okay there probably is one uh i don't have that it's not important i just was asking so that was received uh that was from october so that's a thousand eleven hundred dollars against our budget the next two these are from arc these are for the two surveys they've done on dudley pond at 24.90 each coming in that's in the summer and end of summer so that's you know fifty what five thousand dollars yeah so those have been uh paid out to arc the next two are uh for solitude tom uh we get is it 12 days total for solitude well uh you know i uh asked for seven days and then we uh asked for two more so it's uh two plus four plus uh three is nine days twelve hundred dollars so okay that's uh ten thousand eight hundred um um 24 so i got so then this first one here is solitude two days of water chestnut harvesting 24 yeah then two rows down is four days and then three days down you'll see a few rows down that was an earlier one so that's yeah so what's not there as part of the uh was fifteen hundred dollars for the uh report report and uh so we have not received that yet okay so i think that would account for it all right because it's nine nine hundred dollars we asked for two more days that's twenty four hundred so that's three that should be twelve thousand three hundred right yeah yeah right so 24 48 is 72 and three is eight ten eight yeah the math works out love it okay yeah yeah boy that fifty five hundred i don't know where that's lurking uh but uh uh okay unless we paid it um in the uh prior uh uh fiscal period perhaps yeah but we wouldn't have though right because they didn't do it did they do it in june or was it july that first they did it in july they did so then that would be that would be this year's but i i don't recall having received it and i don't know if it went to the town i mean kelsey wouldn't have paid it out without approval so i assume that apparently she has paid out things without approval i uh i think uh there was an instance of that uh uh i seem to remember that uh i uh so okay well you might ask her about that i i did ask her about that uh but that was that would be odd because she sends me now everything and asks you to approve it i am surprised that she would take a big the biggest one and then just approve that pay that one out without approving it uh but anyways i followed up with her on that one okay so getting back to this here so there's another uh so between the two and four days of hand harvesting there's the permitting for the herbicide that's three hundred dollars on here uh and then you see the for pace analytical that we just approved the ten uh one thousand nineteen dollars for the fall testing uh and then let's see the very last one is the second clear cast treatment on herd pond 3500 so i don't think i've missed anything other than the 5500 and if that has been overlooked we're still going to be within budget for the year but again as we think about planning for next year any deposits that may need to be paid on these contracts um we're not going to have a whole lot of room to uh to work with here so we'll need to manage that uh and i don't recall actually that we paid any deposits so maybe that's not gonna be a problem at all but so we should be able to sneak in under budget for for the year based on this information anything that jumps out to either view that i might have missed i'm trying to you know the main thing is the fifteen hundred dollars for the uh testing on the herd pond and i i see no other expenditures of this uh fiscal year so the fifth if the 5500 hasn't been paid and the 1500 that's 7 000 more so we'll still be under our 30 um which is yeah yeah right right next i have to finesse the money for change carol is there anything that you can think of that i might have missed i don't think so we have so few relatively few large no no so i think we're in good shape for the year it's just uh gonna be planning for the next and hopefully we don't need priscilla core but again i i was on the impression no steve seemed to allude that based on anecdotal conversations between arc and uh allison leclerc that there was a possibility so i'll follow up with him later on that and see if that's going to be an issue for us but i guess the good news is well it was good news you know we do have there is money in the deadly pond gift fund that we can tap into if we needed to it wouldn't be sixty thousand dollars worth but let me not open that can of worms now let's see if we even need to do priscilla core next year and then we'll we'll manage it from that point okay uh that was it for the budget any questions about this but thank you for doing that no i appreciate it carol this is good because i i'm pretty you know carefree about it invoices come in i get them paid out i've not been tracking stuff and i really i need to do that so this is a good exercise for me so carol i appreciate the uh the request to do a budget review every so often all right i'm going to stop sharing my screen here and i think oh uh topics not so uh tom largie did you have you heard from larry kiernan so yeah i talked to him you you sent me uh and he said um i i i suggest you know he's already on the planning board um and uh i uh i told him uh he should uh uh you know submit a letter to the selectman and um and uh uh so i i haven't talked to him since then but um okay i will i'll follow up with him so carol this is larry kiernan who was gonna okay yeah so but we've we've uh we've the window of publicly posting the vacancy uh has closed and now we can and no one there weren't people jumping out the opportunity so larry's got the opportunity if he wants to to join the committee so we seem to get that fifth seat filled on here i didn't know there was a window but okay that's news to me yeah because you have to post it has to be posted for two weeks so if somebody comes out of the woodwork and they want to be on the committee uh you know you just have to give the community the chance to weigh in it shouldn't be us just picking whoever's yeah so yes there is a window all right um the only thing left to do is to uh pick a date for our next meeting i'm going to propose since the winter months i know there are some actions for me to follow up on but why don't we target rather than the early part of january somewhere in the middle of january uh are tuesdays still good for folks no you know for being retired and we're not going to florida or anything like that um i'd like to avoid tuesdays and mondays are no good for you right carol you know what at this point um it depends on whether the paper is going out that week so i can tell you that let me see we move the calendar up from december to january so like we're going out on the 9th which means that six would be bad it depends just what days do we get well so well how let's start with the 13th and the 20th of january those are tuesdays hang on let me close that thing up here the 13th or the 20th i'd still rather not do it on a tuesday if we don't have to can you do a 12th or the 19th those are mondays 19th is martin luther king day not that it matters to me um the 12th we can try the 12. uh well uh i let's do the steve's not here uh do you want to do the 14th or the 20th how about the 14th that's a wednesday um sure okay the 14th is uh fine with me by the way uh carol i uh i very much appreciate that paper i noticed you've had a couple of um columns or articles and uh so i peruse um everything there it's uh what's been badly needed in wayland for the next several last several years i hope we can keep it going by yeah yeah we're hanging in there so that's good we have enough money we'll just see yeah well i say that we just we got a grant which also are we up to grant speaking about grants no keep going uh grants as relating to this committee if you want money we're gonna have i don't even know where to look for things or if that money is available but the one thing i've figured out in looking at the stuff while we've been looking for grants for the post is that if you're willing to send stuff in there's money you just have to find the right ones
so the ones you the grants you're getting are specific for journalism but you're suggesting look for grants for environmentally related okay i'm trying to think what was because there's things like i was wondering if the town actually has something like there's a bunch of different services you can sign up for um to do that i i just think we need it would helpful to get better at that because if you may have noticed at the cpc that's all the people who couldn't they're all small dollar items compared to most of the stuff that ends up in the budget so everybody's desperately looking for money so it's just a thought maybe we don't do grants but it's something worth thinking about no it isn't about 10 years ago i i got a uh fifty thousand dollar grant uh having to do with uh nyanza you know i probably frittered it away on just on pulling water trust that's a third pond and not building the town for it for about three or four years um uh but uh it's uh immensely difficult uh grants and it's um uh you know personally i'm totally uninterested in putting forth that kind of uh effort again i did it once and that was enough somebody else would have to do it yeah that's fine that can be me i mean i have no idea what's involved i mean if but let's not close it out let's not yes nobody nobody said you had to do it i'm just saying that it's something we need that i mean i can look into later but not this year next year yeah i i can look into that as well too let me find some opportunities and tom maybe it's yeah can you ask kelsey if the town has an account that they where they actually there's like services that tell you all the grants that are coming up and some are through state stuff and some are like national and summer um also just like general philanthropic tropic things and if we already have that to the town or she'll let us use it because otherwise you have to pay to get into the service just to figure out where stuff is but like i said we've been doing really well with the whale and post getting stuff i don't know if we're just lucky because it's a hot topic or what but okay that's a good good suggestion i will ask kelsey about that and i'll do some looking on my own too but that's you know we shouldn't close the door on a potential opportunity especially with money being tight it can't hurt and uh well carol if you've gotten some big grants i've got a uh a modest uh monthly amount i send to the whale and post maybe i'll stop that uh but when i said a big grant it wasn't a big grant we got 15 000 to do a whole study through the river stewardship council okay for that but now we have to go do all the write-ups and it's it's extra work on top of the paper but at least it'll get us more exposure and everything else so no we're not coming in with we're not like weston we didn't get someone drop a hundred thousand dollars on us we're still in the uh we're lucky okay like i got you i got you i got you keep the gravy train moving tom don't stop yeah really please all right uh so and that that concludes our agenda with our uh decision on our decision on the date for next year uh what's everyone a happy holidays merry christmas uh okay so it's january 15th uh january 14th 14th wednesday wednesday is the 13th okay wednesday the 14th wednesday january 14th yeah okay january 14th okay i got it all righty uh well so let's so let's uh i'd make a i'll make a motion to adjourn at 8 17 p.m is there a second second okay carol carol's in under the wire i'll get on to carol uh let's go around the room and do a virtual uh vote tom largie hi carol flamm i tom flamm i all right everybody have a great night have a great holiday season i'll talk to you in the new year
all right rest for the way that's right uh first item of business uh as usual is to approve the minutes uh from last meeting 21st of october uh i sent those around did anybody have any comments if there are no comments and i will make a motion to approve but i'll open the floor to any comments on any shortcomings i think i thought i sent you something but i'm already okay i read them anyway okay i'll take that as it might have been about something else not about the minutes i didn't i always set them i think this past weekend yeah all right hang on my dog is okay she's making some noise over there all right uh let's make a motion then to approve the minutes of october 21st uh like i said yeah i move okay thank you tom and let's well tom beats it to it carol so let's start now i have to second it right well tom tom seconded it thank you yeah no you're right sorry i've been listening to too many board meetings where somebody else the chair talks the second person makes the motion and then somebody has to second it so anyway sorry well no i'm the person who makes the motion that's the first person then the second person seconds it so tom second we don't need a third so carol you're just not as quick on the draw as tom hang on many these meetings are at a bad time because my wife is in the back room so i've got to be in the main room but the dog always goes off right after dinner she starts barking and whining bad timing all around okay anyways uh having made the motion to approve the minutes let's now take a vote on the minutes i vote to approve them uh yeah carol plum i tom clam i thank you all right all right what do i have here for next uh lake chichuit um so last time we met uh we were talking about orders of conditions on lake chichuit and might they pertain to anything we want to do on north pond around yellow irises purple loosestrife um and so the answer i got back i think carol i sent this to you is uh that there is there are there is an order of conditions that covers um all the ponds of lake chichuit they are uh through the state uh and uh the but regardless uh none of them uh the order of conditions does not specify anything about yellow irises or purple loosestrife and north pond so if we want to do that we'll have to get permitted and after we run through tom flannery because or well it doesn't have to be we can choose to um go through tom flannery or we can do it ourselves but we just need to keep tom in the loop so he knows that we're going to have a separate permit for these other invasives you're saying we can just go through concom alone well we so the question that we had was if we're going to do any kind of plant management on north pond we need to have a a permit through concom and the question was is there anything already existing that would cover this and the shorter answer is no yes but but the answer from linda was that we could just do it with her no i didn't hear anything back from from linda so in fact i think i went through uh linda or and or emily in her office emily is sort of the office person there and i asked them because emily said there wasn't existing order of conditions she didn't have the specifics on that so i asked her for those specifics and then um seemingly out of the blue there was an email from tom flannery explaining there was an order of conditions uh that uh the state has for lake constituent yeah no i got all that because i did this like two years ago okay and i never i got to the point where i never got an answer about if we put something in who would we have to go through and i thought at the time linda told us we'd have to do it with the state so the answer just is if we want it we have to start the process right right we can either start the process ourselves through linda um or we can go through the state but i would advocate for doing it ourselves but regardless we there has to be we have to get permitted for this specific application it's only it only covers the usual things um milfoil and so on yeah let me interject here it seems to me that before we start worrying about permits and things like that that um there'd be some kind of formal survey uh just to um understand whether those uh what kind of problem is out there as an example you know uh loosestrife is always out there always it's been there for decades uh i don't know um you know in the case of herd pond i'm uh i've i've observed uh two or three clusters of yellow iris um and i don't think uh there's been much progression but uh you know how much yellow iris uh is there on uh north pond and the wayland area and is it a problem i i you know is it advancing i i i would think would uh uh do some kind of survey there's only one specific area that brought it up for me because again and i don't have a boat but i know that you know the heavily trafficked area around the boat loading dock oh where they're running the crew and the sun fishes and all that that area is getting like more and more um filled with like every invasive you can imagine so that's the only reason i bring it up is like you might as well clean it if you just sort of in a what do you call it like getting vaccinated you just clean up that area before it goes anywhere else but again i don't think we're going to have the money to do this right unless we do it it's just it's at this point it's kind of like we we can think about it but i'm not even sure we can actually fund doing it in any way right because if we have to have people be professional to do it or whatever because lyndon's going to insist that that something like that i don't know like i said it's a as far as i know it's that one area yeah it's probably in other areas well i've um you know i'm uniquely the only person who's been out on lake cachituate uh this year in the spring and the fall um the fall probably the yellow irises are gone the loose strife tends to uh be up on the shoreline but um i uh we uh trolled all the way down um you know from uh where the uh waterworks were on past the town beach and um considerably north of there i didn't see any yellow iris but i know that cove has always been uh uh always been uh plants and weeds in there my my opinion is um that um if the uh if the crew people running the cruise felt they had a problem then bring it up either with park and rec or with us uh is in a way that's kind of under the purview of uh wayland park and rec um i uh i just don't think there's an issue there well this initially came up from from carol because carol you had noticed uh what appeared to be an abundance of these plants and you know it wasn't that we necessarily had to do action but we should be poised to do something if these were to uh spread and so i i have no idea if these are that this is a normal amount of these plants if they're spreading but the idea and you're really only going to see them in the spring anyway when they're flowering because they're buried in deep with the rest of the stuff that's the other part so did you say you went out in the spring tom
pardon when you were on lake attituate you were out in the spring like yeah in the spring but we don't go into the cove we're well off uh we we skirt the uh shoreline uh actually in some cases uh uh north of the town beach quite quite close to the shore um you know a yellow iris would jump out um that's although that you know i'd have to see i was either there late april early may um but um they jump out on the herd pond that's all there is to it uh so um uh well you'd have to be there when they were flowering to see them but i think the other thing though too is if i i don't know what you want to do if anything about the snake brook cove which i think as far as i can tell from the maps it's still within wayland because that the algae and all the rest of the stuff on that didn't actually crash out until i think i'll have to go back and look at the date on the picture but it was still floating out there at you know at the end of october it was it was so much of it this year so that in terms of being poised to do something i don't know uh if so so let's let's first then finish up with regards to uh the initial agenda item which was the yellow iris and purple loose rice so carol you had brought this up so it's you know have you this is probably it must have been almost two years ago i know we've been talking about this for quite some time have you noticed it to be uh any worse or i mean is it it doesn't appear to be the same kind of problem that for example milfoil is on on dudley pond so tom's suggesting that this is the natural ebb and flow of these plants does it appear to be expanding beyond that limited area that we should be thinking about management or is this more just an informational thing that just to keep an eye on and we don't need to do any action right now i didn't look that hard lat this year so i'm going to just say it's probably not like blowing out like a water chestnut or milfoil okay this is the kind of thing so i i can check in with with katherine brennan because i imagine she would be more is this kind of near the this is near the beach area right so that's not she wouldn't notice it okay right i mean the only people who are gonna even like probably look in that direction on a regular basis are the crew people and the people taking their boats in and out okay and the other thing that's that's probably slowed some of the whatever issues we're going to have down is they closed off the what used to be like a boat launching ramp next to the the gatehouse so dpw is using that last i looked when i walked back there as like a like a like a loading area whatever you want to call it where they leave stuff like rocks and dirt and they've closed it off so people can't get back there so the people that were coming over from lake kuchichwa state park have that that flow of people has slowed down because now that it goes they can't drive in you have to go into the cemetery so that helps keep whatever invasive things that are coming that way out okay so let's leave this as we know what the status of orders of conditions that may be applicable to that area are in short they don't specifically cover yellow iris and purple loose strife but there's no immediate action that this this committee will take um other than to be aware of the potential for this yeah yeah carol when you say they closed off the the boat ramp that's really a fishing area and parking has always have been difficult there's um hardly ever uh the the boat ramp there is um whatever you want to call it is almost unusable that was never an issue i i yeah it's off of a it's off a granite wall right so you have to go around yeah there's a granite wall there yeah yeah people fish there uh but i used to go there and people would be hanging out so people would drive in and like picnic and like swim off the granite wall there was yeah yeah they've always done that but that has nothing to do with a boat ramp um people don't put on boats there there never was um uh a really easy way to do that uh um it's just a difficult area from a parking point of view that's that's about what what it what it amounts to um are we talking about the same place next to the stone yeah the granite wall yeah the granite wall and the uh okay because there's a turnaround in there it's not hard to park i mean you're saying it's hard to park your boat or is it like what are you saying is hard to park i've been in there when there's been like at least 10 cars back there oh you mean cars can't go in there anymore right on the route 30 side they've taken that thing that looks like an aqueduct uh closure the big yellow bars and it's now closed from route 30 where they get you goes the cemetery entrance and then there used to be the whatever you want to call it the gatehouse entrance and then you'd be driving up over the bridge over lake attituate heading towards spean street why don't we why don't we we can we can leave this i mean the point is where there's no action to take on this right now and whether you know whatever the access is you know there's no immediate action for the committee to take we know what the status of the orders of conditions are and if we need to if we do need to act we'll need to go through concom with tom flannery's awareness to get permits as needed but carol you were segwaying from that into the snake brook discussion from at least a couple of meetings ago about uh eligible growth and do we need to do water chemistry testing so this is you're not talking about plant management this is more about water chemistry testing and is it creating an environment for algal growth yes and i saw that the pace invoice that we're going to talk about later um it you know for a couple hundred bucks we could i don't know who's doing the testing on dudley pond if steve garone actually went out and like scooped the water himself or what but yeah that's that's how we're doing it now so there's ben weatherill who goes out there and takes his meter and does some measurements no no this is well those weren't meter measurements those were chemistry measurements right but i was gonna i was gonna say that if ben weatherwell does that part but then steve uh you steve goes out used to be mike lowry now and then norm now steve he collects the actual water sample right that gets delivered to now pace labs and they do the water chemistry testing so we don't need to do the same panel of analytes but someone needs to be out there to do to do the collection um yeah it's just phosphorus um free nitrogen kenginal nitrogen and um i think they were doing chlorophyll as well was the thing that's on the pace one but the other reason for considering it now and thinking about it is because they should be starting work at sometime soon on the snake brook dam at the old reservoir okay and if they stir everything up and stuff comes flowing down i mean eventually it'll have to right so that'll be later in the probably in the spring linda said that they want to wait till everything hardens up like freezes up better in case the dam is really loose because they have to go across the dam from the right the rice road side and take down all the trees that are on the wrong side of the spillway and they didn't want to bring equipment in there until they had to so it's just a safety factor and if we're being responsible we'll just check it and maybe linda wants to consider that too but probably not so the part you were mentioning so carol when you first noticed this this was by as not street but you were so you could see it from the shoreline this is not going out okay um you know carol uh this is a snake brick cove uh business i think is ludicrous uh frankly uh uh snake brick cove is nothing but a um a clogged up waterway uh heavily sedimented uh uh lots of uh uh trees that have blown down uh the mouth of it um is a very healthy place in fact we were fishing there just uh in uh in october uh we were also fishing there in the spring no problem lots of fish in the cove down below there i simply think there's uh no issue and um you know kayakers go up into it it's extremely difficult to get up into there um i i see kayakers come up go up there i took my boat up there well once um decided i wouldn't do it again but it's a simply a sedimented i'm going to just i'm going to push back on you because you're thinking about it purely from the terms of like fishing and i know like i guess it was 10 years ago no nobody swims there nobody the smartest ones there at all ever i can assure you wait a minute just wait tom snake brook runs right down the side of my neighborhood and i know that the kids go back and play in there but my point was i was down there when i was trying to like check out to see if something was a vernal pool and i happened to be standing in snake brook when a whole raft and i do mean a giant raft of soap came down like soap bubbles and then linda uh i mean i told linda about it and actually told mike lyra about it and they went out and they checked and after that they went and they went to make sure everyone's septic systems were working properly so this isn't a question of fishing or swimming this is a question of like health and ongoing things for the brook um and that's why i keep raising it so at least if we check it we know where it is that's my whole deal is it's maybe we don't act maybe everything's fine you know but you don't wait until it turns into a mess yeah when it comes to brooks far more important uh and i've mentioned it over the years from time to time is a pine brook which has a population of native brook trout probably 10th been there 10 000 years and um uh you know there there are issues on that brook as an example uh proposed uh development along route 20 but um you know snake brook is just uh one of the yeah it's um so we'll talk about pine brook in a bit where we're again we're we don't have to talk about it uh today but it's a it's a more important issue i i just don't get it snake brook cove which is what you've been talking about is simply a um it's a long uh uh you're so you're telling me it's a ditch right you're saying it's just a ditch that collects water that happens to be attached to lake contituate so snake brook flows into it in the springtime uh there's quite a flow in the summertime there isn't uh i mean can i interrupt here can i are you talking about the same part because tom you're talking about being on the water and kayakers and fishing and carol you're talking about something you walked into and you saw it's not you were closer to shore like are these two different areas of snake brook are we talking about the same place i remember i live down here right so there's snake brook dam runs down right behind local school right and it comes out um right and crosses route 30 where the yankee um craftsman used to be the big red barn yeah and it rolls down a side of my neighborhood hits the mass pike opens up into that giant marsh area that you can see while you're driving down route 30 that's across from a little bit further down heading if you keep heading west from the villa there's it opens up into that big marsh and then it comes back in there's all conservation land back there and then it rolls through past donlins and then there's a whole trail on snake brook that runs the snake brook trail that runs along there from donlins to the lake cuchituate slash snake brook cove so it's not that far a distance i don't know maybe it's like a mile or two from the snake brook dam down there uh and tom are you talking about it from the from the other side from the lake cuchituate yeah i'm talking about uh you know i i don't uh see a snake book uh uh we've we haven't worried about the brooks very much uh almost all brooks and wayland uh have marshes um associated with them as uh you know schoolhouse pound and uh hazel brook up in the north part of wayland uh trout brook uh pine brook kayward yeah we have a lot of brooks the uh mill brook there are issues uh but uh there is there is an estuary uh you know that from uh just uh so i guess it's uh the route 30 and uh uh that's it it winds up quite a ways and like i say uh that's uh that's uh that's water that's ponded water back there it's not uh it's not the flowing brook but that's the one that's um i i i think that's what you're talking about uh uh otherwise um it's just a brook
no different than any of the others okay well i'm i'm hearing the one perspective and then carol tom that's your perspective tom and then carol you're saying that they're gonna be doing this work on the dam um you're concerned miles upstream um yeah but my point is stuff that comes out they're gonna stir up everything on the bottom of the dam whatever has been like accumulating in the bottom of the dam is going to go over and we've had septic issues that has pushed stuff i'm thinking more water quality i'm not thinking fishing or swimming i'm just thinking water quality that's coming in and it's going to unload down into snake brook cove and we have more algae just like even you know you're saying that it doesn't matter it was schoolhouse pond and i haven't been back there for like two years the last time it was wall to wall with it was wall to wall with like you know duckweed and all sorts of algae as well so as the water heats up and the world heats up we're going to have more issues my just point was you know speaking science wise can't hurt to have a baseline to find out what's coming out of let me take as an action so carol you said you've been talking to linda um blank hansen about this yeah okay um not recently no okay let me take as an action to to follow up with linda get her feedback on this i'll look into you know we carol you mentioned pace um i imagine somebody a volunteer would have to collect these samples let me i can reach out to them and see you i'm perfectly willing to trot down across the street and pull a sample out of the middle of snake brook right off here or down because you realize they're stripping all the trees out of the spillway on woodridge right do you guys you know where this is on woodridge at the where woodridge hits rice road snake brook comes down right across there uh i'm not okay anyway by the way i'm i'm the only one on this committee or one of the very few in wayland who've actually put their boat on the snake brick reservoir i know a little bit of about that as well it's so simply uh a reservoir that's sedimented heavily weeded um i mean it's not not a whole lot different than other things when dams go silt and sediment go downstream i don't um well we're not talking about instituting uh uh the kind of water chemistry testing program that we have at dudley where we do it twice a year this is to get a baseline and when they do they haven't tested there since 78 when they put all the main stone condos in no no one's looked at no what they looked at it then because lowry wanted to look at it to see what the water quality was back then and it hasn't been looked at since to the best of my knowledge from the stuff i've looked at and um if you're gonna mess with the dam i don't know seems like that would be the time to look it was also it was definitely heavily vegetated i'll give you that much this summer it was almost like i'd say what half covered at least except right up in front of where the dam was so it'll be good that they're pulling up all the sediment because it'll knock a lot of the growth back you know what carol uh this comes up every time i'm uh uh we're spending way more on this and we do in any meeting on dudley pond or herd pond uh we'll probably do herd pond in 10 minutes i know you're excited about this i'm ready to uh with my ipad just to uh close the cover and leave the meeting i think this is ridiculous uh well you know we don't meet that often we we talk about herd and dudley so i think it's good to have somebody like carol who's yeah but we've been on snake brook for a long time well we've touched on it for a few months i think it's worth giving it just move on i don't care just move on like i'm not gonna fight it you know we're only gonna do herd and dudley let's do it so i will let me follow up with linda get her thoughts on the matter i think it's it's worth you know tom yeah we're spending a lot of time on snake brook uh maybe it's you know but how often are we going to talk about it right so let's just give it room to breathe and discuss we have one you know opinion opinion against one in favor let's let me get some information as to what uh conservation department thinks what's the you know if we want to do this testing this one-time testing what's the stress on the budget so let me take as an action to get some more information and follow up on this
now speaking of which uh herd pond and remarkably uh some good news actually so at long last after trying to get uh jeff and the solitude team to send us reports on the the weed the water chestnut harvesting and the clearcast uh after radio silence for a long time it just popped up in my inbox a few days ago so i sent that to the yeah yeah i saw that and tom have you have you looked at it what's the uh yeah yeah i i have and uh you know have either of you looked at it uh at all i i saw it a few days ago i had to do some work stuff so i've not had a chance yet well essentially uh it's uh two parts and um one part uh having to do with the hand pulling that's uh i'll call that jeff's uh report and then uh uh part two uh having to do with the uh clearcast uh treatment and uh my comments on uh you know as an example on the hand pulling um and uh you know i i i did a survey early on and then uh uh uh there's a graph and uh so the hand pulling uh and this is uh you know it's really regrettable um uh 2025 i'm looking at it right now 13 775 plants that's a huge number of plants and uh then if you look at the uh the graph underneath um it uh shows that uh 2025 was more than double um uh 2024 it's many times higher than um in uh 20 uh 22 21 uh uh it's uh just uh uh uh you know i've i've been doing this for 23 years and um it's uh it to me it's uh it's uh quite disconcerting i i don't know um whether these uh high number of plants are uh uh just uh a residue from the uh blow up that we uh had in uh 2016 uh or what uh but uh if you look at the graph that was uh you know that was uh after many many uh
excellent years where we thought we were coming to a close and all of a sudden inexplicably it blew up in 2016. uh many thousands of plants were left unharvested who knows how many seeds um were into the uh of the pond and into the sediment uh in the hundreds of thousands in the millions i don't know well anyway uh but that worked that was uh successful meaning the uh they mentioned 61 acres uh the 61 acres were uh cleared and then um and going over the uh the clear cast and that's uh a little uh uh you know they uh did a survey they uh did a treatment they did an interim survey a follow-up treatment late season survey by the way my opinion is what we spent that all of that is uh quite a bargain but um there the comments uh are difficult to um uh it's you know since we weren't out there tom clem and i did a uh survey uh late in august uh but uh you know as an example uh the first one they did uh uh four acres and then i should have uh underlined this uh uh so uh okay here we are interim assessment revealed uh that approximately four acres of water chestnut targeted during the initial treatment had been successfully impacted observations indicated clear signs of browning and decay however the survey also identified an additional four acres of healthy untreated water chestnut chestnut within the effect affected area indicating um need for further intervention then the question that occurs to me because you and i weren't out there tom we have no idea um why weren't the four acres spotted the first time around um i i just don't know what their mindset was when they went out there because uh when i went out out there in um in june i saw plenty of acres that had plants took photos of it so i don't quite get it um are they saying that those four acres were not impacted at all by the herbicide because we saw a lot of green out there so my question yeah yeah well no it says the survey also identified an additional four acres of healthy untreated water chestnut within the affected areas indicated the need for further intervention so then they uh went in and uh did um follow-up foliar uh vegetation treatment and uh for management of the remaining four acres and then a late season survey uh mentioned um it says approximately one acre of water chestnut persisted in the southern cove under the purview of the water quality committee um that's the growth that you and i saw that we came out with and we couldn't do anything with and um so i had talked to uh the fellow who was doing the uh the pulling uh his name was rocco uh a very diligent guy i'm glad we had him out there and uh he uh you hear that uh meowing going on in the background no now she's walked away well we've got a 17 year old cat she thinks she wants to go out until the door is opened and she sees the snow out in the deck yeah and she sniffs and backs away but then 10 minutes later she's at the back door again uh all right yeah our dog is the same way um yeah anyway uh back to this um so under the purview of the water quality committee meaning um um that was on september 18th um i think that um and i forgot what our actions were after that uh after you and i did the survey i i don't know if we um i honestly don't remember whether we uh sent a note to keith gazelle on that or to jeff but uh uh so there was another acre so from their point of view that area must have been outside of what they felt were the contracted boundaries uh and there were plenty of plants there right so what i recall and uh through you i don't recall hearing seeing this in writing from keith or tanner that they didn't treat that because that was uh u.s fish and wildlife no no that's uh that's different uh the uh no i'm talking about when you and i and my boat went into the pond and um uh and were hand pulling uh areas uh uh to the east of uh the treated area the treated area was uh you know is uh very very evident what was uh treated but uh we just rounded the peninsula and um there were lots and lots of uh plants uh not not to the far south or west of it uh they have a comment uh further down um on the uh fish and wildlife area consider a quote consideration should also be given to obtaining u.s fish and wildlife uh permission to uh treat the remaining acreage which would allow for effective management of the seed bed meaning if uh if they can't treat it uh it's just going to be uh uh a reservoir for uh what's called a seed bank and uh it's never going to end just know my take away from this is that we don't really have any conclusive uh determination of that this was successful or not they didn't treat they saw areas that were not outside the area to be treated areas they couldn't treat because it was u.s fish and wildlife and it seems to me like what they did treat there were still some green plants there with with seeds so maybe the timing was off um yeah so it's terribly hard to say uh you know in short my conclusion is uh just uh two things uh just uh two things or just one thing do exactly next season what we did this season that is contract for uh uh hand pulling uh of uh the uh the majority of the pond the um open uh area and um again um you know there's some verbiage up front uh uh in here that well we don't know what it's going to be like uh where okay uh it says uh continued monitoring and management uh recommended while full treatment may not be necessary next year my opinion is full treatment will absolutely be necessary next year i have enough experience with water chestnuts so i i i simply uh think that um we have a contract for full treatment and and and also uh back to the uh acreage uh and how they perceive it uh uh there's the open water the the 61 acres and then the eight or nine acres by the way on the arithmetic uh um i think the pond is i've seen it i forget whether it's 65 or 85 acres but um uh they they when they're out there and they see a good sized patch that may not be absolutely in that area we should ask them to uh treat it anyway no uh that's that's all there is to it so i um you know uh but again uh i think we do next year just what we uh did this past season and uh one of the problems we have is that uh uh there's uh really not very much uh it's very difficult to communicate with them uh in process uh during during the summer um they're they're incommunicado and um we don't know what the we don't know um what the heck is going on or what they saw until we get some kind of report later on yeah and so i don't know if we just want to treat the same smaller area we did this year or try and treat uh tom when you say the whole area you mean that whole southern cove part yeah yeah we we have to treat we have to treat the whole thing yeah uh uh uh they may say a smaller area i don't believe it i've uh reached out to to stephanie at u.s fish in the wild to find out about our ability to access yeah yeah yeah i've heard nothing back so tom if you feel like maybe you have more of a personal uh relationship you can reach out to her but i'll try again but i don't know maybe i'll i'll try to contact her on that then with stephanie and um uh she's been back at work for what two or three weeks um who knows what they uh what life is why like oh yeah wildlife uh i i can't imagine the first with the the new administration now with uh the shutdown what a mess uh anyways uh yeah if you can reach out to her tom that would be helpful i think i cc'd you in the email i wrote to her a month or so ago i've heard nothing back but that would be good to know if we can access that part of the shore um yeah yeah because um it's uh it's simply um uh means that uh work on the pond is um going to be persistently uh ineffective the fact i'm i'm dismayed by the uh very uh high uh hand pulling count uh this year compared to uh a number of years uh besides the a couple of blow up years this uh this uh this plant is uh just uh just very difficult in herd pond you know i'm 85 years old now i'm uh i'm not tired of doing it but um uh uh my oh my um it's um i i don't see an end to it i just don't see it it's not going any easier on you as in your yeah leg up on it but no and um i i i see um if we get thirty thousand a year and uh we hand pull and then we um treat we're right around twenty thousand dollars every year we're gobbling up uh two-thirds of the budget right there and we're not even um coming up you know from the point of view of uh the selectmen uh the reason for uh our committee is um more uh to quell the noise on dudley pond and um they'll do anything uh to do that they might question why all this money goes out year after year and well i'm i'm glad to speak to to the why of that i mean it can't just be you know to keep one faction quiet i mean herd pond is a large pond uh in the community we can't just let it you know without a fight just let it go to to to waste yeah well there's no constituency for right well that's the select board or a very small constituency for mill pond for snakebook cove um there's no constituency except for carol uh well the the select board needs to be that constituency and recognize the value of herd pond so yeah for starters um so to your point about the the funding um as carol pointed out uh last month is when cpc submissions were due i didn't put one in for herd pond uh under the uh recreation clause and tom you had mentioned that you had successfully done so before i was communicating with susan weinstein about this and she explained that recreation doesn't mean for example weed management it's really more about building a boat launch for example something of that nature so i nevertheless put together a package to submit unfortunately i wasn't able to be there in person to advocate for it i was traveling and i was online but the online thing was muted you had to be in person to present your case um so cpc is not going to be a source of of funding uh for this yeah they basically said goodbye right well they were not that rude about i mean susan was playing her emails but she she's you know she had talked with her uh colleagues before i submitted because i had inquired about that and she said it was unlikely but go ahead and submit it i had all the documents so it wasn't too much effort to do so but uh it's you know it was already outside the box of this the certain parameters they look for in this so uh she confirmed that it's not going to be something that is you guys were the only ones that were actually said or maybe there was one other one that they said no to everybody else or like yeah we want to hear either you didn't finish it nor you need to bring back more information so there were like 10 items on there yeah so when i joined when i logged in i don't know if they were giving precedence to people in the room but i think it was uh gretchen schula i think she was right after when i was on i was supposed to be there on at the meeting so did they sort of get to the herd pond one they said no and they moved on to the next ones is that is that what they were doing okay so i think i came in there a few minutes late for that there's also a conservative concom meeting that night which we'll talk about in a minute so i was juggling meetings okay so they but they at that meeting carol they just said you know this is not a candidate okay so so it'll be through through our own budget process so tom i'll be advocating uh with the select board i'll see what our what we can do for next year but let's get stephanie on board find out what she if she's amenable to us going closer to shore if that might require additional permitting but i just need to hear from her and get some idea of what our next steps are besides just proposing a budget to put some more herbicide in the pond well when do you have to turn that in i mean like when do you have to turn that proposal in which proposal to do whatever you're for hand pulling whatever is going to happen on herd pond you mean that well it's simply a matter of getting the contracts my my assumption is that this uh coming year we uh we already have monies uh allocated to uh surface water quality um and um uh you know you know what is it thirty thousand dollars so i wasn't worrying about that i was worrying about the timing of it making it through the town processes because we now have two trained i forgot there's a now a certification that they have for procurement and so they're going to be a lot tougher about when things get turned in and when things get done that's why i'm asking like that we make sure that we actually leave the time we need to turn it in oh it's seeming the things have to be planned earlier than we might have planned for in previous years well i guess so you know historically i've uh uh uh asked for uh a contract in uh around february or march uh which uh i think uh and tom uh would you uh you know from a contract point of view uh uh uh you know i i i've always just written a note to uh to uh jeff castellani uh it would be a identical uh contract uh would be identical to what we had last year and uh probably uh the herbicide uh would be uh just about identical would you mind handling that i don't i don't mind handling that uh carol makes a good point about timing of all this so we're going to go we'll do a budget review um you know there's not going to be very much left on that for this year so because the other one is are they going to make you go out for a request for proposals for a bid uh that could very well be i know last season in fact to this point because we had been using solitude for years for the water chestnut for the hand harvesting and kelsey had mentioned or somebody in her office had mentioned that every it's it's fine to do that but every few years you've got to do an rfp and sort of refresh on you can't just keep going back to the same person so let me go ahead and do that tom i can take care of the rfp business because i think it's going to be salted again but let me initiate that process now so but yeah carol you're right because it's the i guess maybe it's part of this process but every so often as i understand it um even though you've been using one vendor for a certain number of years to do a certain task it has to be revisited to see if there's maybe somebody else out there who could do it for a different price so i will i'll take the lead on that let me that's a good reminder carol thank you let me go ahead and do that the rfp part or at least check with kelsey if we have to uh but tom to your point about the water the hand harvesting that's fine my concern is uh the budget for herbicide uh i don't know i don't think we have to do worry about procella core next year on dudley pond steve was sending mixed messages about that last time um nevertheless let me do the first part which is the rfp i think let me check in with kelsey because for the hand for the hand harvesting i understand the other reason for try maybe trying for it early is that if solitude knows it's on the docket maybe they'll have enough people and we won't miss any deadline you know seasonal plant
variations they'll have people to go okay yeah that's a good point good idea all right water cessna and herbicide so so tom i have i'm not concerned about the the hand pulling part it's just the it's more the the budget for the herbicide but let me take the first step which is to confirm with kelsey if we have to do an rfp process if we have to uh tom i can take the lead on that and put together a proposal that will go out there for vendors to look at so i'll take that as an action to do uh i'll look into that be certainly before christmas just to see what needs to be done because i know that i don't think it takes particularly a long time but it just builds more time into the whole process so let me take the lead on that for both the uh the water well definitely for the hand management the water the hand point yeah i i i i can uh you know ask uh jeff for a contract but it turns out you know contractors um whatever he sends back is uh uh generally just turned over to kelsey or whoever's in that uh office and right and they uh they uh they they finish it up uh and uh uh but but don't do that now because we can't do that now we have to go through the rfp process and jeff and solitude have to say yes we'll do it and nobody else will do it and then we sort of reset the clock on using them so that's okay well i have to check with kelsey first because i think that's a that's a good point that carol make as kelsey had alluded to it about a year ago so let me take the first step which is to find out if we need to do an rfp that just builds in more front end bureaucracy that we have to negotiate so i'll take that action again that's all just timing and again red tape stuff the herbicide treatment i'm just concerned about that but let me take the first step first you know if we get a because these contracts will probably need to be a deposit paid because it won't be done until next fiscal year um so just things to consider but tom let me take the first step let me do checking on the rfps and if that's not an obstacle then we can think about contracting for this stuff but again i don't know how we can find out from solitude how they're how they'll manage the contract whatever the deposit may be as you'll see from the the budget i'm going to present we're going to be close to 25 000 in uh after this new invoice and so that's basically and we still have six months in the year to go i know we don't have a lot going on during the winter but we're going to be um you know up against it and uh i wrote to kelsey i don't recall we paid invoices for the herbicide treatment i don't recall getting the big invoice for fifty five hundred dollars for the initial treatment so if that has been overlooked by solitude somehow that's going to basically uh take care of our budget for the year but we can talk about budget in a little bit but let me first tom uh find out about the rfps and if we have to factor that timing into our whole planning process for next year on herd pond okay uh okay dudley pond uh so two quick things first good news uh we did get that extension of the order of conditions uh steve has had pointed out that the current one expires march of next year so if we do have to do priscilla core that would be in the summer of next year and we wouldn't have a uh an effective order of conditions so i uh made it made linda and the team aware of that and this is carol this is these are the meetings i was juggling a few weeks ago so i finally logged into the concom meeting and they said that they said tom we took care of it for you i didn't even need to be there for that thing so i lost that on my chance to advocate for the herd pond thing at cpc and showed up at the concom meeting they didn't even need me there so but it was good to check in with those guys so we had the extension on dudley pond for five more years um covering our next priscilla core treatment so that's good news uh the next thing i wanted to do was uh address that invoice so i sent the invoice that carol mentioned earlier for the uh fall water chemistry testing on dudley pond is a thousand dollar thousand and nineteen dollars and forty cents uh i'll make a motion to approve that invoice to pace analytical for water chemistry testing on dudley pond second carol second and let's go around the virtual room for a vote tom largie i carol plum i tom clam i thank you all so that's fifth that's a thousand more dollars against our budget so that's about two thousand twenty two thousand dollars of our thirty uh i'll call that up in a minute here let me just check my the agenda oh okay so right on time so steve's not here so just those quick updates on deadly pond let me uh but by the way uh yeah um this issue of uh reports um it seems to me we never did get a report for the uh spring and i'm not certain um that's uh you know that's uh more in steve's area but my oh my uh we should um certainly uh have reports uh are you talking about the money are you talking about for the uh the aquatic restoration thing arc no no the uh testing uh oh that okay right oh for the testing yeah yeah we never see the test results oh let me circulate those and then steve yeah and then what steve and beforehand norm would do is they would put those reports together um so let me send you so i've got the data files i can i think i do anyways i'll steve send if i don't send data water chem report okay thank you uh the other report that i was mentioning from arc the aquatic plant survey that i checked in with uh ken gendron and he said that that would be sent um this week so i'll follow up on that but yes good reminder on the data for this water chemistry testing and i'll see if steve's put that report together and then yes steve uh tom to their point which was about just a report on the uh uh the weed management that um allison and tree put together just looking what i've got is the the second survey from arc came at 9 30 on september 30th that's the bill sorry yeah that's not the report yet because i did ask specifically about that in fact uh yeah we don't have an invoice for that yet but yeah that's what we i'll follow up with ken gendron on that one all right let me
share my screen so budget review hang on a second here okay i'm going to share my screen there it is
actually i do have a june 25th dudley pond water quality assessment report that's got steve garone's name on it so you're waiting for the fall one as well hit the last date on that report is august 3rd i mean data sampling is august 3rd sorry no it's may i'm wrong i'm reading the numbers wrong got it it's okay anyways yeah so that we have the spring report but this is the fall report yeah all right so here's here's what i wanted to show uh the group so i've been going through collating all the invoices and i i i don't have these in order of date of receipt but what i have here is uh what you see can you see this table by the way yeah yeah see no problem all right so uh these are the invoices we've received for uh fy26 and side note we've had some discussions you know we got 30 000 every year and our contracts our invoices paid out of the year that uh the fiscal year of the contract or when the invoices are received i've never gotten any clarity on this from the town so i'm gonna live life like i'm just pulling you know the budget's coming out of whatever fiscal year we're in so some of these invoices if they were contracted in fy25 whatever i'm invoicing them out of fy26 so these are the invoices received so far again but and what you won't see here is that big one for the herbicide the first treatment on herd pond the 5500 but that one aside and and these aren't in order i apologize for that but just going down from the top here uh let me open this the second here we go purpose so here's what we've received so that's this top one this is uh from ben weatherill uh his company is a ksac uh this was for his part of the water testing for the fall um 1100 uh so this was an invoice received in october this is one that we approved by hand i took it around to um i don't know if it was you caroline tom or steve might have been on this one but anyways so that's 1100 for the fall water chemistry testing and i'll make a note to find out about the spring testing that was hopefully out of fy25 do we have an account number in munis uh i don't get this from munis this is i'm just filling this in myself by hand so okay there probably is one uh i don't have that it's not important i just was asking so that was received uh that was from october so that's a thousand eleven hundred dollars against our budget the next two these are from arc these are for the two surveys they've done on dudley pond at 24.90 each coming in that's in the summer and end of summer so that's you know fifty what five thousand dollars yeah so those have been uh paid out to arc the next two are uh for solitude tom uh we get is it 12 days total for solitude well uh you know i uh asked for seven days and then we uh asked for two more so it's uh two plus four plus uh three is nine days twelve hundred dollars so okay that's uh ten thousand eight hundred um um 24 so i got so then this first one here is solitude two days of water chestnut harvesting 24 yeah then two rows down is four days and then three days down you'll see a few rows down that was an earlier one so that's yeah so what's not there as part of the uh was fifteen hundred dollars for the uh report report and uh so we have not received that yet okay so i think that would account for it all right because it's nine nine hundred dollars we asked for two more days that's twenty four hundred so that's three that should be twelve thousand three hundred right yeah yeah right so 24 48 is 72 and three is eight ten eight yeah the math works out love it okay yeah yeah boy that fifty five hundred i don't know where that's lurking uh but uh uh okay unless we paid it um in the uh prior uh uh fiscal period perhaps yeah but we wouldn't have though right because they didn't do it did they do it in june or was it july that first they did it in july they did so then that would be that would be this year's but i i don't recall having received it and i don't know if it went to the town i mean kelsey wouldn't have paid it out without approval so i assume that apparently she has paid out things without approval i uh i think uh there was an instance of that uh uh i seem to remember that uh i uh so okay well you might ask her about that i i did ask her about that uh but that was that would be odd because she sends me now everything and asks you to approve it i am surprised that she would take a big the biggest one and then just approve that pay that one out without approving it uh but anyways i followed up with her on that one okay so getting back to this here so there's another uh so between the two and four days of hand harvesting there's the permitting for the herbicide that's three hundred dollars on here uh and then you see the for pace analytical that we just approved the ten uh one thousand nineteen dollars for the fall testing uh and then let's see the very last one is the second clear cast treatment on herd pond 3500 so i don't think i've missed anything other than the 5500 and if that has been overlooked we're still going to be within budget for the year but again as we think about planning for next year any deposits that may need to be paid on these contracts um we're not going to have a whole lot of room to uh to work with here so we'll need to manage that uh and i don't recall actually that we paid any deposits so maybe that's not gonna be a problem at all but so we should be able to sneak in under budget for for the year based on this information anything that jumps out to either view that i might have missed i'm trying to you know the main thing is the fifteen hundred dollars for the uh testing on the herd pond and i i see no other expenditures of this uh fiscal year so the fifth if the 5500 hasn't been paid and the 1500 that's 7 000 more so we'll still be under our 30 um which is yeah yeah right right next i have to finesse the money for change carol is there anything that you can think of that i might have missed i don't think so we have so few relatively few large no no so i think we're in good shape for the year it's just uh gonna be planning for the next and hopefully we don't need priscilla core but again i i was on the impression no steve seemed to allude that based on anecdotal conversations between arc and uh allison leclerc that there was a possibility so i'll follow up with him later on that and see if that's going to be an issue for us but i guess the good news is well it was good news you know we do have there is money in the deadly pond gift fund that we can tap into if we needed to it wouldn't be sixty thousand dollars worth but let me not open that can of worms now let's see if we even need to do priscilla core next year and then we'll we'll manage it from that point okay uh that was it for the budget any questions about this but thank you for doing that no i appreciate it carol this is good because i i'm pretty you know carefree about it invoices come in i get them paid out i've not been tracking stuff and i really i need to do that so this is a good exercise for me so carol i appreciate the uh the request to do a budget review every so often all right i'm going to stop sharing my screen here and i think oh uh topics not so uh tom largie did you have you heard from larry kiernan so yeah i talked to him you you sent me uh and he said um i i i suggest you know he's already on the planning board um and uh i uh i told him uh he should uh uh you know submit a letter to the selectman and um and uh uh so i i haven't talked to him since then but um okay i will i'll follow up with him so carol this is larry kiernan who was gonna okay yeah so but we've we've uh we've the window of publicly posting the vacancy uh has closed and now we can and no one there weren't people jumping out the opportunity so larry's got the opportunity if he wants to to join the committee so we seem to get that fifth seat filled on here i didn't know there was a window but okay that's news to me yeah because you have to post it has to be posted for two weeks so if somebody comes out of the woodwork and they want to be on the committee uh you know you just have to give the community the chance to weigh in it shouldn't be us just picking whoever's yeah so yes there is a window all right um the only thing left to do is to uh pick a date for our next meeting i'm going to propose since the winter months i know there are some actions for me to follow up on but why don't we target rather than the early part of january somewhere in the middle of january uh are tuesdays still good for folks no you know for being retired and we're not going to florida or anything like that um i'd like to avoid tuesdays and mondays are no good for you right carol you know what at this point um it depends on whether the paper is going out that week so i can tell you that let me see we move the calendar up from december to january so like we're going out on the 9th which means that six would be bad it depends just what days do we get well so well how let's start with the 13th and the 20th of january those are tuesdays hang on let me close that thing up here the 13th or the 20th i'd still rather not do it on a tuesday if we don't have to can you do a 12th or the 19th those are mondays 19th is martin luther king day not that it matters to me um the 12th we can try the 12. uh well uh i let's do the steve's not here uh do you want to do the 14th or the 20th how about the 14th that's a wednesday um sure okay the 14th is uh fine with me by the way uh carol i uh i very much appreciate that paper i noticed you've had a couple of um columns or articles and uh so i peruse um everything there it's uh what's been badly needed in wayland for the next several last several years i hope we can keep it going by yeah yeah we're hanging in there so that's good we have enough money we'll just see yeah well i say that we just we got a grant which also are we up to grant speaking about grants no keep going uh grants as relating to this committee if you want money we're gonna have i don't even know where to look for things or if that money is available but the one thing i've figured out in looking at the stuff while we've been looking for grants for the post is that if you're willing to send stuff in there's money you just have to find the right ones
so the ones you the grants you're getting are specific for journalism but you're suggesting look for grants for environmentally related okay i'm trying to think what was because there's things like i was wondering if the town actually has something like there's a bunch of different services you can sign up for um to do that i i just think we need it would helpful to get better at that because if you may have noticed at the cpc that's all the people who couldn't they're all small dollar items compared to most of the stuff that ends up in the budget so everybody's desperately looking for money so it's just a thought maybe we don't do grants but it's something worth thinking about no it isn't about 10 years ago i i got a uh fifty thousand dollar grant uh having to do with uh nyanza you know i probably frittered it away on just on pulling water trust that's a third pond and not building the town for it for about three or four years um uh but uh it's uh immensely difficult uh grants and it's um uh you know personally i'm totally uninterested in putting forth that kind of uh effort again i did it once and that was enough somebody else would have to do it yeah that's fine that can be me i mean i have no idea what's involved i mean if but let's not close it out let's not yes nobody nobody said you had to do it i'm just saying that it's something we need that i mean i can look into later but not this year next year yeah i i can look into that as well too let me find some opportunities and tom maybe it's yeah can you ask kelsey if the town has an account that they where they actually there's like services that tell you all the grants that are coming up and some are through state stuff and some are like national and summer um also just like general philanthropic tropic things and if we already have that to the town or she'll let us use it because otherwise you have to pay to get into the service just to figure out where stuff is but like i said we've been doing really well with the whale and post getting stuff i don't know if we're just lucky because it's a hot topic or what but okay that's a good good suggestion i will ask kelsey about that and i'll do some looking on my own too but that's you know we shouldn't close the door on a potential opportunity especially with money being tight it can't hurt and uh well carol if you've gotten some big grants i've got a uh a modest uh monthly amount i send to the whale and post maybe i'll stop that uh but when i said a big grant it wasn't a big grant we got 15 000 to do a whole study through the river stewardship council okay for that but now we have to go do all the write-ups and it's it's extra work on top of the paper but at least it'll get us more exposure and everything else so no we're not coming in with we're not like weston we didn't get someone drop a hundred thousand dollars on us we're still in the uh we're lucky okay like i got you i got you i got you keep the gravy train moving tom don't stop yeah really please all right uh so and that that concludes our agenda with our uh decision on our decision on the date for next year uh what's everyone a happy holidays merry christmas uh okay so it's january 15th uh january 14th 14th wednesday wednesday is the 13th okay wednesday the 14th wednesday january 14th yeah okay january 14th okay i got it all righty uh well so let's so let's uh i'd make a i'll make a motion to adjourn at 8 17 p.m is there a second second okay carol carol's in under the wire i'll get on to carol uh let's go around the room and do a virtual uh vote tom largie hi carol flamm i tom flamm i all right everybody have a great night have a great holiday season i'll talk to you in the new year