November 24, 2025 – Route 20 South Landfill Visioning Committee – Video & Transcript
November 24, 2025 - Route 20 South Landfill Visioning Committee
Why don't we call this meeting to order up at 8.14 of the 220 South Landville Visioning Committee.
This morning, we have all by Zoom, Cliff Lewis, Mike Spelman, Mark Norton, Seema, Jeremy, and myself, Tom Fay, all can join us.
We appreciate his presence as Tom Boulder, as well as Tom Gilly from U.D.
So, today's meeting is by Zoom.
People may watch the meeting on Zoom, and we watch it on the later date on Wacom, as it is being recorded. We invite people to give public comment, and if they so desire. The agenda will include public comment, discussion, and potential vote of October 10th, 2025 minutes, and then discussion of best uses of the South Landville, focusing on the 17th proposed uses outlined at our meeting on June 5th, 2023.
Once that's done, we'll adjourn. But at this point, I invite anybody online who has any public comment, feel free to indicate so by raising your hand. I see Asa Foster here. I'd ask anyone to give a simple meeting to give public comment. Asa, you won't. Morning, Asa.
Did you not hear you? Asa, are you there? You hear me now? Yeah, good. I'll say it. Good morning. Okay, great. Asa Foster, 20th Oak, Connecticut PATH, Chairman of the Recreation Commission. I am an advocate for this field at the former Southfield land site. I think it's currently located at Route 20. It has easy access for the public, adequate parking for participants and spectators. It does not require extensive site work as would be needed at other landfills, other landfills, other locations such as the Holiday Road property, which if we were to try to put a field there, I think it would cause, it's not really good access as far as the public is concerned. But it also would create a situation in which about 2,000 trees would have to be cut down, which would be a real problem for the community. If the turf moratorium was lifted, it would be an ideal spot for a turf field, which would not only increase field inventory, but as a turf field would greatly enhance the usage because of no limits on playing time. It would also be a great spot for a combination of an athletic field and a dog park, which we have, the dog park folks came and spoke to us at a Recreation Commission meeting, and I think it would be a great spot for them there.
Thank you very much for the comment, Asa. My pleasure. I see no one else present online, but I have public comment, and therefore we'll move on to item 3 of the agenda, and that is consideration of approval of our minutes. I'm on public attendance for better than 25, and I'm on the chain of motion for approval. I'll move to the person. Thank you, Mark. Any play or second? I'll second it. Thanks for that. Any discussion or none of the minutes? Hearing none, I'll do it in favor of approving the minutes on October 10th, November 25th.
I think you're muted, Cliff. There we go. Tom, do we need four to approve these minutes? We need five, right? We need five to approve the minutes? And that's all we have? Yeah. All right. I'll vote in favor. Mike? Michael? Yes. Mark? Yes. Timo? Yes. Tom, yes. Five to revoke. Be sure of that. Let's move on to item 4. So we've met several times with the community over the last few years, and we've had delays and meetings in part due to the thorough work of the vendors that were hired by the town, Tom, all of the guidance, to look at this property. Let's decide to learn what can be built there. What uses can occur. And that really is environmental engineering exploration, and that engineers involved, presented at our last meeting. So it seems prudent for us to explore the 17 uses that we discussed back in 2003, and maybe come to some consensus as to what we want to recommend to the select board to those uses. My thinking is, and I'd like feedback, my thinking is, once this exercise is done today, we have a public forum to discuss what we're recommending, so we get feedback from residents, and then soon after that, a finalized report to go on it for submissions from the director and then some of those go on. So with that in mind, Tom Holger, can you just update us on what's occurred, if anything, maybe since our last meeting relative to us? Yeah, we had learned from the master EP that to do a full assessment, which is really what is required, that we needed some additional borings and additional test pits. So last week, we did perform three borings throughout the property, east to west. And really, the purpose of doing that was to get a better understanding of the depth of waste that we have across the two parcels. So that was performed. And although Western and Sampson is still evaluating the data, it will provide a full report for us. What Lee Cosco was able to speak to was that going from east to west, the depth of the waste was 12 feet, 18 feet, 29 feet. So in essence, it's as we expected. You know, the eastern portion of the property has a little bit less waste. You know, the deepest layer is the westerly portion of the parcel. So that kind of affirms what we thought would likely, you know, be, you know, a subsurface condition. We do have a couple of test pits planned that will delineate really the footprint better of the actual waste. You know, how far, how close to Route 20 does it actually get? How far down into the eastern property does it get? So those are to be scheduled. And then once those are done, you know, we'll be able to get a full report from Western and Sampson and obviously pass it along to this membership. When we met last time, I think our plan was to meet at some point after those tests are done to kind of separate these properties into housing and non-housing uses. And so we take meetings focused on non-housing uses.
What I'd like to do now is bring up on the screen the portion of the packet relative to our 2023 meeting.
These are from packets that were placed online for today's meeting. I'm usually used to be able to assess back in 2023. Tom Holder, of these 17 uses, what I'd like to do is maybe try to reduce this list somewhat based on what we've learned since 2022. So let's go to the wastewater leaching field, Tom Holder. What's your sense of the likelihood of this space being, this land area being used for wastewater?
Yeah, I guess, you know, so my position would be that, as people have said, you can do anything as long as you throw enough money at it. But I think, you know, rather than a leaching field, a wastewater leaching field, we have the benefit of having public sewer right in Route 20 as it runs past these parcels. You know, so I think it would probably be more practical to investigate actually, you know, making a connection. There's a lot of activity relative to the town center wastewater treatment plant. We've got a handful of developments that are actively looking to get capacity there. I think it's understood that there'll be a need to increase the design flow capabilities of that treatment plant. But I think we're all receptive to doing that. So I think that that, rather than having the leaching field, I think it would probably be better to investigate connecting to the public sewer. So, well, what about the idea of, I think, from an engineering perspective, it sounds like it's an awful lot, but that's going to impose the roof on this. The idea of using that land for a leach field, much like a leach field located at, what I'm getting at here, is placement of a leach field, possibly utilize the connection with the wastewater plant and town center, so everyone can leave the place. Do you agree that based on the engineering report, that's not something the DEP would have to fail? Yeah, I would agree to that. I think it's not the most practical way to deal with wastewater treatment and would be unlikely a viable option for us.
But then on to the top of the commercial, I think that was brainstorming, again, putting some leach field and other leach field there. Some hold it based on the DEP's statements to you and from the senators who've retired. Structures at this site are not practical, perhaps, and moving a lot of traffic. Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's what we've learned over the last several months, that DEP has stated that building structures, whether they be residential or commercial, would require a fair amount of permitting may not even be, you know, to use their words, it would be a stretch to do that. So I would not be focusing on that as a viable option.
Go to the top of the base for rail trail. I have reached out to ECR and see if there was any money for them to, it wouldn't be expensive, connect with a fair amount of landfills.
We would be able to come over to the DEP, do the expense to connect to, you know, if there were conservation issues for us, but property permitting if needed, that connection would not be a significant project. Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, in making this property usable for passive recreation, you've got this gorgeous, you know, wildlife reserve right next to which you've got a rail trail that's progressing nicely relative to, you know, constructing and making it usable for walkers and those types of uses. So I think it would be very, you know, beneficial to connect this property to the rail trail. You talk about the idea of bringing restrooms back to this property. For example, if the, if this can be recommended, for example, field and let's say town voted to place a field there, is it possible to build labs from a way to put in restrooms at this site? So in my experience, restrooms can be built in three different ways. The most, you know, impactful to a property is to do, you know, a full-blown, you know, bathroom facilities with a septic system and all of that. The middle road would be to, you can actually have modular units built offsite that are then lowered onto a pad. There's a lot of waterless technologies that are available today relative to wastewater discharge. And then the third option, which is the least impactful, is to construct facilities in association with the recreation field or even for just, you know, users of the passive recreation, whereby you can design a nice-looking area that accommodates, you know, porta-potties, handy houses. You can make them look nice. You can screen them with fencing and vegetation screening. So that would be the least impactful. Those are the, really the three options that we would have to us.
One item on the list, some of the receipts here, we've got a public comment, we've got a lot from me, Tom Sciacca, a way of a resident, a member of the Energy Committee, not only putting buses here, but also putting hookups, hookups to the buses. So a question for you, Tom is, you see a practical use of property when you're at the point, with or without the electrical hookup, how, how, how, how would you see these days, electric buses in the rainbow, where they've got them? So for whatever reason, I'm having a hard time hearing your audio, Tom, I'm getting most of it. It was the last part, which I think was asking my thoughts on having electrical, you know, accommodations at the property. Is that what you said? Yes. And also, how prevalent do you see electric buses in New England these days, given our coal chemical system? I mean, I guess what I understand that, you know, some very progressive communities, such as Cambridge, those types of folks, those types of places are making use of electric buses. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't call it prevalent, you know, so I think that, I know that there's a lot of attention given in Wayland to its climate control plan, purchasing electric vehicles amongst its town pool of cars, those types of things. I'm not sure if we're at a point now where we would be accommodating, pardon me, accommodating electric buses, but I can't speak to the bus parking. It's my observation that, you know, having proper space for buses to park remains a challenge for the town. And, you know, this, this location, we would have the real estate to do that, whether or not, you know, this committee feels that's the best use of the property, but you could certainly accommodate the 21 buses that are currently parked at town, at town building. And, you know, the, the office space that's necessary and the, the employee parking that could be accommodated in addition to the recreational field. Well, I think now, go through these items and get a sense from a committee, whether they favor placing them on a list of recommendations, like, or, or not. We can do this a number of ways, but let's see whether we can just have some conversation about these ideas. We can take a vote on each of them. We can't. So let me open it up and ask this question. Are there any, many of the items that we made, pretty much everything except commercial and wastewater beach and fuel on this list that people have objection to and be uncomfortable recommending that use the site to the site? In our work, were we able to find enough space for a hundred cars or was that somewhat less than that? The shared parking? Um, you recall how many states. To be honest, I, I, I don't recollect spending a lot of time evaluating the, uh, the hundred cars. Was that, was that, uh, would that be in coordination with a local dealership? Is that what that one was from? No, it was basically, check me if I'm wrong, but basically cars, the people of the park used the, used the acreage. Yeah. Yeah. Attend a game, uh, maybe bike trail, maybe, I don't know, I'm not sure we want to use some space for that, due to the space reason, um, but we're just, you know, How many, how many parking places are there at the local field? Yeah, that's what I was thinking about, a, a very similarly sized complex that, that would fit in here. And I, and I do not know the answer to that. But, you know, Mark, how many were over there? I, I don't. Paul, do you know?
I don't have that number. I might be able to find out from Joe Doucette. Give me a minute. I'll see if I can find out. Okay, I'll just type in if you learn that. Um, other thoughts or questions? Well, this convert into town gateway, that's sort of nebulous, isn't it? Yeah, it is nebulous. Um, I think the vision was that when people travel east from Sudbury, that they move their town line and they see this, um, this area. Yeah, but I, I've been having trouble conceptualizing that, but Tom Holder, have you given us some thoughts about how this space could be a gateway? I don't envision a huge, you know, arc around the whole of the 20. Big sign over Route 20 that says, welcome to Wayland. Right. Any thoughts, Tom? Yeah, I, I mean, I, I guess my thoughts are, you know, split into, into two real, you know, positions. The first off was that we've always, you know, thought of providing extensive screening between Route 20 and that property. Um, and that's because right now it, it doesn't really look all that nice. It looks a lot better now than it did when it was just, uh, you know, uh, just, you know, overgrowth and all of that. But, uh, you know, still we're working hard to, to maintain that screening. But then, you know, once a field is designed and installed, you've got parking area and you've got passive recreation, you've got, you know, trails, perhaps. I know there's talk about, you know, some connectivity between Alta Oxbow across the street. It's probably something that, uh, we would want to show off and that there are some, uh, things that I would imagine we could do on that side of the roadway as you're coming from Sudbury into Wayland that would identify what that is. And, uh, uh, uh, you know, some, some real nice, you know, landscape architecture with some, you know, stone structuring, some signage. So, uh, I would imagine it would be something we would want to show off. And then also, you know, for, for visiting teams or whatever, make it so that you can find it nicely and, uh, and really show it off. So, uh, are there, um, are there, um, are the remaining items on this list down there are topics that you feel particularly passionate about or strongly, strongly think? Um, I, I think most of the, like, the conservation birding, the real trend, those are pretty much fairly non-invasive ways for us to go for the use of the property. Um, I'm curious about the solar generation. I'm not sure, uh, where they, where that came up from, uh, or who proposed it. I, is that still on the docket or? No, it's good, good, good point, Tima. Um, so by way of background, the Energy Committee has looked at solar panel placement. Um, it's a challenge, uh, by solar panel, uh, by solar. Yes, we, we, we had the, um, the property of the transfer station recently evaluated recently, meaning within the last 18 months. And it was determined that aside from a small portion of that landfill, uh, it really would not be, uh, viable for, uh, groundwater. Uh, ground-mounted, um, solar arrays. So in hearing that from that evaluation, I think the portion of the property that would be available for solar, uh, is more the westerly portion, which is the most steep, uh, heavily sloped, uh, portion. So I would, I would think that, uh, that that would prohibit, you know, the installation of ground-mounted, uh, photovoltaic, uh, panels. Yes. It's so clear. Your last comment referred to the south landfill. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It was that western part of the south, uh, landfill. Yes. Uh, just, just quickly, we've, we figured out there are 60 parking spaces utilizing five of them as handicapped, and that is roughly on one half of an acre of, uh, space being used. So, let's, let's come back to that in a second. Thank you, Paul. Uh, thinking on the solar generation, um, if, hypothetically, the committee recommended field this site, Tom Holden, you're basically saying that if you put a field in, it would really not commit solar generation if it was stopping. Yeah, I, I think that the field, the parking, the amenities, uh, whether, whatever type of bathrooms that we, uh, decide would probably utilize much of the real estate, uh, um, in that, that western portion of the, the property. Okay. Any reason you couldn't put the solar over the parking area or over the bus parking area? So, I would imagine, Cliff, you probably could, because much of our solar in town is like that, the town building, the high school. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think we should include it. We don't know how much or exactly where, but, I mean, we, we sure ought to be able to get something out of it. Mm-hmm. Anything else, Sima? Um, I think the other questions I had was, do we have a sense of how, like, how we done kind of a town meeting to get an idea of what the community wants? Because I know there was some talk about an RFI or trying to figure out, we're trying to narrow this down, but, and we can eliminate, I guess, wastewater and, uh, do the commercial stuff for now. And if the solar generation seems contingent on having, or seems more viable if you have the parking spots. So, I think there's some linkage between the usages there, which is nice to have. Uh, but do we have an idea, excuse me, of, for example, for field usage, what is the usage of locker? And if, what kind of, are we trying to use for multi-athletic field type, um, usage? And then a separate point, or maybe related, is if we are doing that, then do we have an idea about what, uh, we'll do for congestion for Route 20, access to the field? And are we thinking about, are we even thinking about those lines for now, is my question. Okay. So, before you join the meeting, I did make a comment that helped us, trying to get to a point where we can develop some sensor science issues. Then, we then have a public forum in our next meeting where people can comment and think and get feedback. So, regarding the usage, um, you're asking about the needs. Mark, do you have thoughts on the needs of, uh, additional fields and towns? Yeah, I, I mean, without question, we are, um, in town gold, you probably would, would agree with this, but, um, our fields are stressed. Um, there is not enough capacity to support all the requests for demands from a field perspective. Um, I know there's some fields that are requiring improvement. Um, that's probably overdue at this point and is really difficult to, um, you know, for the town to perform just based on, you know, if you take a field offline, what that's going to do to the community and their ability to, uh, to get out on them. So, um, I'd say without question, uh, we could, we could use some more, uh, some more space. For what it's worth, Mark, we heard that exact same comment regarding Loker. And the next comment was, as soon as we get Loker, we'll be able to take some of the fields offline because we'll have enough space. Uh, I'm going to just be directly. I didn't say that. You didn't say that. No, the rec commission said that. Uh, the, um, the consensus, uh, town of white is that here feels, uh, welcome. So this would be a, we can be a grass field, grass fields take time to, uh, keep, you know, get few hours. Uh, but, um, anything further, Seema? Nope. I think that was it. And just considering if you're doing fields there, um, how much thought do we need to put into, uh, making access easier? Or what, if you're putting buses even there, if that's going to add or detract from the congestion on Route 20, especially in that time period when buses need to get in and out. So the bus, the bus, uh, use, technically from Route Town Hall is approximately 6.30 a.m. to 9.30 a.m.? Yeah, it's, uh, you know, it's at both ends of the day, you know, in the morning and then, uh, similarly, uh, mid-afternoon. And, you know, for the bus parking and the athletic field, we would likely be performing a traffic study. So we would have, uh, a sense of what the impact would be to have, uh, those 21 buses coming on and off the property as well as those employees. That would all be handled within, within a traffic study. Would, uh, to, uh, to a seamless point that, uh, would need to be done so we'd have a better sense of, of that impact. If I could just come back to Cliff's point, because I, I think it's important to, to make sure that we are being kind of, um, direct with our messaging and, and candid. Um, and so I appreciate it. I think what we've seen with Loker, and this is just, you know, I wasn't there for the, you know, building of the field. And, and that was, I know you were, I know you were. Um, and I think what you've seen from the community is for the capacity that was required at the time, I've noticed in, you know, over the past couple of years here, we've seen demand from the community with more sports and more activities. So you're seeing lacrosse growing here, you're seeing field hockey programs flourishing, um, and those programs just weren't available. Um, you know, during that period and probably not contemplated, um, you know, that you'd be having a field hockey program growing like it has been in lacrosse as well. Uh, I know when, when Loker was built, everybody was all concerned about traffic. Has that been a real problem there at all? I don't think so. I haven't heard of anything about it from the local field. Not to my knowledge. No. I haven't heard of anything. You, you, you've, I mean, you must go there. Is traffic an issue at all there? I haven't experienced it. Oh, okay. I didn't think so. Just. Have you heard any problems? No, it, uh, I, I remember it being a concern, but I don't think it, uh, actually, uh, um, became one. Yeah. All right. Uh. Excuse me, everyone. I have to dip out for about 15 minutes, work with this crane. Um, I'll be listening, but I probably won't be able to participate. I'll be back as soon as I can. I'm going to stop you there, Mike. I think given your absence, I think we're going to have to end the meeting because we don't have a forum. Um, so, um, so what I'm going to do is I'll, I'll cut the meeting short at this point and obtain a motion to adjourn. Let's, I'll be in touch with the next meeting. We'll continue our discussion. Okay. Uh, so it's, uh, 846. Um, I want to take a motion to adjourn. All right. Sorry, everybody. That's all right. I'm sorry. It's fine. The total move. Thank you. Cliff, I'd wait a second. What's that? All right. Mark, thank you for the second. All right. Those in favor of the motion. Cliff. Oh, yes. Mark. Yes. Dima. Yes. Mike. Yes. Mike. Thanks everybody for your time this morning. And we'll, uh, I'll be in touch. We'll continue. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Bye.
People may watch the meeting on Zoom, and we watch it on the later date on Wacom, as it is being recorded. We invite people to give public comment, and if they so desire. The agenda will include public comment, discussion, and potential vote of October 10th, 2025 minutes, and then discussion of best uses of the South Landville, focusing on the 17th proposed uses outlined at our meeting on June 5th, 2023.
Once that's done, we'll adjourn. But at this point, I invite anybody online who has any public comment, feel free to indicate so by raising your hand. I see Asa Foster here. I'd ask anyone to give a simple meeting to give public comment. Asa, you won't. Morning, Asa.
Did you not hear you? Asa, are you there? You hear me now? Yeah, good. I'll say it. Good morning. Okay, great. Asa Foster, 20th Oak, Connecticut PATH, Chairman of the Recreation Commission. I am an advocate for this field at the former Southfield land site. I think it's currently located at Route 20. It has easy access for the public, adequate parking for participants and spectators. It does not require extensive site work as would be needed at other landfills, other landfills, other locations such as the Holiday Road property, which if we were to try to put a field there, I think it would cause, it's not really good access as far as the public is concerned. But it also would create a situation in which about 2,000 trees would have to be cut down, which would be a real problem for the community. If the turf moratorium was lifted, it would be an ideal spot for a turf field, which would not only increase field inventory, but as a turf field would greatly enhance the usage because of no limits on playing time. It would also be a great spot for a combination of an athletic field and a dog park, which we have, the dog park folks came and spoke to us at a Recreation Commission meeting, and I think it would be a great spot for them there.
Thank you very much for the comment, Asa. My pleasure. I see no one else present online, but I have public comment, and therefore we'll move on to item 3 of the agenda, and that is consideration of approval of our minutes. I'm on public attendance for better than 25, and I'm on the chain of motion for approval. I'll move to the person. Thank you, Mark. Any play or second? I'll second it. Thanks for that. Any discussion or none of the minutes? Hearing none, I'll do it in favor of approving the minutes on October 10th, November 25th.
I think you're muted, Cliff. There we go. Tom, do we need four to approve these minutes? We need five, right? We need five to approve the minutes? And that's all we have? Yeah. All right. I'll vote in favor. Mike? Michael? Yes. Mark? Yes. Timo? Yes. Tom, yes. Five to revoke. Be sure of that. Let's move on to item 4. So we've met several times with the community over the last few years, and we've had delays and meetings in part due to the thorough work of the vendors that were hired by the town, Tom, all of the guidance, to look at this property. Let's decide to learn what can be built there. What uses can occur. And that really is environmental engineering exploration, and that engineers involved, presented at our last meeting. So it seems prudent for us to explore the 17 uses that we discussed back in 2003, and maybe come to some consensus as to what we want to recommend to the select board to those uses. My thinking is, and I'd like feedback, my thinking is, once this exercise is done today, we have a public forum to discuss what we're recommending, so we get feedback from residents, and then soon after that, a finalized report to go on it for submissions from the director and then some of those go on. So with that in mind, Tom Holger, can you just update us on what's occurred, if anything, maybe since our last meeting relative to us? Yeah, we had learned from the master EP that to do a full assessment, which is really what is required, that we needed some additional borings and additional test pits. So last week, we did perform three borings throughout the property, east to west. And really, the purpose of doing that was to get a better understanding of the depth of waste that we have across the two parcels. So that was performed. And although Western and Sampson is still evaluating the data, it will provide a full report for us. What Lee Cosco was able to speak to was that going from east to west, the depth of the waste was 12 feet, 18 feet, 29 feet. So in essence, it's as we expected. You know, the eastern portion of the property has a little bit less waste. You know, the deepest layer is the westerly portion of the parcel. So that kind of affirms what we thought would likely, you know, be, you know, a subsurface condition. We do have a couple of test pits planned that will delineate really the footprint better of the actual waste. You know, how far, how close to Route 20 does it actually get? How far down into the eastern property does it get? So those are to be scheduled. And then once those are done, you know, we'll be able to get a full report from Western and Sampson and obviously pass it along to this membership. When we met last time, I think our plan was to meet at some point after those tests are done to kind of separate these properties into housing and non-housing uses. And so we take meetings focused on non-housing uses.
What I'd like to do now is bring up on the screen the portion of the packet relative to our 2023 meeting.
These are from packets that were placed online for today's meeting. I'm usually used to be able to assess back in 2023. Tom Holder, of these 17 uses, what I'd like to do is maybe try to reduce this list somewhat based on what we've learned since 2022. So let's go to the wastewater leaching field, Tom Holder. What's your sense of the likelihood of this space being, this land area being used for wastewater?
Yeah, I guess, you know, so my position would be that, as people have said, you can do anything as long as you throw enough money at it. But I think, you know, rather than a leaching field, a wastewater leaching field, we have the benefit of having public sewer right in Route 20 as it runs past these parcels. You know, so I think it would probably be more practical to investigate actually, you know, making a connection. There's a lot of activity relative to the town center wastewater treatment plant. We've got a handful of developments that are actively looking to get capacity there. I think it's understood that there'll be a need to increase the design flow capabilities of that treatment plant. But I think we're all receptive to doing that. So I think that that, rather than having the leaching field, I think it would probably be better to investigate connecting to the public sewer. So, well, what about the idea of, I think, from an engineering perspective, it sounds like it's an awful lot, but that's going to impose the roof on this. The idea of using that land for a leach field, much like a leach field located at, what I'm getting at here, is placement of a leach field, possibly utilize the connection with the wastewater plant and town center, so everyone can leave the place. Do you agree that based on the engineering report, that's not something the DEP would have to fail? Yeah, I would agree to that. I think it's not the most practical way to deal with wastewater treatment and would be unlikely a viable option for us.
But then on to the top of the commercial, I think that was brainstorming, again, putting some leach field and other leach field there. Some hold it based on the DEP's statements to you and from the senators who've retired. Structures at this site are not practical, perhaps, and moving a lot of traffic. Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's what we've learned over the last several months, that DEP has stated that building structures, whether they be residential or commercial, would require a fair amount of permitting may not even be, you know, to use their words, it would be a stretch to do that. So I would not be focusing on that as a viable option.
Go to the top of the base for rail trail. I have reached out to ECR and see if there was any money for them to, it wouldn't be expensive, connect with a fair amount of landfills.
We would be able to come over to the DEP, do the expense to connect to, you know, if there were conservation issues for us, but property permitting if needed, that connection would not be a significant project. Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, in making this property usable for passive recreation, you've got this gorgeous, you know, wildlife reserve right next to which you've got a rail trail that's progressing nicely relative to, you know, constructing and making it usable for walkers and those types of uses. So I think it would be very, you know, beneficial to connect this property to the rail trail. You talk about the idea of bringing restrooms back to this property. For example, if the, if this can be recommended, for example, field and let's say town voted to place a field there, is it possible to build labs from a way to put in restrooms at this site? So in my experience, restrooms can be built in three different ways. The most, you know, impactful to a property is to do, you know, a full-blown, you know, bathroom facilities with a septic system and all of that. The middle road would be to, you can actually have modular units built offsite that are then lowered onto a pad. There's a lot of waterless technologies that are available today relative to wastewater discharge. And then the third option, which is the least impactful, is to construct facilities in association with the recreation field or even for just, you know, users of the passive recreation, whereby you can design a nice-looking area that accommodates, you know, porta-potties, handy houses. You can make them look nice. You can screen them with fencing and vegetation screening. So that would be the least impactful. Those are the, really the three options that we would have to us.
One item on the list, some of the receipts here, we've got a public comment, we've got a lot from me, Tom Sciacca, a way of a resident, a member of the Energy Committee, not only putting buses here, but also putting hookups, hookups to the buses. So a question for you, Tom is, you see a practical use of property when you're at the point, with or without the electrical hookup, how, how, how, how would you see these days, electric buses in the rainbow, where they've got them? So for whatever reason, I'm having a hard time hearing your audio, Tom, I'm getting most of it. It was the last part, which I think was asking my thoughts on having electrical, you know, accommodations at the property. Is that what you said? Yes. And also, how prevalent do you see electric buses in New England these days, given our coal chemical system? I mean, I guess what I understand that, you know, some very progressive communities, such as Cambridge, those types of folks, those types of places are making use of electric buses. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't call it prevalent, you know, so I think that, I know that there's a lot of attention given in Wayland to its climate control plan, purchasing electric vehicles amongst its town pool of cars, those types of things. I'm not sure if we're at a point now where we would be accommodating, pardon me, accommodating electric buses, but I can't speak to the bus parking. It's my observation that, you know, having proper space for buses to park remains a challenge for the town. And, you know, this, this location, we would have the real estate to do that, whether or not, you know, this committee feels that's the best use of the property, but you could certainly accommodate the 21 buses that are currently parked at town, at town building. And, you know, the, the office space that's necessary and the, the employee parking that could be accommodated in addition to the recreational field. Well, I think now, go through these items and get a sense from a committee, whether they favor placing them on a list of recommendations, like, or, or not. We can do this a number of ways, but let's see whether we can just have some conversation about these ideas. We can take a vote on each of them. We can't. So let me open it up and ask this question. Are there any, many of the items that we made, pretty much everything except commercial and wastewater beach and fuel on this list that people have objection to and be uncomfortable recommending that use the site to the site? In our work, were we able to find enough space for a hundred cars or was that somewhat less than that? The shared parking? Um, you recall how many states. To be honest, I, I, I don't recollect spending a lot of time evaluating the, uh, the hundred cars. Was that, was that, uh, would that be in coordination with a local dealership? Is that what that one was from? No, it was basically, check me if I'm wrong, but basically cars, the people of the park used the, used the acreage. Yeah. Yeah. Attend a game, uh, maybe bike trail, maybe, I don't know, I'm not sure we want to use some space for that, due to the space reason, um, but we're just, you know, How many, how many parking places are there at the local field? Yeah, that's what I was thinking about, a, a very similarly sized complex that, that would fit in here. And I, and I do not know the answer to that. But, you know, Mark, how many were over there? I, I don't. Paul, do you know?
I don't have that number. I might be able to find out from Joe Doucette. Give me a minute. I'll see if I can find out. Okay, I'll just type in if you learn that. Um, other thoughts or questions? Well, this convert into town gateway, that's sort of nebulous, isn't it? Yeah, it is nebulous. Um, I think the vision was that when people travel east from Sudbury, that they move their town line and they see this, um, this area. Yeah, but I, I've been having trouble conceptualizing that, but Tom Holder, have you given us some thoughts about how this space could be a gateway? I don't envision a huge, you know, arc around the whole of the 20. Big sign over Route 20 that says, welcome to Wayland. Right. Any thoughts, Tom? Yeah, I, I mean, I, I guess my thoughts are, you know, split into, into two real, you know, positions. The first off was that we've always, you know, thought of providing extensive screening between Route 20 and that property. Um, and that's because right now it, it doesn't really look all that nice. It looks a lot better now than it did when it was just, uh, you know, uh, just, you know, overgrowth and all of that. But, uh, you know, still we're working hard to, to maintain that screening. But then, you know, once a field is designed and installed, you've got parking area and you've got passive recreation, you've got, you know, trails, perhaps. I know there's talk about, you know, some connectivity between Alta Oxbow across the street. It's probably something that, uh, we would want to show off and that there are some, uh, things that I would imagine we could do on that side of the roadway as you're coming from Sudbury into Wayland that would identify what that is. And, uh, uh, uh, you know, some, some real nice, you know, landscape architecture with some, you know, stone structuring, some signage. So, uh, I would imagine it would be something we would want to show off. And then also, you know, for, for visiting teams or whatever, make it so that you can find it nicely and, uh, and really show it off. So, uh, are there, um, are there, um, are the remaining items on this list down there are topics that you feel particularly passionate about or strongly, strongly think? Um, I, I think most of the, like, the conservation birding, the real trend, those are pretty much fairly non-invasive ways for us to go for the use of the property. Um, I'm curious about the solar generation. I'm not sure, uh, where they, where that came up from, uh, or who proposed it. I, is that still on the docket or? No, it's good, good, good point, Tima. Um, so by way of background, the Energy Committee has looked at solar panel placement. Um, it's a challenge, uh, by solar panel, uh, by solar. Yes, we, we, we had the, um, the property of the transfer station recently evaluated recently, meaning within the last 18 months. And it was determined that aside from a small portion of that landfill, uh, it really would not be, uh, viable for, uh, groundwater. Uh, ground-mounted, um, solar arrays. So in hearing that from that evaluation, I think the portion of the property that would be available for solar, uh, is more the westerly portion, which is the most steep, uh, heavily sloped, uh, portion. So I would, I would think that, uh, that that would prohibit, you know, the installation of ground-mounted, uh, photovoltaic, uh, panels. Yes. It's so clear. Your last comment referred to the south landfill. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It was that western part of the south, uh, landfill. Yes. Uh, just, just quickly, we've, we figured out there are 60 parking spaces utilizing five of them as handicapped, and that is roughly on one half of an acre of, uh, space being used. So, let's, let's come back to that in a second. Thank you, Paul. Uh, thinking on the solar generation, um, if, hypothetically, the committee recommended field this site, Tom Holden, you're basically saying that if you put a field in, it would really not commit solar generation if it was stopping. Yeah, I, I think that the field, the parking, the amenities, uh, whether, whatever type of bathrooms that we, uh, decide would probably utilize much of the real estate, uh, um, in that, that western portion of the, the property. Okay. Any reason you couldn't put the solar over the parking area or over the bus parking area? So, I would imagine, Cliff, you probably could, because much of our solar in town is like that, the town building, the high school. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think we should include it. We don't know how much or exactly where, but, I mean, we, we sure ought to be able to get something out of it. Mm-hmm. Anything else, Sima? Um, I think the other questions I had was, do we have a sense of how, like, how we done kind of a town meeting to get an idea of what the community wants? Because I know there was some talk about an RFI or trying to figure out, we're trying to narrow this down, but, and we can eliminate, I guess, wastewater and, uh, do the commercial stuff for now. And if the solar generation seems contingent on having, or seems more viable if you have the parking spots. So, I think there's some linkage between the usages there, which is nice to have. Uh, but do we have an idea, excuse me, of, for example, for field usage, what is the usage of locker? And if, what kind of, are we trying to use for multi-athletic field type, um, usage? And then a separate point, or maybe related, is if we are doing that, then do we have an idea about what, uh, we'll do for congestion for Route 20, access to the field? And are we thinking about, are we even thinking about those lines for now, is my question. Okay. So, before you join the meeting, I did make a comment that helped us, trying to get to a point where we can develop some sensor science issues. Then, we then have a public forum in our next meeting where people can comment and think and get feedback. So, regarding the usage, um, you're asking about the needs. Mark, do you have thoughts on the needs of, uh, additional fields and towns? Yeah, I, I mean, without question, we are, um, in town gold, you probably would, would agree with this, but, um, our fields are stressed. Um, there is not enough capacity to support all the requests for demands from a field perspective. Um, I know there's some fields that are requiring improvement. Um, that's probably overdue at this point and is really difficult to, um, you know, for the town to perform just based on, you know, if you take a field offline, what that's going to do to the community and their ability to, uh, to get out on them. So, um, I'd say without question, uh, we could, we could use some more, uh, some more space. For what it's worth, Mark, we heard that exact same comment regarding Loker. And the next comment was, as soon as we get Loker, we'll be able to take some of the fields offline because we'll have enough space. Uh, I'm going to just be directly. I didn't say that. You didn't say that. No, the rec commission said that. Uh, the, um, the consensus, uh, town of white is that here feels, uh, welcome. So this would be a, we can be a grass field, grass fields take time to, uh, keep, you know, get few hours. Uh, but, um, anything further, Seema? Nope. I think that was it. And just considering if you're doing fields there, um, how much thought do we need to put into, uh, making access easier? Or what, if you're putting buses even there, if that's going to add or detract from the congestion on Route 20, especially in that time period when buses need to get in and out. So the bus, the bus, uh, use, technically from Route Town Hall is approximately 6.30 a.m. to 9.30 a.m.? Yeah, it's, uh, you know, it's at both ends of the day, you know, in the morning and then, uh, similarly, uh, mid-afternoon. And, you know, for the bus parking and the athletic field, we would likely be performing a traffic study. So we would have, uh, a sense of what the impact would be to have, uh, those 21 buses coming on and off the property as well as those employees. That would all be handled within, within a traffic study. Would, uh, to, uh, to a seamless point that, uh, would need to be done so we'd have a better sense of, of that impact. If I could just come back to Cliff's point, because I, I think it's important to, to make sure that we are being kind of, um, direct with our messaging and, and candid. Um, and so I appreciate it. I think what we've seen with Loker, and this is just, you know, I wasn't there for the, you know, building of the field. And, and that was, I know you were, I know you were. Um, and I think what you've seen from the community is for the capacity that was required at the time, I've noticed in, you know, over the past couple of years here, we've seen demand from the community with more sports and more activities. So you're seeing lacrosse growing here, you're seeing field hockey programs flourishing, um, and those programs just weren't available. Um, you know, during that period and probably not contemplated, um, you know, that you'd be having a field hockey program growing like it has been in lacrosse as well. Uh, I know when, when Loker was built, everybody was all concerned about traffic. Has that been a real problem there at all? I don't think so. I haven't heard of anything about it from the local field. Not to my knowledge. No. I haven't heard of anything. You, you, you've, I mean, you must go there. Is traffic an issue at all there? I haven't experienced it. Oh, okay. I didn't think so. Just. Have you heard any problems? No, it, uh, I, I remember it being a concern, but I don't think it, uh, actually, uh, um, became one. Yeah. All right. Uh. Excuse me, everyone. I have to dip out for about 15 minutes, work with this crane. Um, I'll be listening, but I probably won't be able to participate. I'll be back as soon as I can. I'm going to stop you there, Mike. I think given your absence, I think we're going to have to end the meeting because we don't have a forum. Um, so, um, so what I'm going to do is I'll, I'll cut the meeting short at this point and obtain a motion to adjourn. Let's, I'll be in touch with the next meeting. We'll continue our discussion. Okay. Uh, so it's, uh, 846. Um, I want to take a motion to adjourn. All right. Sorry, everybody. That's all right. I'm sorry. It's fine. The total move. Thank you. Cliff, I'd wait a second. What's that? All right. Mark, thank you for the second. All right. Those in favor of the motion. Cliff. Oh, yes. Mark. Yes. Dima. Yes. Mike. Yes. Mike. Thanks everybody for your time this morning. And we'll, uh, I'll be in touch. We'll continue. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Bye.