September 9, 2026 – Conservation Commission – Video & Transcript
September 9, 2026 - Conservation Commission
All right, seeing that at 631, we've got a quorum. I'd like to begin the Conservation Commission meeting for Wednesday, September 9th, 2026.
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With that, Linda, are you in the office there? Where are you? Are you home?
I am in the office.
Okay, so we have Linda Dolling from the office.
I see John.
I see John Storer, Barbara Howell, Cliff Lewis, Luke Legere, Lisa Aubin, Haysha, and Fisher came on.
Myself are all dialing in remotely.
With that said, let's open the public hearings, please.
This is 67A, sorry, this is 2A.
67A, Locust Street, Wayland, Mass, DEP, File Number 322-1056.
It's a continued notice of intent filed pursuant to Wayland's Wetlands and Water Resource Protection Bylaw and Protection Act submitted by Matt O'Connor for the demolition of an existing barn and construction of a six-unit,
compact apartment facility at 67A, Locust Street, Wayland, Mass.
The property is shown on Assessor's Map 48, Parcel 42, and is located within a 100-foot buffer zone of a boarding vegetated wetland in a 200-foot riverfront area.
Linda?
Yeah.
We have, let's see, 2A on our, right? And we have, I believe, I don't think there's anybody here for that. We did not receive any new information, and my understanding is that they, also, continued with the planning board, so I don't, I believe we'll probably continue with this until the next meeting. Which is when, Linda, what's the date on that, sorry? That would be the 30th of September. Okay. All right. Someone might want to make the motion for continuing to send her both to the 30th after 630. So moved. Thank you, Luke. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, Cliff. Roll call, please. Lisa Aubin. Yes.
Sorry. You're good. Luke Bougere. Yes. Barbara Howell. Yes. Cliff Lewis. Yeah. John Storer. Yes. Shannon Fisher. Yes. And Sean Fersey, yes. Thank you, folks.
Moving on to 2B is the 68 Lakeshore Drive Whalen DEP file number 322-1057. It's a continued notice of intent filed pursuant to Whalen's Wetlands and Water Resource Protection Bylaw and the Whalen Protection Act. Submitted by Jeremy Jenkins for the after the fact work performed 68 Lakeshore Drive in Whalen, Mass., including installation of a floating dock, gangway, ramp, retaining wall, patio, and repairs to the covered porch steps. Property is shown on Assessor's Map 42D, parcel 56, and is located within 100 feet of a boring vegetated wetlands, bank, and land underwater. Linda. We're going to continue this one also to the September 30th date.
Okay. Anyone want to make that motion? I hope so. I'll move. Yeah. Are you looking for that one? I'll make a motion then to continue under both sometime after 630 to the 30th of September. Cliff? It's a move. Thank you. Lisa, do I hear a second? Oh, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Cliff, a second. Roll call, please. Lisa Aubin. Yes. Luke Legere. Yes. Barbara Howell. Yes. Cliff Lewis. Yes. John Storer. Yes. Shannon Fisher. Yes. And Sean Fersey. Yes. Thank you, folks.
On to 2C. Sorry. Yeah, 2C. 26 Rice Road in Wayland. This is DEP file number 322-1066. This is a continued abbreviated notice of resource area delineation file pursuant to Wayland's Wetlands and Water Resources Protection Bylaw and the Protection Act submitted by Adam Stack for the confirmation of a resource area delineation at 26 Rice Road in Wayland, Mass. The site is shown on Assessor's Map 48, Lot 93. Linda? I believe we have everybody on board for this one. What happened was we had a peer review done by David Burke with Doug Dillon, their representative present. And that's in your agenda packet, the results of that. So if Dave or anyone else has questions, please feel free to reach out to us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Doug, want to present that? You're welcome.
Yeah, absolutely. I can go ahead and open up on that. So Doug Dillon, Wetland Scientist, Guard Consulting for applicant, as you just stated, Adam Stack, 26 Rice Road. So I'm going to go right through my screen.
Okay. Okay.
serious. If we're going to refrigerate for as long as one minute, I just want to give you a quick Nonlovice statement. But this is why you need to do that G greatest for all our long-term appointments for your End purchase thanks to you and we always try to have this along with our vice chair. And the other thing is we completely collect... We are keeps getting their cases found. ー Since the death of like, Danreditator. your memory here you have centrally located wetland here
and
oh we had uh at least said dave burke here who um i don't know if i saw him in the uh audience or not here um but oh you are here yeah present okay how you done um
we reviewed the perimeter of the wetland line made some revisions which include um there were some sort of pockets here and those were eliminated so now it's instead of uh going inward it's jumping from 43 to 54 in this in particular area as well as uh down here we did a jump from 26 to 32 filling in that and making it a bit more of a flush sort of a wetland line we walked the perimeter of the site of course um in addition we reviewed the sort of um lower kind of uh
panel type area here and so we added another uh four flags one two one two right here to continue that neck down and we found in field that the remainder of the area did not necessarily meet the definition of it didn't have a bank and now that did it have wetland vegetation or hydric soils but you know just to the greatest most limit of what you would uh be able to deem as a bank and you know dave and i had a discussion on site and we're thinking maybe his Historically, like 100-something years ago, maybe there was some farm fill here that was common in eastern Mass, central Mass. Just generally speaking, of course, we saw evidence of that in the sort of uniformness and size of the rocks and cobbles on site, being like a 6- to 8-inch, 10-inch, 12-inch stone, which is common to the area and common to former agricultural fields just throughout this area. So we observed that. That is now depicted. The original flagging sort of placed it just from 1 to 102. Now we have this additional 30-foot run here, which goes, you know, we have marked with 100R and 101R, 102R, 103R. So that is just about that, and I will turn it back over to either Adam or Dave Burke, if you want to add on to that. I'll... Okay. Happily, happily began the conversation. Yeah, I could add a little bit to that and give you some flavor of my methodology there. My name is Dave Burke. I haven't seen you in a while. Nice to see you all, Linda included. And I was engaged to, what do they say, peer review 26 Rice Road, and that's the project before the commission this evening. The way that I approached this was to, prior to Doug and I moving flags on site, I get out there twice for several hours each visit. And I really wanted to nail down the characteristics of the outlet of the PVP, which is what we were calling it nine years ago. So it was kind of early in 2018 when I did some work on the property back then. But that PVP has been looked at. It's my understanding it's been looked at and has not met the criteria. I don't know much more about it except that's how I reference it. So it's a standing body of water above the- Could you put the map back up for me for us? Yeah. Thank you. That's helpful. It's above grades. above the pipe in Thompson Road and if if it inlets if it outlets it looks like at some point it probably did go down that hill I mean that's practically irrefutable so what I do first is to is to nail down evidence of hydrology through plants and soils the soils being the most important really there's a there's not there's not a whole lot of wetland vegetation there the overstory is is dominant and the deer have done a number on the understory so what we're left with is there's quite a bit of spice bush in there which is a decent indicator but not the best and there's glossy buckthorn for instance American elm red maple a couple royal fern here and there which can be helpful cinnamon fern here and there Pennsylvania said it's a good upland indicator so I kind of have a look at those those clues and then I start drilling holes up and down that from what we call what was originally stopped the flagging originally stopped at number one and number 102 and it was cut across there and I noticed that there was a semblance of a channel that left the site and so what what you have to be aware of is that you if you can connect hydric soils downstream and hydric soils upstream and then you have a definite channel between those two areas you do in fact have an intermittent stream but the definition is one that I've been working with extensively lately and it's often paired right down to the word as it should be and it's a brief definition but it does state that it's a matter of perspective and whenever you take a look at the water and have a good look at your." that in an intermittent stream is a moving body of water which flows in the ground due to a hydraulic gradient and within a definite channel and and though that's the first sentence of the definition there's three more which i won't bring up but that about sums up what i look for right off the bat so when you walk down that that hillside the topography if we can zoom southerly a little bit there doug let's see what's below there we go um you can see that the topo does indicate some sort you know it obviously indicates a uh a channel of sorts but what what we need to see is a definite channel and in this case back to my hydric soils i started at the at the culvert and i wore my way up with an auger all the way up into say where you flag 100 was and i did not encounter hydric soils uh until i got north of say one you know our final southern flags uh what i can barely read that 10 101 r and 102 r you know that's where i i hit the hydric soils and that's um makes sense because there was a channel in that area and it's fairly flat in that area as well um i don't think there is a channel to heat at it is a moonlight channel the topo on the the shown on plan is doing it nonetheless you know on winter longける it actually i think it's a little steeper than it looks there in some particular sections in our gener tune and so in steeper sections we get more of a channel where that where it flattens out even for six or eight or ten feet the channel disappears and it becomes an interrupted channel or what's often called a segmented channel and so you you know evidence of a shadow 20 feet up from the pai then the glide you know of what it with the assistance of and the soil 2006 works to help the cell amount the width becomes 30 feet less the amount of the PRP that they would be used indeed said before anything because they're spread out enough and there wasnaj C See we got lines CONTROL a MEMBER OF THE PROCESS20122129 on the region 10 and we see quite often 20 feet up from the pipe, 40 feet up from the pipe, 60 feet up from the pipe, but they don't connect. And that's, in order to connect the two resource areas, you do need the word, the keyword is definite and in the ground. And so I looked hard for that, both, you know, physically and as far as physical attributes on the ground within the micro topography. The area that is channelized tends to have those stones that Doug was mentioning. And they do look like they were hand plucked out of fields or that they came up in a stone sifter or something. And it does. And I thought this years ago, it does look like a stone dump in there. And that can play around with the hydrology too. I mean, if they were filling in, you know, a big gully or something with stones, obviously that's going to have an impact. In any case, I didn't know any water like drafts. Going into the ground or being sucked out of the channel by sand or, you know, any such boulder contraption, not to say it hasn't happened at some point. But when I get down to the head wall here, that goes onto Thompson, that's a 12 inch RCP. And I always look at that, those very closely for evidence of recent hydrology. You look for something that might've, you know, that was, is obvious. Obviously brought down as float some more or, you know, floating matter within a, within a current, if you will. And the, I have good pictures of it too. It's devoid of that. And the channel really didn't look like it had conveyed flows in a, in a sometime. I drilled several holes right in front of it where you can see it is fairly flat, right at the 182 contour where the number 182 is. And I didn't, I was not coming up with, with hydric soil. So I got good upland indicators. I then went to the other side of the road and at the outfall, if you will, of the RCP, I also shined a flashlight down the pipe and you can barely see the other side. I think the pipes collapsed in the middle. I think it's one of the bell joints let go or something. I think it's in disrepair. However, at the outfall again, I, I drilled for hydric soils and found nothing. It's, it's, it's remnant of a floodplain on the other side. Linda, I don't know if you went over there, but it's a lot of European buckthorn and, and rich loamy soils. I mean, I was hitting 14 inches of, of not black, but you know, chestnut brown loamy soil over there. And, and I, I did not encounter a hydric, you know, indicators as far as vegetation on soil skills. So, um, that's why I stopped the, the stream up at, at, you know, 10, 101 R and 102 R cause we lose the channel there. And then it picks up again for, you know, 10 feet or so that it, it really does disappear. I mean, you could roll a golf ball across it and it wouldn't bounce. It's, it goes flat. And, um, you know, we, we need to see a definite, a definite, a definite, a definite, a definite, a definite, a definite, a definite, a that channel in the ground. And so my findings did include what Doug said as far as on the Western side of the property there and the wetland rather. And we moved around 10 or 11, 12 flags. I don't know what it was. And it did wind up increasing the upland to an extent. One of my other investigations, by the way, which was not included in my report was I kind of stumbled across an interesting mass GIS representation of the area. And it was prior to the construction of the fields across Rice Road. And they showed a stream over there that ran on and ran through underneath Rice Road by a culvert. And it supposedly discharged onto this property and would have, it would have co-joined with, you know, the flows that one time came out of the PVP area. And I went and looked for it and I couldn't find any sign of it. I couldn't find a hair of it. So, and I didn't see it on the other side of the street where the soccer field is. So what I'm, I mean, I guess the long and short of that is, I don't know if, when I was there nine years ago, I didn't see that area. I looked hard. I mean, I looked very closely at that whole entire place and I didn't see any signs of it. I still don't see signs of it. But if there was meddling with the hydrology on the other side of the road, and it, you know, had an effect on water passing from one side to the other, who knows if it dried that stream out? And who knows if that, streams like that are gonna be dry for another three years or four years, the way things are going with the climate. So Linda, to your question, and I'll close it with this, as far as looking at intermittent streams under drought conditions, I only know of one way of looking at intermittent streams and that's, you know, in normal. And I don't know. There's a specific directive to look at them differently during drought. If you found something, I'd be happy to hear about it. But certainly, perennial streams, we would look at taking into context, you know, their flow with drought. So, that that's my summary. Thank you. Thanks, Ted. Linda, could you kick it to you? No. I, I mean, I did ask Dave before, about, whether, you know, Linda, could you kick it to you? No. I mean, I did ask Dave, before, about, whether, you know, whether, you know, there's a difference between, right, before about whether he had, there was water in the stream, you know, in 2018, when he did the delineation. And because I don't, I looked through my photos, I could not find any photos of that area. Most of the photos were of the vernal pool, or the potential vernal pool that was on site. And I did leave a message for our circuit rider, but she's on vacation. So to ask that question about how do we handle intermittent streams during the third year of a drought, for the most part, and, you know, is there, you know, if it's, if there's no, I mean, I think there's shows from the topography that water does flow in that direction. I mean, I did walk around there a bit too, and there's a lot of debris there. So, I mean, I can understand how the flow of the water would probably not follow a really defined channel, because there's things that really break up the flow there. And so, yeah, I'm not sure that's a good rationale either. But I do think that, you know, at some point, there was a water flowing there. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a culvert underneath the Thompson Road at that location. And I, you know, I'm not sure how you can make a decision, you know, whether or not there is a stream or not a stream, an intermittent stream after three years of a, you know, a serious or severe drought that we've been going through. I think it's questionable how we can handle that. So, and I'm not sure I have a good answer. And like I said, I was waiting to hear from the circuit rider to see what her opinion was about how to handle this. I mean, the second issue we had was, you know, we had a lot of water flowing there. We asked, you know, the homeowner, the property owner to file a new NOI because of the changes in the scope from the previous order condition that was on site. And I think it's hard for us if there is a violation on the property. That's another question I have for DEP. I mean, how do we, how do, can we move forward on anything in this, on this property? And the third thing is I was informed by the treasurer that we really can't issue permits for this property right now anyway. So, okay. That's my second question. We cannot what? We cannot issue permits for this property right now. So. Yep. So what were the next plan of action then, Belinda? Continuation? Like what's the next? Well, it would be nice to get some sort of guidance, I think, from DEP on this one, just because again, you know, we saw that there was a stream. It was, it was delineated as a stream or, or, you know, hydric soils in 2018. And now because of, you know, the drought situation. Is that something we can just ignore or do we, you know, just use current conditions as, as the basis for making our decisions? I'm not really sure. So I don't have an answer for that. If, if I may, Mr. Chair and Belinda, I mean, we should keep in mind that it's, it's, while there is a definition for an intermittent stream, you're really talking about the components of the stream. Yeah. I mean, we should keep in mind that it's, it's, while there is a definition for an intermittent stream, you're really talking about the components of the stream. protected, right? The stream itself is not necessarily protected. What's protected is the bank and the land underwater body. And, and that sometimes gets lost in the Shuffle. So when we go looking, you know, for an intermittent streamer to identify one in the field, your key attribute is, is going to be bank. And it's going to be, you know, as stated in the, in the, in the, you know, the, the bajo that's collect, okay. Okay. Yeah. That's island. Yeah. And I Just wanted to take a moment. I hadn't taken a wherewithal. Okay. definition it's it's going to be a signs of a channel and why that channel is now you know if you will obliterated or segmented or intermittent or whatever it don't know water will flow downhill as we know but um if it breaks out of a channel and we can't tell you know exactly where it's going again in the ground then you got you have to break you should break the stream and and see what's up gradient what's down gradient and then it can determine if it's protectable based on yeah but let me go back to your your question about the stream you know um across the street based on gis i'm just looking at it now that there is a stream that shows the stream that comes from the field across the street it goes under under rice road and it enters into the vernal pool and then it shows it does show an intermittent stream that goes down and feeds the wetland which is south of thompson road not not you know through number two which has wetlands according to this on it and then there's also um there's an empty lot a vacant lot right below that that is definitely wetlands i've been down there before it's a tax title you know it's in tax title and i've been there to investigate that and that stuff has wetlands so it is a system there it's not it's not just oh i'm not arguing that linda but don't get me wrong i'm not arguing that and and when i when i looked at the gis and i saw that it was you know dp had tagged it as wetlands across uh thompson road and i thought sure i'd go over there and find and find hydric soils when i bought on the other side of that pipe but there is there's a distinct break there and that you know that's all we have to work with is is what and i i bet i probably put six or eight holes out there in the lowest points trying to find hydric soil and there's no doubt you know water flows downhill they put pipes under roads for good reasons and and farmers you know don't do work for no reason so but the fact of the matter is i i think we're kind of stuck with what we what we can interpret today unless the circuit rider could reflect on the conditions within a within a drought i that's you know that's where in my experience that's where we uh that's how you make the call and if it connects again ups gradient down gradient you know don't forget the last thing they tell you in the definition of the stream is that portion which is uh down gradient uh upgrading of all other resource areas is uh not a protectable stream so i would just like to ask one question too if i can or on this topic here since uh this is adam sack the owner of 26 race road and lived here for now six years been working on this property uh for six seven or eight so i've seen this i've witnessed this i've been asked by this board multiple times to verify if this was a vernal pool we had three different scientists come out and they couldn't find the evidence of it i think it's very clear now that after oxbow did the flagging they had an idea we had a peer reviewed by dave burke who came up with his own assumptions and it's been proven that some of the the information about this property may be out there but may not be true um so i realized that my property is in a violation state and i need to make uh what i'm looking to get here is just that this is verified so that i can go back to you with the correct information to finalize this property move some things along and just move forward and without having this delineation it's hard for me to give you the information that i need to make sure that this is a real property and that i'm you an accurate picture moving forward. And it gets a little frustrating when I've done what you've asked so many times with different scientists and it's still not enough. This was paid for and then now peer-reviewed. Dave did soil testings and I don't know what else we can really do. It kind of is what it is at this point. And I'm not asking for a permit tonight. We're asking to just have this delineation verified so that we can, you know, clean up the NOI or reapply for an NOI and get this property into out of violation stage. So I really hope there could be some movement on that tonight so that I can move forward in rectifying the situation that I'm in. Gotcha. Thank you. So, Commission, open thoughts, comments, concerns?
So I would be interested to hear back from DEP. I think that's an important piece of information for us to have. But I guess I am struggling a little bit to see how that would, you know, what we might hear back from DEP would necessarily... change anything, given what we've heard from Mr. Burke here this evening. So, Lynn, I don't know if you have a thought on that, but I know this is an issue, the question of how do we gauge or determine what or what is not an intermittent stream given the severe drought that we've been under for a long time. I believe that's something DEP is dealing with on a bunch of different properties right now. So I'd like to know the answer, but is it going to change anything is my question. Well, it would change if whether or not, you know, this area is jurisdictional, you know, and for, like I said, you know, the drought does affect the status of a perennial stream that we can't, you know, determine the stream status during a drought. But there's no mention in any of the regulations about how you handle, you know, drought conditions for an intermittent stream. And, you know, this saying that this is completely dried out and there's no hydric soils, you know, is that a temporary thing? Is that a permanent thing? I really don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I think, again, the hydrology has changed a little bit since this, since this property has been developed. And yes, I know one of the conditions of the permit for this property when we issued it was to have the vernal pool certified before the construction started or have, you know, have it, the certification process start. And that wasn't done. And it was, you know, we looked at this property years ago for purchase. And at the time, Matt Byrne went out and said it was a. you know, potential certified invernal pool. And now it's not. So, I mean, I think that indicates right there that there's been some hydrology changes here. There's been some changes, you know, to the whole system. And now that it's not, no longer certifiable, I mean, I think, I think that's, that's an issue in itself too. And how that's affected, you know, the stream, the status, the water flow. I don't really, you know, that's, I don't, you know, I'm not here. I don't, I haven't been observing this thing for, for many years. So it's hard to make that determination, but I would, I would kind of like to have a little bit of input with DEP on this one, because I think there's a lot of questions here. So. From what my, from what Goddard told me was after doing the soil testing, hydronic soils aren't going to change over the course of three years. Yeah, I can, I can speak on that, Adam. Thank you. Hydric soils, once they've developed, they will, they're not going to go away after, after a period of two, three, four years drought. I mean, if that has developed, if that, you know, those depletions, those reduced matrices have developed in the soil, those will remain there during and after periods of drought. They don't, they don't necessarily go away. And that's what they've tested for. Yes. And that's for well and delineations. So. Okay. So it sounds like Linda wants to, until we hear back from DEP, that's kind of the next step for Mara and Linda, if we're comfortable. Yes. Yes. And like I said, we really can't move forward on this because the treasurer has outstanding taxes on this property. And I'm not looking for a permit. I'm looking for, but this is what I issue, Adam. You know, I issue something, I issue an ORAD and, and my understanding is under the bylaw that we have in place, you know, I can't do that. And you're talking about building. Adam, please stop interrupting. Go ahead. No, that's that. That applies to conservation too. Okay. So. Well, and that I, I, Sean, if I could just chime in, it strikes me, Mr. Stack, that that's something you need to take up with others in town hall. I fully support Linda's interpretation of what she's been told. So I, I'm, I'm with Linda on this. I take your point that an ORAD is not a permission to do work, but I do think it still qualifies in many respects as a permit. So I, I'm with Linda. I'm with Linda on this one. I think if you, if you want to argue that somehow this would fall outside of that prohibition, then I don't think we're the ones to answer that. I think you need to go somewhere else. That's just my two cents. I understand that. And I've been dealing with this with other, other towns. I mean, we, we're looking at something right now. We can make the decision and you can base this contingent upon clearing other things up so that at least we have something to work with here. I mean, I know what has to be done in town and it's not an issue. But I guess I keep asking the question is every time we come here, there's another, let's ask this question. Let's ask this question. And I can't move forward until we have some type of like agreement. And it's a, it's hard when I've done everything you asked for and it's still not enough. But Adam, how is this, how is this keeping you from filing a new NOI for your development? Because if this, if this changes the lines, if you look at the, if you, if you look at what's happening here, the, the, the 100ft and 50ft buffer changes. So I want to make sure that, okay, these are the finalized lines, period done. And then, and then, and then complete the NOI. This is, this is what my main concern is. Yeah, but the, the violation is to file for an after the fact permit for the house that's already built, a driveway that's already built, the garage that's already built, you know, that none of that's��이 can see. But if you look at, if you look at the 100ft buffer, it doesn't, it doesn't solve a lot of problems, right. a buffer, it does change in the area where things were disturbed. So if it's not, then my NOI needs to reflect on work that would have been done in a buffer zone or not. And there are differences. So that's what we're trying to nail down as, okay, this is the legitimate point. And here's your violation, or this is what you have to change, or this is what you have to move. If I don't have that, I can't move forward. Well, with all due respect, you could do that through the notice of intent process. So Linda's absolutely right about this. At any rate, Sean, I guess sort of looking at where we go, I mean, just my two cents on this, it seems to me getting input from DEP is important here. I certainly understand that Mr. Stack's frustrated that this process is taking longer than he thinks it should. But I think given the sort of complexity of this question and hearing from Linda that she was, wants DEP's input, I think we should wait for DEP's input. I tend to agree with Linda there. And I think this other issue of whether we can even do anything with this application also needs to be ironed out. So it seems to me we have to continue this. Okay. I just request some additional clarification. Are the questions primarily procedural or technical or sort of a combination? I just want to make sure I'm able to provide the commission with the information that I need. And I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Any additional? I would say it's a combination. I mean, it puts us in a really, sort of in a weird position because we issued a permit in 2018 based on the current conditions in 2018. Now they've changed. And now you're saying that we're going to file an NOI for the new development based on the new conditions when the house was built back in 2018-19 during a time when we had the new conditions. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. It just broke the border between free and dead and approved plan and approved delineation and approved buffer zone and everything else. So using the current delineation for a project that was built eight years ago, seven, eight years ago, I'm not sure I agree with that either. So I think we have a number of questions I think that need to be answered. Right? So essentially what, you know, one of the key components I'm looking for here is like width. Right. that new notice of intent surely will come, you know, a slurry of buffer zone plantings and restoration and mitigation, you know, what have you for the various areas in question. So verifying this now enables me to do that accurately and more precisely rather than have that be an ongoing question during that notice of intent filing. So, you know, my intention for this is to lock that down. And so such that when we do file that notice of intent, the, you know, certain square footages of the buffer zone will be accurate to the conditions today, and will allow for that restoration to be done appropriately and fully such as it should for this area.
Did I answer that question here? Go ahead, Cliff. Yeah. I'm not nearly as knowledgeable about the technical aspects as some of the other people, so bear with me. But if we have a proper delineation of what it was in 2018, why don't we use that? Well, that's my point, you know, for the new NOI. So, yeah. I'm not sure what the purpose of this is, you know. I found that not to be accurate to my findings on site. And so since, you know, hence, I've submitted with this delineation. But, I mean, it's very plausible that the work that was done between 2018 and 2026 is the cause of the change.
Yeah, I'm, again, I was not a part of that initial application, so I'm not necessarily able to say, you know, but I just know that my delineation on site yielded this. This is what. Well, I understand what you've done. You just went out and looked at what's there. But if we know what it was like in 2018 and the project was built in 2018, why don't we just get the project to conform with the conditions that were there in 2018? Can't. Can't do that. What do you mean you can't do that? Oh, excuse me. Dave Burke. Again, well, I don't know that you can't, but there's a standing, and I'm still not sure if it's written or not, but the three-year rule is applied to most delineations. That's common practice nowadays, but. What is this three-year rule? Well, Dave, we're doing an after-the-fact permit for this, you know, that was built back in 2018. Yeah. And you're saying, now we need to use the current delineation to permit something that was built that probably might not have been, you know. No, bear in mind, all I know about this is I go out and look at the resource areas. I don't really know about the other, the background of the other permit and this and that. So, probably. Well, I mean, I understand what you've done. That's not in question. If we were to do that. I mean, what is the financial implication of just saying, okay, we'll use the information that we had in 2018, make the project conform. Well, it's not accurate to the conditions on the site. No, it's not. Well, conditions change, but that, I mean, if you had, we knew what the conditions were in 2018. The house, whatever was done in 2018, I mean, conditions change all over town all the time. Well, and Cliff. I think what you're really sort of getting to here is ultimately after I asked Linda that initial question as I was sort of processing her response and thinking about this. What really makes this so complicated to my mind is we have sort of an enforcement essentially proceeding, right? So, to your good point, Cliff, the conditions existing today are almost certainly affected to some degree by the work that was done there over the past six or eight years. Right? So, that's why I'm most interested to hear back from DEP because I don't view this as, you know, there's not just the question of what do we do about an intermittent stream and drought conditions. I think we also have the extra layer of work was done out here that wasn't approved and, you know, that might have affected the hydrology and wetlands on the site, too. So, that to me is why I'm really most curious to hear back from DEP. Is DEP going to be able to opine on that subject? I don't know. But I want to see what their response is. Okay. You know, I don't know what their response would be, but that's why I'm curious to hear it. So, can I ask one question to that if that's the direction it's going? I mean, in eight or nine years ago, you guys were saying this was a potential vernal pool, which I have had three scientists now say is not a vernal pool. So, how can we use a delineation on something that we know for a fact now is not a vernal pool and was in question in 2018? If you were building… If you were building this now, it would be a different story. But I'm saying… What you had built in 2018 didn't cause this to be the case now. But there was no certification of it at that point. So, it was a thought. We were only looking at the wetlands back in 2018. That's what you're looking at is a wetland line. And that's what we used. The buffer zone was based on the wetlands in 2018 when we issued a permit for that. We issued a permit for this for your construction project. And, yeah. Yeah. I imagine things have changed. I mean, you build a huge road right on the top of the vernal pool. It's a driveway. It's not a road. It was a road. It was a driveway. But, again, it's… You know, that wasn't built to, you know, what we approved either. So, I mean, you've made… There's a number of changes here that we have no idea how it affects, you know, the current conditions. But what we're asking you to do is file an after-the-fact permit application, an NOI. For the current… What you built in 2018, which wasn't what we had approved. And I think it's only fair that you use the 2008 conditions for that. Because that's what we… You know, that's what we based our decision on. Not on this. 2018 you meant, not 2008. 18. Yeah. What did I say? Yeah. So, 2008. Just clarifying. Sorry. 2008? Yes. Okay. 18. 18? Yeah. So, I mean, the question being posed with this is, does this collection of points accurately represent the resource areas present on this property as depicted at the time of filing? You know, my contention is that it does. That's what I'm seeking the Commission to verify. And then we had a peer reviewer on site with me and verify. And we made some adjustments. And this is the sort of culmination of that process right here. So, let me at least get an answer from DEP, how they treat intermittent streams during, you know, like a long extended drought. Okay? Yep. Sure. And I would encourage… I would encourage Sean, if I may, just Mr. Stack, to reach out to the treasurer or whoever. I will definitely do this tomorrow. Yes. I'm sorry. You spoke over me. I didn't hear what you said. But just to finish my thought. I would… It's a worthwhile use of some time between now and our next meeting. Absolutely. Sorry for interrupting. Commissioner, anything else? Okay. I'm obviously in agreement. So, we'll need a continuation. I guess, Linda, next, the 30th, we'll shoot there. And hopefully, we get something from the DEP by then. Is that fair? Yes. I should hear back next week. Okay. Can I get a motion then under both for continuation sometime after 630 for September 30th, please? So moved. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Cliff, for the second. Roll call, please. Lisa Aubin? Yes. Luke Legere? Yes. Barbara Howell? Yes. Cliff Lewis? Yes. John Storer? Yes. Shannon Fisher? Yes. And Sean Ferzi? Yes. All set? Thank you, folks. See you in a few weeks. I thank you for your time this evening. Thanks. Thank you. On public means, 3A, 15 Wheelock Road, Wayland D-1060. It's a request for determination of applicability filed pursuant to Wayland's Wetlands and Water Resource Protection By-law and the Wetland Protection Act submitted by Roddick McLean for the replacement of a septic system at 15 Wheelock Road in Wayland, Mass. Proposed work is 100 feet of a boarding vegetated wetland and 200-foot riverfront area. And the property is shown in Assessor's Map 24, lot 06. Linda? The engineer, Ted Doucette, emailed me and said that he had another meeting, I think, at 7 at a different town and was wondering if we could move forward on some of the other agenda items and then come back to this. Okay. We'll go with that. Okay. On to 4A, stormwater and land disturbance. This is 15 Pequot Road, SWLD-167. Linda? I believe in your agenda packet you received a response to the comments I had. I don't know if we have anybody on board here. Who? Oh, it was... We do have a comment. Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Okay. Let's see here too. We do have somebody right, representing 15 Pequot. Yes. Can you hear me all right? Yep. Yep, we got it. Great. Would you like me to start? Yes. Sure. I'm Israel Burle . My company's Burle Engineering. We were at the July 29th Conservation Commission hearing for a land disturbance permit for 15 Pequot Road in Wayland. There were some comments to resolve. Not super major comments. and we're here again with a response to comments, a revised plan, and looking to get the land disturbance permit. So would it be helpful if I walk through some of the changes to the plan? Yes, you do. Okay, I'm going to share my screen here real quick.
Okay, let me know when you can see my screen. Yeah, we can see. Okay, great. So I'll just walk through the comments and then just feel free to chime in with any questions you might have. The first comment was DPW is going to require us to do a curb cut permit. Our response to that one is received. We understand that the contractor is going to pull the curb cut permit upon approval of this plan with conservation. The next one was the HydroCAD values being reflected to update the specific storm events for the town of Wayland. Those changes were made. The HydroCAD model was updated for that. The next comment was the deck, stair, and walkway areas being classified as impervious areas. I had already classified those as impervious areas. I just added a new category on my chart. So that you can see the distinction, deck, stairs, paved, and walkways. So that was already included, just a change in the nomenclature. The updated plan for the health department with the septic system. The plan has been revised. I believe it should be submitted tomorrow or Friday.
And then tree removal. There was a comment that said it appears some trees were removed between 2020-2024. And then tree removal. There was a comment that said it appears some trees were removed between 2020-2024. And then tree removal. There was a comment that said it appears some trees were removed between 2020-2024. And now, based on aerial photography, the approved septic plan indicates that 15 trees were removed. The project will need to comply with the tree removal compensation requirements. And my response to that one is the septic plan only had a couple of trees being removed. It just identified ones that were close to the septic system. So all the trees on the septic plan weren't necessarily supposed to be removed. There were five trees that were over six inches that were removed in 2020-2024. And I noted the locations and diameters of those trees on this plan for your reference and provided compensatory trees that exceed the required diameter per the Weyland bylaws. The next comment I have was the soil type for the infiltration system. And I revised that to reflect a more conservative infiltration rate. That change was made.
The next comment was kind of more of like a design comment on the infiltration system. That comment was the three downspouts in the rear of the house discharge to the rear yard. So why not move the Coltec chambers to the front side of the house to reduce the amount of piping and trenching?
And my response to this was the property kind of slopes from front to back from an engineering standpoint. Infiltration works really well. On this property, using gravity to our advantage. So I did remove a couple gutter downspouts in the front just because with the new infiltration, this system would have been a little bit too full. So there were a couple gutter downspouts removed, but we would like to keep the infiltration system in the same location since we can meet all the required setbacks for both the infiltration system and the septic system areas.
Next comment was the stormwater pipe diameters. Those were added to the plan as well. And then the last one was the operations and maintenance plan. I uploaded that as a standalone document and included information from the manufacturer for the homeowner's awareness. So sorry if any of that was confusing. Feel free to ask any questions you might have. Awesome. Thank you. Linda, start with you, please. No, it looks like you guys are adding a lot of fill. Is that correct? To bring up? It looks like the septic and then the elevation of the house, too.
Not much. No, it's not. It's not going to be a big difference. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Because there are zoning rules, zoning board appeals rules for amount of fill brought into a property. That's why I just wanted to bring that to your attention. And this one thing you didn't mention in your comments. So it looks like you're adding an infiltration trench for the driveway then around the inside curve of that, right? Yes. Yes, I wanted to mention that as well. Yeah, I wanted to show that. And I showed more detailed spot grading on the driveway to show that the driveway is not grading to the street. It's grading to this crushed stone trench instead. I have some slope arrow shown on there as well. And spot grades show that the pitch is going towards that trench. Okay. Because that's important to show. DPW will not allow you to curb cut unless you're managing your own stormwater. But I mean, the one reason to have a curb cut permit before. You know, we issue this is because if for some reason DPW says you can't move it or change it, then you're going to have to come back to us with the whole redesign plan. So it's always important to get them involved earlier than later. So, okay, but I think most of my most of my comments have been addressed that I sent you after the meeting last time. So.
Okay, Commission, thoughts, comments, concerns.
I, it seems like they really took the comments and feedback to heart and considered and addressed them all. So I appreciate that. I'm good. Thanks, Luke. Anybody else? Good. In the health department, that's needed first.
Yeah. Yeah. Linda said that to go to get the health stuff. No, I mean, we just need to have the same plans. That's all. So, right. Yep. So if you're, if you're, if you're submitting it tomorrow to the health department, I think I'd probably like to wait until you get at least a conceptual approval from Darren for the new plan. So before I issue this.
Sure. Well, how, what would the timeline look like on the land? A survey? Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I understand.
And then. Looking for. If he's, if he's already if Darren's already seen this, then it, it usually is a pretty quick turnaround, so. Sure. He's seen the initial septic plan that was approved. He just hasn't seen the new building location, but. I'm a septic guy as well. The plan conforms to the. Setbacks. understand that you want to wait on the board felt approval would that be would that need to go before another hearing to get that approval okay
i mean i'm okay with this plan as right now i mean again i'm kind of surprised you're only putting in a pretty small stormwater system for the size of this house but um you know if you if you you know as an engineer if you can stamp and sign and say that's going to work then i have to believe you but um i just want to make sure that the board of health is okay you know with the with the new plan because again otherwise you're going to have to come back again with a whole new set of plans right so understood but i think i think um i think the commission can probably just allow me to issue this after approval from the board health okay
great good with that if so can i get a motion please conditional approval like linda said sure i move that we issue a permit under chapter 193 um with conditions as discussed and contingent upon approval by the board of health
thank you luke don't hear a second thank you cliff roll call please lisa aubin yes luke was here yes barbara howell yes cliff lewis yes john storer yes shannon fisher yes sean fares yes thank you folks i appreciate it you got it uh on the 4b uh this is 80 oxbow road swld-168 linda oh let's see oh that's being continued we still are working on getting a um a peer review we did get three quotes just yesterday i think or today so um we should start that process pretty pretty quickly and then we're gonna take a look at some of the other quotes and now that we have the quotes for that, okay? Love it. 9C, sorry, 9C, 4C, excuse me. 55 Woodridge Road, SWLD-169, Linda. Oh, do we have somebody representing 55 Woodridge Road on that? I didn't see anybody. Did you see anybody? Let me go participate real quick.
No, we got our hand up, right? I didn't see anything in the packet for it.
Let me go back here. Yeah, I don't think I've received any new information for that, which is probably why. No, there is nothing in the packet. Yeah, then we didn't receive anything new. I think we're just going to have to put that off for the next meeting then. Okay? All right. Well, we'll stay in the same neighborhood here. We're going to 5, which is the COCs, 5A. 149 Woodridge Road, DEP file number 322-1035. Linda. This is a closure. They have two permits for this particular property. The first one, which is the 1035, is for a septic replacement. That was the completion certificate was issued by the Board of Health back in December, I think. So it looks like the site is stabilized. Everything looks like it's grown in in the front there, where you put the septic, correct?
Yes, I'm Nick Hatton, the homeowner. Yeah, we have all the landscaping's in, and grass and native plants are all set. Okay. Yeah, the one thing on the permit was putting, establishing like a 15-foot vegetated buffer along the wetland boundary. And we moved that to your other permit. You know, we just kind of, kind of extended that so you don't have to do it now, but it will be part of the permit for the home renovation stuff that you're doing. Okay, what is a 15-foot, or I can follow up after, but a 15-foot vegetated buffer means? We just want an undisturbed area that's been planted with sort of native vegetation, right within 15 feet of the wetlands, so the flagged wetlands. And that's meant just to, as for habitat, wildlife habitat, rest, you know, so wildlife protection, or right, resource area protection. And so it's, it's a pretty standard condition we have in most of our permits, as a way of just protecting an area that we call the no disturb area in our bylaw. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's actually, okay. We've been, we've been doing that in our backyard anyways. I think that's, that's good. All right, thanks. Yeah, it's pretty wet over there, so.
And you're seeing a lot less water right now because they're holding back a lot of water, you know, not releasing a lot of water from the dam. So, it's, yeah, really changed up there, haven't they? Yeah, it's much drier this year.
Okay, Linda, you good? I'm good. Commission, we good?
Okay, a motion please for the certificate of compliance for 149 Woodridge Road, please. I move to issue a certificate of compliance for 149 Woodridge Road. Do we want to make it, do you have to put in the conditions, Linda, the 15-foot vegetative buffer? No, we moved that to the other permit with the home renovation permit. So, because it was, it didn't seem right to be doing it now when they're still working on the property. So, it seemed like we just kind of pushed that off for the next closure. Okay, thank you, Lisa, for the motion. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, that goes Luke. Roll call, please. Linda Aubin. Lisa. Lisa. Yes. Whatever your name is. Thanks, Lisa. Luke Legere. Yes. Barbara Howell. Yes. Cliff Lewis. Yeah, you bet. John Storer. Yes. Shannon Fisher. Yes. Sean Fraser, yes. Thank you, folks.
Okay. Thank you, appreciate it.
Yeah. On to... 5B, this is 5 Lundy Lane, DUP file number 322-1009. Linda.
Oh, they asked for continuance. I think both he and his, the homeowner and his representative were not available for tonight's meeting. I saw that. Yep. I think you saw that email, right? Yeah. And then there are some of them in October. I think it was the ask. Yep. Yeah. I don't remember what the date was anymore. It seemed like it was... It's probably in the future. Lundy Lane. Pardon me? Yes. So we approved this, the COC for this. And it was based on getting a revised aspen plan which I did not get. The aspen plan did not show any stormwater management for the driveway. And that was one of the problems I had with the project was the water just flows off into Lundy Lane without having any sort of stormwater controls. And then the second thing is, is that it shows these pipes coming from the downspouts that just enter into the call techs. At various locations. And if anybody knows what a call tech looks like, and I'm sure you know, John, that there's an inlet and an outlet. You don't just drill a hole through the middle of a call tech and put a pipe into it, right? I mean, that's what the aspen plan shows. You know, usually it comes from one end or another. That's why they have ends. And I asked him about that and he goes, oh, that's the way it was done. And I just was kind of surprised by that, his answer. I don't think that's how it should have been done. So... And I did ask an engineer about that. And they're like, no, that's not, you know, that's not clearly how it should be done. So, so anyway, I'm just not sure the as-build is accurate. Another engineer. So I issued him a partial certificate of compliance and he didn't like that. So he's coming back to ask for a complete. Okay. Lovely. On to, I think I said Ted Doucette. Ted's here. So we're going back. Ted, you're up. Are we locking? Yeah. All right. Thank you so much for the consideration. You're welcome. So we're back to 3A folks. This is 15 Wheelock Road, Wayland D-1060 request for determinative applicability. Go ahead, Ted. All right. I'm going to share my screen here. You can all see that. This is 15 Wheelock Road, three-bedroom, single-family house. It's kind of toward the end. If you know the areas, that's the second from the last house on the right. Right along the, the, Linda, what's the river? I got the stream. I got it down here somewhere. David Brook. David Brook. David Brook. Okay. Which is a cold water stream. And all you can see all these buffer zones. You can see the wetlands there. They're numbered. And then you can see the 50 and the hundred foot buffer zones there and other 25s there too. But and then I did go out there with my GPS and survey the bank of the Brook and you can see the hundred foot bank offset. And then the 200 foot bank offset, which is right at the edge of the property line and the road. So that it's a existing septic system that is in failure and needs to be replaced. Proposing pretty much to do it with an in-kind replacement. A new septic tank, 1500 gallon septic tank to comply with Title 5, obviously running down to a distribution box going into a Presby system. I like the Presby. Because it makes the system smaller. It will also reduce the, yeah, reduce the footprint. There's a lot less materials in it now where you don't have to always do the big over dig. So there's less disturbance. It's moved pretty much as far away from the resource areas as we can. We could move it closer to the road. That would require a Board of Health variance. So we figure why require variance when it's really going to give us a nominal additional benefit. There are some trees. Quite a few trees. You can see that are going to be taking down, are proposed to be taken down. The ones in the front are for the protection of the system and the protection of the home. So there's, you know, four large maples there, about 12 inch diameters. So those are proposed to be down. The ones in the back of the yard are going to be off the table for right now. There are some dead ones and we maybe would have a side conversation about that, about, you know, how do we take down dead ones? I think, Linda, you mentioned that there's no permit. There's no, there's nothing to, there's no concern about taking down those. But let's, let's go on with the septic project for right now. But, you know, this is, I think, the best we can do. Which way is north on your drawing? What's that? North? Okay, north. If you look to the, just to the left of the drawing, so it's kind of backwards. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. It's actually kind of, it's going to be a pretty good project because we, I realized that, you know, this was probably filled in a lot. As you can see, you know, how the house has a walk out of the back. And when it was constructed, you know, the area was filled in. So there's going to be some fill to take out of there too.
Okay, thanks, Linda.
Yeah, I think what I told you before, Ted, was that we don't regulate dead trees. And so you have two in the back. Those 8 and 16, I don't know what kind they are. You can almost see those on aerial survey, you know, some dead branches that stick out, you know, for something called distressed. I'm not sure how to really, usually it's, we go by hazard or non-hazardous kind of thing. Okay. I think most trees are pretty much distressed right now with the drought. That's a tough, that's a tough definition. So if you want those down, especially the ones, with like right next to the wetlands, the wetland line, I think we're going to need at least some sort of, you know, like arborist report for that. But okay. You know, I was just trying to be upfront. I'm not an arborist. It doesn't look totally dead. It doesn't look healthy. So yes, I'm just, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's like, it looks fine to me. I mean, that's pretty much my level of understanding. But yeah, so anyway, that's just what, yeah, we'll approve the septic. We'll approve the four trees that have to go down for the septic. And then you, I will include in the permit that you have every right to take the dead trees down. I will give some strict conditions about that though. You know, we don't like equipment in there, you know, that close to the wetlands. So that would be what, you know, I can add some conditions in the permit for that. But the distressed ones, I will, are you saying we should just not include in the permit right now? Right, right. Because he wants, he wants to think about it. He wants to have a, you know, if it requires a botanist, we're not going to get that done tonight, right? So do we just, is there another permit filing? Or do we say here, we had this botanist and we want to take these down? Oh, it depends on the botanist's report or the arborist's report, I guess. I can't, you know, that's a crystal ball. Okay, all right. Well, we'll deal with the dead ones and the ones that you mentioned up front. And then if there's anything else, we'll come back and circle back to that with a arborist. Yeah.
Okay.
Trees in the rear, they're within the hundred foot, no disturb. Yeah, they are. So only right now they're going to take the dead ones down, Barbara. The other four are going to stay for now. But don't count on taking those down later. And this is a cold water stream. This is our other cold water stream. Remember, say it would work.
Yep. Yeah, actually a little homework and I read up on that because I know Linda's mentioned cold water streams a couple of times. So yes, I do understand the gravity of it now. Yes.
Anything else?
Linda, you're going on this one? Yeah, we've had the Board of Health has approved this, corrected? Yes. Yes. Yeah. So it is far away. Is it? It is. The resource areas as they can get pretty much on this property. So. Okay. And we're in Whalen, not Westford. Oh, where did I put that? Barbara, I'm going to start sending my plans to review.
And where did you put that? Did I miss that? Well, they said they were, it was Westford. Oh, I'm in Westford now. That's where I'm at right now. I guess it was the, maybe it's the summer. I don't know. Somebody. I'm sitting in Westford Town Hall because I just finished a conservation commission hearing here. Back to back. Lucky you. Yeah. Yeah. And I got to go to soccer club after this. Yes. This is a narrative. Oh, I must have missed that somewhere. Well done, Barbara. Oh, yeah. That's my homework. Yes. You know, Barbara, I took a long time writing that. So I'm glad somebody read it. I always. We all do. Okay. I just didn't read the, I didn't look at the, the, the, the title block as a guess is what I missed. So. Okay. Anybody else commission? We good? Okay. Okay. Motion, please. For 3A. Sure. I move that we issue a negative determination under the act and a permit under chapter 194 for the septic system and the four trees closest to Wheelock Road. But not for the trees shown on the plan at the rear of the property.
Good motion, Luke. Thank you. Do I hear a second? Second. I think that was Cliff. Roll call, please. Lisa Aubin. Yes. Luke Legere. Yes. Barbara Howell. Yes. Cliff Lewis. Yes. John Storer. Yes. Shannon Fisher. Yes. Sean Fares a yes. All set. Thanks, Ted. All right. Thank you very much for your time. Have a nice night. You too. All right, folks. Here we go to the others. 6A. Cow Common Apiary Electric Fence. That's a fun title. Linda, tell us what we're chatting about. There's concerns. We have a number of hives. I don't know if you saw that next to the community gardens. Gosh, how many are there? Ann Gordon. I think she's on. She gave me a list today. I don't remember the exact total. But there's a lot of concerns about bear activity in that area. And whether, you know, trying to protect the hives. So one of the owners of three hives has asked us if he could encircle his three hives with an electric fence to keep the bears out. And so that's started a further conversation. I had with Ann who Gordon who has a number of hives over there also and she's she's well in tune to who's all over there with and who keeps bees over there. And I know if she wants to I think we have both of them on tonight. Both Mr. Dave Bechtel and Ann to discuss this if you want to hear more information. So my question to Ann was whether or not everybody there was was interested in having the electric fence around the hives or if it was just going to be the three hives that are owned by Dave Bechtel. So I think I need input for that from either one of those two to help with that answer that question. So I do see someone raising their hand. So that might be someone. Oh, yes, that would be Dave Bechtel. Probably second when we looks like and and it's not on the call anymore on the zoom call.
Should be they should be all set. Yep. All right.
The so it's not real quick. You should identify yourself for the record, please. Oh, it's David Bechtel 38 Moore Road, Wayland. Thank you. I'm a beekeeper and the my hives. My current three hives are in the the cow common adjacent to the public gardens. The the issue is that there's the division of mass division of fisheries and wildlife. It identifies Wayland as an area of expanding their population. And I personally abut conservation land and I've been vandalized by a bear. And I know Shannon has also been had problems with bear issues. Last year. Not a problem. I like the Bears. Okay. All right. Well, I like. I like them as well as they're not eating my honey and brood. But the the this the state actually said that a properly installed electric fence is safe to use around children pets and livestock. And it would be protecting my hives and if if the if Anne and the other members at the the bee common would want to join in this that I'd be happy to include, you know, everyone in that in the apiary. It's but the issue is that
the the the bear fence needs to be properly constructed and with a energizer that's effective as a bear deterrent. Can can you give me a screen share? See if I can get something on this.
Transfer room captioned raise hands. You should be able to do that. Hmm. You should be able to screen share as a as an attendee or participant. I mean, Oh, really? I just as a participant. I don't think not seeing. No, you'd have to move him over. Hmm. He's a he's a panelist. He should be able to panelist. Yep. Your panelists. You're you are then you can do it. Join as a panelist.
There you go.
All set.
Still there.
Hope you're on mute. If you're talking.
Okay, is that better? We can hear you. We you're not sharing anything. That's what your intent was. Right? Yeah, you're no longer a panelist. Well, there you are. Yep. Okay. Yes, share button down at the bottom in the middle. Yeah. Hold on.
Share. Hmm. No, I'm what is it? What is it? I'm sorry. What is it that we're that you're trying to share with us? Is it? I'm sure I wanted to show. You the some of the details about the bear fence and a a well-constructed bear fence protecting
about two dozen hives and
well, once you email that to me and I can share that with the commission, you know, once once it's been received. Okay. Okay. All right. What is the source of electricity? For this thing? The it'll be a solar energizer. So it'll be solar and a backup. Of course it no, it does. It actually has a two-week backup. Yeah, the reason. Okay, so that so that it will it will be a standalone generator, but it as I said, it stores. Two months two weeks of use. What is the voltage of the fence now? The the voltage has to be high. It's probably between it will be between five and seven thousand volts. Seven thousand volts. Yeah, and you're going to let a child out there. Well, but the thing is it delivers it. It's not like it's not a household current. If that were 5,000 volts household current, you'd be fried. You bet. But it it delivers a very brief pulse that lasts less than a second. And it is equivalent to about one watt of energy. Which is essentially the equivalent of a
a
Christmas tree bulb. Somebody said this can't harm people. Well, the it's there's a remarkable record of of safety with this as long as as long as you're installing the right kind of equipment. I mean, this is a factory mutual packing or something. I mean, I can't believe you're going to let a child. Out there with 7,000 volts regardless. Well, the thing is it's the the amperage is tiny. Well, it doesn't matter. Yeah. So before before we get to down, it's going to be a problem. Before we get to the nuts and the bolts of this in the Watson amperage, just so everybody understands. This is not your private property. You're asking you to put electric fence on conservation land for a private property. Okay, let's make sure we're very clear. So I'll plug that. I got a problem with that. So we can talk more about that. But so keep both is more of a presentation. I want to make sure everybody understands the property. We're talking about is conservation land, right? Okay. Yes, I know that. Yep. So make sure everybody understands that. Yeah. Yeah. But
the reality is that the state. Massachusetts is recommending. A electrified fence, a bear fence. To protect hives and chickens and everything else in terms of livestock. And the type of of of of
Energizer that they're recommending. Is has. A very high safety profile. And there is. Remarkably few situations in which this can be. Damaging. You're going to have to show who's certifying this. I'm not going to vote for anything. That's 7,000 volts without a certification from somebody that I can trust. Yeah. Well and clip. I think you just you just took the words out of my mouth. I think I would like to see some of the underlying documentation and materials that are we're hearing about tonight. So I can read them for myself, you know, no disrespect to you sir. I just like to be able to read these things myself. I'm like as Sean said, you know earlier, I would sort of second what he said. I am just for what this is worth put my card on the table. I'm very skeptical of this proposal. So I think it would be helpful for me to at least be able to review some of the materials you're referring to. All right. No, I'll I will send you the information and and see you next month. Perhaps. Okay. Can I ask a question? Yeah, sure. Please. What what what distance from the beehive is the fence because I've touched plenty of electric fences and I'd rather touch an electric fence and be stung by a bee. So, you know, so I just I want to. Understand because if you're walking close to a hive, you know, you've got the you got it. You're taking a little risk already and if the electric fences several feet off of a hive, are you already sort of in the danger zone? Well, the fence is supposed to be four feet from any of the hives because the Bears the Bears can reach over. The fence if they if they're closer than four feet or so, but they have to go through the fence to get to the hives. If they're four feet or more away.
Yeah. Yeah. And so I also I'm also a fellow beekeeper for the last 20 years. So I do understand. So I'll go back to the difference between private versus public. It makes people on conservation land should be able to walk wherever they want without fear of fence. I mean be so the fact that we allow this just to go on is one thing to then say now we're going to wall this off because of a hypothetical bear in a hypothetical situation for a private citizen on public land. I think for me, we're blurring a lot. Again, I want to hear more. I want to understand more. My gut reaction says that's a private issue, not a public one. But one here. And just to explain to John that the area where the bees are, we really don't have any trails over there. The entrance to the community gardens is just a little bit, I don't make, you know, probably 20, 30 yards away from this. So this is sort of on the back side of the community gardens where all these hives are. And again, it's typically just the beekeepers who go into this area. It's like I said, it's really not part of a managed trail system that we have. So.
It's still public land and you can't rule out somebody going there. No, no. True. True. Yes. Yeah. So I think what you're going to send to us is some information on all this and we can kind of continue this chat next time. I think it's the consensus for everybody. Yes.
Okay. So I'll get your emails and send the. Information to everybody on the committee. Perfect. Make it easier for you to send to Linda. She can distribute it that way. You don't have to worry about buying emails. Make it easier for you. Wonderful. Okay. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. Appreciate it.
All right. On to 6B community garden fees. Linda.
I guess at one point Sean and I talked about the garden fees. It's they're ridiculously low. You know, they're somewhere around $12. I think for residents, 24 for non-residents and 18, I think seniors, you know, we just find that does turn into a bit of a problem because we find a lot of people abandoning their plots, you know, so, you know, year three of a drought in order to grow things there, you pretty much have to be there almost every other day watering. And I think people just, you know, sort of midway midstream of the summer tend to just give up on it. So we've ended up with so many plots. So we've ended up with so many plots that are just these huge overgrown weed masses, you know, that, that have been left unattended for, you know, for probably a few months. And it's almost impossible to rent those as Sean can attest to in the following year, they look at them like, yeah, no, I don't think we want those. So, you know, I think, I think we need, we need more of a commitment, I think, from people and I, I'm not sure. And if they don't, if they do abandon them, we need to have at least the funding available to go through. And, you know, rush hog them all, you know, and, and, you know, make them at least somewhat attractive and, you know, the following year for other people to take on, or we just give them up, give up altogether on them and, you know, turn them back into wildlife habitat. So, you know, those are our options. But I think what, you know, we've looked into other communities, I think Wellesley's charges like 80 for a plot, I think Sudbury's 60 or something like that. And I'm not saying that we have to double the price, but I think we have to make it. People. Just make more of a financial commitment to it so that they stick around, and they continue gardening. When's the last time we even changed the fees?
What? 1928.
No, yeah, the Commission decided just to increase them by a few dollars, you know, like maybe no more than $5 or something. And I don't, I mean, that that doesn't, you know, that's barely a packet of seeds anymore at this point. And, you know, I think, I mean, I like to see at least, you know, and with water prices going up, and, you know, they're doing a lot of watering over there now. So, you know, we end up spending money, you know, from the garden fees for paying for the water, too. So, what does it cost us to clean up one that's abandoned? You know, it's somebody's time, you know, it'd be Brian or Jane. How many hours of time? I would say it's at least an hour, I would think, you know. I would say it's more than that, days. Probably a day. A day. I mean, that's just one, I'm talking about one plot, okay. Days to clean the front. And again, you don't know when you're in the plot either. Somebody could have fencing in there. Somebody could have, you know, old tires for that matter. I mean, there could be debris in there, you know. Oh, yeah, okay. To me, you know, it does take time to go through there, clean everything up, throw it away. Could you also charge an abandonment fee? You know, in addition. In addition to raising, I mean, I don't know if anyone does this. I'm not familiar with community gardens. But, I mean, if there is a cost associated with abandonment, because they're not taking care of it. I mean, I know they forfeit whatever they paid for the year. As a practical matter, though, I think it's probably a much safer bet to get the money up front. Like, if they've abandoned it, I'm not sure what the stick is to make the abandonment fee. Who knows where they are. I'm going to be out there every day to check on them. Yeah, I'm not chasing after people for money. That's not. That's not part of my job title. Some people get sick and something happens and they just can't do what they had planned to do or they die. Right. They're definitely not paying an abandonment fee. Yeah, good luck getting that out of the trust. They've already paid the ultimate abandonment fee. I know. Stupid idea. Stupid idea. But I'm also increasing the fees. I mean, everything else goes. I mean, that's we're losing money on that, you know, the cost it takes to maintain it. Is it worth $20? Is it worth just considering grandfathering in those who've stuck through the droughts and are still there, like keeping them like beautiful and productive? And that's something that's the only problem that that turns into subjective. OK, what is beauty? And like, you know, if I've been there twice a summer and I mean, so I'm just I agree. I don't want it to be a penalty, as Barbara said, for someone who got sick or just had a an off a year who's been there for a decade. It's just how do we pay for Linda's or Brian's time in the water fee and just make sure it's like at least, you know, a net zero for the town versus a pretty big loss leader for us. And so does Linda, do we have a recommendation for what that dollar figure would be to do what Sean just said? Oh, I don't know. I mean, without having an uproar. In a riot or something, I'm not sure exactly what we would come to. But I mean, I think what you don't understand either is the amount of time it takes to manage these gardens. I mean, the amount of time that Emily takes, you know, reaching out to people, getting their applications in, turning the money in, you know, assigning plots to them. I mean, it is an unbelievable time sink for this office, especially in the spring. And I'd love to find somebody else to manage these. You know, if somebody has a recommendation or somebody who's going to volunteer to do this, I would love to pass that off. But. But it's, you know, it's crazy. You know, I mean, at some point, you know, rather than, you know, keep handing out more plots that get abandoned, it might be just time just to shut them down altogether, you know, and say this, you know, too bad kind of thing. But I mean, I can come with a number off the top of my head. I haven't really given it much thought. And but I mean, I would love to. How many plots have we got, Linda? Oh, God, there's probably like 200 out there. And how many are getting abandoned every year? Like what percentage do you think are weeds? I'd say there's probably, you know, maybe 10 percent of them are, you know, are getting or probably abandoned at this point. And in a lot of the ones that were way in the back or way at the end of a row, we just we don't even bother renting out anymore. You know, so it's just again, it's just not worth it in the end. It's a ton of work. It is good butterfly habitat. They saw some bronze coppers there earlier this year and no doubt swallowtails. Oh, yeah, because there's a lot of people plant flowers and all kinds of other stuff there. It's Brian has planted a ton of stuff, you know, between the two garden plot. There's like a front and a back. And there's a huge area that we've planted a lot of trees and shrubs and herbaceous stuff. So, you know, we've really tried to improve that area for habitat. Tons of birds there. Tons and tons of birds. So because they really enjoy all the fruit out there. You know, so in a way, it's a community garden, but we are feeding wildlife because of those blueberries. Those blueberries, those blackberries, the raspberries, you know, and anything else out there is definitely getting eaten. The bunnies love it. And the bunnies, the voles. The voles ate all my stuff. So, you know, even the chipmunks, they started going after my gooseberries, which they hadn't ever done in the last 10 years. And one thing to think through to add on to this kind of and to piggyback on the previous one. Linda, correct me if I'm wrong. We don't have as nearly as a robust system. We don't have a system of tracking who has a hive in our apiary, and so I'm not saying we charge them fees, but I think we should just standardize that process and kind of bring it all into one, right? So who actually has an apiary over there? Do we have, is there a capacity? Who's allowing that in? And so I think the whole kind of area can kind of, you know, maybe for next year, come up with a plan of what would be a more appropriate fee structure, who would, you know, monitor it, and then bringing the apiaries into that. I'm sure that would be a more appropriate fee. I would have to be more kind of a pay for that, and because, you know, you pay per hive, per brood box or whatever, but that's kind of gone a little bit more of like a wild west of who's coming in. I was like, we should just get a rain on that as well, if that makes sense. Linda, could we just ask you to make a recommendation of what you think is best? Yeah, let me give it a little more thought, I guess, because I think people now that we're... You know what Wellesley's doing in Sudbury and Weston. Yeah. But also now that we're getting to the end of this garden season, we'll have a better handle of how many people abandoned this year, you know, their plots and get an idea of that. And, you know, I kind of give it a little bit more thought about, you know, what's being used, what's not being used in that area, what we can do to, you know, improve that. But, yeah, like I said, it's just, it's an extraordinary amount of work given, you know. Okay. Well, we'll look for your recommendation. That's the best thing. Yeah, no, I'll have Emily work on that. Maybe put a table together for you for what other towns charge, okay? I mean, it sounds like a lot, but even if you increased it 50%, it's going from $20 to $30. And, you know, I think for most people, if they really enjoy it and they're going back every year, they'll be like, it's fine. We were wondering when you're going to increase it. I don't think it'll send people away. Yeah, I see what other towns are doing. Not in this community. Yeah. Every other town is charging $50. Charging $30 is cheap. Yeah. You might just want to get to the point where, you know, every year or every other year you are increasing it just to go up with inflation.
Okay. No one else seems to mind charging us more money for everything we're buying these days, so. Exactly. Oh, my God. Okay. Thank you for that, folks. On to 6C, town report draft. Linda. Emily wrote a town report that she included in your packet, and she was looking for feedback. Is there any input for an approval that those are due on September 30th, which is the day of our next meeting? So, we'd like to have it submitted before our next meeting. One thing I noticed, I think you missed Luke's name on there. Oh, goodness. I was counting. I'm like, someone's missing. We fixed the glitch. As I've said before, thank you, Lisa, for pointing that out. And as I've said before, I'm open to debating, like, whether and how much. I'm actually contributing. But yes, I physically am attending. So, I appreciate it. Thank you. What is it you say you do here? The only, the thing that I thought we might be able to add, although maybe we're not there yet, I would defer to others. But, you know, I know Cliff has been sort of spearheading a little effort with Shannon and I think Lisa around sort of our tree policy and trying to give some form of credit to people. So, is that, is it worth mentioning that initiative here, or do we want to wait? I would put that. We've just had a very brief on that. I'd put that in a goal for next year. Yeah, we've done, we've done some research. Yeah, we've done a little bit. Okay. And there's something there. I would tweak. It says that I worked with the school committee to discuss alternative uses for 25 holiday. Worked with is overstating. I just sort of brought some ideas to them to do with what they want. Welcome to town politics. You, what you did was I worked with, right? So, change your standard about what you consider. We're working with, but yeah, you're tempted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know Linda, right? I think, don't we have to update? I don't know if this is a goal. It's probably something we have to do, but don't we have to update chapter 194 for, is it the updated flood maps? So, we added all the floodplain management stuff in there last year as an interim measure. The floodplain management bylaw was passed in town meeting in April. We're still waiting to hear from the attorney. The attorney general's office, if they approve that, and when we get the go ahead that they did approve it, we can, well, I will schedule another meeting. I mean, I will schedule a hearing to remove all that floodplain stuff that we just threw into chapter 194 as interim measure. I mean, it also gives us an opportunity to look at some other things that we, if we want to change a few other, some wordage in the chapter 194 regulations. The only thing I would- Because I think you talked about trying to, yeah. Kind of make any of the tree replacement requirements kind of similar to what we're doing with chapter 193. Yes. Oh, we definitely would do that. And the other thing I don't like in there is this land subject to inundation. So never really understood the definition of that. I have no idea what we're regulating and I think we should just sort of throw that out. So unless Luke has an idea of what that means. Town council said that too, like, I have no idea what this is. And I said, I said, I don't either. So I think we did still manage to have two issues of our newsletter and technically Ribbit Rangers continued. So we still did some of that outreach. This was not my greatest year, but I managed a little bit. Awesome. Okay. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you for that update. Emily, thank you for the hard work on that, if you're listening. Okay. 6D, 27 New York Road, CR. Linda. So there was a CPC article and it's probably, what, over a year old, two years old? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 412 years old now, I think that we wanted to put in a boardwalk in order to connect York Road with Troutbrook and Sherman's Bridge and Castle Hill, kind of make a nice little connection between all those properties. And we do own 25 York Road, which was taken by tax title, but it's so wet, we can't really put a trail in there. And then the neighbors have already kind of broken the trail into 27, partially in there. Yeah. Yeah. partially in there. And we wanted to expand on that and see if we could put in some boardwalks that went across the wetlands so we could develop this trail. And we were speaking with the owners at 27 York. And in the meeting I had with them, what we thought would be the best option was they have a huge CR in their property. A good chunk of their property is in a conservation restriction. But there's this weird lobe down in the southern lower, you know, like the lowland part of their land that isn't in the CR. Whereas next to their house, all of it is in the CR, which is much more upland. And so I said, maybe we can, instead of rewriting the conservation restriction, maybe we can just change the plan, you know, make an update on the plan, which would be taking those 0.75 acres out of a CR next to their house and putting the 0.7 acre, 0.75 acres that's in the lowland section, putting that in the CR. And that way, because the CR was written many, many years ago, it's like this, you know, strangely three, four page document, which is nowadays is what, like 20 some pages or even maybe longer that has to go through this whole state approval process. So to kind of avoid that, let's just change the plan. And so what you see, what they sent in the other day was they're asking to swap the 0.75 acres, for about 2.8 acres in their backyard, which is absolutely not what we talked about. So I think this is one of these great examples, you give them an inch, they take a mile sort of thing. And that's, I don't, I don't think we can do that. Because again, this was part of the planning board process too, when they did the subdivision plan. You know, swapping land is one thing, but I would think it'd be, you know, identical acreage, versus, you know, they're asking to take pretty much a huge chunk of their, their rear yard out of the CR, including areas that are, you know, that are, you know, they're asking to take pretty much a huge chunk of their, their rear yard out of the CR, including areas that are, you know, they're asking to take pretty much a huge chunk of their, their rear yard out of the CR, including areas that are wet and stuff like that, which they really can't develop anyway. So yeah, I was kind of surprised by that, when I got that. And I think, I don't know if they just didn't understand, you know, I thought in the conversation, it was, we had, it was, you know, what I was proposing was identical swapping, so, of area. So, so I, we still have a little bit of work to go. I just didn't want to know if you guys would be open to this kind of swap, you know, 0.75 acres for another 7.5 acres on the property, you know, 0.75 acres for another 7.5 acres on the property, you know, 0.75 acres for another 7.5 acres on the property, you know, just moving one area into a CR and taking one out. Is that something that, that you guys would be open to? You guys want me to make sure I clarify, Linda, are you asking, are we open to the original deal that you kind of talked about with them? Yes. Got it. Even Steven, the only thing I think I would agree to, this is what they, what they're asking for is, is, is way, you know, you know, four or five times more than what we had, I was expecting. So. Is there even a way to do this, Linda?
I, you know, again, I think we still have to go through an approval process, maybe with planning board and conservation. Oh, I mean, just, just a technical, in the field. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think we could do that. I mean, it would be a change in plan, you know, it would be submitting a brand new plan. Actually putting the stakes in the ground and all the stuff you have to do. Yeah, we could do that. I mean, we do have a surveyor here in town, you know, a town surveyor. You could actually build whatever you're talking about. Yeah. Oh, you mean the boardwalk? Yeah, we have, we have money for that. We have plants. We have every, all that was approved by CPC. It's just, we don't own the land to put the boardwalk on. And so this was our way of trying to get an easement from them. And then the only way they would allow us an easement was by doing kind of this, this, you know, land swap within the CR.
So. Okay. How high would that be over the, over the wetland, Linda? It would just be maybe, you know, probably eight, eight to 12 inches, depending, you know, no, no, it's a really low boardwalk. So if you fall off, you're not going to die, you'll just get wet. Yeah, no, it's relatively dry, except in the wet season, it gets pretty wet over there. I've walked it, you've, you've marked it by the... Far end of the pond there.
I used to walk him back there and get onto the conservation land. Mm-hmm.
You know, all these, when I was walking more, yeah. Because there's, somebody has blazed a trail in there on the 27 York Road side of that, the detention basin. And we own half the detention basin and that other side, you know, like the west side, that's pretty wet. And it's, it's, it's pretty soaking wet. So... Yeah, I'm familiar with it. So, Commissioner, are we good with that? If it's something we can do it, even for even swap? Yeah, if it makes it more useful. We need to ask our legal team here.
If you're talking about me. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, I'm fine with the idea of, of the sort of swapping out. I agree with what Lisa just said. It seems like it really actually, as a practical matter, just makes this a more usable space. So, I like that. You know, I think probably what you said, Linda, is right. We could just, if the, I mean, if the CR document's that simple, and I think it was in the packet maybe, but I didn't read it super carefully. But I think we could just, if all the parties are agreeing, amend the plan. I'm not sure whether we'd need to go to EEA, given how old this is. I mean, that's a consideration. So, I'm just saying, I don't know what getting the approval from all the parties actually is going to look like in the end. But I don't see why we couldn't, if everybody's on board.
Okay. Anybody else?
Any final objections? Or non-violent objections?
Okay. That's why we have Zoom meetings, right? So, nobody thinks it's violent. Well, let me see how vulnerable they are to the equal, even Stephen Swamp. We'll see what we can do. Otherwise, I think this trail is pretty much a dead issue then. So, okay.
Love it. Thank you. I was probably the only one left that was in on this project. Your road used to be a dead-end street. And then they made it go to Oxbow, and they put this whole thing in. And we spent, oh, that project went on and on and on for so long. I can remember it well. It's come full circle, Barbara. It's come full circle. Hayes Development. I know that company. All right. Last but not least on this one is 6E, 17B Bennett Road Appraisal. Linda. Mr. Warner Gossels came to us a while back, and he owned 17B Bennett, and was wondering if the commission had any interest in that. And my response to him was that we would have to do an appraisal on that. It is an upland parcel. I did talk to the appraisal who did 27 Sherman Bridge. Was it Sherman Bridge? Or was it a different one? Forgetting now. He didn't know. No, he did 4 Bennett Road for us, the other parcel on Pine Brook. And he said that for an undeveloped parcel in Wayland, you can expect to pay about $300,000 per acre because there's no utilities. There's no nothing there. And all kinds of tree removal and grading would have to be done. And that would make that property at 3.3 acres probably close to a million plus. And after talking with Susan, she said we really don't even have that amount of money in CPC right now for land purchases, for acquisitions. And again, we're not in the market to pick up developable parcels of land that are right next to other houses. So my suggestion to him was to build something like a conservation cluster there. So he could still put in two or three houses. He also owns, I think it's 14 Winthrop. It's a way for accessing this parcel. And in the process, they have to preserve something like 38% of the land and the conservation cluster. So it would be kind of a win-win. There would still be development, but there would also be ability for the Conservation Commission to acquire at least the lower portion of that property, which abuts Pine Brook. And but he wanted to, Mr. Warner-Gosles wanted us to get an appraisal. But after the conversation, he said, well, we're not going to get an appraisal. We're not going to get an appraisal. So he said, well, we're not going to get an appraisal. So he said, well, we're not going to get an appraisal. So he said, well, we're not going to get an appraisal. So he said, well, we're not going to get an appraisal. So the conversation I had with Susan, she just didn't think it was worthwhile because, again, there's no way that we would have the money at CPC to actually purchase it, even especially knowing that it's probably going to be fairly expensive, given that it's developable land for the construction of homes. So I just want to see how you guys felt about that. It's definitely not on our open space list of inventory. Do we know for sure that he would insist on us paying market value? I mean. It seems as though if he approached us, maybe he's willing to let it go for something that would be within our budget. I think that would have to be almost half, though, you know, given talking to Susan about, you know, the available funding that CPC has. And I think he bought this more as an investment because he did buy 14 Winthrop also in order to access the property, you know, for development. So I've never really gone out and asked him if he would be willing to, you know. I think he was just trying to figure out how much it was worth to see whether or not, you know, what direction he wanted to go with that. But like I said, I'm, you know, we had our hands full already with a lot of parcels in this, you know, with one and a half staff to manage them. So taking on another three and a half acre property is a lot. You know, it really is. So.
Thoughts? So we don't have the money and we don't want the property anyways.
Your decision is not my decision. But I mean, you know, it's we're strapped already. Come on. We we managed twelve hundred acres with one point one and a half staff. You know, it's it's it's a pretty impossible job as it is. And I mean, it's a beautiful area over there. I know we have a lot of owls and raptors up there. It does border. Pinebrook, you know, at least the lower portion of that does, you know, of course, it'd be beautiful to have. But I don't think we can compete, you know, you know, with some developer who's probably willing to pay a lot more for that parcel, you know, so.
Well, to Luke's point, is it worth asking? Like, is it we can just ask and be honest and upfront and be like, this is what we have in case. I mean, owls have just lost another whole bunch of habitat. So I don't know. But I think it's worth it. I think it's worth it. Yeah. Yeah. Worth an ask. I will do it. I'll find out from Susan what I'm just curious what we do have.
So we know kind of our. Budget, but we did spend quite a bit in the last few years, get some good parcels so I can see. Well, we'll run a little low in the kitty. Okay.
Anybody else on that one before we move on? Okay. Public comment, I don't see any hands. Okay. No one's even with us at this point. And Barbara, this is AA. How are we looking for August 19th minutes? Barbara. They were fine. I just mentioned a minor thing.
Okay. Anybody have anything else? And if not, do you want to approve the minutes for August 19th, 2026, please?
Don't move. Thank you, Cliff. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, Luke. Roll call, please. Lisa Aubin. Yes. Luke Legere. Yes. Barbara Howell. Yes. Cliff Lewis. Yes. John Storer. Yes. Shannon Fisher. Yes. Sean Ferris. Yes. Thank you, folks. Any last-minute thoughts, comments, concerns? No. I like bears. I'm excited that they're back. You what? Simon Stephart? I like the bears. I'm glad we have them back. It's cool. The deer were cute a long time ago, but they're not cute anymore. Bears can help kill the deer. No. Maybe some coyotes. Oh, we got a lot of coyotes. Yeah, we do. On our game camera, that's what we see most is coyotes. I had one with a black back go through a couple days ago. And I know they mix with dogs, but the coloring, he looked almost like a dog. That's cool. That's funny.
All right. We have nothing else. I'll take a motion for adjournment, please. Yeah. Motion to adjourn. And watch the Pats game kick off. Kick off at 830, right? Look at this. Right on time. Look at this. You're walking, folks. That's impressive. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have a second on the Clips motion? Second. Second. Thank you. There goes Lisa. Roll call, please. Lisa Alban? Yes. Luke Legere? Yes. Barbara Hall? Yes. Will Lewis? No, but. John Storr? Yes. Shannon Fisher? Yes. Sean Fersey, yes. All right, folks. Appreciate it.
We have, let's see, 2A on our, right? And we have, I believe, I don't think there's anybody here for that. We did not receive any new information, and my understanding is that they, also, continued with the planning board, so I don't, I believe we'll probably continue with this until the next meeting. Which is when, Linda, what's the date on that, sorry? That would be the 30th of September. Okay. All right. Someone might want to make the motion for continuing to send her both to the 30th after 630. So moved. Thank you, Luke. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, Cliff. Roll call, please. Lisa Aubin. Yes.
Sorry. You're good. Luke Bougere. Yes. Barbara Howell. Yes. Cliff Lewis. Yeah. John Storer. Yes. Shannon Fisher. Yes. And Sean Fersey, yes. Thank you, folks.
Moving on to 2B is the 68 Lakeshore Drive Whalen DEP file number 322-1057. It's a continued notice of intent filed pursuant to Whalen's Wetlands and Water Resource Protection Bylaw and the Whalen Protection Act. Submitted by Jeremy Jenkins for the after the fact work performed 68 Lakeshore Drive in Whalen, Mass., including installation of a floating dock, gangway, ramp, retaining wall, patio, and repairs to the covered porch steps. Property is shown on Assessor's Map 42D, parcel 56, and is located within 100 feet of a boring vegetated wetlands, bank, and land underwater. Linda. We're going to continue this one also to the September 30th date.
Okay. Anyone want to make that motion? I hope so. I'll move. Yeah. Are you looking for that one? I'll make a motion then to continue under both sometime after 630 to the 30th of September. Cliff? It's a move. Thank you. Lisa, do I hear a second? Oh, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Cliff, a second. Roll call, please. Lisa Aubin. Yes. Luke Legere. Yes. Barbara Howell. Yes. Cliff Lewis. Yes. John Storer. Yes. Shannon Fisher. Yes. And Sean Fersey. Yes. Thank you, folks.
On to 2C. Sorry. Yeah, 2C. 26 Rice Road in Wayland. This is DEP file number 322-1066. This is a continued abbreviated notice of resource area delineation file pursuant to Wayland's Wetlands and Water Resources Protection Bylaw and the Protection Act submitted by Adam Stack for the confirmation of a resource area delineation at 26 Rice Road in Wayland, Mass. The site is shown on Assessor's Map 48, Lot 93. Linda? I believe we have everybody on board for this one. What happened was we had a peer review done by David Burke with Doug Dillon, their representative present. And that's in your agenda packet, the results of that. So if Dave or anyone else has questions, please feel free to reach out to us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Doug, want to present that? You're welcome.
Yeah, absolutely. I can go ahead and open up on that. So Doug Dillon, Wetland Scientist, Guard Consulting for applicant, as you just stated, Adam Stack, 26 Rice Road. So I'm going to go right through my screen.
Okay. Okay.
serious. If we're going to refrigerate for as long as one minute, I just want to give you a quick Nonlovice statement. But this is why you need to do that G greatest for all our long-term appointments for your End purchase thanks to you and we always try to have this along with our vice chair. And the other thing is we completely collect... We are keeps getting their cases found. ー Since the death of like, Danreditator. your memory here you have centrally located wetland here
and
oh we had uh at least said dave burke here who um i don't know if i saw him in the uh audience or not here um but oh you are here yeah present okay how you done um
we reviewed the perimeter of the wetland line made some revisions which include um there were some sort of pockets here and those were eliminated so now it's instead of uh going inward it's jumping from 43 to 54 in this in particular area as well as uh down here we did a jump from 26 to 32 filling in that and making it a bit more of a flush sort of a wetland line we walked the perimeter of the site of course um in addition we reviewed the sort of um lower kind of uh
panel type area here and so we added another uh four flags one two one two right here to continue that neck down and we found in field that the remainder of the area did not necessarily meet the definition of it didn't have a bank and now that did it have wetland vegetation or hydric soils but you know just to the greatest most limit of what you would uh be able to deem as a bank and you know dave and i had a discussion on site and we're thinking maybe his Historically, like 100-something years ago, maybe there was some farm fill here that was common in eastern Mass, central Mass. Just generally speaking, of course, we saw evidence of that in the sort of uniformness and size of the rocks and cobbles on site, being like a 6- to 8-inch, 10-inch, 12-inch stone, which is common to the area and common to former agricultural fields just throughout this area. So we observed that. That is now depicted. The original flagging sort of placed it just from 1 to 102. Now we have this additional 30-foot run here, which goes, you know, we have marked with 100R and 101R, 102R, 103R. So that is just about that, and I will turn it back over to either Adam or Dave Burke, if you want to add on to that. I'll... Okay. Happily, happily began the conversation. Yeah, I could add a little bit to that and give you some flavor of my methodology there. My name is Dave Burke. I haven't seen you in a while. Nice to see you all, Linda included. And I was engaged to, what do they say, peer review 26 Rice Road, and that's the project before the commission this evening. The way that I approached this was to, prior to Doug and I moving flags on site, I get out there twice for several hours each visit. And I really wanted to nail down the characteristics of the outlet of the PVP, which is what we were calling it nine years ago. So it was kind of early in 2018 when I did some work on the property back then. But that PVP has been looked at. It's my understanding it's been looked at and has not met the criteria. I don't know much more about it except that's how I reference it. So it's a standing body of water above the- Could you put the map back up for me for us? Yeah. Thank you. That's helpful. It's above grades. above the pipe in Thompson Road and if if it inlets if it outlets it looks like at some point it probably did go down that hill I mean that's practically irrefutable so what I do first is to is to nail down evidence of hydrology through plants and soils the soils being the most important really there's a there's not there's not a whole lot of wetland vegetation there the overstory is is dominant and the deer have done a number on the understory so what we're left with is there's quite a bit of spice bush in there which is a decent indicator but not the best and there's glossy buckthorn for instance American elm red maple a couple royal fern here and there which can be helpful cinnamon fern here and there Pennsylvania said it's a good upland indicator so I kind of have a look at those those clues and then I start drilling holes up and down that from what we call what was originally stopped the flagging originally stopped at number one and number 102 and it was cut across there and I noticed that there was a semblance of a channel that left the site and so what what you have to be aware of is that you if you can connect hydric soils downstream and hydric soils upstream and then you have a definite channel between those two areas you do in fact have an intermittent stream but the definition is one that I've been working with extensively lately and it's often paired right down to the word as it should be and it's a brief definition but it does state that it's a matter of perspective and whenever you take a look at the water and have a good look at your." that in an intermittent stream is a moving body of water which flows in the ground due to a hydraulic gradient and within a definite channel and and though that's the first sentence of the definition there's three more which i won't bring up but that about sums up what i look for right off the bat so when you walk down that that hillside the topography if we can zoom southerly a little bit there doug let's see what's below there we go um you can see that the topo does indicate some sort you know it obviously indicates a uh a channel of sorts but what what we need to see is a definite channel and in this case back to my hydric soils i started at the at the culvert and i wore my way up with an auger all the way up into say where you flag 100 was and i did not encounter hydric soils uh until i got north of say one you know our final southern flags uh what i can barely read that 10 101 r and 102 r you know that's where i i hit the hydric soils and that's um makes sense because there was a channel in that area and it's fairly flat in that area as well um i don't think there is a channel to heat at it is a moonlight channel the topo on the the shown on plan is doing it nonetheless you know on winter longける it actually i think it's a little steeper than it looks there in some particular sections in our gener tune and so in steeper sections we get more of a channel where that where it flattens out even for six or eight or ten feet the channel disappears and it becomes an interrupted channel or what's often called a segmented channel and so you you know evidence of a shadow 20 feet up from the pai then the glide you know of what it with the assistance of and the soil 2006 works to help the cell amount the width becomes 30 feet less the amount of the PRP that they would be used indeed said before anything because they're spread out enough and there wasnaj C See we got lines CONTROL a MEMBER OF THE PROCESS20122129 on the region 10 and we see quite often 20 feet up from the pipe, 40 feet up from the pipe, 60 feet up from the pipe, but they don't connect. And that's, in order to connect the two resource areas, you do need the word, the keyword is definite and in the ground. And so I looked hard for that, both, you know, physically and as far as physical attributes on the ground within the micro topography. The area that is channelized tends to have those stones that Doug was mentioning. And they do look like they were hand plucked out of fields or that they came up in a stone sifter or something. And it does. And I thought this years ago, it does look like a stone dump in there. And that can play around with the hydrology too. I mean, if they were filling in, you know, a big gully or something with stones, obviously that's going to have an impact. In any case, I didn't know any water like drafts. Going into the ground or being sucked out of the channel by sand or, you know, any such boulder contraption, not to say it hasn't happened at some point. But when I get down to the head wall here, that goes onto Thompson, that's a 12 inch RCP. And I always look at that, those very closely for evidence of recent hydrology. You look for something that might've, you know, that was, is obvious. Obviously brought down as float some more or, you know, floating matter within a, within a current, if you will. And the, I have good pictures of it too. It's devoid of that. And the channel really didn't look like it had conveyed flows in a, in a sometime. I drilled several holes right in front of it where you can see it is fairly flat, right at the 182 contour where the number 182 is. And I didn't, I was not coming up with, with hydric soil. So I got good upland indicators. I then went to the other side of the road and at the outfall, if you will, of the RCP, I also shined a flashlight down the pipe and you can barely see the other side. I think the pipes collapsed in the middle. I think it's one of the bell joints let go or something. I think it's in disrepair. However, at the outfall again, I, I drilled for hydric soils and found nothing. It's, it's, it's remnant of a floodplain on the other side. Linda, I don't know if you went over there, but it's a lot of European buckthorn and, and rich loamy soils. I mean, I was hitting 14 inches of, of not black, but you know, chestnut brown loamy soil over there. And, and I, I did not encounter a hydric, you know, indicators as far as vegetation on soil skills. So, um, that's why I stopped the, the stream up at, at, you know, 10, 101 R and 102 R cause we lose the channel there. And then it picks up again for, you know, 10 feet or so that it, it really does disappear. I mean, you could roll a golf ball across it and it wouldn't bounce. It's, it goes flat. And, um, you know, we, we need to see a definite, a definite, a definite, a definite, a definite, a definite, a definite, a definite, a that channel in the ground. And so my findings did include what Doug said as far as on the Western side of the property there and the wetland rather. And we moved around 10 or 11, 12 flags. I don't know what it was. And it did wind up increasing the upland to an extent. One of my other investigations, by the way, which was not included in my report was I kind of stumbled across an interesting mass GIS representation of the area. And it was prior to the construction of the fields across Rice Road. And they showed a stream over there that ran on and ran through underneath Rice Road by a culvert. And it supposedly discharged onto this property and would have, it would have co-joined with, you know, the flows that one time came out of the PVP area. And I went and looked for it and I couldn't find any sign of it. I couldn't find a hair of it. So, and I didn't see it on the other side of the street where the soccer field is. So what I'm, I mean, I guess the long and short of that is, I don't know if, when I was there nine years ago, I didn't see that area. I looked hard. I mean, I looked very closely at that whole entire place and I didn't see any signs of it. I still don't see signs of it. But if there was meddling with the hydrology on the other side of the road, and it, you know, had an effect on water passing from one side to the other, who knows if it dried that stream out? And who knows if that, streams like that are gonna be dry for another three years or four years, the way things are going with the climate. So Linda, to your question, and I'll close it with this, as far as looking at intermittent streams under drought conditions, I only know of one way of looking at intermittent streams and that's, you know, in normal. And I don't know. There's a specific directive to look at them differently during drought. If you found something, I'd be happy to hear about it. But certainly, perennial streams, we would look at taking into context, you know, their flow with drought. So, that that's my summary. Thank you. Thanks, Ted. Linda, could you kick it to you? No. I, I mean, I did ask Dave before, about, whether, you know, Linda, could you kick it to you? No. I mean, I did ask Dave, before, about, whether, you know, whether, you know, there's a difference between, right, before about whether he had, there was water in the stream, you know, in 2018, when he did the delineation. And because I don't, I looked through my photos, I could not find any photos of that area. Most of the photos were of the vernal pool, or the potential vernal pool that was on site. And I did leave a message for our circuit rider, but she's on vacation. So to ask that question about how do we handle intermittent streams during the third year of a drought, for the most part, and, you know, is there, you know, if it's, if there's no, I mean, I think there's shows from the topography that water does flow in that direction. I mean, I did walk around there a bit too, and there's a lot of debris there. So, I mean, I can understand how the flow of the water would probably not follow a really defined channel, because there's things that really break up the flow there. And so, yeah, I'm not sure that's a good rationale either. But I do think that, you know, at some point, there was a water flowing there. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a culvert underneath the Thompson Road at that location. And I, you know, I'm not sure how you can make a decision, you know, whether or not there is a stream or not a stream, an intermittent stream after three years of a, you know, a serious or severe drought that we've been going through. I think it's questionable how we can handle that. So, and I'm not sure I have a good answer. And like I said, I was waiting to hear from the circuit rider to see what her opinion was about how to handle this. I mean, the second issue we had was, you know, we had a lot of water flowing there. We asked, you know, the homeowner, the property owner to file a new NOI because of the changes in the scope from the previous order condition that was on site. And I think it's hard for us if there is a violation on the property. That's another question I have for DEP. I mean, how do we, how do, can we move forward on anything in this, on this property? And the third thing is I was informed by the treasurer that we really can't issue permits for this property right now anyway. So, okay. That's my second question. We cannot what? We cannot issue permits for this property right now. So. Yep. So what were the next plan of action then, Belinda? Continuation? Like what's the next? Well, it would be nice to get some sort of guidance, I think, from DEP on this one, just because again, you know, we saw that there was a stream. It was, it was delineated as a stream or, or, you know, hydric soils in 2018. And now because of, you know, the drought situation. Is that something we can just ignore or do we, you know, just use current conditions as, as the basis for making our decisions? I'm not really sure. So I don't have an answer for that. If, if I may, Mr. Chair and Belinda, I mean, we should keep in mind that it's, it's, while there is a definition for an intermittent stream, you're really talking about the components of the stream. Yeah. I mean, we should keep in mind that it's, it's, while there is a definition for an intermittent stream, you're really talking about the components of the stream. protected, right? The stream itself is not necessarily protected. What's protected is the bank and the land underwater body. And, and that sometimes gets lost in the Shuffle. So when we go looking, you know, for an intermittent streamer to identify one in the field, your key attribute is, is going to be bank. And it's going to be, you know, as stated in the, in the, in the, you know, the, the bajo that's collect, okay. Okay. Yeah. That's island. Yeah. And I Just wanted to take a moment. I hadn't taken a wherewithal. Okay. definition it's it's going to be a signs of a channel and why that channel is now you know if you will obliterated or segmented or intermittent or whatever it don't know water will flow downhill as we know but um if it breaks out of a channel and we can't tell you know exactly where it's going again in the ground then you got you have to break you should break the stream and and see what's up gradient what's down gradient and then it can determine if it's protectable based on yeah but let me go back to your your question about the stream you know um across the street based on gis i'm just looking at it now that there is a stream that shows the stream that comes from the field across the street it goes under under rice road and it enters into the vernal pool and then it shows it does show an intermittent stream that goes down and feeds the wetland which is south of thompson road not not you know through number two which has wetlands according to this on it and then there's also um there's an empty lot a vacant lot right below that that is definitely wetlands i've been down there before it's a tax title you know it's in tax title and i've been there to investigate that and that stuff has wetlands so it is a system there it's not it's not just oh i'm not arguing that linda but don't get me wrong i'm not arguing that and and when i when i looked at the gis and i saw that it was you know dp had tagged it as wetlands across uh thompson road and i thought sure i'd go over there and find and find hydric soils when i bought on the other side of that pipe but there is there's a distinct break there and that you know that's all we have to work with is is what and i i bet i probably put six or eight holes out there in the lowest points trying to find hydric soil and there's no doubt you know water flows downhill they put pipes under roads for good reasons and and farmers you know don't do work for no reason so but the fact of the matter is i i think we're kind of stuck with what we what we can interpret today unless the circuit rider could reflect on the conditions within a within a drought i that's you know that's where in my experience that's where we uh that's how you make the call and if it connects again ups gradient down gradient you know don't forget the last thing they tell you in the definition of the stream is that portion which is uh down gradient uh upgrading of all other resource areas is uh not a protectable stream so i would just like to ask one question too if i can or on this topic here since uh this is adam sack the owner of 26 race road and lived here for now six years been working on this property uh for six seven or eight so i've seen this i've witnessed this i've been asked by this board multiple times to verify if this was a vernal pool we had three different scientists come out and they couldn't find the evidence of it i think it's very clear now that after oxbow did the flagging they had an idea we had a peer reviewed by dave burke who came up with his own assumptions and it's been proven that some of the the information about this property may be out there but may not be true um so i realized that my property is in a violation state and i need to make uh what i'm looking to get here is just that this is verified so that i can go back to you with the correct information to finalize this property move some things along and just move forward and without having this delineation it's hard for me to give you the information that i need to make sure that this is a real property and that i'm you an accurate picture moving forward. And it gets a little frustrating when I've done what you've asked so many times with different scientists and it's still not enough. This was paid for and then now peer-reviewed. Dave did soil testings and I don't know what else we can really do. It kind of is what it is at this point. And I'm not asking for a permit tonight. We're asking to just have this delineation verified so that we can, you know, clean up the NOI or reapply for an NOI and get this property into out of violation stage. So I really hope there could be some movement on that tonight so that I can move forward in rectifying the situation that I'm in. Gotcha. Thank you. So, Commission, open thoughts, comments, concerns?
So I would be interested to hear back from DEP. I think that's an important piece of information for us to have. But I guess I am struggling a little bit to see how that would, you know, what we might hear back from DEP would necessarily... change anything, given what we've heard from Mr. Burke here this evening. So, Lynn, I don't know if you have a thought on that, but I know this is an issue, the question of how do we gauge or determine what or what is not an intermittent stream given the severe drought that we've been under for a long time. I believe that's something DEP is dealing with on a bunch of different properties right now. So I'd like to know the answer, but is it going to change anything is my question. Well, it would change if whether or not, you know, this area is jurisdictional, you know, and for, like I said, you know, the drought does affect the status of a perennial stream that we can't, you know, determine the stream status during a drought. But there's no mention in any of the regulations about how you handle, you know, drought conditions for an intermittent stream. And, you know, this saying that this is completely dried out and there's no hydric soils, you know, is that a temporary thing? Is that a permanent thing? I really don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I think, again, the hydrology has changed a little bit since this, since this property has been developed. And yes, I know one of the conditions of the permit for this property when we issued it was to have the vernal pool certified before the construction started or have, you know, have it, the certification process start. And that wasn't done. And it was, you know, we looked at this property years ago for purchase. And at the time, Matt Byrne went out and said it was a. you know, potential certified invernal pool. And now it's not. So, I mean, I think that indicates right there that there's been some hydrology changes here. There's been some changes, you know, to the whole system. And now that it's not, no longer certifiable, I mean, I think, I think that's, that's an issue in itself too. And how that's affected, you know, the stream, the status, the water flow. I don't really, you know, that's, I don't, you know, I'm not here. I don't, I haven't been observing this thing for, for many years. So it's hard to make that determination, but I would, I would kind of like to have a little bit of input with DEP on this one, because I think there's a lot of questions here. So. From what my, from what Goddard told me was after doing the soil testing, hydronic soils aren't going to change over the course of three years. Yeah, I can, I can speak on that, Adam. Thank you. Hydric soils, once they've developed, they will, they're not going to go away after, after a period of two, three, four years drought. I mean, if that has developed, if that, you know, those depletions, those reduced matrices have developed in the soil, those will remain there during and after periods of drought. They don't, they don't necessarily go away. And that's what they've tested for. Yes. And that's for well and delineations. So. Okay. So it sounds like Linda wants to, until we hear back from DEP, that's kind of the next step for Mara and Linda, if we're comfortable. Yes. Yes. And like I said, we really can't move forward on this because the treasurer has outstanding taxes on this property. And I'm not looking for a permit. I'm looking for, but this is what I issue, Adam. You know, I issue something, I issue an ORAD and, and my understanding is under the bylaw that we have in place, you know, I can't do that. And you're talking about building. Adam, please stop interrupting. Go ahead. No, that's that. That applies to conservation too. Okay. So. Well, and that I, I, Sean, if I could just chime in, it strikes me, Mr. Stack, that that's something you need to take up with others in town hall. I fully support Linda's interpretation of what she's been told. So I, I'm, I'm with Linda on this. I take your point that an ORAD is not a permission to do work, but I do think it still qualifies in many respects as a permit. So I, I'm with Linda. I'm with Linda on this one. I think if you, if you want to argue that somehow this would fall outside of that prohibition, then I don't think we're the ones to answer that. I think you need to go somewhere else. That's just my two cents. I understand that. And I've been dealing with this with other, other towns. I mean, we, we're looking at something right now. We can make the decision and you can base this contingent upon clearing other things up so that at least we have something to work with here. I mean, I know what has to be done in town and it's not an issue. But I guess I keep asking the question is every time we come here, there's another, let's ask this question. Let's ask this question. And I can't move forward until we have some type of like agreement. And it's a, it's hard when I've done everything you asked for and it's still not enough. But Adam, how is this, how is this keeping you from filing a new NOI for your development? Because if this, if this changes the lines, if you look at the, if you, if you look at what's happening here, the, the, the 100ft and 50ft buffer changes. So I want to make sure that, okay, these are the finalized lines, period done. And then, and then, and then complete the NOI. This is, this is what my main concern is. Yeah, but the, the violation is to file for an after the fact permit for the house that's already built, a driveway that's already built, the garage that's already built, you know, that none of that's��이 can see. But if you look at, if you look at the 100ft buffer, it doesn't, it doesn't solve a lot of problems, right. a buffer, it does change in the area where things were disturbed. So if it's not, then my NOI needs to reflect on work that would have been done in a buffer zone or not. And there are differences. So that's what we're trying to nail down as, okay, this is the legitimate point. And here's your violation, or this is what you have to change, or this is what you have to move. If I don't have that, I can't move forward. Well, with all due respect, you could do that through the notice of intent process. So Linda's absolutely right about this. At any rate, Sean, I guess sort of looking at where we go, I mean, just my two cents on this, it seems to me getting input from DEP is important here. I certainly understand that Mr. Stack's frustrated that this process is taking longer than he thinks it should. But I think given the sort of complexity of this question and hearing from Linda that she was, wants DEP's input, I think we should wait for DEP's input. I tend to agree with Linda there. And I think this other issue of whether we can even do anything with this application also needs to be ironed out. So it seems to me we have to continue this. Okay. I just request some additional clarification. Are the questions primarily procedural or technical or sort of a combination? I just want to make sure I'm able to provide the commission with the information that I need. And I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Any additional? I would say it's a combination. I mean, it puts us in a really, sort of in a weird position because we issued a permit in 2018 based on the current conditions in 2018. Now they've changed. And now you're saying that we're going to file an NOI for the new development based on the new conditions when the house was built back in 2018-19 during a time when we had the new conditions. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. It just broke the border between free and dead and approved plan and approved delineation and approved buffer zone and everything else. So using the current delineation for a project that was built eight years ago, seven, eight years ago, I'm not sure I agree with that either. So I think we have a number of questions I think that need to be answered. Right? So essentially what, you know, one of the key components I'm looking for here is like width. Right. that new notice of intent surely will come, you know, a slurry of buffer zone plantings and restoration and mitigation, you know, what have you for the various areas in question. So verifying this now enables me to do that accurately and more precisely rather than have that be an ongoing question during that notice of intent filing. So, you know, my intention for this is to lock that down. And so such that when we do file that notice of intent, the, you know, certain square footages of the buffer zone will be accurate to the conditions today, and will allow for that restoration to be done appropriately and fully such as it should for this area.
Did I answer that question here? Go ahead, Cliff. Yeah. I'm not nearly as knowledgeable about the technical aspects as some of the other people, so bear with me. But if we have a proper delineation of what it was in 2018, why don't we use that? Well, that's my point, you know, for the new NOI. So, yeah. I'm not sure what the purpose of this is, you know. I found that not to be accurate to my findings on site. And so since, you know, hence, I've submitted with this delineation. But, I mean, it's very plausible that the work that was done between 2018 and 2026 is the cause of the change.
Yeah, I'm, again, I was not a part of that initial application, so I'm not necessarily able to say, you know, but I just know that my delineation on site yielded this. This is what. Well, I understand what you've done. You just went out and looked at what's there. But if we know what it was like in 2018 and the project was built in 2018, why don't we just get the project to conform with the conditions that were there in 2018? Can't. Can't do that. What do you mean you can't do that? Oh, excuse me. Dave Burke. Again, well, I don't know that you can't, but there's a standing, and I'm still not sure if it's written or not, but the three-year rule is applied to most delineations. That's common practice nowadays, but. What is this three-year rule? Well, Dave, we're doing an after-the-fact permit for this, you know, that was built back in 2018. Yeah. And you're saying, now we need to use the current delineation to permit something that was built that probably might not have been, you know. No, bear in mind, all I know about this is I go out and look at the resource areas. I don't really know about the other, the background of the other permit and this and that. So, probably. Well, I mean, I understand what you've done. That's not in question. If we were to do that. I mean, what is the financial implication of just saying, okay, we'll use the information that we had in 2018, make the project conform. Well, it's not accurate to the conditions on the site. No, it's not. Well, conditions change, but that, I mean, if you had, we knew what the conditions were in 2018. The house, whatever was done in 2018, I mean, conditions change all over town all the time. Well, and Cliff. I think what you're really sort of getting to here is ultimately after I asked Linda that initial question as I was sort of processing her response and thinking about this. What really makes this so complicated to my mind is we have sort of an enforcement essentially proceeding, right? So, to your good point, Cliff, the conditions existing today are almost certainly affected to some degree by the work that was done there over the past six or eight years. Right? So, that's why I'm most interested to hear back from DEP because I don't view this as, you know, there's not just the question of what do we do about an intermittent stream and drought conditions. I think we also have the extra layer of work was done out here that wasn't approved and, you know, that might have affected the hydrology and wetlands on the site, too. So, that to me is why I'm really most curious to hear back from DEP. Is DEP going to be able to opine on that subject? I don't know. But I want to see what their response is. Okay. You know, I don't know what their response would be, but that's why I'm curious to hear it. So, can I ask one question to that if that's the direction it's going? I mean, in eight or nine years ago, you guys were saying this was a potential vernal pool, which I have had three scientists now say is not a vernal pool. So, how can we use a delineation on something that we know for a fact now is not a vernal pool and was in question in 2018? If you were building… If you were building this now, it would be a different story. But I'm saying… What you had built in 2018 didn't cause this to be the case now. But there was no certification of it at that point. So, it was a thought. We were only looking at the wetlands back in 2018. That's what you're looking at is a wetland line. And that's what we used. The buffer zone was based on the wetlands in 2018 when we issued a permit for that. We issued a permit for this for your construction project. And, yeah. Yeah. I imagine things have changed. I mean, you build a huge road right on the top of the vernal pool. It's a driveway. It's not a road. It was a road. It was a driveway. But, again, it's… You know, that wasn't built to, you know, what we approved either. So, I mean, you've made… There's a number of changes here that we have no idea how it affects, you know, the current conditions. But what we're asking you to do is file an after-the-fact permit application, an NOI. For the current… What you built in 2018, which wasn't what we had approved. And I think it's only fair that you use the 2008 conditions for that. Because that's what we… You know, that's what we based our decision on. Not on this. 2018 you meant, not 2008. 18. Yeah. What did I say? Yeah. So, 2008. Just clarifying. Sorry. 2008? Yes. Okay. 18. 18? Yeah. So, I mean, the question being posed with this is, does this collection of points accurately represent the resource areas present on this property as depicted at the time of filing? You know, my contention is that it does. That's what I'm seeking the Commission to verify. And then we had a peer reviewer on site with me and verify. And we made some adjustments. And this is the sort of culmination of that process right here. So, let me at least get an answer from DEP, how they treat intermittent streams during, you know, like a long extended drought. Okay? Yep. Sure. And I would encourage… I would encourage Sean, if I may, just Mr. Stack, to reach out to the treasurer or whoever. I will definitely do this tomorrow. Yes. I'm sorry. You spoke over me. I didn't hear what you said. But just to finish my thought. I would… It's a worthwhile use of some time between now and our next meeting. Absolutely. Sorry for interrupting. Commissioner, anything else? Okay. I'm obviously in agreement. So, we'll need a continuation. I guess, Linda, next, the 30th, we'll shoot there. And hopefully, we get something from the DEP by then. Is that fair? Yes. I should hear back next week. Okay. Can I get a motion then under both for continuation sometime after 630 for September 30th, please? So moved. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Cliff, for the second. Roll call, please. Lisa Aubin? Yes. Luke Legere? Yes. Barbara Howell? Yes. Cliff Lewis? Yes. John Storer? Yes. Shannon Fisher? Yes. And Sean Ferzi? Yes. All set? Thank you, folks. See you in a few weeks. I thank you for your time this evening. Thanks. Thank you. On public means, 3A, 15 Wheelock Road, Wayland D-1060. It's a request for determination of applicability filed pursuant to Wayland's Wetlands and Water Resource Protection By-law and the Wetland Protection Act submitted by Roddick McLean for the replacement of a septic system at 15 Wheelock Road in Wayland, Mass. Proposed work is 100 feet of a boarding vegetated wetland and 200-foot riverfront area. And the property is shown in Assessor's Map 24, lot 06. Linda? The engineer, Ted Doucette, emailed me and said that he had another meeting, I think, at 7 at a different town and was wondering if we could move forward on some of the other agenda items and then come back to this. Okay. We'll go with that. Okay. On to 4A, stormwater and land disturbance. This is 15 Pequot Road, SWLD-167. Linda? I believe in your agenda packet you received a response to the comments I had. I don't know if we have anybody on board here. Who? Oh, it was... We do have a comment. Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Linda? Okay. Let's see here too. We do have somebody right, representing 15 Pequot. Yes. Can you hear me all right? Yep. Yep, we got it. Great. Would you like me to start? Yes. Sure. I'm Israel Burle . My company's Burle Engineering. We were at the July 29th Conservation Commission hearing for a land disturbance permit for 15 Pequot Road in Wayland. There were some comments to resolve. Not super major comments. and we're here again with a response to comments, a revised plan, and looking to get the land disturbance permit. So would it be helpful if I walk through some of the changes to the plan? Yes, you do. Okay, I'm going to share my screen here real quick.
Okay, let me know when you can see my screen. Yeah, we can see. Okay, great. So I'll just walk through the comments and then just feel free to chime in with any questions you might have. The first comment was DPW is going to require us to do a curb cut permit. Our response to that one is received. We understand that the contractor is going to pull the curb cut permit upon approval of this plan with conservation. The next one was the HydroCAD values being reflected to update the specific storm events for the town of Wayland. Those changes were made. The HydroCAD model was updated for that. The next comment was the deck, stair, and walkway areas being classified as impervious areas. I had already classified those as impervious areas. I just added a new category on my chart. So that you can see the distinction, deck, stairs, paved, and walkways. So that was already included, just a change in the nomenclature. The updated plan for the health department with the septic system. The plan has been revised. I believe it should be submitted tomorrow or Friday.
And then tree removal. There was a comment that said it appears some trees were removed between 2020-2024. And then tree removal. There was a comment that said it appears some trees were removed between 2020-2024. And then tree removal. There was a comment that said it appears some trees were removed between 2020-2024. And now, based on aerial photography, the approved septic plan indicates that 15 trees were removed. The project will need to comply with the tree removal compensation requirements. And my response to that one is the septic plan only had a couple of trees being removed. It just identified ones that were close to the septic system. So all the trees on the septic plan weren't necessarily supposed to be removed. There were five trees that were over six inches that were removed in 2020-2024. And I noted the locations and diameters of those trees on this plan for your reference and provided compensatory trees that exceed the required diameter per the Weyland bylaws. The next comment I have was the soil type for the infiltration system. And I revised that to reflect a more conservative infiltration rate. That change was made.
The next comment was kind of more of like a design comment on the infiltration system. That comment was the three downspouts in the rear of the house discharge to the rear yard. So why not move the Coltec chambers to the front side of the house to reduce the amount of piping and trenching?
And my response to this was the property kind of slopes from front to back from an engineering standpoint. Infiltration works really well. On this property, using gravity to our advantage. So I did remove a couple gutter downspouts in the front just because with the new infiltration, this system would have been a little bit too full. So there were a couple gutter downspouts removed, but we would like to keep the infiltration system in the same location since we can meet all the required setbacks for both the infiltration system and the septic system areas.
Next comment was the stormwater pipe diameters. Those were added to the plan as well. And then the last one was the operations and maintenance plan. I uploaded that as a standalone document and included information from the manufacturer for the homeowner's awareness. So sorry if any of that was confusing. Feel free to ask any questions you might have. Awesome. Thank you. Linda, start with you, please. No, it looks like you guys are adding a lot of fill. Is that correct? To bring up? It looks like the septic and then the elevation of the house, too.
Not much. No, it's not. It's not going to be a big difference. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Because there are zoning rules, zoning board appeals rules for amount of fill brought into a property. That's why I just wanted to bring that to your attention. And this one thing you didn't mention in your comments. So it looks like you're adding an infiltration trench for the driveway then around the inside curve of that, right? Yes. Yes, I wanted to mention that as well. Yeah, I wanted to show that. And I showed more detailed spot grading on the driveway to show that the driveway is not grading to the street. It's grading to this crushed stone trench instead. I have some slope arrow shown on there as well. And spot grades show that the pitch is going towards that trench. Okay. Because that's important to show. DPW will not allow you to curb cut unless you're managing your own stormwater. But I mean, the one reason to have a curb cut permit before. You know, we issue this is because if for some reason DPW says you can't move it or change it, then you're going to have to come back to us with the whole redesign plan. So it's always important to get them involved earlier than later. So, okay, but I think most of my most of my comments have been addressed that I sent you after the meeting last time. So.
Okay, Commission, thoughts, comments, concerns.
I, it seems like they really took the comments and feedback to heart and considered and addressed them all. So I appreciate that. I'm good. Thanks, Luke. Anybody else? Good. In the health department, that's needed first.
Yeah. Yeah. Linda said that to go to get the health stuff. No, I mean, we just need to have the same plans. That's all. So, right. Yep. So if you're, if you're, if you're submitting it tomorrow to the health department, I think I'd probably like to wait until you get at least a conceptual approval from Darren for the new plan. So before I issue this.
Sure. Well, how, what would the timeline look like on the land? A survey? Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I understand.
And then. Looking for. If he's, if he's already if Darren's already seen this, then it, it usually is a pretty quick turnaround, so. Sure. He's seen the initial septic plan that was approved. He just hasn't seen the new building location, but. I'm a septic guy as well. The plan conforms to the. Setbacks. understand that you want to wait on the board felt approval would that be would that need to go before another hearing to get that approval okay
i mean i'm okay with this plan as right now i mean again i'm kind of surprised you're only putting in a pretty small stormwater system for the size of this house but um you know if you if you you know as an engineer if you can stamp and sign and say that's going to work then i have to believe you but um i just want to make sure that the board of health is okay you know with the with the new plan because again otherwise you're going to have to come back again with a whole new set of plans right so understood but i think i think um i think the commission can probably just allow me to issue this after approval from the board health okay
great good with that if so can i get a motion please conditional approval like linda said sure i move that we issue a permit under chapter 193 um with conditions as discussed and contingent upon approval by the board of health
thank you luke don't hear a second thank you cliff roll call please lisa aubin yes luke was here yes barbara howell yes cliff lewis yes john storer yes shannon fisher yes sean fares yes thank you folks i appreciate it you got it uh on the 4b uh this is 80 oxbow road swld-168 linda oh let's see oh that's being continued we still are working on getting a um a peer review we did get three quotes just yesterday i think or today so um we should start that process pretty pretty quickly and then we're gonna take a look at some of the other quotes and now that we have the quotes for that, okay? Love it. 9C, sorry, 9C, 4C, excuse me. 55 Woodridge Road, SWLD-169, Linda. Oh, do we have somebody representing 55 Woodridge Road on that? I didn't see anybody. Did you see anybody? Let me go participate real quick.
No, we got our hand up, right? I didn't see anything in the packet for it.
Let me go back here. Yeah, I don't think I've received any new information for that, which is probably why. No, there is nothing in the packet. Yeah, then we didn't receive anything new. I think we're just going to have to put that off for the next meeting then. Okay? All right. Well, we'll stay in the same neighborhood here. We're going to 5, which is the COCs, 5A. 149 Woodridge Road, DEP file number 322-1035. Linda. This is a closure. They have two permits for this particular property. The first one, which is the 1035, is for a septic replacement. That was the completion certificate was issued by the Board of Health back in December, I think. So it looks like the site is stabilized. Everything looks like it's grown in in the front there, where you put the septic, correct?
Yes, I'm Nick Hatton, the homeowner. Yeah, we have all the landscaping's in, and grass and native plants are all set. Okay. Yeah, the one thing on the permit was putting, establishing like a 15-foot vegetated buffer along the wetland boundary. And we moved that to your other permit. You know, we just kind of, kind of extended that so you don't have to do it now, but it will be part of the permit for the home renovation stuff that you're doing. Okay, what is a 15-foot, or I can follow up after, but a 15-foot vegetated buffer means? We just want an undisturbed area that's been planted with sort of native vegetation, right within 15 feet of the wetlands, so the flagged wetlands. And that's meant just to, as for habitat, wildlife habitat, rest, you know, so wildlife protection, or right, resource area protection. And so it's, it's a pretty standard condition we have in most of our permits, as a way of just protecting an area that we call the no disturb area in our bylaw. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's actually, okay. We've been, we've been doing that in our backyard anyways. I think that's, that's good. All right, thanks. Yeah, it's pretty wet over there, so.
And you're seeing a lot less water right now because they're holding back a lot of water, you know, not releasing a lot of water from the dam. So, it's, yeah, really changed up there, haven't they? Yeah, it's much drier this year.
Okay, Linda, you good? I'm good. Commission, we good?
Okay, a motion please for the certificate of compliance for 149 Woodridge Road, please. I move to issue a certificate of compliance for 149 Woodridge Road. Do we want to make it, do you have to put in the conditions, Linda, the 15-foot vegetative buffer? No, we moved that to the other permit with the home renovation permit. So, because it was, it didn't seem right to be doing it now when they're still working on the property. So, it seemed like we just kind of pushed that off for the next closure. Okay, thank you, Lisa, for the motion. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, that goes Luke. Roll call, please. Linda Aubin. Lisa. Lisa. Yes. Whatever your name is. Thanks, Lisa. Luke Legere. Yes. Barbara Howell. Yes. Cliff Lewis. Yeah, you bet. John Storer. Yes. Shannon Fisher. Yes. Sean Fraser, yes. Thank you, folks.
Okay. Thank you, appreciate it.
Yeah. On to... 5B, this is 5 Lundy Lane, DUP file number 322-1009. Linda.
Oh, they asked for continuance. I think both he and his, the homeowner and his representative were not available for tonight's meeting. I saw that. Yep. I think you saw that email, right? Yeah. And then there are some of them in October. I think it was the ask. Yep. Yeah. I don't remember what the date was anymore. It seemed like it was... It's probably in the future. Lundy Lane. Pardon me? Yes. So we approved this, the COC for this. And it was based on getting a revised aspen plan which I did not get. The aspen plan did not show any stormwater management for the driveway. And that was one of the problems I had with the project was the water just flows off into Lundy Lane without having any sort of stormwater controls. And then the second thing is, is that it shows these pipes coming from the downspouts that just enter into the call techs. At various locations. And if anybody knows what a call tech looks like, and I'm sure you know, John, that there's an inlet and an outlet. You don't just drill a hole through the middle of a call tech and put a pipe into it, right? I mean, that's what the aspen plan shows. You know, usually it comes from one end or another. That's why they have ends. And I asked him about that and he goes, oh, that's the way it was done. And I just was kind of surprised by that, his answer. I don't think that's how it should have been done. So... And I did ask an engineer about that. And they're like, no, that's not, you know, that's not clearly how it should be done. So, so anyway, I'm just not sure the as-build is accurate. Another engineer. So I issued him a partial certificate of compliance and he didn't like that. So he's coming back to ask for a complete. Okay. Lovely. On to, I think I said Ted Doucette. Ted's here. So we're going back. Ted, you're up. Are we locking? Yeah. All right. Thank you so much for the consideration. You're welcome. So we're back to 3A folks. This is 15 Wheelock Road, Wayland D-1060 request for determinative applicability. Go ahead, Ted. All right. I'm going to share my screen here. You can all see that. This is 15 Wheelock Road, three-bedroom, single-family house. It's kind of toward the end. If you know the areas, that's the second from the last house on the right. Right along the, the, Linda, what's the river? I got the stream. I got it down here somewhere. David Brook. David Brook. David Brook. Okay. Which is a cold water stream. And all you can see all these buffer zones. You can see the wetlands there. They're numbered. And then you can see the 50 and the hundred foot buffer zones there and other 25s there too. But and then I did go out there with my GPS and survey the bank of the Brook and you can see the hundred foot bank offset. And then the 200 foot bank offset, which is right at the edge of the property line and the road. So that it's a existing septic system that is in failure and needs to be replaced. Proposing pretty much to do it with an in-kind replacement. A new septic tank, 1500 gallon septic tank to comply with Title 5, obviously running down to a distribution box going into a Presby system. I like the Presby. Because it makes the system smaller. It will also reduce the, yeah, reduce the footprint. There's a lot less materials in it now where you don't have to always do the big over dig. So there's less disturbance. It's moved pretty much as far away from the resource areas as we can. We could move it closer to the road. That would require a Board of Health variance. So we figure why require variance when it's really going to give us a nominal additional benefit. There are some trees. Quite a few trees. You can see that are going to be taking down, are proposed to be taken down. The ones in the front are for the protection of the system and the protection of the home. So there's, you know, four large maples there, about 12 inch diameters. So those are proposed to be down. The ones in the back of the yard are going to be off the table for right now. There are some dead ones and we maybe would have a side conversation about that, about, you know, how do we take down dead ones? I think, Linda, you mentioned that there's no permit. There's no, there's nothing to, there's no concern about taking down those. But let's, let's go on with the septic project for right now. But, you know, this is, I think, the best we can do. Which way is north on your drawing? What's that? North? Okay, north. If you look to the, just to the left of the drawing, so it's kind of backwards. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. It's actually kind of, it's going to be a pretty good project because we, I realized that, you know, this was probably filled in a lot. As you can see, you know, how the house has a walk out of the back. And when it was constructed, you know, the area was filled in. So there's going to be some fill to take out of there too.
Okay, thanks, Linda.
Yeah, I think what I told you before, Ted, was that we don't regulate dead trees. And so you have two in the back. Those 8 and 16, I don't know what kind they are. You can almost see those on aerial survey, you know, some dead branches that stick out, you know, for something called distressed. I'm not sure how to really, usually it's, we go by hazard or non-hazardous kind of thing. Okay. I think most trees are pretty much distressed right now with the drought. That's a tough, that's a tough definition. So if you want those down, especially the ones, with like right next to the wetlands, the wetland line, I think we're going to need at least some sort of, you know, like arborist report for that. But okay. You know, I was just trying to be upfront. I'm not an arborist. It doesn't look totally dead. It doesn't look healthy. So yes, I'm just, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's like, it looks fine to me. I mean, that's pretty much my level of understanding. But yeah, so anyway, that's just what, yeah, we'll approve the septic. We'll approve the four trees that have to go down for the septic. And then you, I will include in the permit that you have every right to take the dead trees down. I will give some strict conditions about that though. You know, we don't like equipment in there, you know, that close to the wetlands. So that would be what, you know, I can add some conditions in the permit for that. But the distressed ones, I will, are you saying we should just not include in the permit right now? Right, right. Because he wants, he wants to think about it. He wants to have a, you know, if it requires a botanist, we're not going to get that done tonight, right? So do we just, is there another permit filing? Or do we say here, we had this botanist and we want to take these down? Oh, it depends on the botanist's report or the arborist's report, I guess. I can't, you know, that's a crystal ball. Okay, all right. Well, we'll deal with the dead ones and the ones that you mentioned up front. And then if there's anything else, we'll come back and circle back to that with a arborist. Yeah.
Okay.
Trees in the rear, they're within the hundred foot, no disturb. Yeah, they are. So only right now they're going to take the dead ones down, Barbara. The other four are going to stay for now. But don't count on taking those down later. And this is a cold water stream. This is our other cold water stream. Remember, say it would work.
Yep. Yeah, actually a little homework and I read up on that because I know Linda's mentioned cold water streams a couple of times. So yes, I do understand the gravity of it now. Yes.
Anything else?
Linda, you're going on this one? Yeah, we've had the Board of Health has approved this, corrected? Yes. Yes. Yeah. So it is far away. Is it? It is. The resource areas as they can get pretty much on this property. So. Okay. And we're in Whalen, not Westford. Oh, where did I put that? Barbara, I'm going to start sending my plans to review.
And where did you put that? Did I miss that? Well, they said they were, it was Westford. Oh, I'm in Westford now. That's where I'm at right now. I guess it was the, maybe it's the summer. I don't know. Somebody. I'm sitting in Westford Town Hall because I just finished a conservation commission hearing here. Back to back. Lucky you. Yeah. Yeah. And I got to go to soccer club after this. Yes. This is a narrative. Oh, I must have missed that somewhere. Well done, Barbara. Oh, yeah. That's my homework. Yes. You know, Barbara, I took a long time writing that. So I'm glad somebody read it. I always. We all do. Okay. I just didn't read the, I didn't look at the, the, the, the title block as a guess is what I missed. So. Okay. Anybody else commission? We good? Okay. Okay. Motion, please. For 3A. Sure. I move that we issue a negative determination under the act and a permit under chapter 194 for the septic system and the four trees closest to Wheelock Road. But not for the trees shown on the plan at the rear of the property.
Good motion, Luke. Thank you. Do I hear a second? Second. I think that was Cliff. Roll call, please. Lisa Aubin. Yes. Luke Legere. Yes. Barbara Howell. Yes. Cliff Lewis. Yes. John Storer. Yes. Shannon Fisher. Yes. Sean Fares a yes. All set. Thanks, Ted. All right. Thank you very much for your time. Have a nice night. You too. All right, folks. Here we go to the others. 6A. Cow Common Apiary Electric Fence. That's a fun title. Linda, tell us what we're chatting about. There's concerns. We have a number of hives. I don't know if you saw that next to the community gardens. Gosh, how many are there? Ann Gordon. I think she's on. She gave me a list today. I don't remember the exact total. But there's a lot of concerns about bear activity in that area. And whether, you know, trying to protect the hives. So one of the owners of three hives has asked us if he could encircle his three hives with an electric fence to keep the bears out. And so that's started a further conversation. I had with Ann who Gordon who has a number of hives over there also and she's she's well in tune to who's all over there with and who keeps bees over there. And I know if she wants to I think we have both of them on tonight. Both Mr. Dave Bechtel and Ann to discuss this if you want to hear more information. So my question to Ann was whether or not everybody there was was interested in having the electric fence around the hives or if it was just going to be the three hives that are owned by Dave Bechtel. So I think I need input for that from either one of those two to help with that answer that question. So I do see someone raising their hand. So that might be someone. Oh, yes, that would be Dave Bechtel. Probably second when we looks like and and it's not on the call anymore on the zoom call.
Should be they should be all set. Yep. All right.
The so it's not real quick. You should identify yourself for the record, please. Oh, it's David Bechtel 38 Moore Road, Wayland. Thank you. I'm a beekeeper and the my hives. My current three hives are in the the cow common adjacent to the public gardens. The the issue is that there's the division of mass division of fisheries and wildlife. It identifies Wayland as an area of expanding their population. And I personally abut conservation land and I've been vandalized by a bear. And I know Shannon has also been had problems with bear issues. Last year. Not a problem. I like the Bears. Okay. All right. Well, I like. I like them as well as they're not eating my honey and brood. But the the this the state actually said that a properly installed electric fence is safe to use around children pets and livestock. And it would be protecting my hives and if if the if Anne and the other members at the the bee common would want to join in this that I'd be happy to include, you know, everyone in that in the apiary. It's but the issue is that
the the the bear fence needs to be properly constructed and with a energizer that's effective as a bear deterrent. Can can you give me a screen share? See if I can get something on this.
Transfer room captioned raise hands. You should be able to do that. Hmm. You should be able to screen share as a as an attendee or participant. I mean, Oh, really? I just as a participant. I don't think not seeing. No, you'd have to move him over. Hmm. He's a he's a panelist. He should be able to panelist. Yep. Your panelists. You're you are then you can do it. Join as a panelist.
There you go.
All set.
Still there.
Hope you're on mute. If you're talking.
Okay, is that better? We can hear you. We you're not sharing anything. That's what your intent was. Right? Yeah, you're no longer a panelist. Well, there you are. Yep. Okay. Yes, share button down at the bottom in the middle. Yeah. Hold on.
Share. Hmm. No, I'm what is it? What is it? I'm sorry. What is it that we're that you're trying to share with us? Is it? I'm sure I wanted to show. You the some of the details about the bear fence and a a well-constructed bear fence protecting
about two dozen hives and
well, once you email that to me and I can share that with the commission, you know, once once it's been received. Okay. Okay. All right. What is the source of electricity? For this thing? The it'll be a solar energizer. So it'll be solar and a backup. Of course it no, it does. It actually has a two-week backup. Yeah, the reason. Okay, so that so that it will it will be a standalone generator, but it as I said, it stores. Two months two weeks of use. What is the voltage of the fence now? The the voltage has to be high. It's probably between it will be between five and seven thousand volts. Seven thousand volts. Yeah, and you're going to let a child out there. Well, but the thing is it delivers it. It's not like it's not a household current. If that were 5,000 volts household current, you'd be fried. You bet. But it it delivers a very brief pulse that lasts less than a second. And it is equivalent to about one watt of energy. Which is essentially the equivalent of a
a
Christmas tree bulb. Somebody said this can't harm people. Well, the it's there's a remarkable record of of safety with this as long as as long as you're installing the right kind of equipment. I mean, this is a factory mutual packing or something. I mean, I can't believe you're going to let a child. Out there with 7,000 volts regardless. Well, the thing is it's the the amperage is tiny. Well, it doesn't matter. Yeah. So before before we get to down, it's going to be a problem. Before we get to the nuts and the bolts of this in the Watson amperage, just so everybody understands. This is not your private property. You're asking you to put electric fence on conservation land for a private property. Okay, let's make sure we're very clear. So I'll plug that. I got a problem with that. So we can talk more about that. But so keep both is more of a presentation. I want to make sure everybody understands the property. We're talking about is conservation land, right? Okay. Yes, I know that. Yep. So make sure everybody understands that. Yeah. Yeah. But
the reality is that the state. Massachusetts is recommending. A electrified fence, a bear fence. To protect hives and chickens and everything else in terms of livestock. And the type of of of of
Energizer that they're recommending. Is has. A very high safety profile. And there is. Remarkably few situations in which this can be. Damaging. You're going to have to show who's certifying this. I'm not going to vote for anything. That's 7,000 volts without a certification from somebody that I can trust. Yeah. Well and clip. I think you just you just took the words out of my mouth. I think I would like to see some of the underlying documentation and materials that are we're hearing about tonight. So I can read them for myself, you know, no disrespect to you sir. I just like to be able to read these things myself. I'm like as Sean said, you know earlier, I would sort of second what he said. I am just for what this is worth put my card on the table. I'm very skeptical of this proposal. So I think it would be helpful for me to at least be able to review some of the materials you're referring to. All right. No, I'll I will send you the information and and see you next month. Perhaps. Okay. Can I ask a question? Yeah, sure. Please. What what what distance from the beehive is the fence because I've touched plenty of electric fences and I'd rather touch an electric fence and be stung by a bee. So, you know, so I just I want to. Understand because if you're walking close to a hive, you know, you've got the you got it. You're taking a little risk already and if the electric fences several feet off of a hive, are you already sort of in the danger zone? Well, the fence is supposed to be four feet from any of the hives because the Bears the Bears can reach over. The fence if they if they're closer than four feet or so, but they have to go through the fence to get to the hives. If they're four feet or more away.
Yeah. Yeah. And so I also I'm also a fellow beekeeper for the last 20 years. So I do understand. So I'll go back to the difference between private versus public. It makes people on conservation land should be able to walk wherever they want without fear of fence. I mean be so the fact that we allow this just to go on is one thing to then say now we're going to wall this off because of a hypothetical bear in a hypothetical situation for a private citizen on public land. I think for me, we're blurring a lot. Again, I want to hear more. I want to understand more. My gut reaction says that's a private issue, not a public one. But one here. And just to explain to John that the area where the bees are, we really don't have any trails over there. The entrance to the community gardens is just a little bit, I don't make, you know, probably 20, 30 yards away from this. So this is sort of on the back side of the community gardens where all these hives are. And again, it's typically just the beekeepers who go into this area. It's like I said, it's really not part of a managed trail system that we have. So.
It's still public land and you can't rule out somebody going there. No, no. True. True. Yes. Yeah. So I think what you're going to send to us is some information on all this and we can kind of continue this chat next time. I think it's the consensus for everybody. Yes.
Okay. So I'll get your emails and send the. Information to everybody on the committee. Perfect. Make it easier for you to send to Linda. She can distribute it that way. You don't have to worry about buying emails. Make it easier for you. Wonderful. Okay. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. Appreciate it.
All right. On to 6B community garden fees. Linda.
I guess at one point Sean and I talked about the garden fees. It's they're ridiculously low. You know, they're somewhere around $12. I think for residents, 24 for non-residents and 18, I think seniors, you know, we just find that does turn into a bit of a problem because we find a lot of people abandoning their plots, you know, so, you know, year three of a drought in order to grow things there, you pretty much have to be there almost every other day watering. And I think people just, you know, sort of midway midstream of the summer tend to just give up on it. So we've ended up with so many plots. So we've ended up with so many plots that are just these huge overgrown weed masses, you know, that, that have been left unattended for, you know, for probably a few months. And it's almost impossible to rent those as Sean can attest to in the following year, they look at them like, yeah, no, I don't think we want those. So, you know, I think, I think we need, we need more of a commitment, I think, from people and I, I'm not sure. And if they don't, if they do abandon them, we need to have at least the funding available to go through. And, you know, rush hog them all, you know, and, and, you know, make them at least somewhat attractive and, you know, the following year for other people to take on, or we just give them up, give up altogether on them and, you know, turn them back into wildlife habitat. So, you know, those are our options. But I think what, you know, we've looked into other communities, I think Wellesley's charges like 80 for a plot, I think Sudbury's 60 or something like that. And I'm not saying that we have to double the price, but I think we have to make it. People. Just make more of a financial commitment to it so that they stick around, and they continue gardening. When's the last time we even changed the fees?
What? 1928.
No, yeah, the Commission decided just to increase them by a few dollars, you know, like maybe no more than $5 or something. And I don't, I mean, that that doesn't, you know, that's barely a packet of seeds anymore at this point. And, you know, I think, I mean, I like to see at least, you know, and with water prices going up, and, you know, they're doing a lot of watering over there now. So, you know, we end up spending money, you know, from the garden fees for paying for the water, too. So, what does it cost us to clean up one that's abandoned? You know, it's somebody's time, you know, it'd be Brian or Jane. How many hours of time? I would say it's at least an hour, I would think, you know. I would say it's more than that, days. Probably a day. A day. I mean, that's just one, I'm talking about one plot, okay. Days to clean the front. And again, you don't know when you're in the plot either. Somebody could have fencing in there. Somebody could have, you know, old tires for that matter. I mean, there could be debris in there, you know. Oh, yeah, okay. To me, you know, it does take time to go through there, clean everything up, throw it away. Could you also charge an abandonment fee? You know, in addition. In addition to raising, I mean, I don't know if anyone does this. I'm not familiar with community gardens. But, I mean, if there is a cost associated with abandonment, because they're not taking care of it. I mean, I know they forfeit whatever they paid for the year. As a practical matter, though, I think it's probably a much safer bet to get the money up front. Like, if they've abandoned it, I'm not sure what the stick is to make the abandonment fee. Who knows where they are. I'm going to be out there every day to check on them. Yeah, I'm not chasing after people for money. That's not. That's not part of my job title. Some people get sick and something happens and they just can't do what they had planned to do or they die. Right. They're definitely not paying an abandonment fee. Yeah, good luck getting that out of the trust. They've already paid the ultimate abandonment fee. I know. Stupid idea. Stupid idea. But I'm also increasing the fees. I mean, everything else goes. I mean, that's we're losing money on that, you know, the cost it takes to maintain it. Is it worth $20? Is it worth just considering grandfathering in those who've stuck through the droughts and are still there, like keeping them like beautiful and productive? And that's something that's the only problem that that turns into subjective. OK, what is beauty? And like, you know, if I've been there twice a summer and I mean, so I'm just I agree. I don't want it to be a penalty, as Barbara said, for someone who got sick or just had a an off a year who's been there for a decade. It's just how do we pay for Linda's or Brian's time in the water fee and just make sure it's like at least, you know, a net zero for the town versus a pretty big loss leader for us. And so does Linda, do we have a recommendation for what that dollar figure would be to do what Sean just said? Oh, I don't know. I mean, without having an uproar. In a riot or something, I'm not sure exactly what we would come to. But I mean, I think what you don't understand either is the amount of time it takes to manage these gardens. I mean, the amount of time that Emily takes, you know, reaching out to people, getting their applications in, turning the money in, you know, assigning plots to them. I mean, it is an unbelievable time sink for this office, especially in the spring. And I'd love to find somebody else to manage these. You know, if somebody has a recommendation or somebody who's going to volunteer to do this, I would love to pass that off. But. But it's, you know, it's crazy. You know, I mean, at some point, you know, rather than, you know, keep handing out more plots that get abandoned, it might be just time just to shut them down altogether, you know, and say this, you know, too bad kind of thing. But I mean, I can come with a number off the top of my head. I haven't really given it much thought. And but I mean, I would love to. How many plots have we got, Linda? Oh, God, there's probably like 200 out there. And how many are getting abandoned every year? Like what percentage do you think are weeds? I'd say there's probably, you know, maybe 10 percent of them are, you know, are getting or probably abandoned at this point. And in a lot of the ones that were way in the back or way at the end of a row, we just we don't even bother renting out anymore. You know, so it's just again, it's just not worth it in the end. It's a ton of work. It is good butterfly habitat. They saw some bronze coppers there earlier this year and no doubt swallowtails. Oh, yeah, because there's a lot of people plant flowers and all kinds of other stuff there. It's Brian has planted a ton of stuff, you know, between the two garden plot. There's like a front and a back. And there's a huge area that we've planted a lot of trees and shrubs and herbaceous stuff. So, you know, we've really tried to improve that area for habitat. Tons of birds there. Tons and tons of birds. So because they really enjoy all the fruit out there. You know, so in a way, it's a community garden, but we are feeding wildlife because of those blueberries. Those blueberries, those blackberries, the raspberries, you know, and anything else out there is definitely getting eaten. The bunnies love it. And the bunnies, the voles. The voles ate all my stuff. So, you know, even the chipmunks, they started going after my gooseberries, which they hadn't ever done in the last 10 years. And one thing to think through to add on to this kind of and to piggyback on the previous one. Linda, correct me if I'm wrong. We don't have as nearly as a robust system. We don't have a system of tracking who has a hive in our apiary, and so I'm not saying we charge them fees, but I think we should just standardize that process and kind of bring it all into one, right? So who actually has an apiary over there? Do we have, is there a capacity? Who's allowing that in? And so I think the whole kind of area can kind of, you know, maybe for next year, come up with a plan of what would be a more appropriate fee structure, who would, you know, monitor it, and then bringing the apiaries into that. I'm sure that would be a more appropriate fee. I would have to be more kind of a pay for that, and because, you know, you pay per hive, per brood box or whatever, but that's kind of gone a little bit more of like a wild west of who's coming in. I was like, we should just get a rain on that as well, if that makes sense. Linda, could we just ask you to make a recommendation of what you think is best? Yeah, let me give it a little more thought, I guess, because I think people now that we're... You know what Wellesley's doing in Sudbury and Weston. Yeah. But also now that we're getting to the end of this garden season, we'll have a better handle of how many people abandoned this year, you know, their plots and get an idea of that. And, you know, I kind of give it a little bit more thought about, you know, what's being used, what's not being used in that area, what we can do to, you know, improve that. But, yeah, like I said, it's just, it's an extraordinary amount of work given, you know. Okay. Well, we'll look for your recommendation. That's the best thing. Yeah, no, I'll have Emily work on that. Maybe put a table together for you for what other towns charge, okay? I mean, it sounds like a lot, but even if you increased it 50%, it's going from $20 to $30. And, you know, I think for most people, if they really enjoy it and they're going back every year, they'll be like, it's fine. We were wondering when you're going to increase it. I don't think it'll send people away. Yeah, I see what other towns are doing. Not in this community. Yeah. Every other town is charging $50. Charging $30 is cheap. Yeah. You might just want to get to the point where, you know, every year or every other year you are increasing it just to go up with inflation.
Okay. No one else seems to mind charging us more money for everything we're buying these days, so. Exactly. Oh, my God. Okay. Thank you for that, folks. On to 6C, town report draft. Linda. Emily wrote a town report that she included in your packet, and she was looking for feedback. Is there any input for an approval that those are due on September 30th, which is the day of our next meeting? So, we'd like to have it submitted before our next meeting. One thing I noticed, I think you missed Luke's name on there. Oh, goodness. I was counting. I'm like, someone's missing. We fixed the glitch. As I've said before, thank you, Lisa, for pointing that out. And as I've said before, I'm open to debating, like, whether and how much. I'm actually contributing. But yes, I physically am attending. So, I appreciate it. Thank you. What is it you say you do here? The only, the thing that I thought we might be able to add, although maybe we're not there yet, I would defer to others. But, you know, I know Cliff has been sort of spearheading a little effort with Shannon and I think Lisa around sort of our tree policy and trying to give some form of credit to people. So, is that, is it worth mentioning that initiative here, or do we want to wait? I would put that. We've just had a very brief on that. I'd put that in a goal for next year. Yeah, we've done, we've done some research. Yeah, we've done a little bit. Okay. And there's something there. I would tweak. It says that I worked with the school committee to discuss alternative uses for 25 holiday. Worked with is overstating. I just sort of brought some ideas to them to do with what they want. Welcome to town politics. You, what you did was I worked with, right? So, change your standard about what you consider. We're working with, but yeah, you're tempted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know Linda, right? I think, don't we have to update? I don't know if this is a goal. It's probably something we have to do, but don't we have to update chapter 194 for, is it the updated flood maps? So, we added all the floodplain management stuff in there last year as an interim measure. The floodplain management bylaw was passed in town meeting in April. We're still waiting to hear from the attorney. The attorney general's office, if they approve that, and when we get the go ahead that they did approve it, we can, well, I will schedule another meeting. I mean, I will schedule a hearing to remove all that floodplain stuff that we just threw into chapter 194 as interim measure. I mean, it also gives us an opportunity to look at some other things that we, if we want to change a few other, some wordage in the chapter 194 regulations. The only thing I would- Because I think you talked about trying to, yeah. Kind of make any of the tree replacement requirements kind of similar to what we're doing with chapter 193. Yes. Oh, we definitely would do that. And the other thing I don't like in there is this land subject to inundation. So never really understood the definition of that. I have no idea what we're regulating and I think we should just sort of throw that out. So unless Luke has an idea of what that means. Town council said that too, like, I have no idea what this is. And I said, I said, I don't either. So I think we did still manage to have two issues of our newsletter and technically Ribbit Rangers continued. So we still did some of that outreach. This was not my greatest year, but I managed a little bit. Awesome. Okay. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you for that update. Emily, thank you for the hard work on that, if you're listening. Okay. 6D, 27 New York Road, CR. Linda. So there was a CPC article and it's probably, what, over a year old, two years old? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 412 years old now, I think that we wanted to put in a boardwalk in order to connect York Road with Troutbrook and Sherman's Bridge and Castle Hill, kind of make a nice little connection between all those properties. And we do own 25 York Road, which was taken by tax title, but it's so wet, we can't really put a trail in there. And then the neighbors have already kind of broken the trail into 27, partially in there. Yeah. Yeah. partially in there. And we wanted to expand on that and see if we could put in some boardwalks that went across the wetlands so we could develop this trail. And we were speaking with the owners at 27 York. And in the meeting I had with them, what we thought would be the best option was they have a huge CR in their property. A good chunk of their property is in a conservation restriction. But there's this weird lobe down in the southern lower, you know, like the lowland part of their land that isn't in the CR. Whereas next to their house, all of it is in the CR, which is much more upland. And so I said, maybe we can, instead of rewriting the conservation restriction, maybe we can just change the plan, you know, make an update on the plan, which would be taking those 0.75 acres out of a CR next to their house and putting the 0.7 acre, 0.75 acres that's in the lowland section, putting that in the CR. And that way, because the CR was written many, many years ago, it's like this, you know, strangely three, four page document, which is nowadays is what, like 20 some pages or even maybe longer that has to go through this whole state approval process. So to kind of avoid that, let's just change the plan. And so what you see, what they sent in the other day was they're asking to swap the 0.75 acres, for about 2.8 acres in their backyard, which is absolutely not what we talked about. So I think this is one of these great examples, you give them an inch, they take a mile sort of thing. And that's, I don't, I don't think we can do that. Because again, this was part of the planning board process too, when they did the subdivision plan. You know, swapping land is one thing, but I would think it'd be, you know, identical acreage, versus, you know, they're asking to take pretty much a huge chunk of their, their rear yard out of the CR, including areas that are, you know, that are, you know, they're asking to take pretty much a huge chunk of their, their rear yard out of the CR, including areas that are, you know, they're asking to take pretty much a huge chunk of their, their rear yard out of the CR, including areas that are wet and stuff like that, which they really can't develop anyway. So yeah, I was kind of surprised by that, when I got that. And I think, I don't know if they just didn't understand, you know, I thought in the conversation, it was, we had, it was, you know, what I was proposing was identical swapping, so, of area. So, so I, we still have a little bit of work to go. I just didn't want to know if you guys would be open to this kind of swap, you know, 0.75 acres for another 7.5 acres on the property, you know, 0.75 acres for another 7.5 acres on the property, you know, 0.75 acres for another 7.5 acres on the property, you know, just moving one area into a CR and taking one out. Is that something that, that you guys would be open to? You guys want me to make sure I clarify, Linda, are you asking, are we open to the original deal that you kind of talked about with them? Yes. Got it. Even Steven, the only thing I think I would agree to, this is what they, what they're asking for is, is, is way, you know, you know, four or five times more than what we had, I was expecting. So. Is there even a way to do this, Linda?
I, you know, again, I think we still have to go through an approval process, maybe with planning board and conservation. Oh, I mean, just, just a technical, in the field. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think we could do that. I mean, it would be a change in plan, you know, it would be submitting a brand new plan. Actually putting the stakes in the ground and all the stuff you have to do. Yeah, we could do that. I mean, we do have a surveyor here in town, you know, a town surveyor. You could actually build whatever you're talking about. Yeah. Oh, you mean the boardwalk? Yeah, we have, we have money for that. We have plants. We have every, all that was approved by CPC. It's just, we don't own the land to put the boardwalk on. And so this was our way of trying to get an easement from them. And then the only way they would allow us an easement was by doing kind of this, this, you know, land swap within the CR.
So. Okay. How high would that be over the, over the wetland, Linda? It would just be maybe, you know, probably eight, eight to 12 inches, depending, you know, no, no, it's a really low boardwalk. So if you fall off, you're not going to die, you'll just get wet. Yeah, no, it's relatively dry, except in the wet season, it gets pretty wet over there. I've walked it, you've, you've marked it by the... Far end of the pond there.
I used to walk him back there and get onto the conservation land. Mm-hmm.
You know, all these, when I was walking more, yeah. Because there's, somebody has blazed a trail in there on the 27 York Road side of that, the detention basin. And we own half the detention basin and that other side, you know, like the west side, that's pretty wet. And it's, it's, it's pretty soaking wet. So... Yeah, I'm familiar with it. So, Commissioner, are we good with that? If it's something we can do it, even for even swap? Yeah, if it makes it more useful. We need to ask our legal team here.
If you're talking about me. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, I'm fine with the idea of, of the sort of swapping out. I agree with what Lisa just said. It seems like it really actually, as a practical matter, just makes this a more usable space. So, I like that. You know, I think probably what you said, Linda, is right. We could just, if the, I mean, if the CR document's that simple, and I think it was in the packet maybe, but I didn't read it super carefully. But I think we could just, if all the parties are agreeing, amend the plan. I'm not sure whether we'd need to go to EEA, given how old this is. I mean, that's a consideration. So, I'm just saying, I don't know what getting the approval from all the parties actually is going to look like in the end. But I don't see why we couldn't, if everybody's on board.
Okay. Anybody else?
Any final objections? Or non-violent objections?
Okay. That's why we have Zoom meetings, right? So, nobody thinks it's violent. Well, let me see how vulnerable they are to the equal, even Stephen Swamp. We'll see what we can do. Otherwise, I think this trail is pretty much a dead issue then. So, okay.
Love it. Thank you. I was probably the only one left that was in on this project. Your road used to be a dead-end street. And then they made it go to Oxbow, and they put this whole thing in. And we spent, oh, that project went on and on and on for so long. I can remember it well. It's come full circle, Barbara. It's come full circle. Hayes Development. I know that company. All right. Last but not least on this one is 6E, 17B Bennett Road Appraisal. Linda. Mr. Warner Gossels came to us a while back, and he owned 17B Bennett, and was wondering if the commission had any interest in that. And my response to him was that we would have to do an appraisal on that. It is an upland parcel. I did talk to the appraisal who did 27 Sherman Bridge. Was it Sherman Bridge? Or was it a different one? Forgetting now. He didn't know. No, he did 4 Bennett Road for us, the other parcel on Pine Brook. And he said that for an undeveloped parcel in Wayland, you can expect to pay about $300,000 per acre because there's no utilities. There's no nothing there. And all kinds of tree removal and grading would have to be done. And that would make that property at 3.3 acres probably close to a million plus. And after talking with Susan, she said we really don't even have that amount of money in CPC right now for land purchases, for acquisitions. And again, we're not in the market to pick up developable parcels of land that are right next to other houses. So my suggestion to him was to build something like a conservation cluster there. So he could still put in two or three houses. He also owns, I think it's 14 Winthrop. It's a way for accessing this parcel. And in the process, they have to preserve something like 38% of the land and the conservation cluster. So it would be kind of a win-win. There would still be development, but there would also be ability for the Conservation Commission to acquire at least the lower portion of that property, which abuts Pine Brook. And but he wanted to, Mr. Warner-Gosles wanted us to get an appraisal. But after the conversation, he said, well, we're not going to get an appraisal. We're not going to get an appraisal. So he said, well, we're not going to get an appraisal. So he said, well, we're not going to get an appraisal. So he said, well, we're not going to get an appraisal. So he said, well, we're not going to get an appraisal. So the conversation I had with Susan, she just didn't think it was worthwhile because, again, there's no way that we would have the money at CPC to actually purchase it, even especially knowing that it's probably going to be fairly expensive, given that it's developable land for the construction of homes. So I just want to see how you guys felt about that. It's definitely not on our open space list of inventory. Do we know for sure that he would insist on us paying market value? I mean. It seems as though if he approached us, maybe he's willing to let it go for something that would be within our budget. I think that would have to be almost half, though, you know, given talking to Susan about, you know, the available funding that CPC has. And I think he bought this more as an investment because he did buy 14 Winthrop also in order to access the property, you know, for development. So I've never really gone out and asked him if he would be willing to, you know. I think he was just trying to figure out how much it was worth to see whether or not, you know, what direction he wanted to go with that. But like I said, I'm, you know, we had our hands full already with a lot of parcels in this, you know, with one and a half staff to manage them. So taking on another three and a half acre property is a lot. You know, it really is. So.
Thoughts? So we don't have the money and we don't want the property anyways.
Your decision is not my decision. But I mean, you know, it's we're strapped already. Come on. We we managed twelve hundred acres with one point one and a half staff. You know, it's it's it's a pretty impossible job as it is. And I mean, it's a beautiful area over there. I know we have a lot of owls and raptors up there. It does border. Pinebrook, you know, at least the lower portion of that does, you know, of course, it'd be beautiful to have. But I don't think we can compete, you know, you know, with some developer who's probably willing to pay a lot more for that parcel, you know, so.
Well, to Luke's point, is it worth asking? Like, is it we can just ask and be honest and upfront and be like, this is what we have in case. I mean, owls have just lost another whole bunch of habitat. So I don't know. But I think it's worth it. I think it's worth it. Yeah. Yeah. Worth an ask. I will do it. I'll find out from Susan what I'm just curious what we do have.
So we know kind of our. Budget, but we did spend quite a bit in the last few years, get some good parcels so I can see. Well, we'll run a little low in the kitty. Okay.
Anybody else on that one before we move on? Okay. Public comment, I don't see any hands. Okay. No one's even with us at this point. And Barbara, this is AA. How are we looking for August 19th minutes? Barbara. They were fine. I just mentioned a minor thing.
Okay. Anybody have anything else? And if not, do you want to approve the minutes for August 19th, 2026, please?
Don't move. Thank you, Cliff. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, Luke. Roll call, please. Lisa Aubin. Yes. Luke Legere. Yes. Barbara Howell. Yes. Cliff Lewis. Yes. John Storer. Yes. Shannon Fisher. Yes. Sean Ferris. Yes. Thank you, folks. Any last-minute thoughts, comments, concerns? No. I like bears. I'm excited that they're back. You what? Simon Stephart? I like the bears. I'm glad we have them back. It's cool. The deer were cute a long time ago, but they're not cute anymore. Bears can help kill the deer. No. Maybe some coyotes. Oh, we got a lot of coyotes. Yeah, we do. On our game camera, that's what we see most is coyotes. I had one with a black back go through a couple days ago. And I know they mix with dogs, but the coloring, he looked almost like a dog. That's cool. That's funny.
All right. We have nothing else. I'll take a motion for adjournment, please. Yeah. Motion to adjourn. And watch the Pats game kick off. Kick off at 830, right? Look at this. Right on time. Look at this. You're walking, folks. That's impressive. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have a second on the Clips motion? Second. Second. Thank you. There goes Lisa. Roll call, please. Lisa Alban? Yes. Luke Legere? Yes. Barbara Hall? Yes. Will Lewis? No, but. John Storr? Yes. Shannon Fisher? Yes. Sean Fersey, yes. All right, folks. Appreciate it.