The Fall River Board of Health convened a virtual meeting on Thursday, April 30th, with Thomas Corey presiding, joined by Michael Coughlin and Agent Tess Karen. Dr. Stephen Gaglioti was noted as absent. The meeting commenced with the unanimous approval of the minutes from the previous meeting held on March 30th, with a 2-0 vote.
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foreign good afternoon to everyone and welcome to the Board of Health virtual meeting on Thursday April 30th scheduled for 3 30. my name is Thomas Corey present with me via Zoom is Michael Coughlin and Tess Karen our agent of the board at this time Dr Stephen gagliati is not with us we also have various guests and participants in today's meeting pursuant to the open media any person
0:35may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised at such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible Tess can we have a roll call Miss Corey present Michael Coughlin present the next item of business is the
1:03approval of the minutes of the meeting from Thursday March 30th are there any additions deletions or corrections to be made to the minutes of the meeting is printed to accept a second can we have a roll call honest Corey yes Michael Coughlin yes thank you next we have um I don't know if this is exactly worded correctly but we've got a Title Five uh situation here from Sharon beruby at 223
1:40Remington Avenue here in Fall River and Mr aguiar is with us to present I believe on this one uh actually the design engineer Mark Rogers is here all right Mr Rogers if you'd like to present yes I'd be happy to everyone can hear me okay yes fabulous I'll move along my name is design engineering here in Fall River and before you as a on-site sewage disposal repair plan for the property
2:14located at 223 Remington Avenue the owner being the Sharon baraby uh what we've got here is a three family eight bedroom uh facility that we're serving with an on-site sewage Disposal system due to the uh non-availability of Municipal sewage uh it's a very small lot on 9200 square feet total with an eight bedroom septic repair that we're proposing for the back of the property to the east
2:47previously the system of record was the flow diffuser system which consumed the entirety of the backyard as I am proposing to do here uh there were waivers and variances to the title V setbacks back in the uh 1999 time frame that systems have served its use for life and is in a hydraulic failure and we're proposing to put in a new title V compliance system and we have several waivers to Title Five that I'm
3:20requesting from the Board of Health the system is a infiltrator uh quick four standard chamber bed a total of 64 Chambers those chambers are approximately three feet wide and four feet long they will be pretty much centered in the backyard existing system the flow diffusers and stone and any contaminated soils and materials ought to be collected and hauled off site and disposed of that inadequate
3:52facility for said disposal the previous system had two tanks which facilitated that system at the time the first tank was a 2 000 gallon uh septic tank which was followed by a 1 000 gallon concrete pump chamber to pursue compliance with title V after inspecting those tanks that are structurally sound and adequate I am converting those tanks from a tank and pump chamber to a uh septic tank two tanks in series The
4:28First tag being the 2 000 gallon tank existing that is piped over to the pump chamber which now will be the second compartment or second tank in series totaling 1 000 gallons that'll provide us compliance with title V for either a two compartment tank or two tanks in series oh we're discharging by pump to a distribution box and then onto the soil absorption system consisting of the 64
4:58Chambers configured as shown on the plan there are four waivers that I'm seeking from the Board of Health this afternoon are those four waivers are as follows the setback and they're all set back distances here but the first one is the setback distance between the pump chamber on the north of the dwelling uh and the Northerly property line and I'm showing that at five feet off the property line versus the title V
5:24requirement of 10 foot to property line the second setback is the distance between the proposed soil absorption system the chamber bed uh and the north property line and that too is 7.3 feet versus 10 feet off the property line the third of four waiver set back waivers is the distance between the proposed soil absorption system and the easterly property line and that setback is seven feet versus the
5:55required 10 feet by Title Five and lastly going back to the proposed new pump chamber that's being installed the setback distance between that pump chamber and the concrete slab Foundation is five feet versus 10 feet as proposed in title five that is also okay Mr aguiara comment or two yes Mr chairman if I could add um I have no issues with the requested waivers for the local upgrade approval there are
6:28some plan components that I'll work out with Mark after these have been granted um but for what you're being asked to tonight um is to Grant these waivers to offset to property lines and the foundation I have no issue with and the rest of the plan stuff is just some minor minor stuff that I'll have Mark cleaned up before we actually issue the permit okay I do know that all of the Abundant notifications went out
6:53um as we're asking for a setback relief to the abutting properties um the applicant is required to send out notification to the abutters that did take place the green cards were forwarded to to testing myself today I don't know if there is anyone on the call that wants to add comment you know being one of the notified of Butters I don't see any but you may want to ask just to make sure
7:19I can see everybody on the call also I have to assume it's only us okay so just for General discussions Mark um do you know why this this property keeps having issues with failed septic systems I I actually do have a history with the property oh it's probably the thickest file in all files is this one and I read through the whole thing uh it's been it's been one thing after another I I
7:47was involved in some forensics back in the 2006 time frame when when this system currently installed was placed in the ground uh and there was evidence of premature hydraulic failure of the system the flow diffuser system uh I did some digging uh excavated back into the over dig and what I found was this classic a Biomat failure that I've seen in all of my years doing this Dan um looking to try to establish the cause
8:18of that uh there was some question that perhaps there were some inappropriate discharge to the system which could have been through a drain from the garage uh to the side of the property I could not conclude that definitively though it is suspect and I think what we've got here is we've got an eight bedroom facility discharging I think the lack of a two compartment septic tank had some
8:45significant uh contribution to the failure of the system back in 2007 Dan a white knight system was installed in the tank provides remediation of the system and that actually took us from 2007 you know until the 2019-2020 time frame uh when the failures were recorded with this with your child so I think she gets a lot of use eight in three bedrooms I mean three families and eight bedrooms I think it put a
9:14great Demand on the system that's why I think going to the two compartment configuration that we have are two tanks in series uh sorry about that uh and then pumping up to a new bed getting rid of all of the contaminated material which was only just outside the perimeter of the stone surrounding the flow diffusers should provide us some useful life and hopefully at that time if we get to that end which probably
9:39will not include any of us here to this afternoon we can see what we can do to get Municipal sewer down there okay and I know it's on the plan um has anyone done an investigation in the house with regards to garbage Grinders or garbage disposals I did I did not but it's my memory serves me correctly Dan the Title Five inspection reports did not indicate that there were garbage Brokers there I could personally
10:05do that inspection though all right so but ultimately you know not necessarily tonight but when I review the rest of the plan you know I will make a condition that an affidavit be recorded that that there is no garbage disposal in any of these uh the Water use records they're they're nowhere close to 880 gallons a day so it's just got to be you know typical rentals with what they put
10:27down the drains whether it's strict oils greases you know they just basically abused the fact that there's a septic system there so we'll we'll add whatever protection we can give to this property owner to protect his investment um so you you and I can talk about some of the plan modifications later but as I stated Mr chairman I have no issue with the grant of uh the requested waivers Michael any questions
10:56you know I was just looking at the looking at this place I assume this is up in the reservation where most of the septic systems are but I see it's not right on the river in that small residential area that's tucked in you know near the waterfront park by Centennial Park Etc so I don't know just that raise any additional issues that it that it's right right on the river or uh
11:25what I would offer so just for everybody else you know if you don't know what Remington Avenue is it's down behind Commonwealth Landing um it's a little dead-end area that basically used to feed over to Slade's Ferry um this this piece of land does fall in an AE flood zone and I'll talk to Mark about that and the filing requirements and the permitting for that but um the test pick data illustrates that
11:46there's no issue with groundwater I think all the soil testing that Mark has done in the past indicates that there's none an important part of this and why we're we're here there was a private sewer line installed in Remington for from the butter across the street a number of years ago however that was under a very specific agreement allowing that home to tie into the Commonwealth
12:09Landing private sewage pump station so I do know that Mark and the applicant attempted um to be able to tie into this sewer to alleviate the need for this and from what I understand the the private line owner um would not accept a proposal to allow that time to happen that would have been the best scenario um so shy of this gentleman installing I don't know 30 40 000 worth of of of uh
12:41sewer installation to get back up to Duval Street this is probably the uh the best that we can do in this location again is there are no requests for reduction in size of the system separation the groundwater these are strictly offsets the property line to fit the biggest system that they could okay it will make the motion uh move to accept the proposed the variances or waivers what's the right local upgrade approval
13:15variances waivers whatever you want to call them it really doesn't matter okay so move to accept them okay I'll second test can we have a roll call Thomas Corey yes Michael Coughlin yes okay thank you gentlemen yeah you too thank you sir have a good afternoon thank you Dan we'll be in touch okay thank you good day cash we have the director's report sure so um I don't have too much to
13:48update other than we currently have the Tobacco Control um position posted um Diane Heath has uh left the position um and so that position is posted and we are currently um conducting interviews for um for that role um so hoping to um what happened with her I liked her what what she moved to um a position in Taunton um in their health department okay so yeah it's unfortunate that you know that she she left
14:28um you know we appreciated all the work she did she really um you know uh did a great job in her role um so uh her last day was um on the 14th um and so we were moving to um to fill that position as quickly as possible yeah is anyone helping out is Maryland available or she's not available um I did Ping her on the chance when Diane put in her notice but
15:02um she she's not available um and so and unfortunately the uh part-time um inspector position is also um they can tap this time on that individual who we have moved to a permanent um position full-time position elsewhere um so I just been looking for more hours and and got something elsewhere um so hoping to fill the coordinator role and then once that individual is established um we'll move to to get the part-time
15:36inspector position built um in fact we I haven't even posted that one the part-time inspector until um until we get the permanent full-time individual okay uh so that's really um you know my uh my my main update um continuing on with the work with the substance addiction task force and the Strategic plan um and you know the the department as a whole is moving forward on a number of
16:04other brands and initiatives that are um going on and as I mentioned last month uh the Epi epidemiologist um has accepted the the role and so she'll be starting full time in June um but in the short term we're having her work with our consultant on getting trained um on some of the maven and the back end disease investigation um thing so so she'll be um able to hit the ground running once she starts
16:34full-time in June very good date for the next uh anything from citizens input we did not receive citizens input okay for the next meeting again we've been going with the fourth Thursday of the month which would be the 25th of May when I remember Dr gagliadi saying he would have surgery he was in surgery that Thursday and so do we want to go with the 18th for now and confirming with Dr gagliotti
17:06is everyone's calendar clear those two days if we need to change I can do either one it's fine okay yep those either of those work so we can check in with Dr Gagliardi um and get back to the board okay very good um was there any other business of such a nature that it could not come before then make the agenda no no new business okay um can we have a motion to adjourn
17:32so moves oh second can we have a roll call Thomas Corey yes Michael Coughlin yes okay thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the day you too thanks bye