The Fall River Conservation Commission held a public hearing on Monday, September 26, 2022, to address an old business item: a Notice of Intent (SE-24-806) from the City of Fall River regarding culvert maintenance and repair on North Main Street. Paul Ferlin, Administrator of Community Utilities, and consultants Dr. Larry Carlson and Ken Caputo from VHB, presented the project. They explained that the existing culvert, which carries Steep Brook under railroad tracks near College Street, had become severely clogged with silt, leading to frequent overflows onto College Street. An emergency cleaning had already been performed, but a permanent solution was needed. The proposed solution involves constructing a pervious stone weir (check dam) with a pipe passage to create a forebay condition, designed to trap sediments before they enter the culvert. This will allow for easier, visible maintenance and prevent future blockages. The project also includes repairing a partially collapsed section of the culvert and refurbishing street drainage outlets with riprap. The work, part of a larger railway project by MassDOT/MBTA, will be performed by DW White Construction at no cost to the city, with the city contributing a pipe from its stock. The underground repair is scheduled for a five-day, 24-hour rail shutdown before Columbus Day, followed by the check dam construction. The Commission unanimously approved the Notice of Intent with standard conditions.
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City Officials
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welcome to the Fall River Conservation Commission meeting being held at uh public hearing on Monday September 26 2022 at 5 15 and the first floor hearing room one government center Fall River considering the petition is listed in this notice pursuant to the open meeting laws any person they make an audio or video recording public media May transmit the meetings he therefore advises such recording or
0:27Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible roll call ammo Jim Cusick Lewis Ferreira John Brandt uh we're missing James Jim Hornsby and Chris Boyle should be with us momentarily we also have from the planning department Danny aguiar Patty aguiar and forward TV Alex Mello uh old business you'll notice of intent
0:59se-24-806 applicant of the city of Fall River owners of American Consolidated Corp project location is ows North Main Street Assessor's map is t-16-0014 filed by VHB on behalf applicant the applicant proposed to conduct a covert maintenance and repair including construction of a stone checked Dam this was tabled from September 12 2022 here foreign thank you very much commission Paul Ferlin administrator of community
1:35utilities for the city of Fall River so this project is uh in relation to work that's being done on the rail as well as the area that we have College Street off Main Street steep Brook comes from uh area originally starts up in the industrial park flows down across this Highland Avenue continues to come down to this one point Crossings in a Culver underneath the railroad tracks just
2:05adjacent to the south of College Street and eventually discharges out into the Totten River this area is uh under heavy ring uh the uh cover can be overwhelmed and uh flow go out into College Street um during uh some construction out there that the railway has been doing they made some minor improvements but there are other improvements that need to be made there's one section of the covet
2:34that's partially collapsed the uh planning to repair as well as improve the area leading into that cover to better the water quality flowing through that color and not into the into the river so that's kind of a broad overview of the whole entire project and I will turn it over to the specialist to talk about the areas of impact that fall underneath the commissions guidance thank you Paul I'm uh Dr Larry Carlson
3:03professional Wetland scientist with VHB with me tonight is Ken Caputo he's a civil engineer working on the project I'm going to start out and give it a few folks an overview of the existing conditions and then Kendall talk about the engineering factors I do want to thank you all for coming out tonight and realize this is not your usual hearing and we appreciate you hearing us tonight
3:26so um the the first sheet shows on this side this is a plan view of the uh situation where the train tracks are down here at the top there's an existing 48 inch pipe that comes out from the bottom of it very tall stone wall that then the flow in the brook proceeds down through a fairly short section of the channel and then it enters a great it's on just a a great
3:59that's on the ground and then it drops down to um you know down to the bottom where it then enters an existing uh Stone box Culvert that was built as part of the railroad um when you look at it in uh profile that's on this side the water comes out from the bottom of the wall goes down and there's an existing sewer line that's out there supported on a bridge and that's that's what this
4:35structure is right here so that's why it looks like something's going through the brook but it's not the sewer line is actually elevated by several feet above the ground and it's really sort of supported on a de facto Bridge this structure is not there now but this is where the proposed check Dam uh would be if you get approved tonight and then here's the grade and then once I entered the grade it actually drops down
4:58um quite some distance maybe five six seven feet until it then goes horizontally in the stone box Culvert under the tracks and then the outlet down here into the cotton River resources on site include a Riverfront Area 25 foot Riverfront here in Fall River because it is a perennial stream we have the Wetland buffer zone we have Bank the first one's in blue the riverfront is in orangish and then the
5:27bank is in blue there is no bordering of educated well there was no Wetland vegetation um either on the bank or significantly in the channel and then the whole area is land separate to Coastal storm Flowage associated with storm events in the river that just back up or flow up through the street and not to the site um so that's that's the exist conditions I'll turn over to Ken talk about proposed work on the second
6:03franchise again Ken Caputo and BHP uh pleasure to be here tonight again
6:16also hears Dan did review the plans and gave us some really helpful constructive comments that we made some revisions to improve upon the improvements that we already planned as Lodge pointed out you understand the system coming in now and and Paul as well it's a large area it's a lot of flow uh coming into this historically uh and uh so we have to manage it what we saw is we have to manage it better
6:43right it is a culvert that's Inlet and Outlet or outside the railroad right-of-way so we don't look at that as a railroad Culvert there's a lot of culverts along the railroad with a head wall Inlet head wall and an outlet head wallet right at the railroad right away lines those are what they are those are railroad Culvers this one is outside that how I wrote the MBTA recognized that its functionality was as much of
7:08importance to the MBTA as it was to see uh so with Gene's help and Holly they're both masked off and MBTA here with us tonight uh you know the MBTA has agreed to uh make improvements do some restoration work on the Culvert and do some things that are preventative in terms of long-term maintenance so first we found that with the Overflow of water and it's just gotten worse and worse I
7:36mean I've been on this project for not as long as as Shane has but uh long enough to know that there was a major change in conditions out there last year with just constant overflow going down Collins Street and DPW and and its history is built a trough along Column Street it just wasn't working constant overflow when we did the investigation what we found was that the color literally up at this end at the inlet in
8:06it's a three by four box Granite box color it had about that much ceiling clearance from the top of the soap layer to the top of the coal which explained why it was overflowing so much so and when you look at this area it looks like uh you know beach sand along the Saco River up in Maine if you're familiar with that it's real Sandy side so you can see how a lot of silk
8:30over time could build up inside this culvert so today what we've done on emergency repair is we got in there up at this half of the Culvert right here and we cleaned it out completely um and that with a backdraw we didn't blow it down into the cotton Revolution sucked it out into into trucks uh which worked but it was a very extensive job because of that profile I showed you we
8:56had to build support of excavation especially the vertical shaft to get down to the Culvert we still have to do that right here at the beginning of the with the covet first passes underneath the road there's still one more obstruction that we have to literally open heart surgery here we got to dig it out again in this area to remove the debris is too big for the back truck
9:19together we have to get in there and get closer so we're going to do that now what it taught us though was okay we don't want to do this again or we certainly don't want to do it anytime soon that's for sure so we looked at with the city uh what preventative measures we could do to try to uh mitigate this from happening over time so what we're proposing tonight is a
9:45pervious stoneware with a pipe uh Passage through across this channel basically and and to make this area that you guys are I'm sure very familiar with new development when they build stormwater detention basins they have four bays in them and the four bay its whole purpose is to settle out those sediments before they get into the detention or retention Basin and ruins ruin its permeability
10:14because you want that water to infiltrate through same approach we want to turn this basically without changing any of it in its existing resource area configuration and condition we want to Simply create a footprint here that makes this area function like one of those four Bays so that those sediments get trapped before they get to the Culvert Inlet which is down here so we have a probius sperm
10:45built up with a rip wrap apron on both sides and also while we're at it you know you're in there you're doing all this repair work you see a little the out the outlet condition from the street drainage here needs to be refurbished as well with riprap so that it it more of a splash pad types set up so we're going to get in there and repair and refurbish
11:08that as well the way it was intended to be uh we can do that right over the wall so there's not going to be any equipment in here doing this doing this except right here and they'll come in from this staging area that is used right now for dock storage over the winter so we got to get in there before the docks get there um and and it's important to the captain
11:31everyone calls them down there at the marina that we we get this done before he stages for the winter with with all the docks from the marina so we do want to do that we don't want to impact his operation anymore that he's already been impacted he's been very helpful to the project we rebuilt Collins Street maybe some of you saw it uh pretty cool operation there putting that bridge in
11:58and increasing its clearance a little bit more than what it used to be so you know our railroad work through here was done but we have to deal with this colder so that's what we're doing we're going to put this weird this um we're in to check Dam call it to create that Forbe condition with the approach aprons uh one suggestion from the city that we did add was we did put a pipe in a duck
12:24the lion pipe um
12:31graciously contributed to stick a pipe for us to use so we don't have to wait uh because getting drunk Alliance pipe right now is not uh nothing uh so we're ready to go on this and and make these final improvements and do this work to try to mitigate and and manage the situation further so that we don't end up with the same problem uh you know in a short period of time from when all of this
12:58effort gets done this has been a pretty intensive effort no nobody wants to go through and and deal with that again and it it's very costly uh it's not it's not just like Roto-Rooter and uh uh a sewer line uh you know so that's where we're at that's what we got so a gene or Holly you have anything
13:27and who yeah exactly and there's multiple things involved so the property owner is American Consolidated uh which is actually the same as the marina that's down there um the property uh the city we filed as the applicant uh working with massdot uh BTA as they mentioned the presently there's no cost to the city uh sticker pipe because it's very tough to get but we have it in stock so that
13:59they'll be able to get their work done this this fall prior to any work but this is a major undertaking that they're doing uh that's part of their overall Railway project so this will alleviate flooding and the flow to water when it eventually leaves be clear and smoother yeah exactly cleaner water going through there being discharged out into the Titan River of more water capacity through the actual
14:23Culvert on a hundred year storm is that Culvert going to take all the flow probably not we may still over top onto College Street but that'll be greatly reduced and I was just going to say by making that check damn structure you'll if once that fills up with sediment you'll you can see it right so that the city could go in and clean that out put new stone in before the whole
14:49Culver gets plugged up like it did this time there will be maintenance in the future we've talked about that but at least you'll be able to see it right see if it happens down under the ground and that no one can see it and that's why it got to the stated condition of this for years the the captain and his family have said oh we've been at we we get in
15:07there every couple of Springs and oh you know clear the leaves off of that and they do all kinds of things what they couldn't see was what was happening underground and that build up that slow build up of sediment and since we removed that sediment I don't think there's been any overflow on College even though there's still an obstruction right at the railroad line take out yeah it's opening up that much the recent
15:32storms they've been able to yeah it's not gone it's better yeah it hasn't been going I think we still have that other obstruction that needs to get out of there but what is the location of the other obstruction the final obstruction you want to clear up roughly I'm right right it's in the it's in the rail bed in the track a little bit where on page two yeah there's a little square it's in an Upland area
15:57within station right now it says approximate location of 14 bit to remove obstruction it's out of the resource area and that's that's at a later date anyway right now oh yeah it's all being done at the same time that's why it was important to have the contractor who's there doing this work be able to continue on and do the remaining more touch stream okay yeah we don't have to hire
16:21out any of this there's no period to retain it we're going to use the contractor that's been rebuilding the railroad he's also a heavy civil contractor been doing the bridges been doing the other culverts up and down the line so qualified contractor uh I think a lot of people in the area know uh um DW White Construction okay and the time frame obviously you're looking to get it
16:44done yeah yesterday expeditious but yeah as soon as we can get them out there yeah but as far as the construction itself oh how long would it take it's gonna probably be a we're actually going to do the repair on the Underground repair the box here and dig that down we're actually going to do that over what we call a five-day shutdown um because we can't have any rail traffic going by us when we're when
17:13we're open it's just a safety issue that we want to be ultra conservative and say no more trains for five days so that'll happen that'll probably be 24 hours uh five five days 24 hour days to get that done they'll get that buttoned up if they can get in there they they just made a submittal on their supportive excavation we're going to review that this week so I think they're going to be
17:37moving to get in for that repair uh before Columbus Day and uh as soon as they're done with that this this work here will probably take a day or two and then they'll back out and they're going to clean it up nice and neat so that the captain can get his docks in there and uh grade out a nice pad it and stone it so that's clean too we don't want to leave any open gravel
18:04it's not a loam and Seed condition because of what the marina wants to use the space for so we're going to cap it with clean crushed on okay any other questions so the hope is that we trap some of that sediment on the check gun itself what does maintenance look like for that because I know the way it is now on the Culvert we couldn't see the sediment but is there going to
18:26be ongoing maintenance to look at the check Dam yeah it's going to be a good I suspect it would be a series of annual visual inspection yeah so currently uh between the the sewer Division and the property owner uh We've annually gone out there to uh you know pick the wings of the grade and maintain the stuff this is going to need continuation it's just like any uh stormwater infrastructure is
18:54that a responsibility of the city or uh so so far it's been a shared responsibility between the city and the property owner and moving forward
19:08thank you all right can I have a motion of intent with the normal standard conditions for me a second yes hi all right thank you very much
19:33we've got another meeting coming up okay
19:41um