The Fall River Conservation Commission convened a public hearing on Monday, May 2, 2022, at 5:30 PM. The meeting commenced with the election of officers for the year 2022, resulting in John Brandt being elected Chairman and Louis Ferrara being elected Vice Chairman, both by an implied unanimous vote of the present members.
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City Officials
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uh welcome to the fall river conservation commission meeting held a public hearing uh monday may 2nd uh 2022 530 first floor hearing room one government center fall river uh pursuant to the open meeting laws any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such a recording or transmissions are
0:22being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and deemed acknowledged and permissible roll call here chris boyle here chris boyle john brandt louis ferrara jim kasich paul emerald james hornsby all members are present also attending from planning department is caitlin young dan aguiar nina pavo and from fall river tv is gary lett um old business is first did you read the open meeting yes
0:57first is uh election of uh 2022 conservation commission election of officers um i guess we'll start with chairman uh can we have uh nominations move mr brent second anyone else uh vote hi all right all right i thank you should that be a wrong call we did roll call yeah on the ball we just did uh rocco oh okay i didn't realize it uh vice chairman that was slow i don't like to elect uh louis ferrer
1:34second okay anything else chris boyle aye aye aye aye aye congratulations okay next on the uh agenda item two is a request for certificate of compliance se-24-722 owner applicant is juan fernand fernandez project location is 178 lake avenue cessna's map is d-21-0006 filed by alexander one of these days i'm going to get his name right on behalf applicant uh applicant and applicant requested a
2:14certificate of compliance this is table from april 4 2022 meeting i'll make a motion to live from the table second okay roll call vote hi hi hi hi abstain okay motion passes you said don't you just load it okay so we can talk about it oh it's table table talk about it oh is this a table indefinitely i thought we were gonna talk about that yeah if i can have dan aguiar uh city
2:54engineer conservation agent you had tabled it at the last meeting pending zoning board of appeals hearing which gut continued itself okay so i would ask that this be tabled again to get us past the next okay perfect okay so we're going to take it we make another motion at the table motion the table no we just didn't we just hit i shouldn't but didn't we just table it mr chairman no we motioned to
3:20to remove it from the table to remove it from the table not to table correct so you can discuss it can you okay i'm not going to get into this because i i'm too close but i i don't agree with your your parliamentary procedure but that's okay okay so we have a motion to table it in a second based on new information from our city engineer where i moved the table one second okay
3:49vote real quick hi all right all right hi hi abstain okay table to the next uh meeting um new business number one is abbreviated notice of a resource of area daily nation owner applicant is forward development authority slash vmd company llc project location innovation way such
4:19consulting llc on behalf of advocate good evening everyone for the record i'm tim mcguire i'm their scientist consultant here on behalf of dnd companies i'm joined as well by kyle raynor representative from bmd did you talk into the microphone i couldn't absolutely
4:48yeah again good evening for the record tim mcguire i'm a wetland scientist with goddard consulting here on behalf of vmd companies uh the applicant for the property i'm joined by kyle rayner from vmd companies and our project engineer brian dunn from mbl um what we have here the proposed project for you is the seeking to confirm wetland resource boundaries at the site off innovation way it's composed of two separate
5:10parcels parcel 189 here to the south this is oriented north facing this way and parcel 185 just north of that the wetland resource areas on site are two bordering vegetated wetland systems that do have an off-site connection these have been flagged with 500 400 and 100 series separately and um 200 series i believe for this part the site does not fall within an area of critical environmental
5:38concern outstanding resource waters areas and there's no jurisdictional fema flood zones on site however it does indeed fall within um priority habitat for endangered species as mapped by the most recent mapping by natural heritage as of august of 2021 so we've we've submitted on the andrad in addition to that we submitted a report addressing concerns from the city engineer in regard to a wetland finger
6:03that was previously delineated we took a specific look at this area we took soils it came up with bright non-hydric soils and it was dominated by black birch some huckleberry as well very rocky area too difficult to get soil samples but those that we did did come up as hydric that was submitted i'm not certain if hard copies were submitted to the commission but i did print out seven
6:24hard copies of those i'd be happy to distribute and pass those around i think it did get folded yeah yeah okay so these i believe that's the um that is the project again seeking to confirm these wetland boundaries uh happy to entertain any questions or concerns from the commission at this time if i could just to give you guys a little bit of back history on this so this is a piece of land owned by the
6:53redevelopment authority office innovation way up in the the extension of what was the industrial pop-up looking backwards so the wetlands had been dylan delineated on this property this is the third time now so i was able to go back look at the two previous delineations and see how close this was very similar in nature to what was flagged the very first time second time i had questioned about this wetland finger
7:22i appreciate them that they went back out and took a look at the error again for me submitted the documentation that i'm comfortable with i think what you guys also need to know is that on this piece of property there was a conservation restriction that was put in many years ago based upon the initial wetland delineation that was done for the property the majority or 99 of this new bvw still falls well within
7:48the limit of this conservation restriction so not only do we have the wetland boundary itself the 100 foot buffer zone associated with it the conservation restriction itself will add additional protections to how close they can get to the bvw with any potential or future work that that they may need permitting it was a difficult wetland to walk uh only because of the leaf conditions over the last two weeks
8:12when i when i did get out and look at it um but again being able to confirm it with past delineations i'm comfortable with how they presented the line and the data that they've submitted to back up their findings it's a big piece of land that that piece of paper doesn't doesn't give it justice for sure the scale is uh is very deceiving that's why there's multiple sheets to give the
8:32level of detail for the per flag that was required for the project and if i may mr chairman brian dunn a principal with mbl land development and permitting that conservation restriction is on the plans and like the city engineer noted very nice presentation jan thank you very much too bad you got it on this side of the table that you watch but uh 51 acres is in conservation restriction so we've been working with
8:58misa on that restriction which is already deeded as part of the land you can see the the reference on note number four of our plans of the book and pages recorded so one of the parts of the things to finalize that would be to bound it and show a plan to misa and have that that bounded plan recorded again along with that that book and page so we're asking for the resource area delineation to be approved
9:27um so that we can have an overhead and then uh eventually start to do some of our development plans and file our notice of intent with their commission mr chairman okay thank you caitlin any thoughts on this nothing that happened did we get a final number i didn't actually yes we wanted to read we we did this we're not getting forward usually they send it to me as well did they provide any comments on it no
9:55comments no comments they did um i could forward it to you right now yeah just so i could yeah i just want to see it yes usually they send it to me and the conservation email and you know what i noticed excuse me through the chair i noticed that they had dan's email incorrect was p again not d i don't know why i saw that i had no respect i know yeah well
10:19we'll help you all with that that's daddy that's patty dan that's not even you oh that's one of my that's one of the clerks in the office okay she's not even the conservation department i and i removed her from that when i started too so they must have went reverted back to an old let's serve as opposed to the new ones probably i mean to move the line forward you know
10:41contingent upon the receipt of the file number i mean we do have we have the number connection okay okay young what's that what does that have the number i just need to confirm that there's no comments okay i'm sorry that i don't believe you but fallout.org i mean you can just show it to me i guess sure i just forwarded the email to but if for whatever reason i don't have service yeah just bring it over
11:10i just want to confirm that there's nothing here's the email from zero yep nothing usually the only time they start to comment is we're on a floodplain or riverfront actual redevelopment kind of a thing when it's kind of dicey so okay just know the commission will be more concerned once development plans are submitted i'm sure this is not necessarily the time for that right but i i want to assure the
11:49commission in the city engineer's office that you will be pleasantly pleased with the information that you will be seeing shortly okay i just do have one quick question with respect to the delineation yes sir so um oxidized rhizospheres um just the quick question i have is there were no obligate species out there at all that you could find in the delineation in the wetland yeah i just didn't see any obligate
12:16specie designations here it's all facultative or well it's an extremely large site and the plots that we're taking were at those locations that were best representative of the bvw system and the up gradient side so off the top of my head if there were any species out there that had obligate status i i do not remember i was there the other day lots of you know it's a hardwood red maple
12:37dominant swamp with lots of green briar but i'm sure there would be a skunk cabbage or two out there atmospheres yeah at least no i just i looked through it very detailed very great delineation thank you for that thank you i just didn't see any obligate species and i thought my memory might be failing me but it could be okay any other questions i'm not fairly new on on the commission i don't
13:08quite understand what it means that there's a previous conservation restriction i missed that in the in the write-up through the chair can i i could explain that so part of the fall river redevelopment authority um in its previous work with with the meep office in boston as well as the mesa office for endangered species they came up with a certain amount of land i don't know how that was actually determined
13:39but the lines of the conservation restriction and deed restriction which prohibits any work within that area of that 51 acre area right and that's perpetually on the property right that means you can't do anything that is correct so what we're asking for is the wetland line to be delineated which goes in and around this area and then the rest of our property that's upland that's the part that we will show
14:07development in we will not be doing any development inside that conservation restriction reverend it may help to understand that their conservation restriction isn't over the whole piece of land it's only over a certain portion of the land and that was an association to the first time that the wetland wetland lines were delineated they established this restricted area their result there are
14:32multiple acres i don't know the exact number that fall outside of the restricted area that run along innovation way okay that's what i was so the restriction is only on what maybe half of the total land area i'm guessing yes yes all right and the wetland area itself falls inside of the restricted area so the restricted area is bigger than the wetland itself in most cases so the restricted area is bigger than
15:06the wetlands that's correct yeah so when they come up with the conservation restriction they add in some protective space that they don't draw the conservation restriction line along the wetland line they create a buffer off of the initial wetland line and create the line that creates the restriction okay and all of that development would be would be prohibited that's correct that is correct if we
15:32know there'd be no construction activity inside that restricted area fine all righty so can i have a motion to approve the area delineation upon receiving a filing number so moved second roll call vote hi hi hi hi
16:06be ready dude probably probably in the next couple days okay yeah thank you very much
16:31all right next on the agendas enforcement order sc-24-v owner applicant mark shea project location is tia marie way assessors map t-25-0065 commissioned to discuss enforcement orders for violation including approximately 5 300 square feet of bordering vegetated wetland has been filled in addition to approximately 3 000 square feet the buffer zone has been greatly altered mr chairman if i can give you a quick
17:02report on this one as well so this is a newly constructed home uh on terry murray way that the original order of conditions was issued to uh mark shea property was owned by jones saint ange that was back in 2020 i believe the property had been sold twice currently the property is owned by coast wise development it was here represented tonight by bill desperado bill came to me maybe two or three weeks ago
17:33and explained to me that while he was away a site contractor who was doing the site work went beyond the limit of what was bvw and women of worked previously and cleared and graded up to an existing wall site has pretty decent slope to it running from east to west downhill and the contractor took it upon himself to clear down to this area and grade it so the current owner of the property came to me
18:04and basically told me himself the violation on his own property so there's still an outstanding order of conditions and mr desperado understands that we have to get to a point where we can issue a certificate of compliance for that work so that the construction of the home can be completed and the property can be sold that comes through site plan review for our sign offs also through the conservation commission so
18:29mr desperado immediately upon knowing or being told what the issue was met with me on the site so i had explained to him that the quickest way to resolve the situation is through an enforcement arm i said don't take the negative connotation of the words of enforcement order as being in the issue this is the mechanism that allows us to require you to fix this immediately so that way we can get back under the
18:57normal order of the order of conditions that was issued um it's a lot it's a lot of wetland and it needs to be restored correctly mr desperado understands that alex gaudetsky is his engineer and i've explained to alex and i had asked for alex for overlays of the plans and everything else to get it locked in so that we could have something to look at that shows here was the limit of work
19:22here's where they've cleared to so he he provided us with that information um i had sent over a memo to to caitlin that my recommendation would be that the commission request that coast wise mr desperados engineer immediately submit a restoration plan for that area to include the removal of all the fill a planting plan extensive planting plan for the restoration of the wetland area itself and then beyond that
19:56that a post and rail fence with the appropriate signage that you guys have used on other sites alerting the fact to the new homeowner or to anyone that beyond this post and rail fence is a wetland and it is not you are not to go within this area um because it's going to take a little while for that area to re-vegetate you don't want the home to be sold and then have the new home a
20:17whole new homeowner coming in and thinking oh i have my yard beyond the other side of this fence so one i think it's very important to get this work done is as quickly as possible specifically while we still have some growing season left you know we're not hitting a drought condition so i think i think we can get this work done if the commission moves in the right direction to try and get it done
20:39now during this spring that will allow two things that will allow the wetlands to stop re-vegetating immediately get the removal of the fill and then allow the rest of the project to be completed it's going to be very important that the certificate of compliance for this does not get issued until the restoration work is done satisfactorily to your requirements before you even entertain
21:07a final certificate of compliance the enforcement order would would still remain on until the final vegetation established and something that you should also require is that in in the if for some reason the home is sold within the next six to eight months even after the work gets done the new owner should be alerted to the fact of there is an enforcement order here this has been restored this needs to be
21:36maintained and needs to grow so whatever wording or however you want to potentially word the enforcement order i think that would be important what for the sake of time again the commission only meets once a month i would ask that you give caitlyn and i the ability to work on the commission's behalf as far with regards to this restoration plan come back next month so that we can all
21:59look at it review it and you can all understand but if i can get a plan in the door within a week and get the work started we could potentially have most of the restoration work done before the next meeting when you ratify the enforcement order and you all have the ability to go out and look at it and be comfortable with has this truly been restored before you before the next meeting
22:22that was just my mindset my own question for um is there any concern regarding the origin of the fill that's on site i don't know because i don't know what's in the quality of the phone so right so what we can do is when we when that activity is taking place i can go and look at the fill make sure it's clean fill make sure it's not construction debris make sure it's not not questionable um
22:47i i'll ask the excavator where the phil actually came from um and maybe we'll get sometimes at the edge of a of a yard towards a wetland is usually not the best of phil so we can make sure during that restoration process that sure you know we do that would be my request to be sure we know the origin of the film and the quality and what it needs to be removed i am hoping that the
23:16organic layer that previously existed is still there that would be great if not then they're going to have to go out and find some but in the restoration plan i'll make sure that alex podeski details that with regards to planting spacing of shrubs plant spacing of trees and that we get the appropriate organic mat down to make sure that that this wetland will start and will flourish
23:39so i think immediately we'll be able to get a conservation seed mix grass-wise down that's not the issue but getting plants in the ground and having them be viable for the next few years is very important particularly any questions bill do you want to you have anything to say no i mean excuse me i apologize for what happened there it just it's just got beyond me i mean it's not my
24:05bailiwick to know what's going on as far as excavation goes um but i did notice it after a while we just looked at the whole thing and alex actually came out there and he said well we got an issue he said we've gone beyond the area i didn't see it happening because there wasn't a lot that was cut down you know we had both we had the log cleared and it looked like a lot of underbrush
24:26there but it just looked like scrub yep and uh so they just started to just move beyond the the actual area that they should have should have stopped at there there were a few different uh contract uh contracts contractors that have been and so you know the the initial guy didn't put down the the conservation or the erosion control in the right area he actually put it down where he thought
24:49was wetland which was down by the wall and so it just began the slope is still there nothing was dug out of there okay but some of the fill that we we used in there at the top near the house and we slid down so they just kind of like spread it out of it yeah and then alex came in to do the final ass build and said wow we got an issue and that's when
25:10i contacted dan well we appreciate you bringing it to our attention before before we found it yeah um is the construction for the home done yes yes is the yard itself stabilized um but the last time i was there it was there was no grass growth okay is there like a wattle or something up at the edge of where the work was supposed to be just to just to protect what's what's
25:34there you mean where where the new line is supposed to be no now it's at the toe of the slope which is into the wetland okay so is is there sedimentation control now there is but yeah but again as long as it's at least it's in the wetland i just wanted to make sure there was something there right now so yeah so what we can do you know immediately before alex even comes in
25:55with the plan make sure that wherever the edge of the fill so anything without vegetation on it that there is adequate erosion control whether it's soil fence water something so that over this spring even over the next two weeks whatever rainfall it is to keep anything from washing it and what we'll also do is we'll look into the wetland itself luckily that the stone wall acts like a sediment barrier to some extent
26:21but we can make sure that nothing spills over into the wetland itself i mean when i looked at it there was erosion control at the end of the tow of slope already but we'll look again in the wetland itself and if there's anything that spilled over we can make sure that that was all removed as well but i do think some type of permanent barrier is uh is well called for here okay okay any other questions
26:45jim i had trouble finding it and i apologize to you in the commission but i oh it's a busy time and i had a little off where is it very white yeah yes in the north end of the city um just north of wilson road so north main street go past wilson yeah and then on the right maybe one or two streets on your right if you go up that street there's a
27:13couple of condominiums on your left yep these are the two new homes built directly across the street but there's there's a sign terry murray white where is it in relation to o'connell boatyard maybe across the street right across almost directly across right after dewey street yeah okay okay just to see there's no there was no number on the on the information and i didn't get to checking it and i
27:37um has it been issued a uh an address yet yes i believe it has it was just tough on these because the assessor's data card isn't updated yet is there an address yes what is it it's 97 and 111 territory away okay these are substantial homes oh yeah they're big houses big houses but they'll fix it and i think it does need to be from the sound of it
28:07and then we get a chance to look at it again next month right so they're not then they're never going to be able to sell it until this gets resolved so it behooves the applicant to resolve this as quickly as possible and this is the right mechanism to try and get that done as quickly as possible fine and the the the thing is in back the area that was filled is in back of both houses
28:28nope it's to the right it's to the right of the first house so as you're facing the house the wetland ran along the right hand side of the house front to back on the law so the wetland that they filled is between the right side of the house and the down gradient wetland which is to the right so it's not in the backyard it's to the right side yard of the house that's furthest downhill
28:51okay i'll take a crack at looking finding it and just looking but i it sounds like that i'm taking absolutely taking your word for it yeah you'll see the common read uh growth on the uh the west end there what you'll see the remaining common read growth or what's left there so it should be indicative of what's called the whole site it's pretty well yeah and then without knowing what kind of
29:21fill they used are you comfortable that will get some kind of uh work done here in a month or so that we can absolutely yeah so eat and even even if the fill is somewhat even if it's questionable and just needs to be disposed of in the appropriate way there's no way to put it on the lot so it's going to need to be removed if it's clean filler can be removed anywhere
29:44but we'll take a look at it as they're going out there and moving forward i know it hasn't necessarily been the past practice at any point in time if any of you ever want a site visit whether you do it together or in groups or want me to sort of the reverend for instance if you wanted to schedule a time for me to go look at something with you
30:01i'm here all day every day so so don't be afraid to ask me for setting up a site visit on any of these projects right it just you're not here it just was there's a lot of church stuff yeah no no no so but i'm saying going forward on any of the projects site visits on any of them uh right i try to do a site visit for all of the sometimes it's good to do
30:26them in groups because you can throw ideas back and forth or questions or actually that's we that you'd see from my reading of the of the the conflict of interest is that two people can do that you can't have a quorum you can't you cannot or so you can do in groups or you have to scan or if it's scheduled okay let me just finish or or more than two can go as long as we do
30:53not um deliberate yeah yeah we don't collaborate and uh i asked john what he thinks and he asked louis what he thinks and we agree to something or if everyone's going to go you can actually post it as a public meeting that's another option as well yeah the public's invited to come as well yeah we did that once and it wasn't overly helpful as i recall it just that was the griffin of the uh okay
31:26one question as far as going on private property if any of us go out there do we have restrictions do we have the right to go like on his property without his permission to go and check yes you through the one because this is a permitted project and you issued a permit that alone gives you the right to go to go on the property to inspect anything yeah um during reasonable length on a
31:56project that's not necessarily approved or has an actual order we should get or some type of a filing before you you should get some type of authorization to allow it really for um liability purposes for the homeowner okay all right any other questions can i have a motion to keep the enforcement order intact no issuing issue an enforcement order and request a restoration plan on the wetlands
32:30uh make sure the uh fill was clean and post and rail fence with uh our standard wetland signage and erosion control is intact so moved second roll call vote aye aye aye aye aye okay motion so have uh passes give me a call tomorrow and we can get the ball wrong let's see on the next ones we have uh if we could take them all at once uh receipt of correspondence from review
33:09and discussion waterway license chapter 91 for route 79.
33:13uh four is a review and discussion of massdot project number 609-434 jefferson street bridge over sucker bridge and then uh review and discussion of 2022 yearly operational plan for massachusetts coastal railroad vegetation control and review a discussion of community development agency development can i have a motion to take all at once motion to take three through six together okay hi hi all right hi hi hi
33:48uh so can i have a motion uh place on file the uh from correspondence from three through six on file make a motion place those correspondence on file second row call vote aye aye hi hi all right okay uh next approval minutes from april 4 2022 uh and april 12 2022 can i have a motion for approval second we'll call vote hi hi hi hi okay which one are we voting on number seven approval minutes
34:33what approval minutes number seven no that's not my question are we voting on both of them at once we we we took three two six together now we're on seven which is the approval of the minutes yeah we took both together yeah i don't remember voting that okay i i will i'll abstain okay any citizen input no citizen input can i have a motion to adjourn sure a second okay vote hi hi
35:08all right i'm on the left hi hi welcome meeting