Washington Conservation Commission - Special Meeting
Members in attendance: Carol Andrews, Sandy Robinson, Nan Schwartz, Jed Schwartz (who only attended the East Washington site walk and subsequent meeting)
Public in attendance: None
The members met to discuss three pending applications.
1. The WLA Dredge and Fill Application for their mooring area project. This is a major impact dredge and fill application. We had a site walk on August 24th attended by Carol, Sandy, Nan, Rich Cook and Johanna Young where we briefly looked over the application and looked at the two areas addressed in the application, the mooring cove and the boat launch. We have informed DES that we will be commenting on the application. We discussed areas of concern and Carol shared with us the phone calls she has been receiving from people in the Island Pond subdivision. Sandy will put together a list of our concerns and will call Darlene Forst at DES to get a little more information on what they need from us. We are having problems with the cove dredging project, based on the information that's before us and the information observed on our site walk. The application lacks detail, leaves out a lot of facts, and does not take the lake/cove/stream/shoreline environment and the project's effects in to account.
2. The East Washington Mill Pond Drainage Improvements project, this is one part of a DES Watershed Restoration Grant project that is taking place in East Washington. This is a minimum impact expedited application being done on town owned land adjacent to Beard's Brook below the dam. Ed Thayer has been working with Erin Darrow, a civil engineer, to design the project. We looked at the plans and discussed the application. The package was very thorough and gave us a good understanding of the project. The project is scheduled to be done in October by the Public Works Department. After a site visit to East Washington, where Jed Schwartz joined us, to look at the project we voted unanimously to have Carol sign the application and return it to Erin who was going to deliver it to DES.
3. J. Gullage, Highland Lake Road, this is an after-the-fact driveway Dredge and Fill permit involving wetlands restoration. Carol, Sandy and Nan looked over the application and enclosed plans. The plans seemed to be a septic design with the dredge and fill information added to it. The plan was a bit confusing at first but we were able to decipher what was intended. We took at trip to the site to verify the information in the plan and application. There was extensive disturbance of the wetland on the site and a channel was dug at some point to take the water from the installed culvert toward the lake without filtering through the natural, wooded wetland. It looked like extensive clearing and filling had been done in the center of the site as well as the driveway and right-of-way. An ATV path was observed just past the installed culvert running right into a wetland area. The path went to the water's edge were it continued on along the lakefront. A dirt berm had been constructed on the right hand side of the lot to hold back the wetland from entering the gravel filled lot. The plans indicated that this berm was to be removed and the area seeded. Another area was to be seeded above the left side of the installed culvert where a stream came down through the woods and digging had been done to prepare for the driveway culvert. Carol will draft some comments to send to DES.