Newtown Inland Wetlands Commission (IWC) met February 8 at Newtown Municipal Center to briefly discuss new business, as well as decide if they should revoke the wetlands permit for the Holly Estates Subdivision off Berkshire Road (Route 34).

IWC members present were chair Sharon Salling, Mike McCabe, Scott Jackson, Kendall Horch, Suzanne Guidera, Stephanie Kurose, and Craig Ferris.

Senior Land Use Enforcement Officer Steve Maguire and Land Use Enforcement Officer Kiana Maisonet were also in attendance.

The commission swiftly handled the first two items on the agenda and spent the rest of the meeting dealing with the ongoing permit revocation hearing related to Permit IW #20-27 by Negreiro & Sons Construction LLC, for property located at 203 and 211 Berkshire Road.

The IWC conducted a special meeting on February 1 where they were on the brink of terminating the permit — for a second time — due to poor site conditions. However, the applicant’s representatives pleaded with the commission to give them a week to create a plan to fix the issues before making a decision.

Representing the original application was applicant Jose Negreiro, Jason Edwards of J. Edwards & Associates, Gary Nash of Nash Construction, and attorney Chris Russo of Russo and Rizio LLC.

On February 8, Russo prefaced the presentation saying, “First of all, we thank you for your time. You gave up an afternoon last week and I know Mr Maguire has spent a lot of time with this property — more than he should have had to spend with this property…”

He noted that Edwards would be sharing the plan for what actions can be done immediately and would also give a schedule for how long it is all anticipated to take.

Salling said, “What we are really looking for is a high-level summary.”

Edwards began by saying how he went out to the Holly Estates subdivision with an engineer from his office, the applicant, the landscape architect, and an environmental scientist on Friday, February 3, to see the state of the site in person.

“That was the first time that I had seen the silts deposit in the rear. That’s really the main issue, or major item, we need to mitigate now,” Edwards said.

He pointed out how in that area “there was blockage that formed from those frozen haybales and silt fences. The watercourse caused the stream to jump the banks and then just blew through this exposed site down here and deposited the sediment.”

Edwards said that the mitigation proposed is to clean it up “as soon as possible” to “preserve the health of the wetlands.”

Restoration Plan

Landscape architect Tracy Chalifoux of Danbury prepared a restoration plan that she said sought “to hopefully immediately remedy the situation that is east of Lot 12.” She explained that there is sediment that washed down the hillside and then spread to woodlands and beyond.

“The depth of that sediment is approximately four to six inches, and it sort of fans out the more it progresses east,” Chalifoux said. “So given the amount of sediment, we feel it would be appropriate to remove it by hand. We want to work around the existing vegetation and respect that.”

They would shovel it, transport it by wheelbarrow to an upland location, then reuse it in a non-wetlands area. Salling said that since it is a revocation hearing, she is interested in the correction of direct impact on the wetlands and the Newtown Forest Association’s (NFA) property abutting the subdivision.

“That mitigation plan is a separate application,” Salling said. “What we are really looking for is very high level bullet points of a correction plan and high level bullet points of the timing. I appreciate the detail, but I am just not certain that it is really the focus.”

Maguire added if the permit is revoked, an application would be “submitted for the lots within the review area and for the changes to the original plan. If the permit is not revoked, it would be a modification of the existing permit to cover the changes to the design elements and then additionally there would be a separate application for mitigation of the affected wetlands, which would be lot specific to where the impacts occurred.”

With that in mind, Chalifoux said there are four bullet points she would like to highlight: the removal of sediment in the eastern wetlands (Lot 12), removing 10 to 20 feet of sediment north of that area, cleaning out the existing basins, and removing the existing culvert and restore a screen in that area’s original cross section.

For the latter, Salling asked if that would mean “daylighting the culvert” and Chalifoux responded yes.

Edwards said that for his plan the overall theme is “more erosion controls” and to finish what should have been done from the original design plan. He listed specific examples, including putting silt fences around stockpiles and berms. He added that they have contacted a third party site inspector from Monroe that can come out to the site weekly or at a schedule the commission prefers.

“We are willing to have him start tomorrow,” Edwards said.

‘Issue Of Priorities’

After some back-and-forth about what the commission can decide that evening, Russo voiced, “We think it is important for the permit to not be revoked” and said if the commission chose to continue the hearing it would allow them the opportunity to do the measures they brought up. Salling said they will make a vote about the revocation during the night’s meeting.

“My concern is that there were other things that were proposed in earlier iterations of this that had they been done and made a priority, we wouldn’t be here tonight. We wouldn’t have been here last week,” she said.

Maguire mentioned that he is fine signing off on the temporary erosion controls. He wants on the record and the commission to review specifics — such as the permanent trenches and swales, changes to the basin, revised maintenance schedule — that need to be done through a permit process.

Salling said, “We are all negotiating in good faith here. We are all subject to the same regulations. We all want the project to move forward as long as there’s no harm to the wetlands and the other [NFA] property … we need to focus on the issue for the good of the wetlands and watercourses, which is our charge as a commission and it’s Land Use’s charge.”

Soil scientist Steve Danzer presented “a little linguistics” that the removal of the sediment is not mitigation, it is restoration. “What we have here is an emergency situation with sediment that has been deposited in the wetlands … it is doing harm,” he said.

Danzer noted that they can remove it now before spring, which is when it would become increasingly more difficult to accomplish.

When commissioners inquired what the benefit would be for revoking the permit versus working with the applicant for remediation, Maguire emphasized that he wants these issues to be fixed instead of them prioritizing building the houses.

“This is the first time I’ve had a revocation in my eleven years here [working for Newtown], and I’ve only gotten to this point after hitting dead-end and dead-end having issues,” he added.

Salling agreed, saying, “From my perspective it’s just an issue of priorities.”

Russo defended his client and tried to persuade the commission that not revoking the permit would be the best route to resolving the issues. Commissioner McCabe preferred they “start fresh” with a new application.

The attorney brought up that a member of the public could oppose the application and even if the IWC approves it that person could appeal it in court. Russo was reminded by the commission that the scenario he brought up is something that should have been considered prior to this point as it is not their problem.

Fate Decided

“It’s time to call for a vote,” Salling said. Commissioner McCabe made a motion to revoke IW Permit #20-27.

According to the meeting minutes, the motion to revoke permit IW # 20-27 was denied 4-3. Commissioners Jackson, Guidera, Horch, and Ferris were not in favor of revocation; while Salling, McCabe, and Kurose were in favor of revocation.

Salling said that IW Permit #20-27 by Negreiro & Sons Construction LLC “shall be maintained with additional conditions to be determined by Land Use.”

Maguire explained that he will review the applicant’s plans submitted that day, he will provide staff comments, commissioners can do site walks, then they will add it as an amendment to the original subdivision permit and have a restoration plan.

“We appreciate your commitment to prioritizing and know that a revocation hearing is quite rare, quite rare. We certainly hope that we never have to do it again. Please take this to heart,” Salling concluded.

The other brief agenda items for that meeting involved postponing an IW Application #22-26 by Pedro Valentin, for property located at 182 Boggs Hill Road, for the removal of fill and mitigation of wetlands due to the applicant not being present. Then commissioners heard a brief presentation about IW Application #22-30 by Fiat Islami, for property located at 123 Hanover Road, for the construction of a single family house.

The IWC unanimously approved the improvement location survey depicting the septic system design. An additional condition with the approval was that shrub species must be submitted and approved by the land use enforcement officer.

The next IWC meeting will be Wednesday, February 22, at 7:30 pm, in Newtown Municipal Center.

Reporter Alissa Silber can be reached at alissa@thebee.com.