By Kim Siebert MacPhail
At their Wednesday night meeting, the Conservation Commission voted unanimously to send The Edge, the athletic facility on Hartwell Road, an enforcement order that will ensure that the owners comply with necessary protections to Elm Brook and the wetlands that border the site. The Edge is in the midst of constructing artificial turf playing fields on land adjacent to their indoor facility and has also recently erected a “bubble” that covers one full-sized athletic field, allowing for all-season play.
Explaining the situation to the Commission, Conservation Administrator Elizabeth Bagdonas said, “On the 27th of December, when we were having a rainstorm,that bubble was not in place. I sent an email to Brian [DeVellis] saying, ‘Please do not do any more work on this site until all the erosion-control issues are resolved,’ because the silt was just pouring over the road into Elm Brook. It was very dramatic. This wasn’t even that bad of a rainstorm. . . .That erosion was coming from all along the site, not just one place.”
Commission members, having seen the photographs that Bagdonas took during that visit on December 27, concurred that the problem was grave.
Bagdonas allowed that the timing of snowstorms has made it hard for The Edge to comply with the need to put in barriers or otherwise control erosion, as well as making it difficult for anyone inspecting the site to see if any work had been done towards compliance.
Adding more weight to Bagdonas’ level of concern is the assessment from independent wetlands consultant Mary Trudeau, who was hired to oversee the environmental impact of the massive project at The Edge. Trudeau has reported twice to the Conversation Commission about the erosion control problems, although it remains unclear to Bagdonas whether remedial action was taken.
“The problem is this: are they going to be ready when we have the next thaw to shore up those areas? Or the next time it rains is it going to be the same thing?’ Bagdonas said. “The retention basins were not capturing the run off that was coming onto the road. It’s [a] complicated [problem]. They need a professional engineer to take a look at that site and draw up some standards and put them [i]n a plan, like Hartwell Farms has done.”
Commission member Art Smith agreed that Hartwell Farms had “quite completely” addressed a serious run-off problem.
Bagdonas added that the bales of hay and silt fences that The Edge project had put in place to prevent run off and erosion had been disturbed and, because of that, did not serve their intended purposes effectively.
“There are breaks in the [barrier] line that provide routes for the run-off to build up and go coursing down into the road,” said Bagdonas.
“What they’re doing is affecting our resource area which we are responsible to care of and to see to it that nobody messes around with it,” said Smith.
Several Commission members made it clear that, while they supported The Edge as a business in town, they wanted to send the type of message that got results without “raining down nuclear warheads.”
“We’re getting their attention,” said member Laurie Eggert.
“I’m the most anti-nuclear person around,” Smith added. “But we need to enforce this.”
Ultimately, the Commission decided to deliver an itemized list of requirements to DeVellis, including the checklist from consultant Trudeau. The Edge will be asked to submit a complete erosion control plan by January 23, 2013, when the matter will again appear on the Conservation Commission’s agenda and The Edge will be expected to speak to the details of the plan.
“It’s not so much things they have been doing,” Bagdonas said. “It’s things they haven’t been doing. . . .They need a plan for various stages of the project. They need a plan for when the ground loosens up and it starts raining instead of snowing. That could be any time—we don’t know.”
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