Kohl Construction, doing business as Tofino Associates/Northern Avenue Homes, submitted a revised condo proposal to the Conservation Commission on Friday. Download PDFs of the revised proposal (1.96MB) and associated narrative (1.31MB). This proposal will come before the Conservation Commission and the Planning Board on January 22 (see below). Concerned citizens are urged to attend.

Here is a detail of Kohl's original proposal as reviewed by the Conservation Commission on December 11:



Here is the same area in Kohl's revised proposal:



Here are our initial impressions of the revised proposal:

• Kohl has made only modest concessions to the Conservation Commission's objections. His proposal still calls for a good deal of disturbance inside of the 35-foot wetland buffer line.
• Kohl’s proposal appears to call for the kind of big “holes in the ground” (detention and bioretention basins), which Land Use and Conservation Planner Bruce Young disfavors.
• Kohl’s proposal now calls for constructing new wetlands. This has had mixed results elsewhere.
• Kohl has not yet recalculated stormwater flows for his revised proposal, so we can't evaluate if the revised proposal handles stormwater as well as the original one.

Here is the narrative Kohl included with the revised proposal:



Here are the January 22 public hearings that will consider Kohl's revised proposal. Please come!

CONSERVATION COMMISSION MEETING
Date: Thursday January 22, 2009
Time: 5:30 PM
Place: City Hall Hearing Room (use back door or main Crafts Avenue door) 2nd floor, 210 Main Street, Northampton

For more information: Bruce W. Young, Land Use and Conservation Planner byoung@northamptonma.gov

Agenda

Approval of Minutes for 01/08/2009

5:30 PM
Continuation of a Notice of Intent filed by Jim Harrity on behalf of EBD Corp. for the construction of a mixed use building, associated parking areas, driveways, sidewalks, utilities, landscaping and stormwater management system. Project is proposed to take place in the 100-foot buffer zone of Bordering Vegetated Wetlands. Project location is 225 Nonotuck Street, Map Id 23A-281.

6:00 PM
Continuation of a Notice of Intent filed by Smith College for the relocation of a tennis court, creation of a synthetic playing field, and the paving of an existing gravel parking lot. Work is proposed to take place in Riverfront Area. Project location is College Lane at Smith College, Map Id 31C-15.

6:30 PM
Continuation of a Notice of Intent filed by Tofino Associates, Inc. and Northern Avenue Homes, Inc. for the construction of twenty-five dwelling units and associated roadways, parking areas, driveways, sidewalks, utilities, landscaping and stormwater management system. Project is proposed to take place in the 100-foot buffer zone of Bordering Vegetated Wetlands. Project location is Northern Avenue, Map Id 25C-12 and 25C-17.


PLANNING BOARD MEETING
FOR Thursday January 22, 2009

THE PLANNING BOARD meets at 7:00 P.M. in Council Chambers, Puchalski Municipal Building, 212 Main Street, Northampton, MA:

7:00 P.M. Informal discussion with Mass Development on Planned Village changes

7:45 P.M. Continuation (from January 8) of a hearing on the request by EBD Corp for site plan approval at 225 Nonotuck St, Florence

8:00 P.M. Continuation of a hearing on the request by Tofino Associates/Northern Ave. Homes for a special permit to construct a 25-unit Townhouse project with associated site plan including driveway access from North and Northern Ave at 8 View Ave, Northampton, Map ID 25C-12 & 17.

See also:

Video of December 11 Kohl Condo Hearing at Conservation Commission
Kohl proposed to place grading, walls, yards, patios, and certain components of the stormwater management system as close as 12 feet to the wetland on its parcel... The commission expressed discomfort with allowing much disturbance closer than 35 feet to the wetland...

1:12:21-1:15:03 Former City Councilor Alex Ghiselin, speaking about Northampton's inspection and maintenance regime for stormwater mitigation: "It's not clear to me now that we have an effective system or that it's funded in any significant way, or that we've looked at the legal problems involved in long-term enforcement and inspection--who will be responsible over time. I have to tell you as somebody who represented a ward that has a considerable amount of wetlands, and building in those wetlands, that that was the knottiest, the most difficult problems that we dealt with... Once the houses are built there's really no good solution. I think of on Winslow, on Nutting, on Elm Street, I think of a continual problem that has bedeviled people who have owned those houses. The developers are long gone. These are houses built 25-30 years ago. I think of my friends John and Sue Norton on Winslow, who spent in excess of $8,000 last year to move water around their house. Almost everybody on the northeast side of Winslow has that problem. It's built along a series of wetlands and streams... I also think it's also significant that the City Councilor with by far the most experience in this city, Jim Dostal, who worked for the DPW all those years, has personal experience with buildings built near and in wetlands, and the problems that they've produced for the city over time, was adamantly opposed to moving to within 10 feet, and is still adamantly opposed, and I hope that the City Council will revisit this. In the meantime, you should really move very carefully into this new area."

1:15:04-1:17:37 Alan Seewald: "If you allow it here, you have to ask yourself, 'What projects are you not going to allow?'..."

1:56:15-2:12:22 Discussion among commissioners and Kohl Construction...

Commission Chair Paul Wetzel, "I don't see that there should be a reason to move past the 35 foot line."

Doug Kohl, "...at a certain point you have to ask, 'Why was the bylaw written this way?' There have to be some extraordinary measures that can be taken in some way that meet the bylaw in your mind." Kohl offers to consider donating land elsewhere to compensate for the encroachment.

Commissioner Mason Maronn, "Doing something on land somewhere else won't help the situation here, so I don't see that as an option. I have trouble getting past the 35 feet."

Commissioner Downey Meyer, "I'm also not inclined to go below 35 feet. I also wonder why those who have spoken so quickly got to 50, since the state Wetland Protection Act and the city ordinance both protect to 100. So I think you're being rather unambitious arguing from 50 to 35... I'm also, as Alex said, a little bit skeptical of the engineered solutions... Part of the reason why buffer zones have received greater emphasis in wetlands protection is that they do seem to work without anyone having to maintain them in terms of making the whole wetlands system work effectively. However, in terms of extraordinary mitigation, I think that to leave open what could happen within 35 feet, I think that depending on the size of the impact within the 35-foot boundary, then the extraordinariness of the mitigation would be in relation to that. Obviously here you have the creation of some of these detention ponds within the 35-foot area. If you were talking about pipes or drywells within the 35 feet, and there was some significant or extraordinary mitigation in relation to that minor incursion, that's a different calculus...  The extraordinariness of the mitigation is to be balanced against the size of the incursion. I would think that's the only way the commission can look at it. They couldn't just say, 'There's one extraordinary measure you must go through regardless of what you do within 35 feet...'"

"Innovative Non-Zoning Approaches to Encourage Smart Growth and Protect Public Health" - Video with Wayne Feiden and Bruce Young
1:03:00... Young: "We have some serious challenges ahead of us. And one is... 'HIGs', holes in the ground. And so, what we're saying is, we want good infill development, but through our Wetlands Ordinance we didn't really adopt stormwater standards that would improve the stormwater in these infill areas. So we have a challenge to come up with better design standards for stormwater instead of these giant holes in the ground, and to actually require or implement some, or incentivize some low-impact development type of stormwater systems. And then...the second thing that goes with stormwater systems is maintenance... We're working with the Department of Public Works that now has a stormwater manager and we're setting up maintenance for these systems, but some of these are older systems and some of these have been approved under a system that didn't have basically [what's modern] for these types of systems...

"And then finally, Wayne and I mentioned this earlier, design standards in architectural ordinances. We really need to think about how the infill happens. Because if we're saying we want a house between two houses, and we can't get the neighborhood to buy onto houses that are just not helping the neighborhood..."

At 1:13:30 during the Q&A session, Cohen asked Feiden and Young about the Meadowbrook Apartments. The experience of this development raises concerns about the hazards of building homes near wetlands. As  former City Councilor Mike Kirby wrote in June:

The developers built 255 units of affordable apartments there. They crammed them in everywhere they could, pushing them up into the bluffs, and close to the creek and wetlands. No backyards to speak of. One third of the buildings were built within 50 feet of the wetlands, 63% of the buildings are within the customary 100 feet of wetlands.

None of the buildings have cellars under their apartments. If they have cellars, there are people living in them. The cellar floors in the basement apartments in Buildings #4 and #2 are lower than the surrounding swamp. Some slabs have cracks in them. People have been flooded out. No moisture-proof barriers between the surrounding earth and the foundations. Moisture and mold percolate up into people's apartments via the chases that hold utilities. If you wonder why low-income children are afflicted with a whole host of respiratory diseases, you have to look no further than the children of the floor level and basement apartments of Meadowbrook...

Feiden and Young were apparently unfamiliar with the problems at Meadowbrook...

Video: "Low Impact Development: Performance Results and Implementation in the Field"; Summer vs. Winter Performance of Stormwater Systems
Here are selected excerpts from Dr. Roseen's presentation (0:13:30-0:32:12):

0:15:26-0:15:36: "Research in the 90s has shown that most stormwater treatment devices fail some portion of the time, say, two-thirds of the time, for some water quality constituents."

0:16:12- 0:16:32: "The wet ponds in general do perform...reasonably well [on water quality metrics]. The dry ponds don't do very well at all. And the swale really has no pattern of performance. That represents 95-96-97 percent of our stormwater management today. That explains much of our current water quality woes."

0:23:36-0:27:59: Summer vs. winter performance of various stormwater systems. Pointing to a chart showing removal of total suspended solids (TSS): "So here's our [stone-lined] swale. This is probably 98% of what's out there. It's doing fine in the summer. It does nothing in the winter." "If you consider the EPA is in general is looking at 80% removal efficiency for TSS, our conventional practices [such as stone-lined swales and wet ponds] are not meeting that."

0:29:36... "How are you going to balance public safety with aquatic habitat? We know we're going to go with public safety. So, salt reduction is not the simple answer... and there's no way to treat salt with a stormwater BMP." Roseen goes on to recommend consideration of porous pavements. They let you use less salt and still prevent slippery surfaces.

Kohl Construction's application (PDF) to build condos near the wetlands off North Street provides a Stormwater Drainage Report and a Stormwater Management Plan (pages 27-185). In light of Dr. Roseen's research findings, the winter performance of Kohl's proposed stormwater systems needs much more analysis. Not only is water quality an issue, but also flood control, as ice, snow and slush are well known to impede the smooth flow of water.

Video: Conservation Commission Meeting of 1/8/09; Challenges of Building Close to Wetland No-Disturb Zones
Selected highlights from the discussion of the EBD project (The David Ruggles Center and live-work space. The rear building is proposed to encroach to within 12 feet of a wetland):

0:13:21... Commissioner: "We've had serious problems with grass areas or even the beginnings of grass areas on wetland boundaries... They just don't tend to be respected by the people who live near or around them... My preference would be for basically to allow that [buffer strip] to naturally vegetate."

0:27:45... Commissioner: "When you look at any building, somewhere, someone puts their bike...they put their trash cans back there. They let their dog out, whatever, cats out. You got a boat you want to store, it sits back behind... You can't have an egress and not have an access way..."

0:28:30... Speaker for EBD: "The condominium documents will specify that there can be...none of the activities and occurences that you've just described... The association that will be formed once this thing gets built out, they will defend those conditions. As I said, the people that are going to be moving here will be people who appreciate the wetlands and all that it provides, and there will be none of the bad activities..."

0:28:58... Commissioner: "But how do you know? ...There isn't a lot of flexibility here..."

0:38:03... Commissioner: "I think what you're hearing from a lot of the commissioners who have seen this is that if residents do...go back into that area inside the 10-foot buffer, if they do cut, then it's going to become an enforcement action, with, you know, fines of $300 a day continuing every day $300... What we're all expressing is that having seen the best of intentions go awry, after projects have been built right on top...obviously when you build right on top of the buffer zone, you have mistakes carry into the buffer zone, where people leave stuff outside of the back of the building, or maybe a worker decides that he needs to get better access, and cuts some brush away, those mistakes then are violating the Wetlands Ordinance."

0:47:18... Commissioner: "The point is...that practically speaking they [the residents] are going to be walking in this no-disturb zone, they have to. And, it may not be this year, it may not be next year, but it will be 15 years from now or 20 years from now."

Boxborough Wetlands Regulations: Plans that Require Replication Discouraged
The history of wetland replication is mixed. Scientific reviews [Brown, S&P Veneman, 1998] conclude that for the most part replications fail to reproduce the range of values--in quantity and quality--of the wetlands they are intended to replace, in particular, difficulties in replicating proper hydrological conditions in a consistent and enduring fashion seem to be a major source of the problem.

The Commission shall strongly discourage any plan that requires wetland replication...

Photos Show: Man-Made Lakes and Stormwater Retention Systems Are No Substitute for Natural Wetlands
"Everett stands at the edge of a murky stormwater retention pond in Ivy Hall that Everett said was once a forest-lined isolated wetland. While the low grass held carnivorous sundew plants, the stump-filled water was largely devoid of visible aquatic life. 'This looks awful,' she said..."

Carlon Drive: Compensatory Wetland Not Working
Mike Kirby writes:
In Carlon Drive, they simply scooped out a hole in the swamp-bottom, and called it a detention structure. Today it is just a pond, and a stagnant smelly one. It was designed to have a dry forebay, and a shallow main chamber was supposed to have only about 6 inches of water in it. This was supposed to be a compensatory wetland, full of cattails and wildflowers. A rock check dam was supposed to hold back the "first flush" off the parking lots and trap pollutants, and outflow from it was supposed to feed the wet part of the detention pond. Here rain water pouring off the new parking areas and street was supposed to be stored, and discharged safely.

That was the plan. Today if you stand by the pond and look down into it, you'll see the check dam is now about two feet underwater. You can't even see where they planted the marshgrass and flowers. The area is under water. Even in a fairly dry summer, the detention pond is only about a foot and a half from the top of the bank. There's no storage to speak of, no discharge, no filtering. As it is constructed now, grey water from the parking lots and the access street goes directly into the swamp and the Connecticut River.

Gazette: "Council adopts wetlands ordinance"
At-large City Councilor James M. Dostal proposed an amendment Thursday that called for increasing the 10 feet no-encroachment zones in urban residential districts to 50 feet because of serious concerns about homes flooding, saying "We shouldn't be building there..."

New Hazards Mitigation Plan Reflects Weakened Protection for Wetlands
Unfortunately, the City Council voted 7-2 in 2007 to permit development in multiple districts to encroach as close as 10 feet to wetlands. In a rapid shift of priorities, facilitating urban infill was now deemed more important than flood mitigation, water pollution control, or urban greenspace. The proposed condo development off North Street is a good example of a project that relies on the narrowed buffer zones...

The claim that allowing development within 50 feet of wetlands can still give effective protection does not bear up under scientific scrutiny. As Hyla Ecological Services noted in 2007:

"Buffers of less than 50 feet in width are generally ineffective in protecting wetlands. Buffers larger than 50 feet are necessary to protect wetlands from an influx of sediment and nutrients, to protect wetlands from direct human disturbance, to protect sensitive wildlife species from adverse impacts, and to protect wetlands from the adverse effects of changes in quantity of water entering the wetland..." (Castelle et al., 'Wetland Buffers: Use and Effectiveness', 1992)

"Buffer function was found to be directly related to the width of the buffer. Ninety-five percent of buffers smaller than 50 feet suffered a direct human impact within the buffer, while only 35% of buffers wider than 50 feet suffered direct human impact. Human impacts to the buffer zone resulted in increased impact on the wetland by noise, physical disturbance of foraging and nesting areas, and dumping refuse and yard waste. Overall, large buffers reduced the degree of changes in water quality, sediment load, and the quantity of water entering the adjacent wetland." (Castelle et al., 1992)

...Most striking in the [Environmental Law Institute] report is that some locales desire wider buffers in areas of intense land use to address the higher levels of pollution and runoff. By contrast, Northampton has its narrowest buffers in these areas.

Earlier this year, NSNA engaged Hyla to compare Northampton's new Wetlands Ordinance to the regulations in other cities across Massachusetts. Hyla found that Northampton is now an outlier. In the entire state, it's hard to find anything similar to our 10-foot buffer zones for new development...

"...it is forecasted that, Massachusetts, and the rest of New England, is long overdue for a major hurricane to make landfall. Based on past hurricane and tropical storm landfalls, the frequency of tropical systems to hit the Massachusetts coastline is an average of once out of every six years." (Hazards Mitigation Plan, p.28)

Just Released: Planner's Guide to Wetland Buffers for Local Governments (emphasis added)
[Environmental Law Institute:] Larger buffers will be more effective over the long run because buffers can become saturated with sediments and nutrients, gradually reducing their effectiveness, and because it is much harder to maintain the long term integrity of small buffers. In an assessment of 21 established buffers in two Washington counties, Cooke (1992) found that 76% of the buffers were negatively altered over time. Buffers of less than 50 feet were more susceptible to degradation by human disturbance. In fact, no buffers of 25 feet or less were functioning to reduce disturbance to the adjacent wetland. The buffers greater than 50 feet showed fewer signs of human disturbance...

Alex Ghiselin, Letter to Gazette: "Don't let development encroach on our wetlands"
The failure of the storm water system built as a part of the Northampton High School renovation six years ago illustrates why protecting wetlands is so important. Silt has filled the retention pond so there is no capacity to slow a storm surge which now flows unimpeded into the Mill River and contributes to flooding downstream. This accumulated silt also raised the water table and spills ground water into nearby basements...

Without maintenance, these [storm water mitigation] systems are part of the problem, not the solution...

Wetlands do not need to be maintained; they just need to be protected.

Video: School Committee Meeting of December 11; Regionalization Discussed
Funding Approved for Bridge Street School to Address Flooding Problems: Process Stormwater with Sewer Tie-in Rather Than Detention Basins
1:42:55-1:43:33

"Bridge Street School has an issue with flooding because of the detention basins which are underground there. And every time we get a downpour we have issues of flooding in the cafeteria and then up that hallway. This will help tie into the city system, rather than have the water go into these detention basins which are supposed to then have the water percolate down into the groundwater. So this will be a major improvement for Bridge Street School."

City of Northampton, Memo from Mayor Clare Higgins to City Councilors, "FY 2009 Capital Improvements Program Recommendations" (12/4/08)
Bridge Street School – Detention Basin/Sewer Tie-in - $22,000
Repairing the three dry wells at Bridge Street School was ranked as the [Northampton Public Schools'] second highest priority. The wells are filled with silt and the ground water backs up into the building. The DPW has cleaned the wells but the problem still exists due to the lack of slope and the deteriorated condition of the wells.

Report on Kohl's Property by Alec MacLeod, Environmental Scientist: Indications of Vernal Pool Habitat
This site is particularly difficult to delineate, as the differences between areas meeting the technical definitions of hydrophylic plant communities and hydric soils are very slight over much of the site. Mr. Dauchy and I examined literally hundreds of soil samples along all the wetland boundaries and discussed the degree to which the soils along the boundary either did or did not display the colors and other features necessary to define the soil at that location as hydric.

Northampton's Flood and Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan: Floyd Flood Damage Reported Behind View Avenue; Avoid Building on Filled Wetlands