NAHANT — The conservation commission met Aug. 11 to come up with conditions for a pair of proposed projects by Northeastern University.
At the previous meeting, the commission accepted the two notices of intent with conditions under the Wetlands Protection Act, while denying them under the Nahant Wetlands Protection by-law.
While residents were able to attend the meeting, public discussion had been closed in a prior meeting so the commission members were the only people allowed to comment.
Special Counsel stressed how important this was.
“You are jeopardizing your decisions that you are making tonight if you take comment. A question is a comment. If this meeting is held…in violation of the open-meeting law, this meeting didn’t happen and therefore these decisions are not going to get issued in time and (Northeastern is) going to go straight to (the Department of Environmental Protection). So it’s very, very serious that we not take any comment, questions, testimony, because the record has been closed.”
Both notices of intent were passed with the conditions that the commission discussed. Among the various conditions were ensuring that the commission is present for pre-construction meetings and ensuring that trees are replanted, as well as all that permits are obtained before the start of the projects.
One of the conditions that had the most debate was guidelines for notification in the case of an incident during construction. Initially, the notification deadline was set at 24 hours by Kristen Kent, who is the chair of the commission. She received some pushback from members who indicated that with a cell phone it shouldn’t take that long.
One commission member mentioned an instance where Northeastern had a hydraulic line break, causing a large spill that wrapped around a wharf near Canoe Beach. The board was never notified of the incident. The commission ended up deciding to make the deadline 24 hours with the possibility to make the notification deadline stricter.
The commission also wanted to ensure that they can hold Northeastern accountable and can’t blame the contractors in case an incident occurs.
The second notice of intent was regarding Northeastern’s seawater intake system. This was a much more complicated issue due to drilling that was involved in the project and possible erosion issues.
Tom Famulari wanted to ensure that local lobstermen were protected during the construction. Famulari had been informed that young lobsters are located in the area, and if construction was to take place prior to September it could harm the hatchlings. Also, a requirement to monitor water temperatures was added to the conditions. The commission plans to do further research in regards to what variance should warrant a notification from Northeastern.
The commission members wanted to ensure that the construction began after that period. Kent added the condition but said that more research needed to be conducted in order to define a time period for when construction can take place.
The conditions need to be issued by Aug. 18, which will be the next Conservation Commission meeting.
