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The thin green line
WHAT’S THE CONSERVATION COMMISSION’S ROLE WHEN IT COMES TO DEVELOPMENT? Jeremy Shulkin
The last decade has not been kind to the unnamed pond in Judith Vander Salm’s backyard, she and her family allege. The unnamed river that fills the acre-wide pond has poured increasing amounts of sediment and eroded hillside in with the water, turning it brown for days after a rainstorm. When that sediment finally settles, algae and other undesirable aquatic plants have found the new soil phosphorous and rich enough to move in and choke out the vibrant natural ecosystem.
federally protected Blackstone River, the Environmental Protection Agency got involved, revealing that Bailin and Associate’s permit for the development never included running storm-water overflow into the water below, and even after obtaining that permit they still “failed to implement and maintain Best Management Practices.” Even with that record, city and state officials haven’t followed up with matching concerns. The EPA fined Bailin $10,000 in 2009, far less than the $157,500 maximum. The Conservation Commission issued no fines, though they could’ve at a cost of $25,000 per violation. In fact, in a 2009 Worcester Mag article, city
100-foot buffer zone of the wetlands that flow into their pond, the Vander Salms fear that the pond’s ecosystem won’t bounce back. “This pond is going to take an additional beating,” he said while giving a tour of the rocky, soggy and treeheavy land between Salisbury Street and Salisbury Hill. Capital Group Properties bought the remaining Salisbury Height’s development from Bailin and Associates at the foreclosure auction in November, despite its awareness of the pending litigation regarding the property. With that in the background, Capital Group submitted plans to develop seven more lots abutting STEVEN KING
The cause, they say, is Salisbury Heights, a luxury condo development for the 55 and older crowd that razed 72 acres of trees above a wetland on the WorcesterHolden town line near the Vander Salm’s property. Jamie Vander Salm, Judith’s son, has been fighting the Conservation Commission for years regarding this. “My guess is that if there were 20 people around this, there would be more public outcry,” he says. The Vander Salms, along with the Jewish Community Center, are the pond’s only abutters.
ALL WET Salisbury Hill’s original plans called
for building 280 condos, but even after clearing out the space between Salisbury Street, Whisper Drive and Barrows Road, just more than 70 have been built despite large areas of now stripped and barren land. Even before the economy stalled out on Bailin and Associates, the original buyer and developer of the land, and the company lost the property to foreclosure, they were already running afoul of local and federal environmental laws.
In 2004, a year and a half or so after Bailin and Associates broke ground, silt-laden run-off would come down the hillside and into the wetlands below, leading to an enforcement order from the Worcester Conservation Commission. In 2007, Bailin was again cited for runoff pumped out of a detention pond. In 2008, after a site visit by a Conservation Commissioner and a city inspector, Bailin received a letter saying their detention ponds, catch basins, and silt fences “require[d] immediate attention.” Later in 2008, noting that this water flowed into the
The unnamed pond, and site of contention, behind Judith Vander Salm’s Salisbury Street home. officials would admit there were valid concerns about the character of the wetland behind Salisbury Hill but that Bailin and Associates was responsive in fixing problems and some of the high volume of water coming down the hill was because of major storms, not faulty waterdischarge. The issue still lingers. In 2011 both the EPA and the Conservation Commission again cited Bailin and Associates for failure to maintain storm water run-off and turbid discharges into the waterway. Both the Vander Salms and the EPA have filed suits against Bailin and Associates, the project’s engineers and these same city officials. And now, with the Conservation Commission allowing Salisbury Height’s new owners, Capital Group Properties, to build seven more houses on Salisbury Street within the
Salisbury Street. Four of those properties will come close to within 30 feet of the wetland, while the remaining three will sit within or just outside of the 100-foot buffer. Capital Group Properties has also enlisted the same engineering firm that Bailin and Associates used for Salisbury Heights. So far, these plans have cruised through the Planning Board and Conservation Commission, despite the city’s wetlands ordinance cautioning “projects undertaken within 100 feet of a wetland resource area have a high likelihood of altering that area, either during construction or from routine operation of the completed project.” At a December Conservation Commission meeting some on the board expressed concerns about run-off into
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JANUARY 19, 2012 • WORCESTERMAG.COM
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