Sam Gurwitt Photo
Just south of the parking lot, a large yellow backhoe sat atop a mound of dirt, logs, and other bits of debris in a large clearing. Tires had gouged the mud all around into deep ruts.
To the east, the clearing sloped down to a small marshy area, on the other side of which the Farmington Canal Trail could be seen through the trees. A large mat of straw mulch had been laid out on the slope, covering the exposed soil below.
The property, at 850 Sherman Ave., in Hamden, currently serves as home to New Era Gymnastics, as well as a newspaper distribution company and a flooring company. To most passersby, the marshy area at the bottom of the slope would not seem to have any significance. Yet it’s the reason for the backhoe, the straw, and a hefty expenditure now assumed on the part of the landowner, the Landino Family Trust.
As Michael Landino, a trustee, found out last year, that small marshy area at the bottom of the hill is subject to the protection of Hamden’s inland wetland regulations. Now there’s work to be done.
In the spring of 2017, Thomas Vocelli was notified about debris that had been dumped in what appeared to be a wetland at 850 Sherman. That’s a problem: If debris is placed uphill from a wetland or watercourse, rainwater can carry chemicals down the hill and contaminate the water below.
As the town’s inland wetlands enforcement officer, Vocelli is responsible for making sure that all building and landscaping activity in the vicinity of wetlands or watercourses complies with the town’s regulations.
He checked his GIS and determined that “he had a good inkling that it was a regulated area,” meaning it was a wetland or watercourse. When he went out to inspect, he was right. The area at the bottom of the slope was a small watercourse, and was therefore protected from dumping without a permit by the town’s regulations.
Though Vocelli had no trouble identifying this particular area as a watercourse, determining if an area constitutes a wetland or watercourse is more difficult than one might think.
The watercourse at 850 Sherman.
Watercourses are usually easier to identify. The town’s regulation defines watercourses as “rivers, streams, brooks, waterways, lakes, ponds, marshes, swamps, bogs, and all other bodies of water, natural or artificial, vernal or intermittent, public or private, which are contained within, flow through or border upon the Town or any portion thereof …”
Wetlands, however, are trickier. In the state of Connecticut, a wetland is defined by its soil. The types of wetland soils are those “designated as poorly drained, very poorly drained, alluvial and floodplain” by the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Though GIS technology is helpful in determining where wetlands are, said Vocelli, the only way to be sure is if a soil scientist goes out and tests the soil.
850 Sherman .
Once Vocelli had determined that dumping had occurred next to a watercourse area without a permit, he contacted the landowner, Michael Landino, to notify him that illegal dumping had occurred on his property.
Landino agreed to hire an engineer to help him prepare a remediation application, preempting the need for Vocelli to submit a notice of violation.
Thomas Vocelli at the commission meeting.
As Landino told the Inland Wetlands Commission (IWC) at a meeting this past Wednesday evening, a landscaping contractor had used the area to dump wood chips two years prior to when Landino first appeared in front of the commission in 2017. The landscaper had asked if it could use the area for staging and storage. Landino had said yes, not knowing that there was a watercourse there.
With the help of Rotondo and soil scientist Eric Davison, whom Landino had also hired, Landino submitted an application to remove the fill that had been dumped there. The Inland Wetlands Commission approved it in October 2017.
Yet when the backhoes went out to begin removing the fill, the crew found that it was not just wood chips that had been dumped. Tree stumps, chunks of concrete, dirt, and rocks had also been dumped there. In all, Landino estimated that 50,000 tons of debris had been deposited on the site.
As Landino told the IWC last week, he does not know when the non-woodchip debris was dumped there, or who put it there. He has been in charge of the property for only a few years, since his father died. He said his father built the first building on the property in the 1970s, and the concrete may date from then.
The great quantity of material, as well as adverse weather conditions, have slowed the process of removing the fill. That was why Landino appeared before the IWC again. He had come to request an extension on the remediation deadline, as well as to change one of the requirements the commission had set forth in its approval of the original application.
After asking a few questions of Landino, hearing Vocelli’s input, and conferring with one another, commission members approved both motions. Landino now has until June 1, 2019, to finish the remediation, on the condition that he cover all exposed soil with straw mulch before the “onset of winter,” which the commission defined as December 20, 2018 (or a later date, if Vocelli approves it).
Covering the exposed soil with straw will secure it over the winter. If the soil were left exposed, it could be carried into the watercourse below by rain. The straw will keep the soil in place, as will the roots of the 27 trees that have already been planted on the slope once they grow into maturity.
Straw mulch covers exposed soil on the slope.
The IWC is one of three land use commissions in Hamden. As with its counterparts, the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Zoning Board of Appeals, its members are appointed by the mayor and approved by the Legislative Council.
The IWC is responsible for approving any activity that could potentially affect a wetland. It has jurisdiction over areas within 200 feet of the edge of a wetland, and sometimes beyond 200 feet if the area could still affect the wetland. Were Landino’s landscaping contractor to dump woodchips legally where it did, Landino would have needed to receive IWC approval because the area is within 200 feet of the watercourse.
Joan Lakin is currently the chair of the 11-member commission. She said that making decisions about what to approve requires taking into consideration “a balance of our responsibilities to the town, to the property owner, and to the regulations.”
Though the commission is required to have a balance of Democrats and Republicans, Lakin said that its members “try to keep politics out of it.”
