By Brandon T. Bisceglia
Engineer Steve Benben of Triton Environmental discusses his concerns with the plans for a controversial housing development off Turkey Hill Road during the Nov. 12 public hearing before the Inland Wetlands and Water Courses Commission. Image courtesy of Orange Government Access Television.
Experts brought in by the Town of Orange to review a controversial housing development off Turkey Hill Road laid out their concerns during a Nov. 12 special meeting of the Inland Wetlands and Water Courses Commission.
The development was proposed by a team representing town resident Richard Meisenheimer, who wants to build 10 multifamily residential buildings and a single community building on a compilation of parcels on the 22.5-acre property that he owns. It has faced withering scrutiny from neighbors, who have argued the proposal is too dense for the area.
A different proposal for the same property was the subject of vociferous opposition in 2018. That first plan was eventually denied by the Town Plan & Zoning Commission.
The public hearings have been held in the cafeteria at High Plains Community Center to accommodate the large crowds that have been attending. Even First Selectman Jim Zeoli has spoken in opposition during the hearings, saying there are better locations in town for a high-density project of this nature that would be less detrimental to the environment.
Steve Benben, an engineer with Guilford-based Triton Environmental, was first to take the stand. He has been hired by the commission to review the site plan to make sure it adheres to state and local regulations.
Benben said he had submitted a ten-page review to the commission citing items of concern and points on which they would request clarification from the applicants.
“Overall,” Benben told those gathered, “I would say the applicant has provided a comprehensive application that does attempt to limit disturbance to the site’s natural resources.” He added that most of the items flagged in his review letter related to “minor details.”
He did highlight a few concerns, though. To start with, he said that although the applicants had claimed there would be no direct impact to the wetlands, there would in fact be a small impact.
“Just the fact that they say there is zero disturbance – there actually isn’t,” he said.
He also noted that although the final project would stay clear of the wetlands, it’s less apparent how the construction itself could avoid them – especially for a retaining wall along part of the road that will lead into the housing development.
“There’s no allowance for sidewalks” on the roadway, Benben pointed out. “If that’s something that comes up, they can’t just put in sidewalks because everything is so narrow.”
The same narrowness issues exist, he said, on the internal streets between the housing units and the community building.
Benben criticized the design regarding stormwater management, saying that the there were no vegetative strips between the roadbeds and the filtration strips. Vegetation normally provides pretreatment and some filtering for stormwater. Without it, the strips could overflow or, in the long term, fail.
“At this point I think there is still a lot of information missing as far as stormwater management is concerned,” he said.
Soil scientist George Logan of REMA Ecological Services was also hired by the town to review the site. He too had some concerns that he brought before the commission.
He said there was not enough information for certain test pits on the site, raising concerns about how the stacked septic systems would operate.
He said that although the amount of nitrogen produced by a septic system might pass health code standards, it could still exceed the amount of nitrogen produced naturally “by an order of magnitude,” thus changing the wetland environment.
“You have one on top of the other,” he said. “So what happens is you have a whole bunch of gallons per day go to the top system, and they’re then fed into the plume of the second system, which feeds into the plume of the third system. So you get a super-concentration of nitrogen at the end.” The stacking, he added, has a tendency to make the second and third systems less efficient.
He also pointed out that some of the test pits had failed.
Logan said another concern involved the lack of adequate buffers to some of the wetland areas.
He asked that the developers take note of large trees within 40 feet of wetlands that are in the path of the proposed construction, because they are usually integral to the ecological makeup of any given wetland.
“Lose those, and it changes the dynamics, changes the hydrology, possibly even the chemistry of the wetland that’s nearby,” he said.
He did say that all of the items he had raised were could potentially be resolved.
The commission made no decision by the end of the evening and did not set a date for its next meeting, when consideration of the application will continue.