The River Road Improvement project will now be divided into two separate watershed areas to help eliminate continual flooding of the road during heavy rainfall and snowmelt.
Shawn Syde and Matt Pitta of CDM Smith presented the revised plan to the Marion Conservation Commission at their June 11 evening meeting.
“The north side of the road will drain to two existing catch basins located off the road, and the south side will flow to an existing tributary, with berms along the road to guide the flow,” said Syde.
The size of the pipes has increased from 12 to 15 inches, and discharge will occur at the existing location, which is 100 feet beyond the wetland buffer zone. The existing outfall pipe will be replaced with a new pipe at the same location, and two catch basins with double grates will sit at the low point of the road.
Back on April 9, residents heard a presentation on the repaving and reconfiguration of River Road and expressed concerns, specifically that the work as presented would not solve the basic issue of constant flooding and water pooling in the road.
After the April 9 meeting, Syde met with Department of Public Works Superintendent Rob Zora and went out to River Road and met with residents and spoke with some over the telephone. The project was reworked with berms on both sides of the road to keep water runoff in the road and off residents’ properties.
Syde presented a revised proposal of how River Road looks now, and how it will look after the repaving. At issue is continual flooding of the road and sand washing into basins, which renders them only partially useful.
The revised proposal has River Road at the same elevation and width, but straightened out in certain places. The entire road will be replaced, the two 15-inch pipes will run underground beneath it, and two filtered catch basins with catch hoods will be installed to collect any oil and grease. The DPW will maintain the drainage swales and basins.
“We listened and wanted to solve the issues presented by the residents and we did,” said Syde. The bidding process for the project will begin on July 10.
Next, the board met with Dennis Clemenshaw to discuss construction of a new dwelling at 99 Perry’s Lane near Mary’s Pond, with power access from Tucker Lane.
Clemenshaw purchased the 24-acre parcel located in both Rochester and Marion in 2009. The land, with cranberry bogs and a barn, is located ten feet from Tucker Lane, in Marion. Clemenshaw told the board he wanted to build a home and possibly a solar farm on the land, but lacked electrical power to the property.
“I bought the property thinking the bogs would help pay for it, but now want to create a solar farm on about six acres but don’t have power to the property,” he said. “I have two projects I wanted to discuss with you, one is the new house and the other is the solar farm, and I’d like to have it all done at once instead of coming back on each project,” said Clemenshaw.
Clemenshaw continued, “NSTAR told me that they no longer put poles where there are no roads.” There are existing electric poles, but the lines have been down for years.
Essentially, NSTAR told Clemenshaw that they would not install wires over a wetland area because the poles could not be serviced.
Clemenshaw hired an engineer to flag the wetland areas. The board asked Clemenshaw to have a site plan drawn up showing the wetland areas and where the proposed house and solar farm would be located and schedule another meeting with the board.
The next meeting of the Marion Conservation Commission meeting will be June 25 at 7:00 pm.
By Joan Hartnett-Barry
