WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Conservation Commission last week gave its approval for a four-home subdivision on a town-owned parcel on Summer Street.

 

Northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity was before the board with a notice of intent to build a 260-foot road with four associated building lots on a parcel currently owned by the town's Affordable Housing Trust.

 

The road and some of the home lots are planned in the buffer zone of a bordering vegetated wetland on the lot currently known as 0 Summer St.

 

Habitat plans to build four single-family, one-story homes priced for residents making up to 60 percent of the area median income on the parcel. The non-profit hopes the town will accept the road and associated infrastructure as a town road once it is built.

 

In addition to determining that the construction would minimize impact on the buffer zone, the commissioners Thursday reviewed the stormwater management plan for the site — an aspect that has been a sticking point for nearby residents who say drainage problems are a long-standing concern in the area.

 

Charlie LaBatt of Guntlow and Associates civil engineering took the lead on walking the commission through the plan to handle stormwater runoff from the increased impervious surfaces in the planned subdivision.

 

"Proposed drainage improvements include a rain garden, which acts for filtering of TSS [total suspended solids] and detention and very little recharge — due to the site's soil constraints — and a culvert that helps allow in one portion of this [parcel] the watershed to make it to that rain garden," LaBatt said. The rain garden and the stormwater management infrastructure has been sized anticipating the development of the four lots.