ADAMS, Mass. — The Conservation Commission stressed the need to play by a fair set of rules at its committee meeting Thursday.

 

The commissioners had two projects on their agenda — one involving Specialty Minerals Inc. and the other the Town of Adams operating through TRC. Specialty Minerals sent the commission a letter prior to the meeting requesting to take off from the agenda its request to remove knotweed from a property adjacent to its own.

 

"We agreed that no action is required to remove the knotweed on the adjacent SMI property," Chairman James Fassell read from the letter.

 

According to Fassell, Specialty Minerals had wanted to remove the knotweed because "they thought it would be a nice thing to do." They had assumed (because they had been notified by a specialist) that they would be able to remove the knotweed without any notification of the neighbors and without notifying the state Department of Environmental Protection.

 

"They went along with" the recommendations of the specialist, said Fassell, "and then all of a sudden, when they came in front of us, we did care."

"Getting rid of the knotweed," continued Fassell, "as an environmental situation, is tough."

 

Fassell said he told SMI that they shouldn't remove the knotweed if they didn't have to.

 

He began by saying that the commission should give SMI a "positive 2" for it Request for Determination of Applicability, meaning that the company would then have to submit a notice of intent.

 

If the commission issued a "positive 2" determination on the RDA request that SMI had filed, it would have determined that SMI's request was subject to the Wetlands Act. The NOI is the next step in that process.

 

Effectively, Fassell had originally wanted to issue a "positive 2" to SMI so that if the company decided to remove the knotweed in the future, it would not have to come before the commission again before it started reviewing the project's environmental consequences and issuing notices to neighbors, etc.

 

Member David Lipinski, however, rejected this idea. He said issuing a "positive 2" to SMI would be "prejudic[ing] them in the future."

 

"If they want to do anything, they're gonna have to come back here regardless," he said.

 

Lipinski argued that the commission should not issue a determination in either direction so that SMI, like any other applicant, would have to come back to the commission with an RDA request in the future. This was mostly important because SMI had withdrawn its request before the meeting.

 

Fassell and the rest of the commission agreed with Lipinski's argument, and did not issue any determination on SMI's request.

 

The town of Adams had a similar request, though it did not withdraw it before the meeting like SMI had. The Coal and Grain Park project, which will be constructed using the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money, will abut the Hoosic River and Ashuwillticook Rail Trail.

 

TRC, an environmental consultant working on behalf of the town, will perform soil remediation and cleanup of the site. The buildings on the site are old coal and grain storage buildings, constructed many years ago, and they have asbestos and trash inside of them. The soil is reportedly contaminated with chemicals from the coal and grain days.

 

TRC brought forth a request to the commission to issue a "negative" determination for the RDA. While the park sits adjacent to the river and would normally be subject to the Wetlands Protection Act (and would thus have to withstand a notice of intent), TRC felt that the concrete wall on that part of the river would protect it from any contaminants from the park site that would otherwise likely seep into the water.

 

The commission, however, did not want to seem as if was biased in favor of the town vis-à-vis private actors. "It might look like we're favoring the town with an RDA versus Cumberland Farms with a notice of intent," said Commissioner Jeff Randall.

 

Randall and others pointed out that Cumberland Farms had to go through the more rigorous process of requesting the NOI for a project with a similar proximity to wetlands, and it would be unfair for the town to not have to do the same.

 

The commission voted to issue a "positive" determination on the project.