ConCom rejects Plymouth St. housing proposal

By Jay Turner

A lengthy and at times testy standoff between a pair of local builders and the Canton Conservation Commission over a proposed five-unit housing project on Plymouth Street came to a head earlier this month when ConCom members voted unanimously to deny the project, citing a laundry list of concerns pertaining to riverfront protection and stormwater management.

The June 5 decision, which also included the revocation of permits for a previous version of the project, was just the latest in a string of setbacks for developers Scott Lenhart and Don McNeice, who have already drawn the ire of a group of abutters and must now face the prospect of an appeal more than a year after getting the green light from the Zoning Board of Appeals.

The project as currently constituted, which has been scaled down from the initial seven-unit proposal, consists of two duplexes and a single-family residence, along with associated parking, walkway and decks.

“It’s a good project; it’s good for the area,” insisted Lenhart in a telephone interview, adding that he was disappointed but not entirely surprised by the recent ConCom ruling.

Indeed, the opinion of commission members had been quite clear for months — namely that the property falls within the riverfront area of the Neponset River’s East Branch and is therefore subject to the stringent requirements of the state’s Rivers Protection Act.

Most notably, the act limits the amount of land that can be disturbed to 5,000 square feet and requires that any project within the riverfront area represent an “improvement over existing conditions.” The developer further has to prove, through a detailed analysis, that there are no “practicable and substantially equivalent economic alternatives” to the proposed project with less adverse effects.

The commission had previously exempted the property from the aforementioned regulations based on a determination by then Conservation Agent Bob Murphy that the river in that location was technically a pond. However, commissioners reversed course beginning in December — after they started reexamining projects with ties to M&M Engineering, a firm owned and operated by Murphy that reportedly was never disclosed to the commissioners or to the Board of Selectmen.

What they found in the case of the Plymouth Street project was, in their opinion, clear evidence that the river was in fact a river and not a pond — a position that was reportedly shared by the state Department of Environmental Protection, although not by the applicants themselves.

In fact, while Lenhart and McNeice chose to move on from M&M Engineering in the wake of Murphy’s dismissal by the town, their new engineer, Arthur Borden, held firm to the pond argument, citing an existing USGS map and plans prepared by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Borden further argued that even if the water were deemed a river, the property would be exempt from regulation under the “historic mill complex” exception, as the entire area was part of an industrial site dating back to the time of Paul Revere.

ConCom, however, refused to budge from its stated position and eventually ordered the developer to perform an “alternatives analysis,” which was later deemed insufficient and “inadequate.”

In their final analysis, the commissioners ruled that the proposed development was simply too large and too disruptive to meet the performance standards outlined by the applicable state and local regulations.

In addition, they rejected the developers’ assertion that the use of permeable or “porous” pavement on driveways and parking surfaces would constitute a “stormwater management system” and therefore not be included in the square footage calculation.

Commissioners dismissed it as a veiled attempt to “circumvent the regulations” while further noting that the practice does not conform to DEP standards regarding stormwater management.

Lenhart, however, defended the use of porous pavement, claiming that it has actually been embraced by the DEP and was even approved as a stormwater management design for the original seven-unit proposal.

In fact, he recently drafted a letter, addressed to more than a dozen state and local agencies, that accuses both the ConCom chairman and vice chairman, Deb Sundin and Tom Liddy, of lying about a recent vote to disallow the use of porous pavement as a stormwater technique in Canton. He asserts that a vote was never taken and has issued a public records request — which had yet to be fulfilled as of last week — pertaining to “any and all policy changes” adopted by ConCom regarding stormwater permitting over the past 18 months.

“I don’t think there was ever a vote,” said Lenhart when asked about the matter last week. “I think the rules and regulations regarding stormwater management have been manipulated to achieve a certain outcome.”

Sundin, meanwhile, has denied Lenhart’s accusations and insists that the office is doing its best to be responsive to his records request.

When asked directly by Lenhart at the May 22 meeting if she lied, Sundin replied, “No, I didn’t. The porous pavement itself does not seem like it’s working out, no, and we did at a meeting discuss the fact that we should not use porous pavement because of the issues around it. Now, which meeting that was? I don’t know.”

Despite this and other heated exchanges between the two sides over the past few months, Sundin made it clear following the June 5 vote that a denial of the project was “not easy for the commission to do and not what [they] wanted.”

“It does not benefit anyone — the property owner, the abutters, or the environment,” she said. “It leaves a blight in the neighborhood that a well-planned and well-engineered building could improve.”

“It is not the goal of this commission to prevent [development],” she added, “but to ensure that any development adheres to state and local bylaws pertaining to wetlands, riverfront, and stormwater management.”

As for the two developers, Lenhart said both he and McNeice are currently “looking at all options,” including a possible appeal before the DEP or state Superior Court. Either way, he said, they are “committed to seeing it through.” They are also pleased with their existing proposal and have no plans to reduce the size of the project any further, according to Lenhart.

As he told the commissioners on May 22, “We’ve already downsized it to five [units]. We did push the issue with zoning. We came up with a compromise and we worked on it for a while. And while it didn’t pacify, presumably, most of the neighbors’ wishes, it was the best compromise we could do economically.”

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