KENT, Conn.—The owners of 422 Kent Hollow Road have authorized Richard Rosiello to be their agent after an incident during which Zoning Enforcement Officer Tai Kern and Inland Wetlands Commission member Paul Yagid were reportedly aggressively challenged during an inspection.
During the April meeting of the Inland Wetlands Commission, it was agreed that a state trooper would accompany the ZEO during future inspections, but the troubled waters seemed to have calmed by the Monday, May 19, meeting.
Rosiello, who drafted the plan for the property approved by the commission, said he would provide a letter from the owner designating him as the contact with Kern. He said he had stressed to the owners that the ZEO and IWC members had the right to inspect the work being done.
In walking the property with the owner, Rosiello said that he could not tell whether the vegetation in the “no mow” meadow had been cut, as Kern and Yagid believed, or whether water damage had suppressed the grass.
“We walked over the log bridge you crossed, and along the whole path,” he told the commission members. “The skunk cabbage is quite tall and there is evidence of new grass—but was there cutting? I don’t know.”
He said cutting is one kind of management plan and questioned what the commission’s goal is in designating the area “no-mow.” “How do you want to maintain that area?” he asked. “You do have to manage it at least once a season if it is to be kept as vegetative grassland.”
IWC Chairman Lynn Werner questioned whether the intent was to maintain meadow land or that it be a buffer that could sustain more woody growth. Rosiello said it would help to define that going forward.
“These plans are not set in stone because it is, after all, nature,” said Werner. “The goal is to restore and to maintain the health of the wetland.”
Yagid asked if the meadow would be cut with a machine or by hand. Rosiello leaned toward hand-cutting, perhaps at different heights.
He said he is more concerned about stabilizing the stream banks per his plan but reported that his clients have been nervous about going forward because a neighbor reported excavating machinery on the site. Rosiello said that incident had occurred a year before.
He also expressed disappointment that a “reputable nursery” had sold his client a non-native tree for the site despite having been given Rosiello’s mitigation plan. That tree will now have to be removed.
In other business, the commission members at a proposal to install a hot tub on a deck at 145 Carter Road, immediately adjacent to Camp Falls Brook. Werner observed that concern about a leak of chemically treated and heated water from the tank into the brook “is not insignificant.”
“If we had some kind of catastrophic failure, we need protection for the brook,” said Werner.
The application, submitted by Molly Burke, trustee for the property, concerns an older building that is “incredibly close” to the watercourse, according to Kern. The property’s lot lines have been revised many times, and she said her scale does not correlate to the applicant’s by a difference of up to 35 feet.
Yagid said the application was not complete and that better information including gradient lines, accurate distances and the like should be submitted. Werner said information should also be included about alternative sites and where water would be discharged when the tub is cleaned.
Yet another discharge issue resulted from a beaver dam being ripped out near Kent Falls Brewery. Removing the dam caused flooding in the stream below the dam. Kern said she had been in touch with the property owner, David Birnbaum, who promised “to come up with a plan to work through the problem.”
Kern said she had given downstream property owners permission to pull debris out of their culverts by hand to prevent flooding.
“We used to try to inform people about the need to clean out their culverts,” said Werner. “It might be good to remind people, given all the rainfall we have.”
Finally, the commission considered an application for a modification of a plan it recently approved for John and Priscilla Nelson, 17 Woodin Road. The commission had previously approved a plan for a pool and patio at the rear of the property, but the Torrington Area Health District did not approve the placement of the retaining wall.
The Nelsons submitted a different plan that moved the wall further from the wetlands. Commission members were happy with that, but less thrilled with the new part of the application, which calls for another patio at the front of the house. Because the closest portion of the plan would be only about 10 feet from a watercourse, and there would be a much activity in a small space, the commission will schedule a site walk to assess the site.
