2/23/2006 BLUE RIBBON COMMITTEE Minutes

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said the Commission used the wetland's Protection Act to try to achieve some of these benefits for the Town. He added that he thought some of the regulations the Commission would be very good models for the'town. Part of the frustration for the Commission was that heir jurisdiction was very limited. Basically* it}s a hundred feet from the edge of any identified resource area, a pend, wetland,200 feet for rivers,he said. The other thing frustrating for the Commission is that a let of properties were grand fathered, and other things that the Commission could net do much about. He believes that one of the reasons why,the Conservation Commission,and he spore for himself", unanimously support the Planning Board's DCPC process. He said that as a committee,he was going to make some actions that night that the Town could take that it may be necessary to revisit the IU PC process. It may take the resources and capabilities of that process to achieve some of these things,He hoped that would be considered throughout the DCPC process. He said that he knew the Commission would give a lot of support to the Board throughout the process. 1n that regard,he said,the Commission probably knew more than anyone else in Town about the quality of hath the ground water and surface waters in lashpee,whether it was the main estuaries and bays of waquoit and Popponesset,the various streams and ponds and wetlands and ground water.The Commission has a very strong understanding of it. The Commission saw a couple years ago,the first serious algal btoom its waquoit Bay. A once important shellfish area now destroyed for shell fxshifl Part of the Commission}s frustration was that they had an understanding of it,but so little power to do much about it,very limited. He said he hoped the Commission could help by sharing some of the things that we worked on,he was going back to rewrite the lawn regulation,to make it even more stringent. His jurisdiction was very limited in that regard. On the other side, in his professional field,his hole in education devetoping programs and models and concepts for ecological landscaping and land use,there were some things he could help with in that regard. You probably aware that waquoit Bay is probably one of the most studied estuane system in the United States and some of it's more recent studies have been significant attempts to pinpoint the sources of nutrient pollution in waquoit Bay, Mr.Talbot added that its the current political envirotiment,there would be nothing done to power plants,in fact it may make it worse. What comes next is wastewater treatment,which he described as a critical element.He said that if you took at what remains in that,when they have some sort of sewage treatment system* is storm run-off and landscape fertilizers and more exclusively lawn fertilizers. That could be 15 to 23%.that's big and something the Committee and.Commission could do something about.we see the effects more on the Cape than other places. Looking at more effective means of storm water management particularly of direct run- off.He noticed in a number of places where storm drains lead out through the outfall pipe that goes too often than not that feeds directly to a waterway that feeds directly to wa quoit or Popponesset. Anything from cars, salt, sand can move over asphalt,which provides almost no impedance of storm water run-off. Putting on his professional hat,he spoke about low impact development what they involve is the effort to be sure that all storm water run-offs are infiltrated by biological systems right within the development.It costs a lot of money to create.Planted areas that are intended to capture and utilize storm water and to provide a biological filter for the pollutants and the nutrients that may be involved in that storm water.He said he would love to see the town doing it. It was being done elsewhere,he would love to see an assessment of where the storm water drains are going now and to make a concerted effort to begin to convert those away from outfall pipes to systems like rain guards and bioretention filters.He thought it was good to think about moving into that area.. He spore about buffer zones,creating buffers between storm water run-off and these sensitive waterways and wetlands. He then spore about properties where lawns go dawn to the water line and were grand fathered, the Commission had no jurisdiction,these houses were built before the Town had its' by-law, Until,the owners come to the Commission that they need a permit for, and the group will say, "'well,now you"ve got to do something about this edge,you can't just leave it like this." The Commission has created a regulation where no more than 10%of the property in its' jurisdiction can be turned into can be converted into lawn. He said that the Commission's goal was to seek to protect of public and private water supplies alterations occurring in a.residential lot or subdivision in any area of jurisdiction should result in a nitrate/nitrogen load, not exceeding five parts per trillion. He said when the Commission calculated