02/03/2024 BOARD OF HEALTH Minutes (2)

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facility is outside of a sewer area but is within a TMBO compliance area that if they wish to not be subject to local scrutiny they could increase the design flow of their system to retain review only by DEP which is a troubling scenario when you think of development impacts moving forward. In theory any developer could say we're at 9,999 gallons and we're going to go to 10,000 gallons because DEP is going to give us a pass on doing treatment.This runs completely counter to the expectation which has been broadcast to us numerous times not only from DEP but from the Conservation Law Foundation. I don't where that leaves us and there is not much appetite pursuing this by the Town Manager's Office and I think having read Attorney Costello's assessment. He is the legal expert on these things but I don't necessarily agree that it's not worth pursuing. This whole thing is bizarre to me for the lack of a better term. We have a large facility sitting right on the Mashpee River which is one of our impacted waterways and we're saying that there is no kind of treatment that is required here. Especially for something that is discharge,that is crazy. I don't know where we go from here. Mr. Harrington: The opportunity right now is that there has been a proposal by the owner's representative, an expert on the subject matter to use some sort of denitrification, albeit not a system that may do what Brian thinks it would do, but it is at least something beyond a standard Title 5 system. The board may not get the chance to negotiate any other type of system should DEP throw this out when we get beyond our sixty days and go back to a formal hearing. I just think we have to take some opportunity or give them some kind of system that the board will approve and counsel has some negotiating tools to put some denite system on the property. We know that the property is going to be sold or is for sale and I think there is going to be some willingness by the existing owner to agree to some kind of system to move the sale along. I think there is some leverage where we could put some kind of denite in or take the chance to go back and fight this or have the town manager say we're not going to support this financially to do a long term fight. I think we have to take this opportunity to come up with something to give to counsel so he can do his job and negotiate some additional treatment which we may not get the chance to do later. Chair Baumgaertel: I have a few questions. Knowing that this property is up for sale or whatever, is there any indication as to what the future plan is for the property? Mr. Harrington: I don't know and that may be why Ernie recused himself because he's working with the buyer. But I do not know any of the proposed uses right now. It has approximately 84 bedrooms on the property. There is going to be a 20 or 22 seat restaurant whatever the flow is left behind. And retail space on the first floor of the front building. That is the existing use and would think would continue to be some portion of the use, based upon the economy to keep the property going. I did look into the whole remedial approval that DEP said that system would be considered and I don't know exactly how they made that statement because I couldn't get that system to fit into a remedial approval, but if DEP is willing to do that,that's fine. I couldn't figure out how it would do that because it's a sand filter only has approval for residential and only has a maxim of 880 gallons a day. If you look at the recirculating sand filter it has a maximum of 10,000 gallons/day,this property is at 10,200 gallons/day. DEP is going to extend their neck a bit by approving any other system that doesn't fit into their own approval.