Weston ZBA skips May 17 session, demands stormwater answers from 40B applicant

WESTON — May 10, 2022 — Weston ZBA votes to skip a session and reconvene May 24 over unresolved stormwater and groundwater disputes at a proposed 200-unit Chapter 40B development. The three-member board — Chair Jane Carlson, Winifred Lee, and Sujit Sathaye — voted unanimously at the May 10 session to cancel the May 17 meeting after peer reviewer Mark Bartlett of Professional Services Corporation presented findings that the applicant's hydrology model fails to account for reduced infiltration rates once groundwater mounding reaches the base of the stormwater recharge chambers, potentially sending nearly a half acre-foot of additional water per storm event toward the adjacent wetland. Bartlett also flagged an estimated 1,100 large truck trips needed to import more than 22,000 cubic yards of fill as insufficiently addressed in the construction management plan. Applicant engineer Nate Cheel of Tetra Tech maintained that the project's greater-than-four-foot groundwater separation satisfies handbook requirements and that the 10-year storm is the correct design standard, a position applicant attorney Valerie Moore of Nutter, McClennen and Fish supported; neighborhood peer reviewer John Chessia countered that porous pavement along the emergency access drive physically "does not fit" within required setbacks given a 44-inch-deep wall block. A follow-on session covering architecture, landscaping, and the construction management plan is tentatively scheduled for June 7.