Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Town of North Smith Midfield Planning Board uh meeting for Thursday, December 11th is called to order at 7:02. First on the agenda, roll call. Dr. Benoy here. Dr. Roberts here. Mr. Porter here, Mr. Bernard here. Our our newest member, Mr. Hammond here and the chair is here. Next, u we have the minutes, right? Mhm. Is everybody comfortable reviewing the minutes tonight? Okay. We did get them late. I wasn't present at the meeting, so I can't Oh, okay. But I'm just saying. All right. So, any comments on the No meetings? Okay.

I'll make a motion to approve the November 13, 2025 meeting minutes as presented. Second. Second. We have a second. Those in favor? I

opposed. Meetings meeting minutes for November 13th are approved as presented. Uh does anyone have uh any planning board members have anything to disclose about potential conflicts be uh before the board this evening? Well, hearing none, any board members have to need to disclose any exparte communications about any contested material adjudicated facts or opinions on the merits of any application before the board this evening. Nope. Hearing none. So, our voting members be Dr. Benoy, Dr. Roberts, Mr. Porter, Miss Manard, and myself. And with that, Mr. Krillo, if you could give us an introduction so we can get started.

Mr. Chairman, uh board members, you may recall that um the application for the zoning amendment for Poundhill Realy LLC was initially before this board back in February. Um there was substantial testimony and presentation made at that time. That meeting was continued to March. There was a second um a second uh presentation of testimony then continued to April and in April there was an agreement between the applicant and the board to continue indefinitely um while the applicant went back and was working with uh the town council having its public hearings and um now they're back before the planning board. I think they're going to be back before the council on Monday for a recommendation for the zone change. So, we're picking up where we left off. Now, in the interim, um the council directed the applicant uh or requested that the applicant participate in a peer review. Uh the town hired GZA Engineering to perform the peer review. Uh this evening, we have Mr. Tony Orbano from GZA here uh to go give a brief uh review of the report. I think you all received a copy of the report. Um and at that point he'll be available for questions and I believe that uh the applicant would likely want to give some sort of uh remarks following the presentation by Mr. Erbano.

Okay. Yep. Great. Thank you. So Mr. Erbano, you up first? Yeah. Yes. Go up there. Introduce yourself.

I am Tony Orbano of GZA. Um we were hired basically by the town um to perform a peer review of previous Go ahead. Could we maybe get the microphone a little bit closer to you? Is it on, excuse me? Okay, great. Is it on? Yeah. Thank you.

All right. Um we were hired by the uh town to perform a peer review of the previous testimony. Um was mostly just um uh looking at YouTube videos of the testimony that was provided back in March and April or something like that. Uh we reviewed that information. I went out and visited the site. Um we reviewed other geologic information that we had. There was some information that they had regarding the two nearby super fund sites. One is western Santa gravel which is ab budding the site. The other one is LRNR which is about I think 1300 feet northeast of the site. We reviewed that information that was available in the public. Um and then we put together our report which is summarized in the October 6, 2025 um report. Um our opinion was generally we agreed with the um the the testimony provided by the experts. We provided some recommendations. I mean, there were some areas of concern, but we provided some recommendations um in the end of our report. And then I've noticed that you've incorporated um a lot of that information. I think the um there was some recommendations that they have that the town planning board should include uh that you'd recommend. I think there's like bullet points one through 12 whatnot that seem to incorporate all those things. Um generally those are uh you know I think consistent with our findings I report. I do have a couple of I guess thoughts after I looked at that and compared it to our report. Um, one of them, um, was, uh, the, uh, I think bullet point 6, um, it requires to follow the, uh, North Smithfield, um, uh, extraction

earth products for certain things and it, which is a creation of a it of of me of a restoration plan. And I would just recommend recommend that as part of that restoration plan they evaluate final grades. This is like a deep rock cut. Rock cut faces can be relatively steep. Um but there will be an exposed um gravel faces which should be properly faced for stability purposes and stuff like that. So as long as that they include that in the restoration plan. Um and then uh sections 9, 10, and 11. um refer to the you know that basically there's still some areas of concern and the hydraologic consultant should be further evaluate that. Um so far there's no impact and it's likely that they can proceed without any adverse impacts but it shouldn't be just proceeded without any forethought and whatnot. Um one of the things that we mentioned in our in our uh report was a mind plan. Um it would basically in order to evaluate the impacts on like potential water supply or private water supply wells in the area and stuff like that, it's going to be a function of what the bottom elevation of the rock quarry is going to be. So would recommend that they provide some type of a um a plan that would determine how deep they would go in different areas of the site and then that way the the hydrogel consultant can be specific to that whether that specific plan would would be be um uh be okay basically. So, um, and then the other one was the, uh, section 10. You had the hydraologic consultant evaluate like the western, um, whether depending on how deep they were going to go. Um, areas, I think, in

the southwestern portion of the site. Um, and it is just a reference to it says impacts on nearby residential water supply wells, which is important, but it says to report that information to the EPA. I would recommend that they report that information to the town. Um it's the EPA would be concerned of the impacts on western sand and gravel but they would not have a you know their their focus would not be whether you know what the development would be impacting um the yield of water supply wells in the area. um and that's somewhat common and section 11 um there's a recommendation to install some monitoring wells um to evaluate trends but that section 11 I believe should re should refer to the hydraologic consultant and that would should he should just be able to provide the opinion that the proposed development as laid out in the mine plan would not have impact to yield the water supply wells. It's all this stuff is workable. It's just the question is how deep they're going to go. Right now they're about 50 feet below the water table and and the portion if they go 100 feet could be more impacts. If they go 200, you know, so put a limit and then provide that opinion. And that could be even flexible. It doesn't have to be it could change with time, but it has to start out with some type of opinion that's so you'd feel confident that the um residential water supply wells aren't going to be impacted that particularly the yield. The water quality is unlikely to be impacted. Um uh it's more likely the um if they go very deep and if they're very close to a uh if a residential well is very close to where they're excavating, there's the potential um to to uh of whether they could affect the yield of that well. Um that's kind of big picture stuff. So if you have any specific questions, I guess I could um address that.

Any questions for the board? I have one from from your report. It's uh on page 14 number 12 because I mean you list a bunch of recommendations. Yep. Um but item 12 talks about dust. It says dust is controlled at site by paving blah blah blah. It doesn't actually make a recommendation. It's just sort of factually stating like how dust can be controlled. Um so I'm not sure what the recommendation is with this. Are you is there are there unpaved areas that you say should be paved? I mean things that's what I'm trying to get to. I mean it it's all a function. I mean let's see. I'm which where was that? Uh page 14. Page 14. Uh item 12. It's near the bottom of the page.

Item 12. Yeah. The dust control. I mean the dust control is uh there should be a plan. Usually watering dropping water down on the on the road road is the thing that controls dust for the most part. It's only if an area would be really prevalently the dust control was not working that you'd might want to consider paving. Um, usually it's just like the main entrances. You're not going to pave the whole site obviously. So, um, but it's really a should be a flexible plan, but I mean basically they cannot have air emissions leave the property line and that's the ultimate thing. So, if there's ever a concern, you just want to be able to make sure that they they're following a plan that would prevent that from happening and that's

that would be part of the mind plan. Yeah. Um the Yes. The well the dust control plan I think pollution control plan. Um

yeah Mr. Carrillo would that be something we we add into the stipulations then? I think that might be covered. I'm not sure, but I would defer to Tony that number two control.

Yeah, actually I'm I thought I read it somewhere just you guys have that cover that this specific thing about paving and sweeping and Okay. All right. Just want to make sure it's covered. Thank you. I have a question. Okay, Dr. Roberts.

Thank you. Um, one of my questions is I noticed in the report in the peer review that you did that, um, it talks about silica as it's dangerous to um, workers in the quarry. And I'm really glad that workers are protected, of course. Um, and I know that in our community many people, especially people who live close to the quarry, are concerned about the silica dust. And I was curious, I didn't really see anything in the report talking about um standards or measures about how we know whether silica dust that may be being spread is harmful to the neighbors and at what levels. because I know like people have complained about having dust on their you know picnic tables in their backyard on their cars etc. But I again I just didn't see anything mentioned about potential harms to residents and like what those standards are.

Yeah. I mean well the so the silica would be part of the dust. So it's part of that dust mitigation plan. So that gets goes right to that spec you have for number three there is following a dust control mitigation plan. And if there is evidence of of dust migrating, there should be corrective actions that be made basically anytime. I mean, they can affect their operations. They could add more water or something like that or and that goes back to your statement that no dust is supposed to leave the property. Correct. Yes. Okay.

Yeah. because that's a is a question that I have which is it seems to me from what I've seen over the last few years that when people um who do live near there have complained about the dust it seems like that hasn't been taken seriously and that maybe it's been said that they shouldn't be worrying about it. So, if you're saying that the silica is in that dust, I would just like it on the record that it matters that residents are finding that on their cars and their backyard porches and things, which means it's leaving the property. Yeah. I I mean, that's where I think we said that basically the they are protecting their workers from it

and and they would be the first line of defense. So if they're protecting their workers going above and beyond that point, you know, they're it's going to be super protective and therefore extremely unlikely anything can happen. It's not leaving the property. You can protect workers with masks and and other things, too. You can't you can't stop stuff from leaving the property with a mask. So those are some they're related, but they're different things. Yes. Yeah. And it's how deep they are into the excavation and stuff like that.

Um I do have another question. It's about the mind plan that you recommended and um I I was curious based on the review that you did is there current so there's like so many technical pieces and so many regulations and different bodies that oversee them and that was one of the things that I found to be really overwhelming to try and review everything. So, I was curious as far as a mind plan goes, is it then the case that currently there is no mind plan and everything is just like lots of fragmented things but not all brought together by a plan?

Well, my my recommendation for the montan is really specific to evaluate what are the potential future um impacts from the from the thing and and and really it's the the bottom elevation. There is no defined, you know, they're down a certain depth right now, but there's no limit on who how they can go deep. They can continue to go deep as long as there's no impact, but there's there has to be a, you know, have a plan to go to a certain depth and then evaluate it and then at that point they could re-evaluate it, determine if you can go deeper or something. And and the question is just like there mining certain areas that's I think the middle of the site is really sand and gravel, but then kind of the northeast and the southwest corners are rock areas. So the question is how deep are they going to go in those areas. So once they've defined what the bottom elevation would be then you could make an evaluation of you know how if they don't go below the water table you don't even have to evaluate whether you're going to impact private wells but if they're going to go certain you know different differences 50 feet or 100 feet below the water table

that would potentially have different radiuses that might be uh areas of concern and whatnot. So, I don't I don't think I heard a definitive answer for Dr. Robert's question. Is there a mining plan in place? Uh, no. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else? Do you have anything else?

Okay. Um, one other thing you we mentioned the site mitigation. I guess you're talking about the the rock faces and they have to become stabilized. What about just in general? I mean, you know, this could be left. You know, I I think of the mine that's, um, off of Route 99, which is comfortably more than 40 ft high. Um, uh, of course that's still in operation. Once it's not in operation anymore, doesn't that pose a safety risk, um, for res, you know, I mean,

I know what I like to do at 14 years old going exploring in the woods, you know. So, what what is the appropriate plan for that? Um I I believe they they're going to have to submit the restoration plan. It's one of the conditions.

So that would be basically set and I believe there's a plan for a fence around the property. I again I didn't um I'm pretty sure there was a a requirement for a fence. And then and I just brought up is that I noticed there are uh because different rock material rock materials versus sand and gravel they have different slopes. Rock can be relatively steep. Uh but Santa gravel if you and and you do you already incorporated some of the impacts by requiring a 200 foot setback.

So you have an area but you just don't want a failure that's going to go off of a property line or something and you that's a pretty good setback right there but it's just something should be considered just so they know where the finals you'll excavate to a point and then they'll stop excavating so you can maintain those final um Mr. What's the timing on having for example the mining plan, the restoration plan in place? So the next step after the planning board, the planning board will make a recommendation to the council uh and I would advise the board whether they recommend positively or negatively that they include these stipulations to forward them to the council. Um the council will determine the timing,

Mr. chairman because there's a request for a zone change here and it's part of that process that zone change process. They should dictate the timing in that basically um once the zone change the zone change will take two passages. It goes to the council for first passage and then a second passage and there's a 20-day appeal period. But with regard to the plan um you with the mining plan and whatnot that is not determined in here that they would they would have to provide that. So I would expect that the council would determine when they would want that plan in place. Um it doesn't exist currently. So there would have to be some lead time for them to produce these

and therefore it would be it'd be up to the town council whether that's a um a mitigate and a mitigating onion. In other words, you know, we can't move forward to this without these plans in place. Something like that. Plans approved, I should say. So, so, so typically stipulations are in effect, right? So, when the zone change takes place, should should a should should a zone change take place, then stipulations go into effect. There'll be the council could attach a performance period to that for certain elements of it. I would expect some of the elements like a fence or something like that would be required almost immediately as part of the zone change being in effect. They have to perform. Okay. Would it make sense for us to put that in stipulations

if that's your prerogative? I whatever the timing would take to do something like that 30 60 90 days 6 months I can consider that a use I'm I'm not a mining expert. Maybe that would be a question we could ask Mr. Banano about what's a reasonable amount of time. Well, we're not saying I'm not saying the specific amount of time necessarily. I don't think that's necessarily understood, but just saying put it in the stipulations that this must be done, you know, prior to whatever, you know, let the and let the town council work out whatever the appropriate time time frame is. Is that reasonable?

Everybody Everybody seems good with that. Okay. So, you can add that to your lengthy list. All right. Anything else with Dr. Roberts? I think we're having other opportunities to discuss other aspects, right? Because All right. And if we have questions as they unfold, can we reask Mr. Erbano because I might have some more questions. Of course. Okay.

Thank you. I I would just like to um remind not only ourselves but everybody watching here tonight that our our duties this evening, we have a few to determine if this zoning uh ordinance or overlay is consistent with the comp plan. And please correct me if I'm wrong. Um that's one that's our main duty for this evening, right? is to determine the consistency with the comp plan and then also make the recommendations to town council one way or the other as far as stipulations go and and potentially any other recommendations we may have in considering their um with their uh duties as the town council to pass the or not this ordinance that's before us. Correct. So, so your primary duty is to make a determination whether the request is is in compliance or not in compliance with the comprehensive plan. Um, if it is in compliance, the assumption is that it would be an affirmative recommendation to the council to approve the zone change.

Mhm. Otherwise, you would be inconsistent with your finding and your recommendation. Sure. If you find that it's not compliant, then in effect, you would be recommending that the council not approve it. You need to be consistent in your finding in your recommendation. But there's there's been times where we've made recommendations to uh to the council one way and they decide the opposite way. Well, they're they are the legislative body and it is their prerogative and that's their prerogative. But if we decide, you know, in one direction, but then also forward along those stipulations regardless of how we decide.

That's why I agree and that's why I'm recommending regardless of what your recommendation is that you move forward a list of stipulations for their consideration. Yep. Should they decide to approve the zone change. Okay, great. Thank you for that clarification. Okay. So, perhaps open up the hearing. Open up the public hearing. Am I all set or I think you're all set for now. Thank you.

Oh, we did. Would be help if I was looking at the breakdown. Gary, we did Yes, Dr. All right.

You could ask M ask Mr. Kuo if he would go over the comprehensive plan aspects. I excuse me. I'm sorry. I provided to the planning board um a chapter by chapter analysis of those areas that in my opinion uh reviewing it as the planner and and um you know working on behalf of the planning board those areas that would directly relate or relate to the request at hand. When I went through the comprehensive plan, just to be clear, there is no specific um recommendation one way or the other. The comprehensive plan does not say within it that mining shall be prohibited in the town of North Smithfield, you know, period. Um, so as I go through each chapter, you know, I would I I was reading it in its in totality and I was finding areas that may or may not um pertain to the request that may or may not be in favor of the request. And these, you know, as a comprehensive plan is a general policy document and um many times it can be read one way or the other. Um my preference was to look at it, do an analysis, and make a very um more or less neutral determination because there's really no uh like as I said, there's really no definitive um opinion within that comprehensive plan whether this is consistent or isn't consistent. So that being said, uh, in the land use chapter on, uh, page 15, goals and policies and actions, um, page 15,

it it says the the rural estate designation, low density, and that's basically what this area is zoned. Um, the REA area covers land, groundwater, aquifer areas requiring conservation action. The reason I brought that up is that's what this area is zoned and that's what the comprehensive plan says. It says all sensitive areas where utilities should not be provided and open space should be preserved. The designated area has also been established as a buffer district around uh along Troutbrook, Trout Pond, Dolly Pond. This is where the REA is located and the Slaterville reservoirs. It is proposed that the buffer be increased to include portions of the reservoir drainage area, Slaterville aquifer and aquifer recharge area. This is an aquifer area in this particular area um in the reservoirs in Poundhill Road. The area encompasses the landfill and resource recovery of Western Sand and EPA super fund sites. So, it refers to this general area. it doesn't really define, you know, what the buffers are and what that means. Um, development proposals must consider the constraints associated with the existence of the EPA super fund sites and the need to protect the Slaterville aquifer reservoir. So my opinion is the description of the REA presented above represents the town's concern about the existence of a groundwater aquifer Slaterville reservoir and the presence of contaminated super fund sites. This section of the plan calls for open space enhanced buffers in consideration of constraints to development related to the super fund sites in the REA district. However, there is no specific mention of what constitutes an adequate buffer and what qualifies as appropriate land uses other than open space.

So to me, it's inconclusive. Goal number three, which is table three, goal number three, prevent incompatible non-residential land uses and residential neighborhoods. That's reasonably clear to me. Um when reviewing the goals, policies and actions of the land use chapter table three number four goal three above it appears to be the most direct statement in conflict with the proposed zoning amendment. Location of a sand and gravel quarrying operation directly abuing a residential land use is indicative of incompatible land use condition. However, the sand and gravel operation in some configuration is a pre-existing condition which predates the current zoning and adoption of the comprehensive plan. Should a proposal for a new sand and gravel operation be presented, it would clearly be incompatible with table three go uh table three, number four, goal three. So basically what I'm saying is in a in in a world where where we're looking at new development and compatibility um to to introduce a quarrying operation next to a residential neighborhood would be an incompatible land use. I think that's pretty clear. However, this is a pre-existing condition. The quarry was there before the comprehensive plan was adopted. Um, I I won't get into my my my my thoughts on that, but the fact that there was a quarry there and then someone reszone this area residential and said don't introduce incompatible land uses, there could be an argument that the introduction of residential next to a quarry was an introduction of an incompatible land use next to a quarry. Mhm.

Um economic development chapter following excerpts from the e economic development chapter not directly related to the proposed zone change but may be related. Uh page 43 uh detailed buildout of all non-residential zoning districts was performed using GIS and discussed later in the chapter the section non-residential buildout analysis. The findings confirm North Smithfield has very little undeveloped commercially zoned property remaining. As a result, the town must consider both flexibility in its subdivision and land development process to encourage development of remaining industrially zoned land along with potential zone changes to add to the zones industrial base, the town's industrial base. Such will likely require cooperation between the planning and zoning boards and subdivision developments. This section of the economic development chapter states a need for more commercially zoned land. The chapter suggests flexibility to encourage development of remaining industrial zone land as as well as potential zone changes to add in to the industrial base. While this section supports new and expanded industrial activity, is the town's responsibility to determine the most appropriate areas and type of activities that are most suitable for proposed expansion and reszoning. Again, um this is a request to allow the continuation of an existing use. If this was a request for a new industrial use in an area that's adjacent to a residential neighborhood, I would say it's incompatible. However, it's a pre-existing use. Um the town does need expansion of its commercial base and industrial base. Um this is an existing business that's looking to continue. So from one aspect of it, um the business is a benefit to the community because it's providing a tax base in and lessening the burden on residential.

However, it's an incompatible land use abuing a residential neighborhood. Financial uh again in the economic development section, financial review based uh basics and trends. North Smithfield revenue was dominated by residential tax base. The commercial tax revenue has been growing which helps mitigate the burden to residents. However, the delta between the commercial and residential is nearly identical to that 2006. Tells us that reliance on residential revenue versus that of commercial revenue has not made progress. It would appear that the reliance gap shrank between 2011 and and 2012. However, as a result of the post208 recession, residential values are rebounding. The structural alliance has not changed. We must address this is these are these are excerpts out of the comprehensive plan. We must address the challenge increasing revenue from commercial tax bases to meet the town's financial needs without raising residential taxes in addition to creating local jobs to the greatest extent possible. So these are all excerpts that are in favor of commercial and expanding commercial uses. The expansion of this tax base is critical to the community success in stabilizing the residential tax base and controlling the cost of living for its residents and generating tax revenues to fund quality municipal services. The most demanding of which is public education. Expanding the commercial tax base also allows a commercial base to be low um which in turn attracts businesses. This section, this is my analysis. This section emphasizes the town's reliance on a residential tax base and expresses the need to expand the commercial tax base to provide necessary municipal services for town residents in particular funding of the education system. It also articulates the idea of the compounding effect of business attracting business and supports new and expanded industrial activity. However, as previously stated, is the town's responsibility to determine the most appropriate types of

business activities that are suitable for the town and the location. I think that speaks for itself.

So, Mr. Krill, if I could make comment on that. So, uh this and to some extent the previous section on econom on economic development. Um this is not about creating an overlay district that will attract new businesses. In fact, we specifically are pointing out that at least any new mining business would be incompatible and therefore not allowed. Um, so it seems to me this is really about allowing uh one business to continue and expand, but that's all it is. And and we have precedent in this town. Unfortunately, we have experience at creating overlay districts to benefit a single business, and they're not positive experiences. So, um I'm wonder I'm wondering with or without the overlay, isn't this business still going to be able to perhaps with some town council approval to expand and you know, and therefore um make more money, probably pay more taxes, etc. Um but without the overlay, without creating an overlay that that is specific to their business. I I think uh I I would defer to a solicister that there's pending litigation. The applicant has been directed to come back to the town and try to resolve the issue. They've been cited by the town. The town um I'm not sure exactly what the citation is. I didn't I didn't read it recently, but basically I think the claim is that they have been expanding um their use in violation of the local zoning ordinance.

Right. So the simple answer to that question is the town has taken a position that it believes they're not able to expand. They have taken that position to court. That is being litigated currently. That has been suspended while the applicant comes to the town and is trying to present to the town an option that would allow them to continue to do their business and expand their business on their property. So,

but what I'm what I'm saying is aren't there is this the only option? Is isn't there an option for the town council to simply say you can expand and continue? you know, we'll put stipulations on and all that stuff on how that expansion will occur and be regulated, but without creating some new special overlay just for one business.

Well, the there could have been other options. I mean, the there was there was an option to apply to the zoning board for relief um and allow an expansion. There's a there's there there's an option to create this overlay. There's an option to just amend the zoning ordinance to allow mining in the there there are multiple options. This is the option that the applicant chose to come with, but they could they could have come back and said, "Hey, change your use table to put a yes for mining." Right now, you know, it says no across the board. So,

to answer your question, there are multiple options. this is the mechanism to get them before the town council uh to consider the option that they are proposing and the council can approve or not approve that. Um I I'd have to defer to to to the solicitor whether the council has the ability um to just to allow them to continue to do business and expand when the town has taken the position that they're in violation of zoning. I'm not sure that

that's something that would be before them currently. I I think I think the board needs to focus on the application before them and not options are that not presented. Um this is the option that the applicant filed and requested you to act on. Everybody's trying to speculate about what other choices they should make. This is their choice. I'm just saying my comment wasn't to speculate on options they could take. Understood it's this is what they chose to take. What I wanted to do, frankly, is to make sure that they still have the option to expand even if we say no or give a negative recommendation. We're not trying to shut them down. We're not trying to prevent that. What what I'm really concerned with is just that creating an overlay district for a single business. Again,

I think we should get out of that. The simple answer to your question is if you recommend no, the council can still say yes. There's the simple answer to your question. Well, they can say in which case they're saying yes to the overlay district, of course, right? and you can make a recommendation. No, the council can still say yes. That's what's before the council. So, there are multiple options that the the applicant could take to to get this relief. This is the one they chose. Gotcha. You make a recommendation, but your recommendation is just that. So, it could still be a positive decision for them by the council. Okay.

If this if you want to make a recommendation that you support it, but not this way, um certainly that the council could consider that as a vote. We we approve it, but not this way. If that mean that's your if that's your meaning, we approve the expansion, right? But just not this way. If that's what you're getting at, you could certainly do that. Okay, there you go. Thank you. All right. Sorry to derail you there, Mr. Kurillo. That's That's fine, Mr. Chairman. I I That's what I do. It's what I do. I I I I understand your question. Um

I have a quick question on the financial impacts. Have we seen any proposals on what this is going to do in terms of tax revenue in ch since we will be creating a new zoning district for it? No. Um tax revenue is really not something that the planning board takes under consideration. It's more land use. Whether this land use is compatible u whether the land use is consistent with the comprehensive plan. Um tax revenue is really not something for the planning board to be considering. That might be something that the town council considers, but it's really not in the planning board's purview.

Um, I I wanted to add because I was going to ask this at some point tonight. I have asked the company to provide um tax information when we had them present other times. And I haven't seen that. I don't know if it's been provided. And I understand you're saying it's not our purview. And I think when we're talking about a a business's benefit or risk to a community and like their compatibility with these things that we're deciding, I I do think what they contribute tax-wise does factor into whether they're a like a good business to have in our community and be allowed to expand. And I might be speaking out of turn, but I it says right in our comprehensive plan.

It's It says right in our comprehensive plan that we're trying to expand the tax base. So, if we're not seeing taxes come in from a particular business that's asking to expand, to me, that is there is a relationship there. Maybe not technically, but qualitatively I feel like there is I I agree. I think it's I think it's you're weighing multiple things and it's just something that has weight. That's all. You know, if you say, "Yeah, we're go we want to do all this stuff and it's going to create, you know, one part-time job, you know." Oh, that's great. So, so, so typically when a development comes before the planning board, if there's a if there's an analysis, it's called a fiscal impact analysis,

and that does a comparison between the cost of the services to whatever the development is to the town versus the taxes. It doesn't talk about, you know, would I allow this because of the taxes, which is there there's a there's really a there's a difference there. Um and that if there's going to be a negative impact on the town um as far as a service or something like that, then the town can impose um some some sort of a a a uh uh a fee or something. You know, they they would have to they would have to resolve whatever the impact is going to be on the community. Like if it was going to cause the town to have to widen the road or build a road or build a school, then you know there could be an impact fee that or or or an impact um that they would have to resolve moving forward. But really as far as um not to be argumentative with the board, but as far as land use and determining whether there's a financial benefit to that, I mean the taxes are the taxes and the businesses pay taxes based on assessment or based on whatever the tax assessor determines that to be.

Okay. I think there was I think there was one more section to your uh at least one more section to the comprehensive plan analysis

the natural resource. Oh yeah, that's right.

That's right. Non-residential buildout, I think is where we where I interrupted you. Well, the, you know, basically the sum, the the the economic development element, obviously, um the emphasis on promoting economic development within the community, expanding business, and increasing the business tax base to take some of the burden off of the residential taxpayer. Um so continuing a business or expanding a business to address that somewhat um will provide tax revenue to the community and that provides relief to the residential tax base. That's basically the the the finding of the economic development uh element. Now we're into the natural resources chapter page 72.

Mr. Perula.

Yes. If I may uh though uh before we leave the economic development One of the goals that are listed in the economic development goal three is strive to balance economic development in preservation of town's natural resources and open spaces. So that one to me feels like it's again a gray area of that potentially is conflicting with what's before us tonight too. that um that was just one of the things that that I had when we had initially started going through that uh this process. Part of that economic development goal seems to be in this overlay district seem to be at at odds with one another.

Okay. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Cru, if you want to move into the natural resources. Sure.

Groundwater is an so page 72 natural resources discuss discusses groundwater. Um that has been a topic of conversation for this development. Groundwater is an important resource as it supplies drinking water for a large percentage of the town's households. North Smithfield has two class GA groundwater aquifers of Slaterville and lower branch groundwater classified JA those groundwater resources that are known and presumed to be suitable for drinking water without treatment. Um map five number one groundwater aquifer protection overlay from the town of North Smithfield zoning ordinance. This map combined with the North Smithfield zoning ordinance section 6.19 regulates the use and development of land to protect major stratified drift aquifers in their recharge areas. While much of the town's more intense residential, commercial industrial development has been historically related uh located over aquifers. Ordinances have been put in place specifying permitted uses and non-permitted possibly contaminating uses to protect drinking water in North Smithfields residents. Groundwater overlay zoning. The town responded to the 1992 comprehensive plan requirement for groundwater protection by adopting 6.19 of the zoning ordinance regulation of groundwater aquifer zones, groundwater recharge areas, wellhead protection areas, and water supply basin. As recommended by the comprehensive plan, the regulations dictating uses over these resources are more stringent than the underlying districts. The National Resources Chapter includes and emphasizes the protection of the town's groundwater resources. The chapter includes mapping of the sensitive areas and expresses a desire to control land use in these areas and to develop more stringent regulations for these areas. It should be noted that the subject property is included in the water water supply protection overlay district and does not necessarily preclude the existing land use. However, the use should comply with the standards and provisions

requirements of the water supply protection overlay. I think uh the engineer talking about contamination of the groundwater and putting a mining plan together kind of addresses that element where um the use itself would not be contaminating the groundwater, but it could it could affect the um capacity of wells in proximity to the development. Um, I think I I think rather than just going through all of that, I will go to the planning office recommendation towards the end. Says the town's comprehensive plan does not specifically address the proposed zoning text amendments. However, there are several sections of the comprehensive plan that may be appropriate when reviewing the proposed zoning amendments. The land use chapter explains the purpose of the REA zoning designation which is where this this uh use is located uh is to protect and preserve environmentally sensitive areas of the town by proposing lowintensity land use. Goal three of the land use chapter calls for preventing the establishment of incompatible non-residential uses in residential neighborhoods. If the request was to allow a new sand and gravel quarry business on the subject property, one could argue that the proposal would conflict with the land use chapter. However, the fact that there's pre-existing use hinders this argument as the uses established before the comprehensive plan was written. Economic development chapter discusses the need for the town to expand its non-residential tax base and shift the burden away from residential property owners. The chapter represents a vision of desired industries being the type that would result in the creation of quality job opportunities and expansion of the tax base while preserving the town's unique character and environment. The natural resources chapter identifies the need to protect the town's natural resources, in particular the groundwater aquifer recharge areas. This chapter goes on to explain the town should

re-examine its regulations to protect these resources, including soil and earth removal operations and provide for the restoration of land in a manner that will provide long-term protection. The requested zone change is unique because it proposes the creation of a new zoning district that focuses on a pre-existing non-conforming use as opposed to requesting a reszoning of an existing zoning designation and approval of an allowed use in that designation. It should be noted that sand, gravel, and quarry businesses were at one time allowed under the town zoning ordinance and the town amended the ordinance to prohibit the use. This action represents a policy decision by the town that eliminated the ability to establish new quarry businesses. The effect of this action is to make all existing quaries pre-existing non-conforming uses. There are no specific references in the town's comprehensive plan explicitly prohibiting and/or specifically in support of the requested amendment. The plan does include multiple passages related to natural resources and the environment. These passages are presented in this analysis and are primarily focused on protecting the town's natural resources including including groundwater aquifers. The comprehensive plan recommends limiting development through proper zoning regulations to establish compatible land uses which mitigate impacts on the environment. Based on the history of quarrying in the town having been allowed and then prohibited, this request becomes a a question of policy. The planning office suggests that the planning board consider forwarding the following conditions to the town council regardless of whether the board makes a positive or negative recommendation regarding the proposed zone change. I think you have the 12 stipulations that the planning office is recommending. Um these stipulations have been amended since the initial um analysis that we provided in February based on the analysis done by GCA and

its peer review. And um several of their recommendations have been included in these 12 recommendations. If you have any specific questions, I'd be happy to try to address those. I think we added one tonight too about about the requirement for the for the mining um restoration plan. There was a there there is a um a restoration plan here but I think it I think um Mr. Abano suggested that we address the final grades in as Mr. Chairman.

Yes Dr. in consideration. If we do not go forward, the land will never be subject to these 12 conditions that are being proposed. The land is already vulnerable to the landfill resource landfill site and it's also vulnerable to the western sand and gravel contamination that's already in the ground. Unless we can put these 12 conditions into effect, the land remains vulnerable to those two contamination sites.

This gives us an opportunity to have control over the future of that land.

Understanding that tonight we're only making recommendation. It's going to be up to the council. Yes. To do that. But yes, I agree. But that's why I'm I'm saying this is it makes me inclined to say we'll give a positive recommendation. Let the council make the ultimate decision which is theirs to make. But keep in mind that the area is polluted very close to this site. It has not leaked uh fortunately to the reservoir from what we all understand. It's being monitored by EPA. With the 12 conditions, the site will be monitored and more closely watched than ever.

And it's a golden opportunity to establish that. But but we can submit a recommendation to the council that includes these stipulations even if we don't I understand that. Recommend the overlay. I understand that. Okay. But I'm explaining my position is that we'll have more protection if it goes through. You're saying with the overlay it's stronger. Yes. Okay. I um just

there were two areas of the the comp plan that I that I had looked at as well. um specifically section seven with open space and um there's goal two protecting the town's natural resources while preserving the rural areas and also section 8 circulation where we actually have a policy 3B combine confine industrial and commercial growth to the route 146 corridor. So in that fashion um and also goal three of the circulation utilize a road system to promote both rural character and economic development. Uh we did hear a lot of neighbors complaining about um circulation trucks the like along the the proposed routes of of the quarry. Mr. Kuro, is there any other stipulations that we could add in? I know they have to carry a bond for maintenance of the road as it exists for their use. Is there any other stipulations that we should think of considering for making sure that the roadways are become a little bit more safer particularly with uh children in the area, school buses, making sure that we have some level of enforcement of hours of operation um and when those trucks are coming and leaving from the site. Is that something that would be appropriate to add allow into the stipulations? If I missed that, I apologize.

Okay. All right. So, yeah, that suitability and capacity probably covers it, right?

Dr. Roberts, go ahead. Um, I have a question about um whether in the stipulation it would be possible to include something about having some kind of um escrow account or something that would help if there should be um pollution either to the surrounding wells. I understand from the report that it's more it's sounding that it's more about the um like the volume of the water and not it being uh contaminated, but there's also unknowns. And so I was curious if there was um precedent in in this field and in um in these kind of ordinances where there could be some kind of mechanism for having some money be set aside for future um problems. And then similarly um I guess this is probably related to the mine plan but um we had talked in previous meetings about whether not only um like having the all the required stuff like the mesh and the walls and everything but is there a way to actually restore the land to actually be useful to the community and I think that's related to the question of what's the end date for when the the mine will stop being

That's a plan. That's a restoration plan that's also been mentioned. Yeah, I know it was mentioned, but it was mentioned more the way I heard it with like making sure the gravel walls don't crumble down, but it wasn't really focused on like will it can it be a resource for the community. Yeah. So, that was one thing.

And then, um the other piece, one quick second. Yeah, I think that's a good point on the restoration plan. The the the restoration plan to me can't just be we're going to pick put a big fence around it so kids don't get in there and kill themselves, you know, because it still will remain an absolutely unusable piece of land at that point. There should be a way to make the land usable. Otherwise, we haven't gained anything, right? We haven't there's no it's not open space. It's just an open hole. And is there a way to put something in the stipulation on the restoration plan that says with with an end result that it is an acceptable acceptably usable piece of property at that point understanding that we know we're talking about decades away.

Excuse me, chairman. I I don't have that section in front of me. I'll see if I can look it up on my phone while we're discussing it. But I think the rest the definition of the restoration plan does address that. In our conversations, um the planning office conversations with the applicant, it was clear that we'd be looking for um a plan that would make the property usable in the future. Okay. Now, with regard to bringing it back to grade, that's obviously that that would be impossible to happen. But there could be um certain elements that would be

at the time that the the business is no longer functioning and it's no longer useful that they there would be some plantings or there would be some sort of uh public access and activity internally within there. that that's yet to be determined, but I think the plan would be designed by a registered landscape architect and we've had those conversations with them and I'm I'm sorry I haven't I haven't You're saying that's that's a a normal part of the restoration plan. It is. Okay. Okay.

Um and then um it this is building on what Dr. Benoy was suggesting about having the overlay district could possibly empower us more to hold the um company accountable to all these different things. And I was curious if um when you read the um the peer review, it talks about how complex it is to manage this type of development or business um and how difficult it is for a community to have the correct amount of resources to actually oversee and regulate. And then there's like all levels of regulation with the state regulates some things, EPA regulates others, etc. And I was curious u we've talked about this many times about how our town doesn't have enough staffing to um make sure for example like that our water isn't being polluted and we've talked about having an engineer on staff and stuff like that. So, I was curious whether there could be an agreement where the the applicant would agree to put a certain amount of money from their the b the proceeds that they make from mining the land here to pay for the oversight of what they're doing because it's so complex. And um so I wanted to put that out there because I think that's a big part of our problem in this community. We're a very small community and we are seen I think as a target for like various types of land development that are exploitative of the land and end up exploiting people and um thus we have super fund sites etc and we don't have the resources to pull all those things together and that's when when I saw the thing about the mining plan it just made me wonder if we could have a staff some staff time paid for to actually look at all of those pieces and

make sure everything is in its proper place. M I was going to bring up something on that same subject. Um, GSA had recommended that the reports get handed over to the town and I'm not so sure that the town has a qualified department or a person to handle those reports or deal with those reports. So, what happens to those reports? They get filed. Yeah, they've submitted their reports that they're supposed to, but nobody knows what it means.

I would think it may not be appropriate to go to EPA, but in between is DEM. And it would seem that DEM would be concerned We would hope. So my suggestion was adding to uh number 10 that upon submitting that report that the business would pay for a peer review for the town to tell us what that report means and guide us because we I in my opinion but Mr. Robbins we don't have qualified people on our staff to deal with that. So town selected resource correct. I think that might be covered by stipulation number 12.

Yeah, it does say yeah. All reports provided. All right.

Um I guess I would just want to add though if there's a peer review of all the reports. Is there also like a so what written up so that it's like these things aren't in compliance? these things are because um I like when I read this peer review a lot of them did tell you like what the problems were but a lot of them were kind of observational and they didn't have a so what associated with them so it's like even if the knowledge exists on a piece of paper if someone isn't making that actionable in some way and I just want to say from my point of view I I don't even think it's necessarily that we don't have the um like the compet It's the actual like person hours because we we have so many applications and things to follow up on all the time. So then maybe what we say in in item 12 that the town may may perform thirdparty peer review of all reports provided by the applicant instead of just uh peer review. We include peer review and recommendations or action items that are to be taken uh to make sure that something if there is something out of line, we have a a qualified recommendation by a third party peer review such as GZA that says, "Okay, here's here's what we found. Here's the corrective action that needs to be taken."

Okay. I I have a different topic if if we can move off that if we're all done with that one.

Um Mr. Krill on the on the U and I believe it's just number two which talks about the burm and the you know the uh sound barrier etc. Um we had had some conversations in the last detail meeting about and and this speaks I guess to the mine plan about um the dust mitigation right and keeping um you know as as Mr. Bono said keeping everything on the property and we had talked about putting up the types of screening that uh you know a sandy gravel place would put in Arizona if it's next to an an orange grove you know because they can't they have to keep all that from you know destroying the the grove. So, we had talked about that as as an option in addition to sound screening because this is just this is strictly for, you know, they have the the mesh that will I guess it'll stop stuff down to, you know, 08 microns, something like that. So, very lightweight um but also rather tall because it's not clear it's not clear how how high we need to go to protect the uh the residents to the south. In number three,

in number three, Mr. Chairman, we're we're referring to the regulation um it says may include dust control filtration barriers, which is what we're what you're talking about. How did I miss that? Um or automized misters and the like. So, we actually you and I have that conversation. I I amended that to include that. I'm sorry I didn't point that out to you, but All right. No, I appreciate that. I'm sorry. Including Okay. Yeah.

Any other I'd like to go back to the restoration plan for a moment. Um, and the GZA recommendations to modify that language a little bit. Can we also include something that says that this restoration plan has to be before council or the planning board for approval? Because right now the way it's stated is that they just come to the they provide a restor restoration plan and then that's that. There's no oversight from council. There's no oversight from any administration. Is there language that we could add for that? That that becomes an approve an approval process to go through that. You could simply add at the end who you want to approve it to be approved by. says

for number six. Um yeah, in the um the restoration plan under the ordinance provides that the decision of the building zoning official shall be the final determining whether uh a restoration plan shall be put into effect. But I maybe that's not in the it's in the ordinance not in but you could put it in your in the or if you want to have it go to some board I guess you could do that. But there is a provision in the ordinance that indicates that a restoration plan is submitted to the building/zoning official. Okay.

But I think you know I think you could I think add to have it come to to a to the planning board for public for review public hearing. Same situations that we have for all of our other stuff that gets going on in town. So I would I would add number to to number six that it it's to be approved by either planning board or by town council. There need there needs to be some public input at that for that plan.

Okay, Mr. CR on on all these things, you know, for example, number five, providing blast vibration monitor. Is it implied that it's uh in perpetuity as long as the business is in operation or does it need to be stated? No, it's these these Well, if there's a zone change, this would be a very sightspecific zone change, right? And um by statute, the town's allowed to impose um conditions on any zone change and it becomes an inseparable part of that is not to the business. It's actually to the property. Oh, right. Right. I'm sorry. Great. Okay. So, okay. Great. Thank you. Roberts.

Um, I think I said a little earlier that I was interested in knowing whether there could be some kind of language around having a fund for future harm or impact. And related to that is um I did read in the um peer review report that at least one a butter was able to get um to arrange having reverse osmosis filtration for their water. So, not only for like future um problems, but things like uh wells being cracked, you know, during blasting and things like that. There just seemed like there was a lot of technical uh just orchestration that has to happen around when the testing happens, how you can prove what happens. And what I'm concerned about is residents being left with like wells that are cracked or foundations that are cracked and no mechanism for helping them and everyone having to like one by one, you know, take care of this. And I know in the report it talks about a plan for the data having to be like looked at according to certain timelines and everything. And I was had having very similar ideas that as Dr. Benoy that if we have this overlay we can perhaps have some something written in there that provides some kind of escrow like I was saying I don't know what the mechanism is so that if people need reverse osmosis water filtration or need to have their foundations repaired or wells dug or whatever it is that it's there and it's like more easily facilitated. And I say that because the mining operation does take a lot from our community and it it causes a lot of impositions and I'm not I don't know what it gives to our community. The only thing I've asked for was to know what the tax base was

and I haven't found out. So other than extracting from the community and harming the neighbors, I don't know what what they're giving to our community. So if they could put money aside for potential harm, I think that would be a useful stipulation. I think you're talking about a performance bond basically what you would Okay, you would require then the question is what is the amount of the bond? Yeah. And I get insurance and bond. That's what I Okay.

Yeah. Because it's more like an insurance. Yeah. It just seems very ownorous for anyone to have to prove what's actually happening considering the timing of everything and the evidence collected. And I just think that's a small thing to ask for the abutters who have to put up with that all the time. Right. Okay. Is there anything else from the board? Dr.

Um I just have one more thing which is reading a very brief statement from the groundwater protection committee. Um I'm a liaison to the planning board from the groundwater protection committee and um I'll skip over anything that I already brought up but I'm wearing in this moment my groundwater protection committee chair hat and I am sharing this on behalf of the committee. Uh members of the groundwater protection committee are concerned about the following issues pertaining to the quarry operation and ask that these issues be seriously considered when making decisions about the potential creation of an overlay district. I acknowledge that a number of these concerns are addressed in the GZA peerreview report. Um these are the few highlights. the quarry's proximity to the two super fund sites, its location over the water supply overlay district, past history of the quarry in terms of being a responsible neighbor and compliant member of the community as a business, the impact of the quarry on residents ability to protect the integrity of their drinking water for their families. The level of technical expertise and time needed for a professional to review, monitor, and hold the quarry operation accountable to the regulations and standards is vast and exceeds the current resources of our community. What is the current ability of the owner operator to address potential pollution potential pollution of the groundwater um should contamination occur? Is there a way to hold funds in escrow in such in case such an event happens? And I believe this is the last one. Is there a provision for residents whose wells and water quality are impacted um to um to receive something such as a reverse osmosis filtration um and other

um remediation such as having wells repaired. And we already discussed that in terms of the um performance bond. And that's it. And thank you um for hearing these concerns from the groundwater protection committee. Okay. Thank you. And CJ for uh for future meetings. Could we get a ground strap for Mr. Kulo or something to uh somehow keep that intense electrical charge he has from taking out the microphone? It only happens on your seat. Only happens right there. Yeah.

All right. So, are we uh Okay.

Good. Thank you. Okay, we're back. Um, while we're not opening a formal public hearing, we're uh going to allow for if there are people who would like to uh come up to the podium, make some comments whenever that's fine. I'll just ask you to keep them brief. Um, again, if you come up, say something, the next person up, don't repeat what somebody before you said, just say, "Oh, I agree with that, too." Great. And move on. Okay, that's what I'll ask. So, um, with that, whoever would like to Sure. Uh, Bill Landry representing uh, the applicant. Thank you for all of that, uh, thoughtful, uh, discussion. Uh before I forget to mention this, I would like to make a request at the beginning that the materials that GZA reviewed in connection with their peer review, the the uh YouTube videos and the materials that were given to GZA be incorporated. Do we need this? Mr. Oozi, are we required to stop when we lose our sound?

Should cuz it's public a chance to watch for open what's going on for open. I mean if you permanent CJ is this going to be a problem that's permanent for the night?

Okay then. All right. So we'll continue. Thank you.

Thank you. I just asked that those materials be made part of the the record of this proceeding, whatever was given to to GZA, most of which were the was the testimony that this board heard, but it wasn't completely uh co-extensive with what was presented at the uh at the town council. Um I'd like to just remind uh the board, you know, what what our thrust was here. We we were never coming in for a permit to establish this operation or to continue to operate it. It's a it's a 70-year-old situation. Uh it will go on for a long time with a plan or without a plan. Uh some people disagree on how far out it can go. Uh but there's an awful lot of gray area and an awful lot of additional area that can be expanded as well as depths that can be explored within areas that have been mined for decades. So the likelihood that this black hole here will cease to be a black hole on its own from every perspective uh is very low. We didn't come here for permission. We came here to try to establish a planning approach to this property which has had anything but planning on both sides. the app the owner side and the and the town side. There's been no cooperation on planning this site ever and it's been in litigation for 30 years which has accomplished nothing so far. Uh there's no silica

dust control plan. There's no mining plan. There's no restoration plan. There's no 12 points that we feel are good starts for the discussion at the town council along with most of what's been mentioned uh tonight by all of you. our request. We love to hear the pl the word plan so much because that's what exactly what we're encouraging everybody to do along with us and want to continue to participate in uh you know the the references to the comp plan and existing zoning. Nobody's going to have any residential agricultural estates on this property for three more comprehensive plan uh sequences of 10 10 years. You can put anything in the comprehensive plan about what the town aspires to do if it were possible, but it's not going to make any difference uh if it's in the plan, if it's it's not feasible to be carried out. All of the conservation aspirations of the plan for this property to protect the groundwater, protect the reservoir, uh protect the neighbors, uh all of them can be accomplished through this mechanism that we've suggested. This is the way to carry out the feasible goals of the comprehensive plan, not to just leave it in a black hole where the developer decides where the next hole is going to be dug. responsible developer. Um it is a planning process that we'd like to see come to to conclusion. It was very well-intentioned. Um it it's the everything that's been

put on the table here is on the table. Honestly, it is uh we don't necessarily agree word for word with all of the 12 factors and I won't take the time to go through each one, but they're a very very respectable constructive start. Every single one of them is we may not be able to do 200 feet everywhere. May be impossible to have a 100 foot buffer within the 200 feet. There's no 200 feet there now in in some spaces. So, our preference at the council level will be to have the buffer really focus on the neighboring property owners uh as opposed to areas where where it really presents even uh less of a of a risk there. But buffering, screening, significant all of these these things are worthy of discussion through whatever mechanism the council you know chooses to adopt uh to get there. Um, we we presented uh the experts uh before we addressed all of the points because we felt that you needed to know how dangerous this site really was. There's a there was a lot of hyperbole. There are a lot of statements that were made across through the and we knew that it would be very very difficult for you to embrace this idea without a better understanding of what the real situation is out there with respect to blasting, with respect to groundwater, with respect to dust control, silica, where we stand in relation to the standards, how they're controlled, how safe it is, whether our experts are to be believed and they're engineers. They they are they have a

duty to the profession and the state and themselves to play it straight here and they did and they're all highly qualified people and we didn't pick the peer review. Uh we left that up to the town. We did agree to pay for it and we're very happy that somebody was going to be peer reviewing this and it took a long time. you you pick the town, pick a a firm that's at the top of the list of people who really understand this. And that was a that report was a very emphatic uh affirmation of what the experts had to say. Uh and we're not patting ourselves on the back because we believed what they were saying and the peer reviewer believed what they were saying. Now, he's supplemented it with a few other things. You got to pay attention to how low you go. You got to pay attention to the what the restoration plan looks like. All of these things could result in a problem if they're not monitored rock to rock as as the mining process proceeds under this diminishing assets rule that says that this use can continue to expand. Every time a bucket goes in the ground, it's an expansion. That's not something we're that applies to gas stations and other non-conforming uses. It's the rule in this state and other states about diminishing assets that it's a constant expansion. So, what it requires is a planning and control process to see what the risk is as that work proceeds. And that is what my client's plan is all about. That's all it's ever been about. Monitoring, benching, uh, evaluating risk, uh, it's doing the things, you know, have to be done in the short term that have that have not been done and haven't been monitored, sharing

all of the data, helping in the process of of financing the review of it so that somebody's not the applicant is not running over the town with a big job that the town has has to do and has no resources. uh eventual reclamation. A town could own this property and have it be a park or something at some point uh after it's after it's been mined and there should be controls along those lines. That's what we do on new solar projects. There's no reason that that can't be part of this uh part of this plan to have some controls. But if everything stays the way it is, um I won't be here for 30 more years and mo and most of us won't be. But that the the trajectory of this whole site, this whole issue is not likely to get any better than it's been for the last 30 years uh unless this opportunity is pursued. And and we promise to continue to do it in good faith. We haven't rushed you. We have paid for everything. We've welcomed uh opposing views and and peer review and that's what we're going to continue to do. So, we we encourage you and hope that you'll you'll see fit to to recommend to the council that there's merit in continuing to plan as opposed to walking away from the subject matter and and and letting things uh develop on their own. and thank you for all the time that you that you're putting into this.

Thank you, M. Who's next? We're back at the Christophar 1931 Poundill Road. Bear with me. I have a hard time breathing and talking at 8 months pregnant. Um, I'm speaking as an auter road quy. I have a few things that I'd like to say in relation to the comprehensive plan. And I just wanted to start with Mr. Landry respectfully. Your point that this Corey will go on with or without a plan, I think continues to inflame negative sentiment among residents. it sounds more like a threat than it does an auto branch. So I would just say maybe moving forward. Um it it seems as though just when I feel like there could be any headway made as we're sitting here and we're talking about comprehensive plan and potential Is this off?

Oh, I just want I just want you to name to look at you. Sorry. focus on

um and you know the potential to discuss conditions that will not only benefit potentially the business but also the residents. Um it just leads me to believe that there's still concern there that this business is going to continue to operate with or without you know conditions or plan. Um, a few points as an abuter. I will say this. I am not up here to make a recommendation on whether or not you should consider the overlay district in relation to this business. I only feel comfortable speaking about my experience as an ab butter and what I would feel like I need to be comfortable in living next to a quarry. Obviously, living next to a quarry is not an ideal situation. In retrospect, I probably wouldn't have purchased my property had I known the extent of this operation there, but that is neither here nor there. And I am at this at this property. Um, and I love this town, so I will stay. So, in order for me to live there comfortably, um, I saw in the comprehensive plan that there was proposed buffer of 200 ft, but with vegetation only at 100. I am absolutely positively not comfortable with that.

It It doesn't say vegetation only. It also says sound barrier and um I didn't read other types of screening is that I forgot the wording there. I read vegetation would only you'd only require vegetation for 100 ft within the 200 ft. Right. But that's the that's item two. Item three as Mr. Kruo pointed out that I missed also talks about screening which is for the dust mitigation. That's in addition to the the 100 foot screening. I just want to make sure that

right but I think the issue is that I don't think a 100 feet of veget I maybe maybe it's 150 ft of vegetation with the buffer but I'm not necessarily comfortable with the mining business coming any closer than 200 to 150 ft and that's not even like I don't have an any experience to really inform that but I know that maybe I would need to see what this burm and buffer and screening situation looks like in order to say at what distance I'm comfortable on a windy day it's very very loud. It sounds like it's in your backyard. Um on a windy day also the degree of dust that comes through the trees is concerning. So anything that we could do like any more distance that we can keep between us and the business in order to mitigate the dust and the sound I think would be completely uh would be ideal. The other thing that I think we need to consider based on GZA's peer review is the depth below the water table. um will a study be completed in order to understand at 50 ft it might have this impact at 100 feet it might have this impact like that I think the mind plan needs to be really specific on the depth that they can essentially mine in order to ensure that we're not impacting water level like water tables and I think that needs to be informed by a consultant so I or this hydrogeeologic consultant. So I would say in addition to what the comprehensive plan states about the hydro hydrogeeologic consultant if that could also be added I mean to the to the assessment

Mr. Krill would that be a normal part of the mine plan to include that assessment of at various depths? I I would defer to uh Mr.O mono on that

information consultant can evaluate basically what the deeper you go you want to be away from the closest water supply so so that would be where the water supply wells are so that' be yeah that would be part of the planning before they start going to to determine and maybe even affect how deep they go based on what they learn Right. Okay.

Gotcha.

Okay. So that would be part of the so like in theory my geologic consultant would be able to inform the mind plan by saying based on this depth it would impact x y and z right

okay um I also really appreciate the suggestion for staff or some sort of regular review to oversee regulations and compliance with the mine plan. I think it's kind of easy to infer that the reason why we're here today is because there really has been that lack of oversight for the last 30 some odd years. Um, as well as the performance bond and insurance. I know that I mentioned this before. Um, and given some of the increased blasting over the last two years, like I everybody thinks that I'm crazy, but I've I've done some research to understand the implications it can have on a roof and my roof has been leaking substantially over the last two years. So much so that I had to file an insurance claim in order to get my whole roof redone. and the payout wasn't even enough money to actually complete the work that needs to get done. Um, and I can't hire a lawyer to prove that it was as a result of blasting. So, with that being said, I think having that sort of mitigation bond or performance bond for future issues, I think would be um very much appreciated by residents. And then lastly, again, not necessarily in relation to to this business, I have concern regarding the approval of an of this overlay for for one reason specifically, and I I got chastised when I said this last time, but I think that there is some degree of truth here or potential. My fear is that approving an overlay would allow for precedent. Um, and when I say that, I what I mean by that is if another developer comes into town and sees that an overlay for mining has been allowed for a business, could they try to replicate that or use this as an argument to pursue an overlay for their specific property? And I can't

recall what town we're seeing this in now. Um, I think it was in Valley Breeze or NRI now. I don't know if it was Smithfield or Bavville, but a developer purchased a piece of property and they're actually going to be able to mine that property for the next 10 years before they even put in housing. I mean, that's that's my concern for this town is that if we allow for it once, it may be allowed for in or have to be allowed for in the future. like I don't know the legal ground there, but if if we allow for this situation, are we potentially opening up the door for future situations? Um, and then lastly, I would also like to say this over the last few months, I this business has been respectful. I think I've I've at least noticed that they've been I haven't heard of their operations starting up at 600 6:30 like they used to. I think that they have been a little bit more respectful of the resident's concerns. I did have the opportunity to sit down as an abuter. Um, all the abuters were given the opportunity to sit down with uh Mr. Plunkett and and express what concerns they had as the butters. They were incredibly receptive to what I said. Um, so I did really appreciate that. But it's again Mr. Landry's comment that with or without a plan, we're going to operate anyway. That kind of makes me feel as though I'm concerned about smoke and mirrors here. Um, so again, I want what's best for this town. I obviously want to preserve my my property, my my my quality of life, my family's quality of life. Um, and I think that you have all of the information to make informed decision.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Who's next? Anybody else wish to speak? No. I I'm gonna ask m Mr. Actually, just before I go, um, could I ask you, Mr. Robbano, to come up just to just to readress the, uh, the dust mitigation and what the what the options are there because I mean I mean, we heard now Mustar Christ and um, we've heard it in the past number of times and it seem still seems a little more gray than some of the other stuff which seems fairly cut and dry.

Yes. Um yeah, as I said, just there's best management practices that are used to basically for dust control and that's what they'd be implementing and they can modify those things to make them Oh, so that's actually been discussed with them. Mhm. That's No, that's I mean that a dust control thing is landfills or you know it's it's a very common thing is you know dust control plans um and as I said adding water is the usually the thing that keeps the the dust down and depending how dry it is and how windy it is you know that would be the right but in the end the wind blows stuff so yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they have to have some type of thing. Appreciate that.

Have to be an evolving plan basically. Okay. Thank you sir. Oh, okay. Um, yes, sir.

Good evening. Bob Ferrari. Um I've presented it before you previously as a professional engineer and I'm a consultant uh to a material sand regarding the quiry operations as well as their other facilities. I want to just add a few uh comments here folks. Um and by the way I want to thank Tony and GZA. I thought they did an excellent peerreview and I'm not saying that because they substantially agreed with our findings, but because I've known Tony for probably 30 years and I've worked with GZA intermittently for 30 years and you couldn't have hired a better peerreview consultant. Um, and one of the best parts of the peer review, and this is a critique I have of people who do peer reviews, is that they didn't just say we agree or disagree. They explained why and they gave you a lot of backup information. That's a real peer review. Okay. So, you got a really good job done on that. Okay. Whether you agree with me or not, you got a really good job done. Um, I understand the concerns of the town. I understand the concerns of the neighbors. I want to point a few things out just to kind of I want to reinforce a few things in that there's concerns, for example, over groundwater contamination. And I want to I think this is a a key key issue. Please understand something and I I stated this I think it was last February or thereabouts when I uh made a previous presentation on this on this site. You already have significant and severe groundwater contamination. This site is bracketed between two super fund sites. Wilson's Landfill and Resource Recovery to the east and you've got Western Sand and Gravel to the west immediately immediately to the west. me is over the fence on the other side of the the the perimeter fence.

The worst possible thing that could happen to this quarry is to ha have contamination contaminate the materials they're extracting.

That's the worst possible thing. The last thing the owner wants to do here is have something happen on site that would create potential contamination or create conditions that would bring contaminants from offsite onto onto this property which would contaminate materials. You may or may not be aware of it, but this site has certain of their grade of of some of their construction materials. It's the only site in Rhode Island that has certain Rhode Island DOT approvals to use their material. They don't want to lose that. Okay. This site has been responsible the the drainage control program implemented on this site has been because I think um one of the board members asked earlier what benefit does the town get from this site? Well, here's a benefit you get from the site on environmental issues. The drainage plant on the site it's a zero it's a zero surface water discharge site. any water generated on the site, storm water or ground water, that's that's it's pumped to their infiltration basins. The discharge from those basins maintains the the the plume remediation under under the um western Santa gravel site that has been a major factor in maintaining that contaminant plume going in the direction it's supposed to be going. Okay. If you look at the and I've looked at 28 years of groundwater monitoring, okay, for that bloom, EPA developed a remediation plan called natural attenuation and it was basically traveling north generally northward roughly under Turkill Brook straight up to towards Upper Slope. If you look at the the monitoring data, the boundary on the east side of that plume is dead straight. Look at the plume on the west side of that plume. It's not quite straight. It's kind of

wandering around a little bit. Okay. But the good news is the plan is on or ahead of schedule and it's doing its job. The hydraology of this quarry site is a major factor because it's a blocking water and it's been maintained and it's not having an adverse impact. And I can assure you the quarry and the owner of this site want to continue that because the last thing they want is to have that plume migrate onto their site because that'll create major problems. Tonyy's absolutely correct. The deeper you go with the quarry, particularly this is on the eastern end of the quarry, could it have an adverse impact or some impact relative to the drainage, you know, the the contaminant plume drainage from Wilson's that the contaminant there. And again, this has been monitored for decades. It's going generally east northeast. It ends up basically following Trout Brook to lower Slavsville Reservoir. You want to maintain that. The good news is that geology and hydrogeeology is very favorable to maintain that. Some of the conditions of of suggested conditions of approval, and these are things that we've been discussing, reviewing for quite a long time, is to do some monitoring outside to be sure. I think Tony made some good recommendations in that respect and he and I discussed this extensively. So this site has been operating in a very responsible manner despite what some people may think. For example, they on their own valition put in those infiltration ponds because they didn't want to have a surface water discharge off the site and they've expanded that system periodically when they needed to. As the quarry operation expanded and they produced more, they captured more storm water that had to be pumped over and and infiltrated. Just as an example, when they when they recognized that they might under a worst case storm condition that occurred in uh late 2023 and into

2024, they they had a couple of little minor defects in the BMS. They doubled the width of those of those containment perms. And there is one little error in Tony's report. The burm has never been overtopped. It's never had an overflow. They had a couple of minor defects and some water went through, but it didn't over top the BMS. Um, things like dust control. I've been on that site. I I can't tell you how many times in the last seven or eight years. I have never been on that site, including in rain events, when they haven't had their dust control operation go, their water spray going. Okay, that's very important, as you can imagine, for fugitive dust control. And it's also very important for protection not only of the neighbors, but of their own staff on site. And as recently as uh a week or two ago, uh they actually had a uh uh mine safety um the mine safety and health administration came in and did uh silica dust exposure monitoring on the site. They monitored five of their staff members doing different different functions on the site. Okay, just for what it's worth, they came back with 100% clean bill of health on that. No adverse issues. Okay, another consideration. And again, this is done without any this isn't done at the at the request of a regatory agency. It was this is again noted in the peerreview report. Typical protocols when you're doing blasting, you put out one to three seismographs on neighboring properties. The minimum requirement of course is one. You put it between the blast site and the nearest the nearest building. Okay. Nearest potential effective building. Now Rick Ro who is a very highly qualified seismologist and and he's professional geologists been doing this work for 20 years. Rick uses up to 10 seismographs. as it said in the uh peerreview report that's established a

new standard of care for the industry. Okay, that's done voluntarily. Okay, it's been and for 20 years since they started blasting. No, no regulatory agency came in and said you've got to do X, Y, and Z. They they just do that and I can assure you it costs the site more money. They design their blast charges very specifically to to to minimize adverse impacts. They want to get the the blast done precisely for a certain amount of material with minimum adverse impacts. Okay? And that's been done every time every single blast. And that blast is monitored by up to 10 seismic graphs on neighboring properties. Okay? Because they want to be sure. And the results of those that monitoring and Rick can elaborate more because this is his area of expertise. The vibration monitoring is is two orders of magnitude below what the defined risk levels um or damage levels would be uh by um you know mine safety and the Bureau of Mines. Okay. They came out over 40 years ago with their with their criteria um as far as uh standards for blasting and for vibration uh and you know blast vibration and control of blast vibration. There's many things they've been doing and voluntarily. Okay, we went ahead when they did the infiltration ponds. We're the ones who went ahead and said, "Let's get this uh basically permitted, if you will, with RA and DEM." Okay, we're we were one of the first zero discharge sites in the in the DEM program. They are subject to inspe in inspections and it's at it's at the absolute discretion and will of D. They've had any number of inspections out there from various regulatory agencies. This site is very highly regulated. They have DEM coming out there. They have OSHA. They can have the fire marshal, state fire marshall coming

out there to do inspections. They can have mine safety coming out there. They can have an incredible array of regulatory authorities coming out there. They have to have their documentation lined up. It's got to be explicit. Yes, they have to do filings. They have 20 years of blast records been sent to the fire marshall's office. I can't tell you what the fire marshall does with them, but they they've done the appropriate filings. And every one of those blasts has been within within the established criteria to minimize any adverse impact on on neighbors, let alone offsite, let alone anything on site. Okay? you know there are structures on site also so they don't want to damage um as far as neighboring wells are concerned and it was mentioned how one of the neighbors has a reverse osmosis system that wasn't done under any regulatory directive that the owner of that house came to Bobby Peza and said geez I'm having some water quality problems don't really know if it's due to the aquar operations Mr. Beza voluntarily did that. Okay. Right. That was worked out between him and the neighbor. It had nothing to do with with any regulatory agency. Nothing to do with me. It's one of my that's one of the areas of expertise we have is blood supply. He just did it voluntarily. Okay. He's tried to be a good neighbor. He's limited his hours of operation. Has has good has had good entrance control. Yes, he's got to have trucks going up and down. That's that's the access. He's got one access into his site. That's that's what he's got to use for for his trucks. So, I'm just trying to point some things out here that this isn't some wildcat out of control operation doing whatever it pleases. Um, you know, you know, he he's been operating. This site has been getting operated for over 60 years as a as a quarry site. Most of the site is burned. And by the way, if you go to his other sites, they're burned also, right? Um, and that's that's good for drainage control. So he he did that that and you you can look at the aerial photography.

Those BMS were established back in initially established back in the 1960s. Okay? And they've been improved upon and improved upon and improved upon as recently as this past year. Okay? Um so I'm just trying to point this out that I believe he's been a this site has been a good neighbor. They've been operating in a responsible manner. I wouldn't say that if I didn't believe it. And by the way, I am subject to a very strict code of professional ethics as a registered professional engineer among other things. Um, and I wouldn't make that representation if it if I couldn't demonstrate it and prove it. Okay? So, I just want to offer that. Um, and our team is available virtually at any time to answer questions, address issues, whatever the needs are. And as Mr. Landry said, this is not this is not a threat, okay? This is Mr. Landry was stating the obvious. This site has been operating with no plan in place for many decades. Okay. This is the collective opportunity for the town and the owner and the operation to develop a set of reasonable and realistic boundary conditions to try and address everyone's everyone's concerns and issues including the site ownership concerns and issues. Everybody stands to gain from this if it's done in a fair and reasonable manner. So that's that's what I have to say. So thanks very much. She very much a second bite of the apple. Is that what you saying?

If it's quick, as quickly as you can get there.

Rebecca the Christopher 1931 Poundill Road. Um, as far as fugitive dust, I of course appreciate that they ensure that their workers are wearing the appropriate equipment in order to mitigate any exposure. It's not. And I have noticed that they have been watering the roads a lot more. Like I always see the stream of water coming down Pineh Hill down road and it ends up um draining right into my um drainage. So they are watering Monday through I think Friday. I don't necessarily always pay attention on Saturdays because they don't have regular operations on Saturdays. I don't necessarily know to what degree they're watering inside of the quarry, but on a Sunday, nobody's there to do water or or water to ensure that there's no dust. There's no dust leaving the property. It's on a really windy day when you can just see sheets of dust coming through the tree line into our property. Like that's what concerns me is the the dust that's able to leave the property because there's no existing screened screening devices or whatnot up. So I realize that they are they do have dewatering protocol but or watering protocol rather to to mitigate the dust but that's not necessarily enough to mitigate the fugitive dust that does leave the property whether they're operating or not. So, I think that still needs to be something that's definitely addressed.

Okay. Okay.

Ryan Hurley, I represent the applicant. I do want to just present this to the town since this has come up now a couple of times. This is the email um that the applicant received today from my safety reporting uh sending in his report showing no negative results. Those are addressed on days they're not operational. and how dust is made.

The point that was just made is about when you're not there to operate, they're spraying.

And when the crushing is not happening, dust isn't really happening. So, um, other than natural dust, dust does exist everywhere. Dust comes onto my property. So, uh, in addition, this is the prior testimony. Um, She will be in the public. Um along with the report for mind safety, there's a few of those as well. I think what I'd like to just kind of echo a little bit what was said by Mr. Landry and Mr. Ry, this is a planning issue. These are a very highly regulated operation and it has always been. This isn't just that all of a sudden in the last year when we've come before this board and from town council that all of a sudden when we started going to these other agencies that had been going on for many many years Mr. Gro and Mr. far have been working with this this operation and this company for many many years decades. What the problem was when the town started fielding a lot of complaints a

couple of years ago the town didn't know what was going on because there's no planning for this site. It is screaming and begging for planning and that's what we're offering. It's what the court came and said figure this out. go in front of the town and put together a plan in which you can provide the town the opportunity to have planning so you guys can know what's going on with EPA and what is going on with Ryen and what is going on with mine safety and what is going on with OSHA okay where we are presenting all of our data and plans and dust control issues to these other agencies but the town didn't have access to it they didn't even know what was going on right that they couldn't respond to these complaints and when we first came here, there was an enormous amount of public safety concerns that this quarry was a safety hazard. And I think throughout this whole year from the testimony from Mr. Ferrari and from Mr. Gro and from Mr. Hammond, who's not here today, but he was the mind safety expert. Um, and then that was all supported by GZA without exception that this is not a public safety hazard. In fact, it actually, as Mr. Fur just pointed out is a benefit in that it is actually pushing the plume away and to where EPA wants it to go. It's actually a barrier keeping it away from the residential properties and letting it naturally go to where EPA wants to go and get out of the system. So I think what we are offering is what the town really needs here. It needs a plan. Okay, this is an opportunity for the town to put in a plan with the 12 recommendations that have been set forth and those are almost very similar to what is actually in the amendment. The text amendment has a lot of these things

put into it. uh you know the detail of which you know should be worked out a little bit more. But the reality is this is going to give the town the opportunity to respond to complaints if there are changes to have the ability to go about and make any changes if anything were to ever happen, right? But have the understanding of what's going on on that property. And that's the that's the essential need of of planning and that's what really what the site needs. And so I I think that's that that's the benefit of what we're offering here today. Thank you. Thank you very much.

I can honestly say I've never heard the word plan used more at a planning board meeting in my life. Fortunately, it's what we do. So it's uh that's great. Anybody else? Of course. Carol Draville from 750 poundhill road. I'm on the groundwater protection committee. I am have been concerned about the silica problem and listening here tonight. I still worry that the way they determine whether there is a problem is basically by what's happening. And I think I've heard this before, so I'm reiterating it. What's happening within the quarry then? So if the quarry um and Mr. Hammond said the same thing because he was a mine expert and he tested quarry workers and determined whether the quarry the the silica um they they were affected by the silica. But if you're in a residential area, a budding, how do you determine that nothing is leaving the quarry? Because the quarry workers are equipped and it's the the mine owners who have to supply them with equipment with um with gear and um and they use water as their as their blasting I would guess. We asked and Mr. Hand was asked at the time what they were using at the at the site when they

blast and he said, "Well, I'm never there when they blast." So, I think it's the town should be more um have more information about how this residential area is going to be protected because there are sites all over Rhode Island that have not been protected and people have been affected and the residents can't be collateral damage. Thank you.

All right. If there's nothing else, um I I do I don't know if the planning board has anything else. I have one uh comment to make on one of these stipulations. I' I'd like to raise a question and any of the experts in the audience. We know that we can collect pollen and determine if it's ragweed, um, milkweed, or golden rod. Are there filters that could be out in the be put out in the field to determine if it's silica or if it's other types of uh, contaminants in the air? Looks like we have someone answer your question.

Fortunately, we have an expert.

Ro, Richard J. roll technical services out of polollis New Hampshire. I'm here in regard to issues of blasting uh noise, vibration, dust, all the uh all the things that you can attribute to the sensations you contribute to excavation. Uh as far as the dust is concerned, the breathable dust is a very very small particle dust. You don't see it. uh they're measuring for that kind of particle dust. They're not getting it in there. The visible dust that you see coming out is not what they're measuring for and you can't breathe it. Uh your body just can't it can't get in all the way to the what they call the which are very small air exchange sacks that uh take the oxygen, put it into your body and take carbon dioxide and expel it. Uh the part particulate matter that can make it that far into your body is measured as uh anything below four microns. Um and visible dust is never smaller than or about I I I know it's much more than four microns. You cannot see four microns. to use a what's known as a electron scanning electron microscope to see such a small particle. Uh so it's not it's nothing that you have to worry about breathing if it's visible. Uh as far as the screening that they're going to be using these screens, what they do is they do not necessarily filter dust. What they do is they take dust out of suspension. Laminer flow in a fluid keeps has the greatest potential to keep suspended solids in the matrix. Whereas if the

fluid is turbulent its net velocity is dropped because in a laminer flow you go from here to here directly. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. In turbulent flow, it does this and it the net time that it takes to get from here to here is substantially greater. Okay. So what they're doing is they are erasing the laminer flow that comes off of the site and they're replacing it with a turbulence barrier that causes the material to come out of suspension because the energy that it would take to keep the material in suspension is being dissipated in the form of heat against the individual molecules of air that are bouncing against each other instead of moving and sympathy with each other's in one direction.

Okay. And that was it. Great. Thank you. So, I may not be as well educated as that. Was that a simple yes or no? That that to Dr. Benoy's question if they could determine what the dust is coming from the site? I I I just need a yes or no. Yes. Yes. Okay. They put the mineral matter on. Okay. And the immersion oils everywhere.

Okay. Thank you. Um, so anything else on the board just one one of the stipulations?

I'll let you go first. Okay. Yeah, I just I was curious if we were definitely adding the stipulation about the performance bond. Did that definitely get added? Well, I I I wrote one down. It's going to be the board's prerogative whether they want to approve it, but Okay. I want to go over this. I have a few actually if I can just I'd like to comment on the first one based on uh one of the things that Mr. Landry said which I thought was very helpful. Um as he pointed out uh the land is at a point now where there may not be 200 ft for the setback and in the last few words where sufficient land remains available.

It doesn't address what happens when sufficient land does not is not available and I think it should be very clear on what happens if there isn't 200 ft. What happens? Do we say therefore it stops wherever it is because it's within the 200 feet or we need to put something in there because that has created that creates a gray area. That would be the the desire of the board. I thoughts from the planning board on that. No, I agree. I agree.

But what what would you agree to be the wording? It just stops wherever wherever it is. If there I would say if there's existing land that that resides within the 200 feet setback that that is the definitive one and if there if there no there's no if there's no more if they're beyond the 200 feet or within the 200 feet there's no going further.

No going further. Got it. Right. So here it is. Okay. So Mr. could you turn that into some addition um there's an addition where where sufficient land is not available then no further uh expansion or whatever is allowed or whatever whatever's the right way to say that um the other one I'm just curious about is that whole like data to action thing so it's like um there's a a plan and there's all these regulations that get reviewed and all these papers that are filed. But um Jeff like clarified. Yeah, that's item 12,

right? And so I was saying I I would like to have some staff time or consultant time to pay for someone with the time and the expertise to analyze all of that and um make it actionable. Not just like yes, it's filed, but like the so what part. Um, and I feel like there and then Jeff kind of expanded on that and I feel like there was a it seemed like people liked that idea people on this board. So I wanted to know whether we're going to have something along those lines in there that's added to 12.

Yeah, it's not only the peer review, but like how is it utilized? Yeah, we did talk about having um action items based on the peer review. I think is the phrase I heard. I simply added and recommendations after the work review. Oh, and recommendations. Okay. Peer review on what actions need to be taken.

I my other thing is just that about like actually managing it like not just the action because our town just doesn't have we always talk about how our town does not have the the the person hours to manage a lot of the things that we have. So I guess I would ask uh Mr. Curulo, do you think that in addition to doing the peer review and having action items, we need paid time for someone to actually like look at all of that and you know like basically the the business would help us do the job that we have to do because they exist in our town. But maybe you think we already have enough um capacity to do that. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what you're asking. Um,

well, we've said over the years, like for example, in the groundwater protection committee, that it would be great if we had some engineer hours like on staff for our town because we're a rural community and we have different businesses coming in doing various things. So I was thinking like maybe it could be like a 2ft FTE of an engineer or something like that. Like the town currently and I don't know what will be the condition in the future has um agreements with three engineering firms. GZA is one of them. I think PAR is another one and Crossman Engineering

and they're available to the town uh on project as needed basis. And um for example, if the peer review was going to be GZA, they would review the documents, they would provide recommendations to the town, and then it's up to the town to to uh enforce. I mean, in mo in the majority of cases, the recommendations are going to be something the the business needs to do, in which case, obviously, they'll be absorbing the cost. If there and I guess what you're saying if we needed uh engineering resource to oversee it or whatever that would be for the town council to decide. Well, I think that's covered under under number 12 to be honest with you. Right. Okay.

Okay. And then those recommendations if there's things that are found within reports, right, that fall under the purview of the zoning official like their responsibility is they have to take enforcement action. Yeah. Right.

Okay. question. I'm sorry. This is about the two monitoring wells that were mentioned in the um the peer review report. Are those two monitoring wells part of the mine plan or are they a different um item? They they talked about monitoring wells for the um EPA near the EPA super fund sites. I think number nine addresses the monitoring wells. The hydraulic consultant to evaluate potential impact watering from the monitoring well near the north area. Right. Okay. Thanks. Just making sure.

All right. Make a motion. Motion away.

I'm going to make a motion to present a positive recommendation to the town council. based on the professional uh report from GZA and with no counterp profofessional uh information to counteract what was presented to us and with all the conditions that have been enumerated this evening from 1 to 12 and any additional that have been added. Yeah, the if if if the the board doesn't mind, I'll read um what could be condition number 13 that the applicant shall provide adequate liability insurance and/or performance bond for potential damages to abuing residences for relevant risks set amount to be determined by the town council

as stated. Yes. Could you could you read the proposed language for the addition to stipulation number one? I used your language, Mr. Chairman. That's what I'm concerned about. I didn't stay at a holiday night, so I don't know. says that the you shall maintain minimum setbacks of 200 feet from any abuing residential property line district or zone where sufficient land remains available. Where sufficient land is not available, no further activity shall occur.

Excellent. I couldn't have said it better myself. Great. So, we have a motion with a bunch of things added on to it. Do I have a second? A motion for a positive recommendation with everything else that was said. We have a second. Second. We have a second, Mr. Let's do a roll call vote. Dr. Benoy, yes. Dr. Roberts, no. Mr. Porter, no. Mr. Manard, yes. And the chair votes yes.

Dr. Roberts made no she said yes. Yes. So yes. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. So anything further we need to do with this Mr. Cru Mr. No, that's it. Okay. Did um was that did you act on the did you make any decision in the comprehensive plan or was that in the Mr. Mr. Bonoy made a positive recommendation to the Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, it was

even even with the positive recommendation, do we need to vote on consistency with comp plan because that wasn't part of the motion? That was that was my question. That was my question. But if we're if you're making a positive recommendation, you're finding it consistent with the comprehensive plan. And I'm assuming you're going with the recommendation with the planner. Okay. clarify that question probably wouldn't hurt to make sure we're including that language that we include the the planners finding as to the comprehensive plan.

That's kind of you referenced the 13 conditions but you didn't reference his findings. So again, we just wanted to be clear for the council that you're pointing to those. Yep. Yep. So maybe it's a motion to for to that effect. Okay. Oh, so we need to So we need to have a motion to amend the just to adopt the findings. Mr. Chairman, no further business before us. I move we adjourn. You know, we actually need the motion to to include uh the the planning offic's findings on the comprehensive plan.

Why don't we just Why don't we just make a mo m allow Mr. Bonoy to amend his motion to include the planning department's findings. Okay, I'll make a motion to amend my motion. Okay, then a second and and just revoke. And we have a second and we'll revote Roberts. No, Miss Bernard. Yes. Chairman. Yes. Same same motion as last time. Yes. And now. And now, Mr. Chairman, I'll make a motion to adjurnn. We have a motion to adjourn. We have a second. Those in favor? I. We are adjourned at 9:21. Thank you all.