State ignores commission's orders on Route 20 project

Date: 6/6/2012

June 6, 2012

By Debbie Gardner

debbieg@thereminder.com

WEST SPRINGFIELD — Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) officials contended last week that the rules that apply to everyone else don't apply to them.

Members of the Conservation Commission are welcome to tour the environmental practices that MassDOT has in place for the Route 20 CSX railroad bridge project. But the state has no plans to apply for the permits which the commission is requiring.

That — and word that construction was preparing to limit Route 20 traffic to one lane in each direction that night despite the commission's cease and desist orders — was the message Albert Stegemann, MassDOT district highway director, brought to a special meeting of the commission on May 30.

"I understand Mark, but it's not going to happen," Stegemann said when Mark Noonan, conservation officer and assistant planner noted how much the commission had appreciated the ability to review the state's conservation permit filings on past projects.

Noonan told Reminder Publications that the commission was still debating how to proceed in the face of MassDOT's refusal to accept its enforcement order.

"They have their position, we have our contention that they still have to file," Noonan said.

What Mass DOT did provide at the meeting was an overview of the project's timeline, noting the number of contacts the state has had with West Springfield, beginning with a pre-construction meeting with town officials in May of 2011. Presented by Project Manager David Baker of SPS New England, the overview was designed to demonstrate the project's "commitment to communicating to keep the community up to date as information becomes available."

Baker also gave an explanation of the design-build process — where actual construction on a project begins before the plans are complete — being used to replace the CSX railroad bridge adjacent to Charles Avenue, in the hopes of clearing up a "misunderstanding" about the dissemination of information.

"People are getting information [about the project] at the same rate we get it," Baker said.

William Grace, a senior environmental planner and wetlands scientist with TranSystems, a consulting firm for MassDOT, offered an explanation of the project's environmental practices and safeguards to protect both wetlands near and abutters'properties bordering the Route 20 project.

Grace said his evaluation of the project scope indicated it did not "have any impact to the [Squassick] brook or [Westfield] river or vegetative wetlands, only the floodplains [of those bodies]."

Noonan said the environmental presentation wasn't the most detailed or comprehensive one he had ever reviewed, and did not even include a baseline examination of the turbidity — or initial level of sediment and pollutants — in Squassick Brook, which runs through a culvert perpendicular to Route 20 at the construction site.

However, Noonan said, "It indicated everything [the commission identified] for resources.

"They agreed with us — why not file?" he added.

Michael Bastoni, state environmental liaison to the accelerated bridge program, under which the Route 20 project operates, did acknowledge that the commission knew the town better than the state, and "strongly recommended the commission make a list of water quality conditions and landscaping, because you know the areas better."

However he and Stegemann still maintain that the state legislature has given MassDOT "an exemption on [CSX] bridge projects" that allow work without local permits.

"We have successfully used design build on large projects and small projects," Stegemann said. "All have gone well and ended up giving the public good value [for its investment].

'We've built over 700 bridges [this way]," he continued "I believe this is number 736."

Baker and Grace offered to take commission members on a tour of the construction site and its environmental controls at 5:45 p.m. on June 6, just prior to the commission's next regularly scheduled meeting at 7 p.m.

Noonan said the commission would most likely decide its next course of action regarding its enforcement orders against MassDOT on the CSX bridge project at that meeting.