WESTFIELD – The Conservation Commission last night continued the hearing on a plan to daylight a stream piped through the sixth hole of Shaker Farms Country Club, an issue which has been on the board’s agenda for nearly a year.
Consultant Rob Levesque asked the board to continue the hearing, which has happened routinely since October of 1013, to allow further discussion with city officials and the country club owners on a plan to resolve the issues created by the city’s stormwater drainage system at 866 Shaker Road.
The daylighting project was delayed for months while it was under review by the Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over all waterways and related water control structures in the country.
Shaker Farms Country Club owner, Dan Kotowitz, appearing before the Board of Public Works in October of 2013, said that “a huge amount of runoff” from the stormwater pipe collecting water in the Falley Drive neighborhood is flooding the course near the sixth green.
Kotowitz said at the BPW meeting that the sixth hole, a 565-yard uphill dogleg and the hardest hole on the course, lies at the bottom of the Shaker Heights bluff. Kotowitz said the water “is coming down onto our property” from the bluff and requested the Board of Public Works to take what action the city could take to eliminate that storm-related flooding.
The city had already hired R. Levesque & Associates to design a solution to the problem prior to that meeting. The Conservation Commission opened its hearing at its Oct. 10th session to determine what environmental impact would result from removing the pipe carrying water under the course.
Levesque said that the state Department of Environmental Protection is now involved in the environmental review process.
Levesque said he and his staff “met with city officials and the Shaker Farms owners” and presented “option that are less impactful to wetlands” because of the DEP’s ruling that daylighting the piped stormwater would have to be protected y federal and state laws and regulations.
“Because of the DEP’s ruling they would not be able to maintain the fairway,” Levesque said. “It’s going on at golf courses all over western Massachusetts.
“The DEP sees it as becoming a bordering wetland and they would not be allowed to maintain or mow the fairway,” Levesque said.
Levesque said he plans to walk the site with city officials and the country club owners to determine what other action is an option to daylighting the stormwater drainage system.
The commission voted to continue the hearing to its Nov. 25 session to allow time for alternative solutions to be identified and a plan developed.
