MARK CRESSOTTI
WESTFIELD – The Conservation Commission last night approved an order of conditions needed by the city to extend the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail another 5,000 feet into the city.
The board opened the public hearing on the Order of Conditions at its Oct. 23 session and conducted a site visit with the city’s engineering consultant, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., (VHB) on Nov. 6 to identify its concerns and actions required in the Order of Conditions to protect the Little River resource area.
The trail is being constructed on a former railroad line which crosses over Little River near South Meadow Street. The rail trail will cross the river over “Tin Bridge” which will be refurbished and improved for public safety. Much of the work to repair the span will occur near the river.
The Conservation Commission is requiring the city, VHB and the contractor, yet to be selected, to take measures to mitigate any potential environmental impact and to do the work near the river during times of low flow to reduce that impact as well.
This segment of the trail, with an estimated cost of $2.25 million, will extend the trail from the end of the first phase completed last spring, and bring it near East Silver Street.
City Engineer Mark Cressotti said that the rail trail, which currently terminates 500 feet south of Little River, will be extended to near East Silver Street next spring through a $2 million state grant, augmented by $250,000 in city funding. That construction work will extend the trail from the area of Coleman Avenue to the Southwick rail trail and the trail system extending more than 30 miles down into Connecticut.
Cressotti said the project is under a restrictive timeline to secure the state grant funding and needs to be completed within the current fiscal year, similar to the rail trail work completed last spring in the 2011 fiscal year budget cycle.
“This time the trail is going to East Silver Street where we’ll be doing a connection,” Cressotti said recently. “There are several options for that connection that we are considering.”
“This is a time sensitive project that needs to be completed by June 30 (the last day of the current fiscal year),” Cressotti said. “The plan is to submit the design to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation by Thanksgiving and advertise it for comment, then incorporate those comments into the design and have the project be ready to be awarded by the beginning of the (2013) year.”
Cressotti said that lead time is required because the contractor will have to order steel to re-deck Tin Bridge and to replace the entire span over South Meadow Road. Tin Bridge is 15 feet wide, sufficient to accommodate the 10-foot-wide rail trail and still provide space for construction of scenic observation areas along the span over Little River.
Senior Project Manager Douglas Vigneau of VHB, speaking last night to the conservation board, said that the existing abutments will be repair and a that a cement concrete deck will be constructed on Tin Bridge.
Vigneau said at the October meeting that the environmental impact of this segment is less intrusive than the first section of the trail from the Southwick town line to about 500 feet short of Tin Bridge. The first section of the trail, which includes a parking area accessed through the Shaker Farms Country Club, crossed through several resource or environmentally sensitive areas.
“This is more straightforward than that Shaker Farms area work,” Vigneau said. “There is about 50,000 square feet of riverfront area. This is a redevelopment project in a degraded riverfront area, so there will be cleanup.”
