WESTFIELD – The Conservation Commission closed the Walmart project public hearing Tuesday night, but have yet to approve an order of conditions to address environmental impact related to the store and parking expansion.
The commission has been reviewing the specifications of a proposed 58,692-square-foot addition to the Walmart story located at 141 Springfield Road.
The applicant, W/S Westfield Properties Limited Partnership of 1330 Boylston St., Chestnut Hill, Mass., submitted 120 pages of engineering, traffic and environmental impact data and site plan details at the opening session of the public hearing conducted on Nov. 8, 2011.
The applicant is seeking approval of both the Conservation Commission and Planning Board to expand the existing 127,284 store into a 186,064-square-foot Walmart Superstore.
The present building in located on 91.6 acres of land zoned for Business B use and is within a flood zone overlay and a Bordering Land Subject to Flooding zones. The Conservation Commission has been reviewing the project under the state Wetland Protection Act (MGL, Chapter 131, Section 40) as part of its process to issue an order of conditions to mitigate the environmental impacts.
The petitioner is seeking a special permit, site plan approval and stormwater management plan approval through the Planning Board.
The focus of the discussion between the Conservation Commission and the petitioners has been compensatory storage of flood water. Any project which displaces storage of flood water, such as construction of a building, requires that compensatory storage be created nearby to accept the displaced flood water.
The point of conflict is that the petitioners argue that when the original Walmart building was constructed, excess compensatory storage was created on the site to allow for future expansion.
The commission members have countered that there has been no clear documentation from the Conservation Commission, which issued the original order of conditions for the Walmart building construction, to allow that use of “banked” compensatory storage. State law gives the commission considerable discretion in making its decision on that point.
The Conservation Commission selected Baystate Environmental Consultants, Inc., an environmental firm to review the data submitted for the Walmart expansion project.
Baystate Environmental, an East Longmeadow firm founded in 1972, specializing in civil engineering, natural resource management, environmental permitting, and environmental land planning. Baystate was acquired in 2007 by GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc., a multi-disciplined engineering firm and is currently operating as GZA.
The petitioners cited language in the GZA report Tuesday night to validate its argument that city boards recognized the existence of the “banked” compensatory storage related to review of another project at the Walmart site, a project that was issued permits, but which has yet to be constructed. That project used part of the “banked” compensatory storage from the original Walmart calculations.
The board appeared to accept that argument Tuesday night, but also said that any remaining “banked” compensatory storage would evaporate with completion of the addition to the existing building.
The commission held off on approving an order of condition to allow the petitioners to seek approval for several other changes.
The project includes expansion to the stormwater collection system to deal with storm water from the expanded parking lot, 120 parking spaces will be added, and from the addition to the building.
There are two detention basins, one with a forebay to filter suspended material in the water, before it is released into the Westfield River and infiltrates into the ground water.
Currently there are no fences around the existing basin facilities. However the insurance companies for both the retailer and the property owner are requiring fences to be constructed around the basins. The board rejected that argument stating that the chain-link fences will be located in a flood way and if the river rises to that level will collect debris and become a barrier to the flow of water, in effect displacing that flood water. The board members also argued that a chain-link fence would impede movement of wildlife.
The petitioners agreed to bring that issue to their respective insurance companies.
The commission stated that it would craft the order of conditions at its Feb. 12, 2012 session after the petitioners report back the results of those discussions.
