WESTFIELD – The Conservation Commission selected an environmental firm to review the data submitted for the Walmart expansion project Tuesday night.
W/S Westfield Properties Limited Partnership of 1330 Boylston St., Chestnut Hill, Mass., the petitioner, is seeking an order of conditions from the Conservation Commission to construct a 58,692-square-foot addition to the Walmart store at 141 Springfield Road, property located in a flood plane.
The partnership submitted more than 120 pages of engineering and traffic impact data and site plan details, stormwater management plans, and compensatory storage information, as part of its application
The petitioner is also seeking a special permit, site plan and stormwater management plan for the expansion project from the Planning Board, which voted on Nov. 15 to continue its public hearing to Dec. 6, 2011, to allow the Conservation Commission to conduct a third-party peer review of the storm water and compensatory storage data, issues that fall within overlapping jurisdiction of the two boards.
The applicant is seeking approval of both boards to expand the existing 127,284 store into a 186,064-square-foot Walmart Superstore, which will include a supermarket.
The present building is 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.
Tuesday night the Conservation Commission selected Baystate Environmental Consultants, Inc., 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.
Conservation Coordinator Karen Leigh said the primary issue is compensatory flood water storage, required when a building project displaces flood water that would normally accumulate in that area.
“I think we can forego the stormwater discharge (peer review) because they’re not adding a new outflow,” Leigh said.
The issue with the compensatory storage is that the petitioner cites that excess storage was created when the present store was constructed. The petitioner is seeking the board’s permission to now use that “banked” compensatory storage capacity for the expansion project.
“There is nothing on file, although we don’t have the complete files, to denote that compensatory storage was ‘banked’ for future use,” Leigh said. “The DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) shares that concern. There’s nothing to indicate that it’s still there.”
Conservation Commission Chairman Dr. David Doe said that claim is the reason the board is seeking a third-party peer review, to check the calculation and determine if additional data is required as part of the review process.
