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Applicant says Great Pasture Road redevelopment will fill 2,900 sq ft of wetlands; mitigation proposed
Summary
Applicant Benjamin Dodo told the Danbury City Environmental Impact Commission that the 2 Great Pasture Road redevelopment would fill about 2,900 sq ft of wetlands while proposing roughly 11,000 sq ft of mitigation and site improvements; the commission tabled the item pending additional reports and the ELUR summary.
At a Dec. 18 special meeting of the Danbury City Environmental Impact Commission, Benjamin Dodo, a licensed professional engineer representing 2 GPR LP, presented the first review of a redevelopment plan for 2 Great Pasture Road, an existing industrial property with a 115,000-square-foot building on a 15.6-acre lot.
Dodo said the owner seeks to expand outdoor storage and formalize a driveway loop on the building’s west side to improve ingress and egress. He told commissioners the proposal would directly impact and fill approximately 2,900 square feet of wetlands but would create about 11,000 square feet of wetland mitigation — a mitigation ratio the applicant characterized as roughly 3.8:1. He described the earthwork as about 160 cubic yards of fill and nearly 500 cubic yards of cut, producing a modest net gain in flood storage of about 300 cubic yards.
“We will be directly impacting and filling approximately 2,900 square feet of wetlands,” Dodo said, adding the team had tried to minimize fill by keeping the new driveway tight to the building and by using a retaining wall to reduce slope fill.
Dodo also noted an Environmental Land Use Restriction (ELUR) recorded on the property from prior industrial operations. He said prior sampling identified hydrocarbons and PCBs under the building slab but that those contamination areas are currently capped by the slab; the ELUR requires dealing with contamination if the slab is removed. He agreed to provide commissioners with the ELUR and a concise summary or recent environmental investigation report before the next meeting.
Barbara Constable, the project’s landscape architect, walked commissioners through the proposed mitigation planting palette: wetland seed mixes and native canopy and understory plantings (examples cited included river birch, swamp oak, buttonbush, chokecherry and clethra), additional buffer plantings between the development and the mitigation area, parking-lot shade trees and two ADA-accessible stalls in the front lot. She said the plan includes a 20-foot buffer adjacent to the roadway required by zoning.
Commissioners asked for a short, more recent summary of prior environmental investigations, access information for the upcoming site walk and confirmation of the mitigation sequencing. The applicant said Jim McManus is preparing a full function-value assessment and expected to present findings at the next meeting.
The commission voted to table regulated activity 12282 (Great Pasture Road) to the next regular meeting (Jan. 8) pending receipt of the ELUR and other requested documentation.
What happens next: The applicant will provide the ELUR and a concise summary of prior environmental work, and the commission will review a wetland function/value report from the consultant at the next meeting.
