Danbury commission approves doggy daycare permit at Kenosha Avenue, adds annual water-quality testing

The Danbury Environmental Impact Commission on Sept. 11 approved a permit to convert 122055 Kenosha Avenue to a doggy daycare while adding a written condition requiring annual water-quality testing and potential remediation if tests show elevated nitrogen or phosphorus.

Dines Verbickas, a professional engineer with Artel Engineering Group and the applicant’s representative, summarized plans for an astroturf play area behind the building, three rain gardens for stormwater infiltration and a trash enclosure. He told commissioners the site sits on several feet of fill and that the proposed permeable turf over a stone bed and the rain gardens should limit runoff reaching the nearby brook and wetlands downstream of Lake Kenosha.

Commissioners pressed the applicant on whether repeated dog urine from an expected approximate daily peak of 75 dogs could create a cumulative nutrient load. One commissioner asked whether the proposed disinfectant product might be prone to 1,4-dioxane contamination during manufacture and urged the applicant to consider alternatives; Verbickas accepted the information and agreed to review it.

After discussion the commission added a condition (referred to on the record as Condition 7) requiring samples taken at the southern and northern property boundaries, annual submission of test results to the commission, and a requirement that the applicant submit an application proposing remedial measures to the agency if elevated nitrogen or phosphorus are detected. As drafted in the meeting the nitrogen definition was expanded to include ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and total nitrogen.

A motion to approve the permit with that condition was made and seconded; one member voiced opposition on the record, but the chair declared the motion carried and the permit approved. The transcript does not include a complete roll-call tally of every commissioner’s vote in sequence; the meeting record shows at least one recorded ‘aye’ votes and one recorded ‘nay’ before the chair announced approval.

The application materials included supplemental site drawings showing the turf and rain-garden locations, a product sheet for the proposed cleaning agent and a project impact report from staff that prompted a clarification about watershed mapping connecting the back brook to Mill Plain Swamp and the Still River. Commissioners discussed possible nonstructural and structural tweaks — for example, adding additional stone depth under the turf or introducing woody compost to the rain-garden mix — but avoided prescribing specific engineering changes that could conflict with product warranties; instead they used monitoring and a remediation trigger to provide oversight.

The commission also approved the August 28 minutes earlier in the meeting and scheduled the next regular meeting for Sept. 25.

The permit approval is subject to the written condition on monitoring (Condition 7 as described in the meeting). The commission directed staff and the applicant to finalize the exact condition wording for the record and to circulate it before the next meeting.