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Conservation panel urges clearer mitigation or fence relocation after unpermitted clearing at 87 Moore Road
Summary
The Sudbury Conservation Commission continued the 87 Moore Road hearing after finding roughly 2,000 sq ft of unpermitted clearing and questioning a proposal to leave a fence inside the Riverfront Area; the panel told the applicant to submit a revised site and mitigation plan by Nov. 3.
The Sudbury Conservation Commission on Oct. 20 pressed homeowners and their representative to revise plans for a garage project at 87 Moore Road after staff identified unpermitted clearing and invasive-species problems within the 200-foot Riverfront Area. The commission continued the hearing to Nov. 3 to allow submission of a revised site plan and a stronger mitigation proposal.
Ben Maiden of Confido Builders told the commission the project team had relocated the barn and driveway outside jurisdictional limits, leaving only an existing fence and the previously cleared area for the commission’s review. Conservation Coordinator Lori Capone reported that the cleared area was heavily infested with buckthorn and that her field estimate—supported in discussion before the panel—placed the disturbed area at about 2,000 square feet, not the roughly 200 square feet earlier recalled by the representative.
Commissioners questioned whether Lynch Landscape’s preliminary quote for about eighteen plantings would be sufficient to restore the larger disturbed area. Several members raised concerns that leaving the fence in its current line, well back of the lawn and inside the Riverfront Area, could create the misleading appearance that the disturbed area is part of private yard and could encourage future encroachment or use by pets. Staff recommended adding monumentation along the Riverfront boundary if the fence remained, and commissioners said moving the fence to the jurisdictional boundary or the edge of the lawn would create a clearer, more defensible limit to disturbance.
The commission also directed that any mitigation follow its standard monitoring expectations: plantings must be monitored for survival (typically a two-year period) and invasive-species control is expected to continue (typically a three-year window) before a Certificate of Compliance would be considered. Chair David Henkels asked the applicant to provide a formal mitigation plan showing planting density, species, and square footage of disturbance; Maiden agreed and requested continuation to Nov. 3, 2025. The commission voted unanimously to continue the matter to that date.
Reporting note: the meeting record is prepared as minutes-style summaries of remarks rather than verbatim quotations; the article paraphrases statements as recorded in the commission’s minutes.
