By Bill Slocum
Contributing Editor
An application to build a 355-unit apartment building along the Post Road near central Greenwich drew a sizable if not capacity crowd Greenwich Library’s Cole Auditorium Monday evening, along with pleas that the application be rejected.
The town Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Agency took no action on the matter. Members criticized the application’s representatives for not providing more detailed information on what the project would entail.
“You need to button down these representations,” agency Secretary Stephan Skoufalos said. “We want some definite findings.”
The application involves several adjacent parcels comprising a total of just over five acres. One parcel, at 345 West Putnam Avenue, has been for the last 80 years the site of Post Road Iron Works, a metal fabricating and design business. It also involves some 87 square feet of wetlands, and the potential via runoff and drainage to impact neighboring wetlands as well.
“There is no direct impact on wetlands,” claimed attorney Steve Studer, who represented the proposal’s applicant. “This will eliminate an existing industrial impact.”
It was that industrial impact that formed much of the argument against the five-story apartment complex. Nick Cataldo, a neighbor of the project, claimed that existing use by Post Road Iron Works has led to serious contamination concerns being expressed by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. He specifically cited a documented presence of xylene, hydrocarbons, and mercury on the site.
“This operation needs to be investigated in its totality,” Cataldo said. He estimated that a full-scale remediation of the kind needed before a major construction project could be started could cost “in excess of millions of dollars.”
Agency members expressed more concern over what they were not hearing, specifically in terms of drainage expectations and hydrology reports from Studer and his team of experts.
Noting that proposed excavation for the project would involve moving 52,000 cubic yards of land, agency Vice-Chair Elliot Benton challenged Studer and his experts on whether the likely blasting would cause the fracturing of bedrock, and with that, the potential for wetlands damage.
“What are you going to do to prevent the fracture of rock?” Benton asked.
Another agency member, James Carr, asked what impact rainwater runoff from the new construction might have on surrounding wetlands, which he pointed out, currently support a robust population of mallard ducks and other wildlife.
A lack of answers left the agency pondering what to do, with a 65-day window in which to either approve or deny the application. Ted O’Hanlan, an attorney representing a group opposed to the development, the Greenwich Neighborhood Preservation Association, urged the agency to deny the application outright.
“I do not understand why the applicant is not providing complete information,” O’Hanlan said. “I can only think it is purposeful.”
While the agency had planned on inviting public comment on the matter, even booking the unusual setting of the library auditorium rather than a smaller meeting room at Town Hall for that purpose, the length of the applicant’s presentation, and those of O’Hanlan and Cataldo, provided time for only one: First Selectman Peter Tesei, who also recommended rejection.
“I urge you to consider the intensive nature of this development, and the runoff it would create,” Tesei said.
After Studer indicated more information from the applicant is forthcoming, including firmer answers to runoff concerns, the agency agreed to hold over discussion for a later, agreed-upon date. Benton also raised the possibility of the agency hiring its own consultant to look at the site and answer questions about drainage and contamination.
