Business

Town Body Seeks Meeting With Landscaper Who Violated Environmental Regulations

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Members of the volunteer group responsible for enforcing regulations that govern some of New Canaan’s most sensitive environmental habitats are seeking a meeting with an area landscaper who cleared a large wetlands area on Old Stamford Road. If Mount Kisco, N.Y.-based landscaper Mike Nolan “had disappeared from the face of New Canaan, that would be one thing,” Inland Wetlands Commission Secretary Angela James said during the group’s most recent regular meeting. “But my fear is that he is still operating in New Canaan and could quite easily do something similar on another property,” she said at the Dec. 21 meeting, held in the Town Meeting Room. Specifically, Nolan appears to have violated New Canaan’s Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Regulations at 279 Old Stamford Road —as well as a conservation easement for the property, which noted “no disturbance, no maintenance, no planting” there—in clearing out vegetation from a large area.

Government

Second Violation on West Road: Pond’s Vegetation Cleared without Permissions

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Town officials say they need a more detailed landscaping plan for a West Road property after discovering recently that vegetation around a pond had been removed without permissions—the second time that Inland Wetlands violations had been found on the 5.57-acre parcel. Michael Platt, assistant manager of the property at 559 West Road, told the Inland Wetlands Commission at its meeting on Monday night that he thought it was OK to remove what he called small forsythia and other bushes from around the pond that had dried out and died. Platt said his plan had been to replant the area and he realized after speaking to municipal workers that he “should not have done that.”

“So I do apologize,” Platt said during a public hearing, held in the Town Hall Meeting Room. “It was kind of a new ambition in the new job to try and remove the dead plants and foliage and put in new stuff.”

He added that he thought because the pond was manmade, it may be exempt from the regulations—it is not, as bodies of water “natural or artificial” are defined as watercourses under the Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Regulations (see page 7 here). Commissioners raised the prospect of fining the property’s owners—a suggestion that the staff members who make such decisions said they would take under advisement.