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

‘I’m Going To Miss Dr. Englund’: Inland Wetlands Chairman Honors Longtime New Canaanite

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Members of the volunteer commission that oversee applications and other matters related to some of New Canaan’s most sensitive environments on Monday night recalled a vital member of their group who stepped down a little more than one year ago at age 93 and passed away earlier this month. Dr. Sven Englund, a member of the Inland Wetlands Commission for 26 years (including nine as chairman)—and a member of its forerunner, the Environmental Commission, for far longer, going back to the 1970s—died on Dec. 10. Commission Chairman Dan Stepanek during the group’s regular monthly meeting, held in the Town Meeting Room, said that “although he resigned from the commission in November of 2014, it seems like it was last month that he was sitting next to me, here at these meetings.”

“He would always poke me with his elbow if I did not get a meeting procedure right, or if I repeated myself or, heaven forbid, forgot something,” Stepanek recalled with a smile during remarks made at the start of the meeting. “He would straighten himself up in his chair, clear his throat, and then quietly reprimand me while giving me that harsh look.

Government

‘We Are At An Impasse’: Town, Resident At Odds Over References To Wetlands Violations In Land Record

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Officials are at odds with an Old Stamford Road man who’s asking that references to violations of New Canaan’s Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Regulations be removed from a proposed new land record with his name on it. No one disagrees that the clearing of a large wetlands area at 279 Old Stamford Road amounts to a violation of those regulations, and an existing conservation easement for the property had specifically noted “no disturbance, no maintenance, no planting,” according to a public record of last month’s Inland Wetlands Commission meeting. Commissioners did grant Cullis a wetlands permit in order to start restoration work of the area—the plan now is to reseed the cleared area as a meadow—but one condition of that approval is that the Inland Wetlands Commission sign off on the new conservation easement that will be recorded with the Town Clerk. Two sections in a draft of that conservation easement read:

“WHEREAS, in violation of the terms of the Original Conservation Easement, Culliss performed certain prohibited acts within the Original Conservation Easement area, including the Conservation Easement area on [a neighbor’s] property.”
“WHEREAS, Grantor has applied to the Inland Wetlands Commission of the Town of New Canaan (successor to the Environmental Commission of the Town of New Canaan) to conduct certain activities within the Conservation Easement area, including restoration and mitigation to remedy the violations.”

According to Cullis, the references to violations are “simply not necessary.”

“It [the draft ‘Revised Conservation Easement’] says that there is a permit that needs to be executed upon and that this needs to be changed to allow it,” Cullis told commissioners at their regular monthly meeting, held at Town Hall. He added that, based on successively updated versions of the draft document going back-and-forth between him and the town, he had thought his elimination of the references to violations had gone through.

News

Demolition, New Construction Planned for 3-Acre Ferris Hill Road Property with Significant Wetlands

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The owners of a 3-acre property in eastern New Canaan that since 1931 has included a small-sized home with a log cabin-style exterior are seeking to raze that structure and replace it with what appears to be a far larger house as well as install in-ground pool with patio and attached garage. The 3-bedroom home at 59 Ferris Hill Road sits near the eastern edge of a north-south oriented lot, about one-third of which is wetlands, including a manmade pond, tax records show. Though no demolition or building permit applications yet have been filed with the New Canaan Building Department, the property’s owners have taken the initial step of obtaining a permit from the town’s Inland Wetlands Department to pursue the project. The proposed work is regulated under Inland Wetlands, in part, because more than one half-acre of land will be disturbed upgrade of wetlands and a watercourse (in this case, the pond) that is more than 5,000 square feet (see Section 7.4 of the regulations here). The property sold in July for $995,000, tax records show.

Government

Two Property Owners Cited for Inland Wetlands Violations

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Vigilant residents recently alerted town officials to unusual landscaping activity on neighbors’ properties, in what turned out to be two violations of local regulations designed to protect fragile natural resources in New Canaan. Expert consultants are scheduled to come before the Inland Wetlands Commission on Monday to present mitigation plans for violations at 277 Old Stamford Road and 589 Oenoke Ridge Road, according to the agenda for the group’s regular meeting, to be held in the Town Hall Meeting Room. On Old Stamford Road, on a 1.24-acre property purchased last summer, the new homeowner hired a landscaping crew to remove all vegetation from an approximately quarter-acre parcel that happened to be wetlands, as well as part of a conservation easement carved out during a subdivision many years ago. Officials found that on the Oenoke Ridge Road property, a 2.62-acre parcel that was sold less than four months ago, the new homeowner had hired a contractor to fill in a pond, in clear violation of New Canaan’s Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Regulations (where a pond is defined as a “watercourse” whether it’s natural or manmade). Asked about the violations, Inland Wetlands Director Kathy Holland urged homeowners and professionals who deal in landscaping and related fields to come to her department at Town Hall with any questions concerning planned projects around their properties.