Army Corps of Engineers
Feds: Grace Farms Needs Permission Prior to Conducting Activities Affecting Wetlands
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Grace Farms must obtain formal permission before pursuing further activities on its Lukes Wood Road campus that could affect wetlands that are under federal jurisdiction, officials said in a new report. Following a months-long investigation into unauthorized activity, the Army Corps of Engineers determined that a “contractor plan-revision error,” though unintentional, “resulted in minor encroachment into a wetland area,” according to a Dec. 6 memo from the federal agency. Specifically, rocks or “riprap,” which typically are used as part of an erosion control system, encroached into a wetland that forms “an unnamed headwater tributary of the Fivemile River,” according to the agency’s findings.
Because the Army Corps didn’t learn of the activity there until after construction at Grace Farms, the federal agency warned that “any future regulated work that is undertaken without the required authorization or self-certification is considered a repeat or flagrant violation of the Clean Water Act.”
Such violation “may be subject to legal action by this office,” according to an accompanying Dec. 6 letter to Grace Farms Foundation Chair and President Sharon Prince from Kevin Kotelly, chief of the Permits & Enforcement Branch of the Army Corps’ Regulatory Division.