Government

Officials Approve Petition for New Wetlands Boundary on Charter Oak Drive Property

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Town officials have approved a petition from Charter Oak Drive homeowners to re-draw the boundaries of a wetlands located their property so that it’s smaller than originally mapped—a change that followed a frustrating process that led to locating a new house closer to the road than wanted, the residents said. Though John and Sheila Lee Chun Arabolos knew that the 1.88-acre property at 108 Charter Oak Drive contained wetlands when they bought it last May, the couple had already started construction of a single-family home (through her father, builder Moon Chun) when new testing from a soil scientist showed that “we could have moved the house further back away from the curb,” John Arabolos told the Inland Wetlands Commission at its Feb. 22 meeting. “We could have had more space in between the house and the street and, you know, the house is built now,” Arabolos said during the meeting, held at Town Hall. “The foundation is laid, the structure is up, but we feel like in the initial steps of it, if we had just questioned results, we would have had a better result on our end.”

Inland Wetlands staff members and multiple soil scientists said that the work of pinpointing just where the wetlands lay was made more difficult because a previous owner of the property had filled wetlands that had been there, violating local regulations.

Government

Inland Wetlands To Prospective New Canaan Homeowners: ‘Buyer Beware’

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New Canaan is seeing an uptick in the number of Inland Wetlands violations cited by the town—an unsettling trend that officials attribute, in part, to a lack of knowledge among homeowners who aren’t checking to see whether their plans require permits. Asked to summarize the situation for prospective property owners in New Canaan, Inland Wetlands Director Kathy Holland said: “Buyer beware.”

“Buyer beware of the particulars: lot-by-lot, as far as where the wetlands are located, whether there is good information for that location, whether or not it has been field-tested by a certified soil scientist. That’s the requirement. That’s the only way to know whether wetlands are present or absent.”

New Canaan’s Inland Wetlands Regulations (they can be found, along with other resources, by selecting ‘Inland Wetlands’ from the dropdown menu on this page), like those of other municipalities, follow from what is commonly called the “Clean Water Act” of 1972. The provisions within it protect the environment, and people’s health, by setting standards in areas such as groundwater, flooding, erosion and pollution.

Around Town

Gerrish Lane Property Owner Fined $1,000 for Inland Wetlands Violations

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After placing some 300 cubic yards of fill over and adjacent to wetlands without a permit, the new owner of a 1.14-acre property on Gerrish Lane faces a $1,000 fine from a town agency responsible for overseeing the sensitive environmental areas. Contracted workers at 128 Gerrish Lane drove construction equipment over wetlands and disturbed about .32 acres of land “by brush and tree removal, along with woodchipping, filling and grading activities in and out of wetlands,” according to a Feb. 11 municipal citation from the Inland Wetlands Commission. “These activities have disturbed the underlying wetlands that are protected under the [Inland Wetlands and Watercourses] Regulations,” according to the notice of violations. “No soil and erosion controls were installed at the initial inspection.”

Specifically, the property owner has been cited for violating sections 5.4 and 7 of the regulations—see pages 14 and 16 here. Municipal workers who oversee inland wetlands in New Canaan said in an email on file at Town Hall that they became aware of the situation after receiving a complaint regarding “truckloads of fill being delivered and spread on the site.”

The Inland Wetlands Commission is scheduled to discuss the matter at its regular meeting on Monday night.

Government

Knapp Lane Resident Faces $1,000 Fine, Stop-Work Order Following Multiple Land Use Violations

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In what officials are calling a particularly egregious case of land use violations, a Knapp Lane homeowner faces a $1,000 fine and cease-and-desist order from the town following the discovery of multiple projects in and near a pond and brooks in the Noroton River watershed. The owner of the 1.84-acre property at the eastern edge of the dead-end street violated state statutes and building codes as well as local Inland Wetlands and Planning & Zoning Regulations in driving construction equipment through a watercourse, removing trees, brush and undergrowth, excavating soil, demolishing a shed and building a new one, constructing a bridge and wall of boulders, and installing a concrete slab—all without contacting any agency in municipal government. “This is a pretty serious violation,” Inland Wetlands Director Kathleen Holland said during a regular meeting Monday night of the Inland Wetlands Commission, held at Town Hall. Holland added that the property owner in this case has been very cooperative since the violations were brought to his attention. Town officials happened upon the site by accident, and on Jan.

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.