Houston, Texas-based The Hanover Co. has been penalized $149,010 for wetlands violations at Tewksbury’s The Lodge at Ames Pond by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP).
The Lodge at Ames Pond is a 364-unit residential apartment development on a 53-acre site. Inspections of the site determined that work done by the development company led to repeated discharges of silt and sediment into Ames Pond and bordering vegetated wetlands, according to a statement.
Beginning on July 27, 2009, a third-party environmental monitor hired to inspect the project on behalf of the Tewksbury Conservation Commission and other inspectors first noted a breach from one of two stormwater detention basins specifically constructed to control runoff from the site. Although monitors and the Conservation Commission asked The Hanover Co. to address these runoff problems at the site, there were 14 reported discharge violations to nearby resource areas that were the result of inadequate site stabilization and stormwater control over the next eight months, according to a statement.
"There was a clear pattern of noncompliance by The Hanover Co. by first ignoring the state wetlands laws and regulations, then ignoring the Order of Conditions that the Tewksbury Conservation Commission issued to approve the project, and then ultimately even ignoring the reports from an environmental monitor who was hired specifically by the company to inspect the site," said Richard Chalpin, director of MassDEP’s Northeast regional office in Wilmington.
MassDEP inspected the site on several dates in March and observed persistent problems in the ability to control runoff and discharge from the project site, and that it had resulted in sedimentation from the site filling and altering approximately 4,000 square feet of Ames Pond and 1,500 square feet of bordering vegetated wetland, according to a statement.
On April 9, MassDEP issued a unilateral cease-and-desist order to The Hanover Co., which the company appealed. Under the settlement agreement, both the developer and MassDEP have agreed that the company will stabilize the site, submit a plan to restore the damaged area and pay $112,005 of the penalty. MassDEP has agreed to suspend the remaining $37,005 if the site is in compliance after five years.
