ORDER-2017-110 : Petition of National Grid for Gas Main Extension at intersection of Bellevue Ave from Lynn Fells Parkway - Install 105 feet of 6" Plastic Low Pressure Gas Main as shown on Plan GP-MEL 1150617-17-33, dated 2/14/2017

Transcript (~14 min @ 19:38)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 19:43 Speaker 6: excuse me could you read the order please order number 2017-110 petition of national grid for gas main extension at extension of bellevue ave from lindfels parkway install 105 feet of six inch plastic low pressure gas main as shown on plan gp dash mel one one five zero six one seven dash one seven dash three three dated february 14 2017. and we do also have a communication from our

▶ 20:10 Speaker 5: engineering department dated march 31st 2017 which hopefully everybody has we're going to commence a public hearing on this order at this point the way these hearings operate is people can come forward state their peace and after everybody who's spoken who is interested in speaking on the order we will close the public hearing and the board will ask questions and deliberate on the order

▶ 20:42 Speaker 8: could you folks identify yourselves please yep uh good evening good evening everyone uh my name's sean kilcullen i am a construction field supervisor for national grid gas i'm elena

▶ 20:57 Speaker 5: prairie casellas the city engineer for the city of melrose could you briefly describe this order for anybody who might be watching us at home on television please all right so basically what

▶ 21:02 Speaker 8: uh we're putting forward is uh the national grid engineering department has recommended that we do a gas main reinforcement between the gas mains that are on uh lindfels parkway and bellevue ave um it would connect to the two gas mains uh they're both six inch cast cast iron low pressure and uh they would be connected with a uh six inch polyethylene uh plastic gas main

▶ 21:31 Speaker 5: that's basically okay could you indicate when this work will take place and what if any disruption

▶ 21:37 Speaker 8: they'll be to the public right depending on what our environmental department or any permit issues it should be done sometime this spring or early summer and public works have

▶ 21:52 Speaker 9: any comment relative to this project I think our main comments were just they're all summarized in the memo that I believe you all got a copy of but the main comments are that a portion of the work a large portion of the work appears to be within the DCR property so we've advised National Grid that they will need it appears a DCR permit to do this work it appears to be far enough away from the mwra utilities in the parkway that they shouldn't need any permitting from the mwra but they we did advise them to take a look at that and then we are recommending that the restoration be curb to curb along the entire disturbed area if it's in the roadway it's a little unclear from the plan if it's going to be off the edge of the roadway or just into the roadway so if it's in the roadway curb to curb if it's in the grass strip or the sidewalk it would be restoring what's there great if you folks could step back

▶ 22:48 Speaker 5: for one minute and we'll see if anybody else wants to speak on this my name is nick fasano i live at

▶ 23:01 Speaker 10: 155 bellevue avenue i hear i hear what they're saying about uh the general geography but i'm not really sure uh what's it involved from glenn fellsway in the in the bellevue avenue what part of bellevue avenue they said x amount of feet you have a map what we can do sir is if you have

▶ 23:23 Speaker 5: specific questions we'll call the gentleman back up and we'll ask him i just want to know where the

▶ 23:28 Speaker 10: line is it's a new line that's going in and where it's going in specifically as it relates to my home that's all that's basically that's just basic information for me right any other problems either way okay that's it then understood it is okay how's that gail huh thank you sir good job good

▶ 23:49 Speaker 10: job i don't know okay good so someone will tell me where it lays here i was a boy scout but this is not that good okay you can explain this to me okay thank you thank you anybody else who wishes

▶ 24:01 Speaker 5: to speak before we conclude the public hearing okay it doesn't look like we have anybody else

▶ 24:15 Speaker 5: who wishes to speak chair would entertain a motion to conclude the public hearing alderman chairman tozy moves to conclude the public hearing the motion is seconded by alderman mortimer on the motion all those in favor aye aye anyone opposed public hearing portion is concluded are there any questions comments from members of the board alderman lemmerman

▶ 24:36 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: thank you mr president do we um have a sense of how long this project will take uh that would

▶ 24:47 Speaker 9: be a question for sean when he's back okay it's only a short alignment so it shouldn't be lengthy but he should have a better estimate than i would maybe that you might know this um

▶ 24:53 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: if they do if there is a disturbance in the street at all do you know if any of the recent paint on

▶ 25:04 Speaker 9: the parkway will be disturbed okay yeah it's beyond the limits of where it was paved in the

▶ 25:15 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: parkway right okay um they are they are in charge of informing the residents right yes okay so i have another question from on that so my remaining two questions are for the gentleman okay yeah and

▶ 25:23 Speaker 9: i think we had that as a condition as well that all residents would be notified in writing 48

▶ 25:30 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: hours prior to the commencement of any work oh does it say in writing that was my question okay

▶ 25:35 Speaker 5: great okay yeah if the gentleman from national grid could rejoin us that would be helpful

▶ 25:44 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: sorry about that thank you do you have a sense of um how long the work will actually take it away um as you said in the spring or early summer but do you know how many days i would anticipate it

▶ 25:52 Speaker 8: would take probably less than a week um that could take longer if there's weather rain um or if there's excessive ledge in the ground but barring that it would take less than a week and do you

▶ 26:07 Speaker 8: know what hours of the day the work uh typically would be from about nine till four nine till four

▶ 26:16 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: okay um i ask because this is a area where a lot of people walk to the schools okay um so we have have a lot of kids walking along the parkway down to the school area and nine o'clock would be fine for them getting there okay and typically there's a little bit more of a trickle in the afternoon they have activities and whatnot but we just want to flag that for you and just okay perhaps if you could work with the engineering department and with the police around making sure that that is made very safe we can work with the detail officers to

▶ 26:46 Speaker 8: sure that we sort of cordon off the uh sidewalk area that would be great thank you thank you very

▶ 26:55 Monica C. Medeiros: much thank you alderman medeiros thank you um would a motion to formally accept the conditions of the memo from the public works be in order it certainly would so i would like to make that

▶ 27:06 Speaker 5: motion at this time alderman medeiros is moving that the uh seven conditions to the street opening permit that is set forth in the memorandum uh dated march 31st 2017 be made a condition of the allowance of the request second that motion is seconded by alderman lemmerman

▶ 27:30 Monica C. Medeiros: madeira you have the floor thank you uh and just uh i also was wondering if you could sort of explain to us what led national grid to seek this permit and and you kind of what

▶ 27:41 Speaker 1: what's brought us here tonight.

▶ 27:43 Speaker 8: So this would be more of a broader type issue that would be looked at from the engineering department. So it's nothing specific that we're looking to do, but it's just a general reinforcement of the area. The more connections that you have between gas mains on a low pressure system like this, the better it's gonna be going forward, especially when you have increased load from more services being added to the pipeline, the system. just um it's looked more forward-looking um proposal for construction will this make it

▶ 28:13 Monica C. Medeiros: safer for the residents that are in that neighborhood and better delivery it will

▶ 28:20 Speaker 8: make uh better delivery and the area where we are doing construction will be safer and as far as you

▶ 28:25 Monica C. Medeiros: know are there any leaks or anything in that in that area and will that as far as i know existing mains be reviewed and and kind of inspected to see if there's any leaks so uh the new main that we're

▶ 28:37 Speaker 8: putting in will be not be leak prone but the leak the mains that we are uh connecting into are older cast iron so in the future they will be replaced within the next maybe decade or two depending on how badly they're they've corroded but um as far as i know they're they're in good shape for right

▶ 28:57 Speaker 1: now okay thank you thank you very much thank you i'll be making chair margolis uh thank you mr

▶ 29:00 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: president can um thank you for coming tonight can you can you let us know are there any new services being added or are there any residents that will be offered new service uh right now there isn't

▶ 29:09 Speaker 8: new services being added but i believe that uh house is at 543 lindfels and 148 bellevue will now have the opportunity to purchase a service and connect off the new main if they chose to

▶ 29:25 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: and it looks from your um diagram that most of the work is on the um kind of on the south side of by on bellevue but that's still considered um dcr that part of bellevue

▶ 29:39 Speaker 8: uh i mean we would look into it with our environment our environmental team reviews all our projects so they'll look into whether or not we need to pull dcr permits or if we need to uh just notify the town about uh the construction we're going to be doing and the environmental

▶ 29:57 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: impact it would have so as alderman lemon pointed out it's a heavily traveled pedestrian route for students but it's also a heavily traveled traffic route up until i would say 9 30 in the morning for people coming in and out of the fellsway and you know we have two sets of traffic lights there So I would urge you and urge the engineering department that if this is going to impact that part of Bellevue in a fashion for like a week, that they might want to review their traffic signals in a sense because it already backs way up to past bachelors some mornings, even at 9 o'clock.

▶ 30:35 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: And at school hours, it's much worse. So bearing that in mind, it would be very helpful, I think, to the community and certainly to the neighborhood.

▶ 30:50 Speaker 8: Okay, we'll do our best to make sure that we try and keep traffic flowing.

▶ 30:55 Speaker 5: Okay, thank you. Thank you, Alderman Mortimer.

▶ 30:57 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you very much, President Kahn. You're going from cast iron and you're going to use polyethylene? Yes. Pipes, and then you're going to return to cast iron? Yes. not sure if you're familiar, but in plumbing, that's generally not allowed to go from metal to plastic and back to metal. But you have no problem doing that? We have the connections that

▶ 31:19 Speaker 8: we use are insulated couplings, so it protects both pipes from... And with strong glue, you paint

▶ 31:34 Speaker 8: the inside of the polyethylene? We use... Sorry, it's wax tape just to prevent from corrosion.

▶ 31:38 Peter D. Mortimer: All right. Well, the polyethylene is better, but I'm sure that our city engineer can tell you. In Melrose, we have a lot of underground water, and we have a lot of ledge, and most of it is granite. Very unforgiving, and you know the freeze-thaw cycle of water is also very unforgiving. So occasionally around Melrose, we get gas leaks, and you can smell them. They start to percolate upwards through the ground, that's an oxymoron, but they start to rise through the ground and you get the smell and then you have to do the whole dig up. So I'm sure that our DPW department will be watching to make sure that this is done very tight. We want it tight, tight, so we won't have any need to dig up the street in the future. It's a problem we have. Thank you very much.

▶ 32:37 Speaker 5: Thank you. Anyone else? Alderman Boycelle.

▶ 32:42 Robert A. Boisselle: Looking at the number seven, curb to curb, is National Grid agreeing to do curb to curb?

▶ 32:49 Speaker 8: We're agreeing.

▶ 32:52 Robert A. Boisselle: yes I would say yes okay just want to make sure the utility agrees to that because there seems to be hesitations and other utilities of doing this and I just want to make sure it's curb to curb one side of the street to the other side of the street not a not a 12-inch gap or patch and so forth okay thank you thank you mr. chairman thank you we've had a motion that's been made

▶ 33:13 Speaker 5: and duly seconded to make these seven conditions in miss proacus ellis's memorandum of march 31st 2017 conditions to the grant on the motion to amend to accept the conditions is there any further discussion all those in favor of the motions please indicate by saying aye aye aye anyone opposed the motion as amended is before you motion to recommend second alderman lemmerman moves to recommend the order as amended motion is seconded by alderman boycelle is there any