The Commission approved a restoration project for the Middlesex Fells Reservation and expressed support for holding a conservation restriction on land at the former Malden Hospital site.
[Denis MacDougall]: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the City of Medford Conservation Commission meeting for August 5th. A couple items on the agenda, sorry, just give me a second, because I mistakenly shut down Word, so I shut down the document from the agenda.
[Theresa Dupont]: And we'll want to hit record, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're, I thought I set it up so it automatically hits record. Okay, sorry, my apologies. No, we're good. Thank you, Bill, for the reminder.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Denis MacDougall]: So the first item in the agenda is a notice of intent. DEP file number 215-0250, I believe, for the Middlesex Fells Reservation. The Friends of the Middlesex Fells has filed a notice of intent the control and management of non-native invasive plant species within portions of the Middlesex Fells Reservation 90-millimeter site in Whitmore Brook Path. The work will be conducted within bank and bordering vegetated wetland resource areas in the 100-foot buffer zone to bank and bordering vegetated wetland.
[SPEAKER_06]: Hi, everybody. My name is Kyle McGrath. I am a volunteer. Well, first, thanks for having me. And I'm a volunteer and also a board member of the Friends of the Middlesex Fells Reservation, and I live in South Medford. And so what I'll do this, what we're looking for from this commission specifically is permission to work in a wetland area that's part of a larger project in the Middlesex Fells in Medford. But I think it might just be useful to kind of zoom out for a moment and just kind of tell you what the project is so we understand how it fits into this bigger picture, and also because I think it's something that conservation-minded folks in Medford and the other communities surrounding the fells should be excited about.
Is it okay? Am I able to share my screen? It looks like I think I can.
[Denis MacDougall]: Yep, you're all set now.
[SPEAKER_06]: Excellent. Thanks. I'm just going to pull up my slideshow. I've got one for everything. Can everybody see that okay?
[Unidentified]: Yep, you're good.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, aside from the part where I was mid-slideshow. There we are. So thanks. All right, so let's talk a little bit about what's going on here. If you haven't heard of the 90-millimeter meadow, this is a part of the Middlesex Fells that's in Lawrence Woods. The Lawrence Woods section of the Middlesex Fells is a little newer than the rest of the fells. It was added to the reservation in 1925 after the first mayor of Medford, I think his name was Samuel Crocker Lawrence, if I'm remembering correctly, died and sort of bequeathed this land to the Middlesex Fells. So the 90 millimeter meadow was a woodlot at that time. And this is located, it's kind of right between Medford and Winchester. You can get to it pretty easily from the trailheads, any of them at the Medford High School. And you can also get to it very quickly from Dennett Park, which is kind of the little park in Winchester that borders this part of the Middlesex Fells.
In the 1950s, it was an anti-aircraft artillery defense site in the Middlesex Fells. That's where it gets its name, the 90-millimeter meadow. There were 90-millimeter artillery pieces there. And so that was sort of a man-made meadow, and that turned it into this important habitat, which I'll talk about in a sec. That shut down in 1958, and then it was handed over to the then MDC. This area is like a mixed meadow and woodland, and it's got adjacent wetlands as well, which is why we have to file this NOI. We've done a lot of volunteer work here before. We've done a pollinator habitat project with the Girl Scouts. And we've also, it's a focus area for invasive removal efforts that are, you know, our manual volunteer removal efforts that we're out doing every week in the fells. But professional intervention is required at this stage.
So a couple of things here. There was a bit of a scuffle over this space. You may remember in 2018 when there was a developer who wanted to build an ice skating rink on the site as part of the Fells. It's happened to chunks of the Fells before. Ultimately, that permit got pulled, and that didn't end up happening, partially because of friends of the Fells. other community groups and our partners resisted that. There's a few things to know about this meadow specifically and that was part of the basis for us doing that. One of these is that when it was documented in the 1980s by a guy named Bob Robbins who's a consultant on this project and is currently, I should say Dr. Bob Robbins, he's the curator of the National Butterfly Collection at the Smithsonian. He did his PhD in tufts at this meadow and when he documented all the meadows in this part of Massachusetts he said that this meadow was the best butterfly habitat inside of Route 128. So like
Gloucester down to Quincy, the whole circle around Boston. This was the best habitat for them. The reason for this is that there's a convergence there of wetlands, forest of different types, there's pine forest and oak maple, and also this acidic, rocky upland community that makes up the open part of the meadow. There's a wide diversity or was a wide diversity of pollinator plants that caused this to be one of the better sites in the area. There were 67 butterfly species documented there. individual species during his studies. About half this meadow, however, has become woodland since that time. That happens naturally. If it's not maintained, whether that's mowing or clearing of shrubs periodically, it will eventually turn into early successional forest. And a lot of it also has become invasive monoculture. So there's just like a whole acre that's nothing but black swallow warden, Asian bittersweet, both of which are nasty plants to have. And the biggest onus for this project was the invasive plant problem, but it's sort of all these other things about the pollinator restoration and all that have come with our research into the site, and this project's taken shape over a few years. So I'll just kind of run through the project components pretty quick. Oh, one last thing. This is probably review for everyone in this room, but it's in my slideshow anyway. What's the importance of this meadow? This is a The species that were once prevalent in this meadow, things like Leonard's Skipper and Northern Hairstreak, both of which are a pollinator, a moth and a butterfly that have disappeared from eastern Massachusetts entirely in the past few decades. All of these rely on really almost man-made habitat. There's either a natural fire process or agricultural clearing that keeps these meadows clear and they're adapted to that environment. And with the decline of agriculture in the Northeast and suppression of the natural fire cycle that comes with development and just development in general, you know, bowling over habitats, a lot of these species have disappeared. And that's what makes habitats like this so important. I'm going to show you some aerials. I'm pretty proud of these. This is the DCR map of the site. So if you look at the DCR map of the Middlesex Fells, this is what it looks like. It's got that loop in the middle there and this little kind of almost figure eight, I guess, and the part that goes out to gate 10 on South Border Road is all the existing asphalt that remains from the base that was there in the 1950s.
This is a photo of the space in 1938. You can see South Border Road there on the right. You can see it's kind of mostly, it's not the highest resolution picture, I guess, but you can see it's mostly open space. And this is when it was a woodlot. This is a photo of the place in 1955. This is when there was an active military base there. You can kind of see the outlines of the structures, which I also took the liberty of marking up. So you can see the main meadow there actually is where those artillery emplacements are. There was a barracks facility. There's a whole history of this. Actually, I wrote a history of this site that got published by the Medford Historical Society a couple years back. If you look up 90 millimeter meadow Medford, I think it's like one of the first things that comes up. So if you want to learn about the base in the Cold War and why it was there and all that stuff, there's a little paper on it that I wrote.
This is the site in 1963. So this is it after the base was cleared in 1958. You can see it's pretty open and there's just the last remnants of the road and a couple of the building foundations there. And then this is around the time that Bob Robbins, the man who documented this site in the 80s, kind of started visiting the area in the 1971. There's a couple of things to flag here. You can see that there's already some forestation happening on this aerial. You can see there's also some present day unofficial trails that aren't marked in the DCR map, but are very well used there. It's a pervasive problem, the fells that we will talk about in a moment. So this is 1971 and this is 2025. So you can see that as of right now, the meadow area is almost entirely gone. There's two remaining patches of it that I've labeled after the things that were located there, the gun meadow and the radar meadow. And these two are the focus of our restoration project. big time tree removal on this site is a very tall task and we'd want to do that kind of thing phased and watch for impact and all that. So that's not really, the scope isn't to get it all the way back to 1963. We're just trying to restore these two critical meadow areas that are still restorable pretty easily. So a quick breakdown on the project. There's a few pieces to this. The biggest one is invasive remediation. There are almost every MEPAG listed invasive species is in that meadow someplace. It's actually really remarkable. So just at this point, we've been trying to manually manage it with repeat volunteer projects for years and years, and it's gotten to where we need to have a contractor deal with it. We have an arrangement with the DCR where we do this kind of stuff actually quite a bit. We've already had a pilot program for Japanese knotweed management at three other places in the park. So we kind of work hand in hand with them on this all the time. The meadow clearing piece is freeing up space that has had forest succession happen. This is going to be primarily removing perennial shrubs and trees. We're already cleared to do everything up to three inches, whether it's native or invasive. And we're doing this sort of with a light touch in a couple of places to open up the grassland area a little bit and get some more sunlight to the bottom. Obviously, we're cautious about removing native species, but there's a few places where very early successional species like white pine that are super well represented everywhere else in the fells are crowding out this delicate habitat. So we're looking to remove those. And then overall, there's some site improvements. There's some old foundation holes left over from the base. There's an old kiosk that is kind of rotten out and could stand to be replaced. All of that stuff is within the scope of this project and blessed by the DCR.
Two other things, there's some asphalt removal entailed. We don't really have to go into this because it's a few years down the line, but there's like an old basketball court that we're hoping to rip up and allow to return to forest. We have a whole comms piece on this. There's a project page on our website that I can share with the committee. And then lastly, we're gonna come up with a maintenance plan for this site that's in the 10 to 20 year timeframe. The reason this kind of forest succession happens and the reason that the meadow was allowed to get this far is because there's just kind of a short institutional memory. Personnel turnover happens. There's not regular documentation of these spaces. So people really didn't realize how much has been lost. When I actually met up, Bob Robbins is still around, but he was visiting Boston. He lives in DC. I met up with him a few weeks ago and he was shocked. He said the site was unrecognizable. And also shocked at that time for what should have been peak butterfly hours that we only saw really two butterflies in the whole time.
So this somewhat loud graphic is the site all marked out. These are the color flags we have. What we're talking about today is the area that's flagged in blue. This part is the area that goes around Whitmore Brook, which is a real small stream. And we've had that delineated. Mary Trudeau, who we worked with to do that delineation, is also here. And we flagged out 100 feet on either side of the delineated wetland. And that's flagged in blue, so the vendor we're working with, Essex Horticultural, knows that we can't touch that stuff until the NOIs are all sorted. Everything else here is just our work areas. The purple areas are the only parts that we're currently doing native removals on. That's the radar meadow, which is the part that's mostly intact.
And you'll also notice a big black line, that's the rogue trail that we're leaving in place. It's the one that's so well worn that people think it's a real trail and there's just no point closing it. So that's why there's a big bold line there through the middle of this. But again, really what we're talking about tonight is the blue area. Couple pieces here, whoops, there we go. So I mentioned meadow clearing already. I'm just going to run through these real quick. I don't want to take up too much of your time, but we have a lot going on. We've gotten most of our approval from the DCR. Larger tree removal is kind of pending approval from forestry. They have received this very positively initially. They're just concerned about the quotas that the DCR has for like canopy cover and how this invasive removal fits into that.
Rogue trails, there's a spiderweb of these in the Middlesex fells. If you didn't know, at last count, the fells has about, I think it's 75 miles of official trails and somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 of unofficial trails that people have worn. So it's spiderweb with trails and most of the habitat in the fells is pretty fragmented. Closing some of these is part of a goal for any area we try to conserve, and balancing that with what users like to walk on. There's no sense in trying to pick fights with park goers who enjoy the space if there's a very popular trail. Kind of have to balance all that out. There's a very large spider web of trails on this site that I mapped out with a GPS and all trails. So this is sort of what it looks like if you map it all out. And whoops, sorry. I didn't include the map. Basically, all that we're really keeping is the very thick line there, the one that is running from Dennett Park, sort of makes like an L shape. I had another slide that had that just marked out, but apparently I didn't add it. Regardless, we're leaving the main rope trail in place. That's what people like to do. And we're trying to close off some of the smaller ones to defragment those surrounding areas of habitat.
This is the part I mentioned that was a, this is the gun meadow it's the portion that's an almost entirely black swallow wart and Asian bittersweet and there's some Japanese knotweed in there too for flavor. This is the whole area that we basically just have to blitz over and treat, and we're talking about some of these places we're going to be treating in like the eight to 10 year timeline because of just how much year on your work there's going to be. The big picture here is that we're using a variety of methods. Herbicide is one of them, targeted and carefully where it needs to be done. Manual stuff is always favored, but a lot of this stuff, it's not practical to treat unless we're using a DCR approved contractor who can professionally apply herbicide to some of this. The goal is over the years for this to transition out in favor of volunteer manual management. We want to get the situation under control to the point where volunteers can come around every year and just pull what's there. And then we can maintain the meadow that way. Invasive species are a bit like litter and the way I see things, you're always going to have to pick them up at some point, even if you get all of them at one point, they're going to come back and you just have to monitor and manage.
And lastly, public comms. This is just some of the communication stuff we've been doing. I'm just actually going to skip over this because we're I don't want to take up too much of your time. Essex Horticulture is the vendor that we're talking about for doing this work. They were on a list of vendors provided to us by the DCR. We've worked, it's been very smooth working with them so far. Most of the initial work in the meadow is done, and they're very good nature-minded, habitat-minded, and they've worked with us on species selection for seeds and all that stuff.
The total estimated cost of this project for year one and year two is $98,000, sorry, $98,000, really, I'm saying 100K. That is coming out of our pocket. We have a fund that we've established with legacy gifts and stuff over the years, and we've also done specific fundraising towards this total. And at this point, the project is fully funded. So that makes it appealing to the DCR. We can sort of come in and say, hey, we've got all the pieces in place to do this thing we've been putting off for a long time as a park, and here we are doing it. Um...
This is a delineation of responsibilities you don't really have to worry about. And here's the current status. So we've done the initial invasive treatment everywhere except that blue flagged area, mostly cutting and dabbing of invasive shrubs like burning bush. We've blocked up the rogue trails that we're gonna close with cuttings. So whether it's from thinning the natives or whether it's the kind of invasives that you can cut and have them be sterile, like the burning bush, once it's cut, if there's no berries or anything, it's sterile. We've used those to block up rogue trail entrances in the places that we've chosen to block them up. We also have signs up at all the entrances to the meadow and the kiosk that kind of tell you a little bit about the project and include a QR code page on our site.
As I mentioned, we've been removing everything up to three inches in the areas that we want to thin. The native thinning is much smaller than what we're doing with invasive removal, but we're doing some of that in those areas, like I said, to create habitat. Work's going to continue through summer. There's certain things like Japanese knotweed treatment that you have to time specifically. And then in the wintertime is when you go in and do things like felling invasive Norway maple. That's best to do in winter. So it's this kind of a year-round project, but the peak season is this summer. We've started that first phase. The next steps will be mostly in August, September. Geez, it's August already, isn't it? This month in September to finish out some of those invasives. A couple little closing thoughts for me. This is a launching board for future projects in this area. We're hoping to see the return of plant diversity that we've lost of host species. We can do that with, we have partners who propagate seed that they've taken from the fells. We have a sort of a burgeoning partnership with the Native Plant Trust. They have a seed accelerator program for that. So we have that local ecotype, local gene pool species. We're looking into providing some more historical interpretive signage. There's not really a whole lot there right now. There's just a little sign in the kiosk that briefly mentions this used to be a military base. And there's a lot of other stuff we're talking to the DCR about too. Bird boxes, bat boxes are all a possibility. And then the muscles that we build, I'm sorry, the muscles that we build from this project will be useful in doing these kinds of things elsewhere. This is one of the most heavily impacted sites in the fells for invasive plants, but it's not the only bad one. There's quite a few spots that need serious ecological work, and it just gets worse year on year unless we intervene. And now that we kind of have the knowledge and the funding to do so, that's what we're trying to do. This is our first big project that's this ambitious.
So that's the slides. At this point, thanks everybody for sitting through my slideshow. And if there are any questions or comments or anything, I'm happy to answer.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thanks, Kyle. Very helpful. Appreciate the background information. If I may, I just, I'm trying to line up the scope of work that was outlined in the Essex report with what's actually being proposed. I think if I understand you correctly, it's the Whitmore-Brookpath scope of work that Essex outlined that is what we're reviewing this evening. Correct.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, because it's a part of a larger project in context, I thought the commission might just be interested in it. I figured we'd talk about the whole thing, but the rest of it's all been all in progress. We have approval from the DCR, Megan Shave, DCR naturalist is there as well as JP Patton, who's the cultural resources, the digging guy. So we have, this is all kind of in motion everywhere else on the site already. It's just this last piece that we also, because that path tucks like 10 feet into Winchester, I also went to the Winchester Commission two weeks ago. For what it's worth, no pressure, they did approve it.
So we sort of had to do two of these. But yes, this is just for that Whitmore Brook portion of what we're talking about here.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK. Within that scope, can you clarify, are you proposing to mow some of the knotweed within Whitmore Brook, or is this all by hand? and will equipment need to access that area?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, knotweed is, so knotweed's a tricky one. We're not mowing it per se. What we usually do for knotweed, and we actually have three other sites as part of this mass trails grant that we got that we're treating for knotweed in the fells. We're on year three of those treatments. If you ever go to Dana's Meadow up by Greenwood Park, there's a whole sheet of land that used to be all knotweed that's now clear. It's really cool. Anyway, I digress. With knotweed, we usually do a June cutting, which is normally manual. And the only reason to cut it in June is to control the final height because what you really need to do to kill knotweed is use a specific solution of glyphosate at a very specific time when you hijack the plant biology to move all that herbicide into the rhizome sink. The problem with Japanese knotweed is it's a huge 30 foot deep single organism rhizomal plant and cutting, it's just like cutting hair. Cutting the stem, the canes off. You have to actually get down to the plant. It's not just like cutting hair.
So yeah, the strategy there is not necessarily mow, but manual cutting. And then in the September timeframe, between flower fade and first frost, they call it the effing window, is when you do a foliar spray treatment to get glyphosate, maximize uptake into the plant once a year, you do that. Okay, and that doesn't require any heavy equipment, they do have a truck that parks on the asphalt part of the remaining base roads to like haul stuff in and out, but they're not taking wheeled equipment into the woods or like the soft areas.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, very helpful. I just... The Essex scope specified mowing in that area, and I just wanna be... Oh, interesting.
[SPEAKER_06]: Clear over the methodology. Yeah, that's interesting. They do... They are mowing some things, like they're specifically mowing the bittersweet in the gun meadow, which is just south of there. I didn't realize they had put it down, they were mowing that, but they were out there cutting it with loppers last time I saw, so I don't think they're mowing that. They are planning to torch the and they could they could mobile we're planning to torch the stilt grass which runs on both sides of the Whitmore Brook path. That's one that if you just hit it with a propane lead torch year on year after year, it eventually goes away because it's an annual.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. And I think I understood from your presentation that that path that has been established through that area is going to remain? You're not proposing permanent closure in that area? Is that correct? Correct.
[SPEAKER_06]: So the Whitmore Brook path itself that runs kind of, it just borders the top of the meadow. It's that, you know, that's already an official DCR trail. If you know the area, there's also this like little footbridge that goes over the drainage ditch into there. That whole thing is an unofficial trail. It's not marked anywhere. And it's got its own footbridge. But that just shows you how long some people have been using these. And that's one where it's clearly a desired trail. Everyone likes going over that footbridge. So that one we're leaving. There's a lot of smaller trails that branch off from there that are just not even that great shortcuts to get to another trail. And all of those are the ones we're blocking off. There's already one that we tried to block off that a bunch of people have unblocked like three times. And we're like, all right, fine. You know what, if it's that big of a deal, we'll just leave that one. But yeah, that main trail that everyone uses, we just didn't think it would be practical to close. And we want to, you know, you have to balance the conservation part of it with the relationships with park users, because we're not rules enforcement. We don't not here to tell people what to do. We're just trying to, you know, do repairs to the site, so to speak.
[SPEAKER_05]: just to confirm all permanent trail closures are outside of resource areas. What I'm getting at is, you know, if trail closure is going to be done by stockpiling a brush or cut material, I want to make sure that that's outside of the resource area rather than within the resource area.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, I see what you're saying. So yes, everything that's getting closed is outside of that blue flag 100 foot buffer delineated on both sides of that wetland. It's all in the main meadow area. Thankfully, that area is pretty wet, and there's not a lot of people going off trail, it seems. So we don't really have to do anything in that part.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's all I had. We'll circle back with Dennis about conditions, but I'll turn it over to my fellow commissioners if they have additional questions.
[CAS00002529_SPEAKER_07]: I'll say this is definitely not a strong point of my knowledge, so I'm curious with the herbicides that are being proposed. I guess I'm actually one of my questions is if the Winchester Conservation Commission had any Comments or feedback on the herbicides and if there is a question for anybody either on the conservation commission or to you Kyle if there's a overall management plan. Like, uh. that covers the use of herbicides in the fells outside of Kong Kong jurisdiction?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so that's a good question. To speak to the Winchester Commission, they actually didn't really ask about that. I did tell them we were using herbicide, just as I gave them the same presentation I gave you folks, more or less. But I just sort of didn't come up as a point of concern. However, I was expecting to be asked a lot more about that by both the commission and members of the public, because I know it's a thing people are worried about, like the soil and water and all that stuff. So what I tell members who asked me this question, and so to answer the final question, which is, an overall policy for it with the DCR. That's kind of determined by a DCR naturalist. Megan Shave is our partner in this, who's the DCR naturalist in question. And it has to be done obviously by a licensed vendor who's approved by the DCR. But in terms of the overall management plan, as long as we get the okay to treat something, the label is the law in Massachusetts. So whatever the instructions are for the herbicide in terms of concentration, PPE, all that stuff, a licensed applicator knows all that.
In terms of how it's used, I am, I'm not a fan of herbicide. I really think it's super overused in our agriculture and it gets into our food supply and all this stuff that I think it's really irresponsible how it's used a lot of the time. People spray everything with Roundup and it drives me nuts. However, in certain cases like this, it's the most effective tool for managing invasive species that are already destroying the space. And there is no invasive management without some kind of collateral damage, whether you're trampling over stuff to get to the invasive plants, stepping on bugs, whatever. It's just a question of the situation that it's used in. For a plant like Japanese knotweed, there really is no practical way to kill it without that annual herbicide. treatment. And to put it in kind of perspective, when we treat that, it's a 2% glyphosate solution. So glyphosate's the Monsanto, the big bad one that people are concerned about, rightfully so. But it's applied in a 2% solution, so 98% water, and with a surfactant that helps it bind to the leaves and minimizes overspray. And the reason for this is it's super watered down because we want the plant to absorb it. you want it to be treated like rain at a time when the plant is transferring all the resources from its canes above ground into the rhizomal sink underground. And the canes die off every year, but the plant underground endures. So what you're doing is hijacking that process to get the herbicide into it. Likewise, with things like burning bush and bittersweet, with the bigger invasive shrubs we do, it's hack and squirt, where you actually cut it down and then just paint the stump. And they'll use blue paint, so you can tell what's been treated already. That's also minimized, targeted. Likewise, and then I guess the other big application is the monoculture of bittersweet and black swallowwort. The tactic we do there is actually to mow it in the early summer and then wait for it to have a flush of growth and then wait for that same timeline and hit it with triclopyr, which is an herbicide that's in mass that you can still get that at Home Depot.
But yeah, so these are sort of minimalist targeted treatments, and the amount that you need to deal with invasive plants is a drop in the bucket compared to what gets like dumped on our agricultural land, because we're sort of doing this small targeted work. And people are rightfully concerned about the use of herbicide, and we also try to avoid it whenever manual control is possible. But for sites like this, it needs to be one of the things that's in the toolbox, or else we just won't get it under control. And then in a few years, we don't have to use it anymore. And that stuff breaks down in the soil. The stuff we're using for Japanese knotweed, Aquamaster is rated for use in freshwater. It actually breaks down in freshwater very quickly. So, you know, there's half-lives of everything for years afterwards. Of course, you can detect things in the soil, but in terms of safety, it breaks down pretty quick. And you can, you know, stuff like glyphosate, you can allegedly plant things like three days after it's applied. I'd probably still wait a little longer. But that's the label. Does that answer that?
[CAS00002529_SPEAKER_07]: Yes, absolutely. Thank you. That's very helpful.
[SPEAKER_05]: And Jess, if I may, to that point, I think if it's not already, I'm sure this is best management practice for Kyle and his team. If it's not already a condition, I think I would recommend that whatever herbicides are used, they're registered for use in or near wetlands or aquatic resource areas. Again, I think that's fairly standard practice, but I would propose that as a condition. And of course, if it's not already a standard condition, that the application will be done by a Massachusetts licensed pesticide or herbicide applicator.
and that the application should not occur during precipitation or when precipitation is forecast. so on and so forth per the manufacturer spec in terms of precipitation.
[SPEAKER_06]: Of course. And all of that was also conditioned on the DCR approval. So it is kind of, yeah, that's all going to be redundant. And the vendors that they do stuff with, like they've worked with, uh, trustees of reservations and a bunch of different towns and stuff. So that was all that all kind of comes with it. However, because it does, there's no harm in writing it in the conditions if you'd like to do so, because we're already, you know, 100%.
[Craig Drennan]: Heather, Craig? Nothing for me. I mean, this looks great. I think the pesticide component has been handled. Thank you guys for doing what you do. Appreciate it. The fellows is a huge resource, and taking care of it's a big deal. So thank you for putting this together and for leading the charge.
[Heather]: I am very familiar with both the physical site and the history of the site. I'm delighted that this is going on, and I just want to say in terms of the herbicide pieces, everything that you've said today are all conditions, et cetera, things that we've worked with. with other groups over the last 10 years. So I feel very comfortable that. I think it was a good question to ask, though. No, I have absolutely no questions. And I am glad that you're cutting off. I am familiar with a lot of the trails that should not be there. So this is just wonderful, especially from a historic point of view.
I should mention that my husband is the president of the Local Historical Society, and I've been a board member for five billion years, so.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, I probably sent him my article.
[Heather]: Yes, I'm familiar with the article, and we've had a program on it, and if there's anything more from that end, I would be very interested in hearing. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: I have a couple more questions and I'm thinking back through your notice of intent. I suspect this is the case, but can you confirm there's no stump removal or grubbing within the resource areas, right? This is just not weed stuff.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's it's it's a complex of things. It's it's mostly it's not weed. There's barberry, there's multiflora rose, there's Asian bittersweet, and there's grass. Yeah, there's a still grass and there's the other boy. There's like everything and there's maple, Japanese, Japanese, sorry, Norway, maple is Norway. No. But in terms of grubbing or any of that stuff, no, we're not doing any of that. Even the Norway maple, that is a hack and squirt. They cut it and paint the stump. And a lot of those are also pretty big. So that's probably getting tackled further down the line as we wait on DCR forestry to matriculate there. That takes a little longer. And we're not pulling any stumps or anything. There's not earth disturbance or ripping up. We're just hacking everything off above the surface.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's what I'm ultimately getting at is, you know, potential for future erosion, banking stability, that sort of stuff. But it sounds like that's not contemplated in your scope of work. One other thing you talked about, the notice of intent, I should say, talked about temporary closures. And I don't want to create more complications for you. Did the Winchester Conservation Commission impose any conditions about the timing of temporary closure for the work?
[SPEAKER_06]: No, and I think that the temporary closures thing, we don't actually have any of the marked DCR trails or that large section of rogue trail marked off for closure at any point right now. I think that's mostly pesticide application, and specifically there's like one or two of the rogue trails that are the vector for invasive plants, so it's just a small award on all of those. When we do apply herbicide, they put the little yellow flags that say pesticide applied with the date on the area they apply it to. So it's clear, but we haven't, to my knowledge, that was included in the scope in case we needed to use it, but we haven't, to my knowledge, actually closed any trails that people were walking on.
[SPEAKER_05]: um to that and would your team be comfortable with a condition in the order that says should there be a need for temporary closure signage shall be put up 48 hours in advance of the closure oh yeah for sure if we were going to close like an official portion of the trail or anything yeah we do signage up well in advance so yeah that's a fine and i'm happy to make that clear that it's an official trail however we want to term that not just some road trail
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I just, you know, I would just say if there's a closure of a, you know, maps of an official trail, then we, or, you know, you can maybe put in the condition of the long footbridge trail or whatever, if you want to include that, because it's not really official, but people use it. But I don't think there's really a plan to close off anything that people would be really using. It's mostly single, small, rogue trailheads along bigger trails that we're just blocking off so people don't wander off.
But yeah, that's a fine condition. If we were to close anything, we would put signage up in advance. And that would mark out an alternate route to take, for example, if it's a popular trail.
[SPEAKER_05]: I appreciate that. Thank you. And then finally, I promise this is the last thing. Oh, it's all right.
[SPEAKER_06]: Good question.
[SPEAKER_05]: To your point about institutional knowledge, would your team be willing to provide the Conservation Commission with some sort of report just summarizing the activities that were conducted in the resource areas, say, within 60 days of completion of the work? Um, I think that's helpful for our commission just to understand, you know, we put out the order, the work gets done. We don't necessarily see the results of that work and particularly where this is going to be an ongoing effort. I think it would be beneficial for the commission to have that record of what actually occurred and when. Um, so it doesn't have to be much, just a memo delivered to Dennis that says, here are the areas, here's the work, here's what we did kind of thing. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: And what we, Winchester raised a similar request. And so we ultimately arrived at with them, the tough thing with like 60 days from is that the work is rolling over a period of like eight months. So, and like, it's something new is kind of happening every week. So what we decided to do with Winchester was we said, hey, we'll give you the initial proposal. It's already done. And then we'll provide you once like year one, once they give us the invoice, it's like, hey, year one's done. Here's everything we've done so far. And your final bill of what we've done this year, that we would send that each year that we do it.
I don't know if that's comparable or acceptable, but that's what sort of we decided, OK, we'll send the yearly update when they finish for the work for the year. Hey, here's what it is. Perfect.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's perfect. Yes, if we could just copy our commission on the filing, I'd appreciate it. And that's all I had. I think the typical concerns about monitoring work after the fact is not a concern with your organization. So thank you. I appreciate that. With that, Dennis, I think I'll flag if there's anyone from the public wishes to comment or speak, please ask that they raise their hand and do so now. I'm not hearing anyone. Back to the commission, does anyone else have anything they wanted to raise about this notice of intent? Otherwise, I think I'd entertain Heather, yeah.
[Heather]: I just want to check with my fellow commissioners and Dennis. Is there any reason why I cannot take copies of the minutes, et cetera, of these meetings and make sure that I incorporate them at the Historical Society with our files on the Middlesex Fells? Is there a problem with that? This is a public document.
[Denis MacDougall]: No, public record. You're good to go.
[Heather]: Okay, thank you.
[Denis MacDougall]: So I think the only thing just from my point is just when you're going to be working in this area, just to give our office, just contact our office so that, you know, we can sort of, cause I'm not gonna lie, I'd just be interested to go up there and see the work being done. And also, you know, we have some extraordinarily energetic and enthusiastic interns working for us right now that, you know, Ooh, I think it would be great to do a little field trip up there, honestly, to just stroll through the site.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'd love to take you guys up there, honestly. If you want to come out and do a tour of the site, I actually have that map that has, and to digress, but I spent a long time staring at the aerials and looking at diagrams of the weapons systems, like a Soviet spy, and looking at the shadows and figuring out what was there. So yeah, we have all that mapped out. It's really cool. We used to do a, I've been so busy with this project, I haven't done it yet this year, but we did monthly history tours for a while to that site. All that's to say, if you'd like to meet out there sometime, I'd love to. I've given tours to tons of people of this work. Please, yeah.
[Denis MacDougall]: I'll shoot you an email post-meeting and we'll try and set that up.
[Craig Drennan]: That sounds great. I'd love to be copied on that. That sounds like a ton of fun.
[SPEAKER_05]: Dennis, if you will, please can you remind us of what conditions we've identified?
[Denis MacDougall]: No use of herbicides during any precipitation. Only wetland certified pesticides to be used. If any herbicides used have to be state certified by state certified operators. If there are any closures of any official trails, notice should be posted in advance. 48 hours.
[SPEAKER_05]: 48 hours.
[Heather]: Follow up report.
[Denis MacDougall]: Yeah, and then after, you know, upon, you know, at the end of. Well, you said with the invoice, I don't know if I want to put invoice in there, but just provide conservation commission with. reports with status updates. We'll just kind of keep it fairly, you know, we know we're sort of there, but just, you know, updates, you know, and if we just put like annual intervals for that, I think that would probably, because you said you get the bills every year, so.
[SPEAKER_06]: yeah we kind of go back and forth obviously we're going back and forth with them all the time but the plan was when we talked to Winchester about it was to say hey when we have our like formal it's either going to be depending on whether we're doing work in the winter or not it's either going to be like September or it'll be December but it's our formal like end of season just summary and invoice for everything we pay as you know sort of as they go line item but yeah we get like a summary of all that and our plan is just to send that to Winchester every year and we can do the same thing. So you could say annual, maybe end of season or something like that. Summary.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so with that I suspect we would entertain a motion to issue an order of conditions with those special conditions included.
[Craig Drennan]: I'll make such a motion.
[SPEAKER_05]: Second. Anyone? Second. Thank you. Um, all in favor, Craig. Hi, Heather. Hi, Jess.
[CAS00002529_SPEAKER_07]: Hi.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I am and I have it.
[Heather]: OK. By the way, his little tour is very interesting. And on a nice day, it could be a very pleasant afternoon.
[SPEAKER_06]: I was going to say, did you come on one of those? Yes.
[Heather]: I think my hair at that time was black and white, you know, more like not all white.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's cool, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, this is, and those tours are partially what gave me the insight to be like, wow, this Black Swallow Ward's growing really fast. I don't remember being here last year. Yeah, so, yeah, that's how it starts. Well, thank you everyone. Thank you, Kyle. Appreciate it. Good luck with your project. Absolutely, I will take my leave, but yeah, Dennis, if you wanna shoot me an email and we can put together a little hike one of these weekends, I'd be happy to show the commission to anybody else around.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sounds good, excellent, fantastic. Thank you.
[Denis MacDougall]: Thank you. Now the next item on our agenda is a, basically a conservation restriction discussion with the friends of Felsmere Heights. So, bring my colleague Teresa in.
[Theresa Dupont]: Hi there, everyone. I'll pause for a moment to introduce our two friends from the Friends of Selzmere Heights. This meeting is all about our friends. I'm Teresa Dupont. I think I met all of you at our last Conservation Commission meeting, but I am the Community Preservation Act Manager for the city, which is a grant program that funds open space preservation projects. Enter, stage left, Stephen and Karen from the Friends of Selzmere Heights. They've come to us requesting some, they're really putting in an application for funding to put a conservation restriction on a certain parcel up at the Old Malden Hospital. And I don't want to steal their thunder, so I'll pause for a moment to see if either one of them wants to jump in here and provide some more color, but we're here tonight to continue that discussion. Do you want to take the helm, Stephen?
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: I guess I can start, but it's kind of great to have you present it, because then I can say, oh, well, there's some things I want to add. It helps to know what you know, rather than repeating everything. But how do you want to go? I guess you want to say about us, or what do you want to?
[Theresa Dupont]: But more about Friends of Felsmere Heights, and then I'll jump back in to talk more about the project.
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: So Friends of Felsmere Heights, we've been incorporated in, I think, 2015. We originally were formed because of the large development that was planned on the Malden Hospital. Well, before that, actually, when I was on the Energy Efficiency Commission, the hospital was up for sale, and I was hoping that the city would buy it for open space. But with delays, and the mayor, or whatever, they ended up having this developer who wanted to build something there, and deaconess, and so on, and other people were trying to build. So in 2015, though, before us, in 2013, that happened. In 2015, we helped
get the Community Preservation Act passed in Malden and in Medford to try to make sure we had funding to do production of land in the heights, in Fulton Heights, and our name comes from the putting together of Fulton Heights and Felsmere Park. And so, Many years later and through the pandemic, slow slog, we finally, the city finally got a grant and the new behavioral health hospital opened in February. And now we're at the stage of getting the conservation restriction getting in place for the Malden land and we're trying to get the things tied up on the on the Medford side. During the whole process, there was during various meetings, there was statements that the Tufts would be putting a conservation restriction on the land in Medford, but that was not a high priority because of all the budgetary problems with hospitals and getting the new hospital open. So that's my little blurb.
[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you, Stephen. And Karen is also a member Friends of Faulkner Heights and has been helping support this project. So for conservation restrictions, there needs to be a holder of it. And as much as I tried to commit myself to all things City of Medford, I can't do that. So we're here at this board tonight to ask if you would be willing to entertain being the conservation restriction holder for this land?
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: It was just as them, there's a possibility of having two, a primary and a secondary. So the state has a template for these conservation restrictions, and we use that template for the Malden land and with some modifications. So a very similar form would need to be approved by the state when you do a conservation restriction. And so, yeah, their standard template allows two grantees. So they like having two because then you have your primary and your backup. So a lot of times the conservation commission in the template will be the primary, the secondary, and another entity would be the other one.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay, thank you for that clarification. So we'd be asking the Conservation Commission to be the primary holder of the conservation restriction. Tufts would remain, Tufts and Acadia Healthcare would remain the property owner here. They would just be voluntarily entering into this restriction, maintaining ownership of the property, and then looking for, the Friends of Feldsmere Heights would be looking for the Conservation Commission to Essentially, as a holder of a restriction, you would be the primary enforcement officer on any shenanigans that happen up there, or you're generally just kind of keeping an eye on, hey, we conserved this piece of land and it's still being conserved as it's originally intended. So we're here tonight to answer any additional questions, talk a little bit more about the process. I'm happy to bring up some visuals to support the conversation here, but I'll pause to see if there's any initial questions that I might be able to address.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you. I guess just curious looking at past conservation restrictions in your minds at this time, what would be the conservation values that would be espoused by the restrictions? Is it open space? Is it public access? That sort of thing.
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: When we were looking at the land because of the wetland setbacks and the wetland overlay that's on the land, it would seem that it would be appropriate to have it protected as habitat. So we're not clear what the Conservation Commission Sees as part of that, which would potentially be something that you'd want to have open for a trail or something. But my understanding is it's pretty hard to access. There's some rocks on the northern side. There's wetland areas on the southern end of 47 Grover Road.
So there's no curb. People do park along the Grover Road. There's not really any clear delineation of where the property is, so there needs to be some marking out of the area. But right now, the City of Malden is still working out an easement between the land they purchased and what would be the ring road in that picture. Murray Street is the old name of the road that was there when the hospital was still there. It's really not a street there anymore. But the Lund Road is like an extension. There's a little entryway across the land. So as part of this process, the city probably would also want to negotiate a public access easement. on that little strip of road, as well as the conservation easement.
[Theresa Dupont]: And just to address that, I have started bubbling up some conversations with very important people in the city to start those conversations.
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: Oh, another thing that's noteworthy on the northern part, my understanding is there's a culvert, there's a stream, the whole area of Fulton Heights used to be swampland that was filled in to create that residential development, so there's still a lot of water features underneath, so the drainage in the riparian corridor It's not clear whether the Conservation Commission would want to modify any of that culverts to improve habitat as part of this process or not. That might be a subsequent thing or at least something to consider as part of the conservation restriction discussion.
[SPEAKER_05]: I suspect as a baseline, it would be informative for the commission to have any resource areas within the CR delineated. I don't know if that has been done at some point in time, but having an up-to-date delineation of resource areas within the area to be subject of the conservation restriction would be an important baseline.
[SPEAKER_02]: Understood.
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: I did see and took a little picture with my old phone many years ago of the delineation on one of the maps at City Hall. So I know a map, I don't know if it's been updated in these many years, but there is a delineation in the files.
[Heather]: Are we talking about the Conservation Commission's files, City of Medford files?
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: It was this, I think it was in, it was back in the day, it was energy and environment.
[Heather]: Okay.
[Denis MacDougall]: Probably next. I mean, there has been work done in this area behind houses and things like that. So it's just a matter of finding the old files because we go back a certain, you know, I've been here since 2013. So I know where things are from like 2010 going forward. Anything after that, it's a little less hard to find, but. But I think, honestly, getting it delineated would probably be a good move anyway, just to sort of, that way we have exactly what we have there.
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: Yeah, I think it'd be good to have someone with an eye to the conservation, to at least do a walk around. Yeah.
[Denis MacDougall]: I think that'd be a good idea anyway, just to our, I mean, our chair who isn't here tonight is, Well, it's not. So I think like, you know, and maybe just getting the whole commission up there for a walkthrough might be sort of helpful because, you know, just even without the full delineation, you know, just sort of picking out, okay, that's, those are wetland plants here. Here's, you know, I think that would be maybe our next step is to sort of, you know, if it is to sort of just do a site visit and
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: There's sort of a parallel effort because the timeline for the Community Preservation Committee and the deadlines for application. When you do a conservation restriction, there's a parallel document that's the baseline report that documents all the conservation values that are going to be, you know, are being preserved. So that would be developed alongside after we get, you know, when the funds to complete, you know, whatever legal and surveying and whatever costs need to be done to complete the conservation restriction. So the main thing, I think, for the discussion tonight is just determining whether there's a willingness to be part of the being an applicant for the end of MBE, try to help work with finding a way to talk with Melrose Wakefield slash Tufts Medicine, because just to correct things in the drop file, it says 47 Grover Road on a file from 2026. That's actually 100 Hospital Road that was purchased by the combined entity of Tufts Acadia for the new hospital. That's not 47 Grover Road. That happened in February. And so there's a lien from January on the 47 Grover Road still showing it as being owned by Melrose-Wakefield, which is essentially Tufts Medicine. So just to be clear that in the documents in the file, when you're looking at it, don't get confused that the land has already been sold to somebody else.
[Craig Drennan]: Dennis, as an administrative note, we just lost Jess. Do we still have the quorum we need to continue this discussion?
[Denis MacDougall]: We can still continue it. We just can't do any voting, but I don't think, I think for something like this, I think between, I'm just sort of going between this meeting and the prior meeting. I mean, I don't want to speak for everyone, but I think we did have a agreement to move forward with this. So I don't think that's speaking on, I mean, we literally couldn't vote on, but I don't think we'd be voting on it anyway. I think it was what really, you know, Stephen Cameron, what you're sort of looking for is, you know, us saying we're willing to be, you know, the partner and, but I think, you know, I mean, given the previous meeting and this meeting, I think we have that. And, uh, you know, to be fair,
The person actually doing all that would be me. And, you know, for the most part, like, you know, the, the, the day to day. I mean, if something happens, I would, of course, let you all know, but, you know, for just in terms of, I know part of this is, you know, you have to just do periodic checks on the area. You know, that would pretty much fall to me. You know, I think there's. I can't remember how often they have to do like a report of sorts, just an update, you know, to provide to the state, you know, that would be me or my successor, you know, many years down the line. So I think speaking along those, following that track to its end, I think, you know, I think if given that you're sort of looking for, you know, I think we can go ahead with that.
[Heather]: There was definitely a consensus at the last meeting to be supportive of this. And there's still a number of steps. I mean, basically you just want to move forward in your timeline so you can keep it moving if I wreck Steven, right?
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: Yeah, we have to finish the key item unless there's some extensions or something that in the application is determining which of us are going to be co-applicants. Not to steal your thunder, Teresa, but who's going to be primary and secondary. I think it makes most sense in this situation for the Conservation Commission to be primary. And then there's the backup. The reason why they like the combination, because you don't know what happens in the future, but it's nice to have another entity in case some friendly whatever wants to get around the conservation easement with the city, because there's a financial benefit to the city to let the conservation restriction be converted. So it's good to have two.
But then we need to get the contact for a letter of intent. with or uh for what you called Teresa for the application that they're giving approval for the project to go forward if they're funded.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah that's correct yeah we just need a permission from the various entities so sounds like we have um I don't want to speak for anybody here but it sounds like that we have support from the conservation commission which is kind of step one of all this so we would proceed next with Tufts and coming to the CPC for the funding to draft up all this legal, we'll have lawyers involved. And this is probably going to be a 12 month project from time we actually can move forward with it, because of like the state review period and everything. So you guys will be bored with seeing us, I'm sure at some point, because we'll come back several more times on this to the board.
[Craig Drennan]: Sitting through the last presentation about invasive species removal and ecosystem creation, it's a good kind of set of projects for tonight's meeting. It's got the creative juices flowing.
[Heather]: Yeah, glad to hear that. And we're looking at a piece of land that quite honestly is would, as I'm sure, caught the eye of many people who can see a lot of money to be made in and off this property. So the time is now.
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: Actually, it's a little late, but yeah.
[Heather]: I would have liked it at the earlier stage. I think we were involved with that as well.
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: Yeah.
[Heather]: So where do we go from here, folks?
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: I guess we would need to, I guess, Teresa, we just need to figure out who would be the people that would necessarily work on making, giving you what you need for the next steps.
[Theresa Dupont]: The next step for CPA would be an application write up, which I'm happy to assist with that. I tend to help folks out with writing applications, especially since this one's a little, you know, it's not clear cut. You know, it's not DPW asking for money for a park. friends ask friends of those mere asking the Conservation Commission to be the official working on this. So for next steps, an applicant CPA application, which applications are do I believe it is September 10th or 11th.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yep. Thank you. So we do have some time on that one. And again, I can certainly help with writing the application. Dennis, when is Remind me of the cadence of conservation commission meetings.
[Denis MacDougall]: As a rule, first and third Wednesdays of the month. But we, you know, can meet, you know, ad hoc, you know, on the off, you know, like we met last Wednesday. So like, ideally though, the members usually like sort of mark out the first and third in their calendars. And then, but then after that, it's sort of, you know, so we can, So our next schedule would be the 19th. I'm actually going to be away, but I could, we could, I could, but you know, since we only have three hours, we couldn't really pick a time anyway. So I think that would be just sort of getting, you know, sort of talk to you about, you know, if you need us to like meet and just actually have a formal vote or something.
[Heather]: Does there need, Teresa, to be a letter from the owner of the land?
[Theresa Dupont]: That would be something, yeah, that we would also need to work on in conjunction with. In terms of the application, that would be the next deadline. We can continue working on a Tufts official written, yes, we bless this, in tandem with that.
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: Does that letter need to appear before the 11th?
[Theresa Dupont]: It would be ideal, but I would say it would need to be in hand before you present to the CPC. So that would be either October or November. So again, we can book you for November to add some more time if we need it.
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: So, but again- I don't want to buy time to the rope. So I think that, yeah, it's just a question of who may have connections with the appropriate people through Lawrence Memorial or otherwise.
[Theresa Dupont]: And I have worked on that. I reached out to Councilor Linehan over in Malden, who was kind enough to share some contact information. So I'm just trying to hone down exactly a person, but yeah, we'll take that conversation offline, but we've got that in the works. But I ask about when you're paid in some meetings, because I think it would be ideal to have you all review the CPA application before the deadline. So if you guys are meeting, it sounds like potentially September 2nd,
That would be ideal if we could add that as an agenda item just to have your eyes on it and blessings.
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: So that means that Dennis and us, the friends could, without violating quorum, could work with you on that before it's presented?
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, absolutely. Yep, that's administrative stuff. We would just, I think it would be a nice courtesy. this board, please tell me if you feel differently, but I think it would be a nice courtesy to have y'all review it as a board before it goes through for submission.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and I apologize for compressing your schedule, but would you be able to share a draft of the application, say, a week before that September 2nd hearing? That way we can have a more fulsome conversation about it at the hearing, I think, probably be more productive for everyone.
[Theresa Dupont]: That sounds great. So I will have a draft to y'all no later than August 26, which is one week prior to that meeting.
[B5fALLGbAKg_SPEAKER_20]: Thank you. Thank you so much.
[Theresa Dupont]: Of course. I'm a grant person, so I can write those all day long. Anybody needs narrative writing, I'm your girl.
[Heather]: Well, thank you.
[Theresa Dupont]: Well, thank you. I really appreciate your willingness to partner on this. It's a good project, helps conserve our open space and maintains this wonderful asset for the both Medford and Melbourne communities. So thank you. Thank you.
[Denis MacDougall]: So I guess we can still make a motion to adjourn.
[Craig Drennan]: I'll second that. All in favor, say aye. Aye.
[SPEAKER_05]: Aye.
[Heather]: And thank you, Eric, for an excellent meeting.
[Denis MacDougall]: Well, thank you. I appreciate the help. Good job. Can't wait for Heather to get back. So I will, and then we, just for those of you who aren't here, since we only have three, just about if we want to meet on regulations at a certain point as well, I can send, I'll send out an email tomorrow just to everyone and sort of give them an update of when we're going to meet on the second and update on this. And then say if anyone wants to meet in the interim, here's my schedule. Yeah.
[Craig Drennan]: Do you see anything in the forecast for our regularly scheduled on the 19th? No, I do not.
[Denis MacDougall]: I think we're good, actually. I'm going to be actually away on the 19th. So, I mean, if you all want to meet without me, you are more than welcome to. I mean, I could actually dial in from London. I'll just land at about two hours prior. So, and I'll be You'll be useless if you just landed two hours before. A little bit, yeah. Well, I'm doing like, I'm leaving at 7 a.m., getting there at 7 p.m., so it's a good way to go, but it's a long day. But I'll probably just be checking into the hotel at that point, so.
[Heather]: Are we done then? I think so.
[Denis MacDougall]: So I think, so yeah, but I mean, so when I sent out the message to Laura, maybe I could say, maybe we could do the 26 anyway. And then, you know, if people want to do that, since we don't have any other filings coming in, so.
[Heather]: Okay. And the second we're definitely on.
[Denis MacDougall]: Yes. Yep. Oh, I almost said end meeting too quick. I clicked on it and I almost double clicked. So that would have been very rude of myself. So, but so having said that, good night y'all. Thank you very much. Bye.