PEABODY — The city’s Conservation Commission will be issuing an enforcement order to Salem Country Club as early as this week in response to a Jan. 30 violation order issued to the club and Mayer Tree Service for illegally removing trees within buffer zones in close proximity to jurisdictional resource areas.
“We are drafting it now and the order will go out hopefully by next Tuesday,” Conservation Agent Lucia DelNegro said last Thursday.
Representatives of the club appeared in front of the commission at a public hearing the previous evening with the meeting becoming contentious on several occasions.
Prior to removing the trees, the club got permission from the commission to remove certain trees in non-jurisdictional areas in connection with a $3.5 million course-renovation project the club began last fall.
The club ended up cutting down 450 trees along with another 233 within jurisdictional areas. At no time did the club give notice to the commission of its plans to engage in massive tree-clearing.
After being issued the violation notice, club representatives admitted to removing approximately 685 trees at a March 23 public hearing.
“The fact that the country club came to us for 20 trees and cut down 700 is very distressing to the Conservation Commission because… conservation is everyone’s business,” Commission Chairman Stewart Lazares said. “Yeah, there’s a million more trees but these trees, we didn’t give anyone permission to take them down and you guys didn’t ask us about more than 20 trees. It’s not the only time this has happened.”
Lazares noted that the club took trees down for a parking lot in 2017 and didn’t tell the commission.
“You guys did take advantage and didn’t tell us that you were taking down more trees,” Lazares said. “I don’t want you guys to do this again. Just tell us what you’re doing.”
When the discussion turned to the club’s ongoing course maintenance, Commission Vice Chair Michael Rizzo said he didn’t “remember allowing Salem Country Club to remove materials” in the course of regular maintenance.
Club attorney Barry Fogel responded that the club wanted to remove debris “to maintain safety for players.”
When pressed by Lazares, Fogel said the only debris that had been cleaned up was on the third hole.
That response didn’t sit well with Lazares.
“You guys took down a ton of trees and you tell anybody about it?” he asked. “Doing this is criminal. We need to get out there again.”
Rizzo agreed.
“I don’t trust you guys, he said. “We need to get out there as soon as we can.”
Lazares said he wants to see a restoration plan complete with a timeline to see how many trees need to be restored in the jurisdictional areas along with regular site visits every three months to monitor compliance.
“I want to see the trees growing,” Lazares said. “I’m concerned and I’m angry and I’m nervous about when we’re not out there, what you guys are doing. I don’t trust you.”
The commission passed a motion to retain an independent engineering consultant to assist them on any proposed mitigation and requirements for the restoration plan and what the restoration plan will include. The country club will bear the cost for that peer review.
The commission also scheduled a site visit to the country club on April 25 to see the damage done with the tree removal in the jurisdictional areas. DelNegro and Fogel sparred over whether the visit would be open to the public with Lazares pressuring DelNegro to declare the visit off limits to the public.
“The club is inviting the commission; this is not a public site visit,” Fogel said after DelNegro said she planned to post the visit publicly.
“I am doing my job,” DelNegro said. “By law I have to post it.”
Fogel pushed back, saying, “This will not be a site walk that the press is invited to.”
At a March site visit, the club barred the public, including members of the media, from participating.
During its April 14 meeting, the City Council discussed the matter and voted unanimously to ask City Solicitor Donald Conn to provide a legal opinion as to whether or not the club has the right to bar the commission from conducting a public hearing during the April 25 site visit.
DelNegro said that she observed other evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the club in connection with bank work on a body of water adjacent to what appeared to be a new tee on the second hole.
“I would like to know more about this as it’s not only tree removal we are talking about,” she said. “In the case of the bank, they knew it was jurisdictional wetlands.”
“Realistically you guys are not our favorite people,” said Lazares. “We need to go out there and see the course, make a plan and give you some guidance and be involved in this business so we know what’s happening.”
This topic will be on the agenda for the commission’s next meeting on May 11.