Conservation Commission Extends Commercial Street Bridge Permit, Clears Two Compliance Certificates

WEYMOUTH — October 25, 2022 — Weymouth Conservation Commission unanimously extended the order of conditions for the long-delayed Commercial Street Bridge project and cleared compliance certificates for two residential properties at its October 25 meeting. Town Engineer James Donovan told the commission that the bridge project, originally permitted in 2018, went to bid in April 2020 but bids exceeded available funding, triggering the latest one-year extension to November 13, 2023; the town hopes to re-bid in spring 2023 with construction to follow that summer and fall. The commission also granted certificates of compliance to Joseph Nagel at 67 Heather Lane and Timothy Thilworth at 34 Moreland Road after staff confirmed both sites met all special conditions. In the most complex item of the evening, the board authorized staff to issue a partial certificate of compliance for the Weymouth Club's parking lot expansion after hearing that a 2,700-square-foot wetland replication area has lost most of its original plantings to flooding and phragmites, with a new planting plan of roughly 70 flood-tolerant specimens scheduled for spring 2023. Staff separately reported awarding a contract to SLR Consulting for the next phase of snub dam removal design and submitting a $2,755 grant application for an environmental DNA brook trout survey of the Old Swamp River.