On September 3, the City Council’s Public Facilities Committee voted unanimously to authorize a peer review of a request by local developer Betsy Harper for a main drain extension on Newton Centre’s Chapin Road — a project that, if implemented, would open up new land for development.
It’s the latest step in a controversial process that began in 2023, when the City’s Board of Survey approved the subdivision of two lots at 132 Homer Street. Harper, their current owner, is working to prepare them for construction.
Throughout that process, however, property abutters and Chapin Road residents have raised significant concerns: Many worry that Harper’s project will make heavy flooding — an issue they’ve grappled with for decades — even worse.
Further complicating the issue, dueling engineering reports — each of which draw different conclusions about the merits of Harper’s proposal — have made it more difficult for the Council to come to a decision on the request.
The Subdivision
The story of the Chapin Road project begins with the 2023 property subdivision. Public records show that the subdivision’s approval came with strings attached. It was contingent on five City ordinance waivers — related to curvature and minimum widths of streets, cul-de-sac diameters, and sidewalk construction — all of which have since been issued.
An August 10 petition with 41 signatures addressed to the Newton City Council stated that Chapin Road residents and abutters had concerns about the approval process for the subdivision, including the ordinance waivers.
“The subdivision was approved with very little public visibility. Only four abutters were notified of the initial Board of Survey meeting. Two of them were in long-term care facilities,” the petition reads in part. “City engineers supported granting waivers to allow the subdivision to proceed, even waiving full sidewalk construction to reduce stormwater runoff.”
The subdivision was located on a site with a high water table — less than two feet below the surface — that could not infiltrate water. Therefore, an additional contingency was added during the approval process: The developer of the two lots would be required to put in place a stormwater management plan, which would include an extension of the municipal drain down Chapin Road by 500 feet.
The Project Begins
Harper — the current owner of the two lots — has, by her own account, professional experience that differs significantly from that of mainstream developers. She specializes in eco-friendly development, having previously transformed a historic Victorian home in Cambridge into an ultra-energy efficient “Passive House.”
“I am actually not a developer, per se. I am somebody who is very interested in high-performance buildings,” Harper said. “That whole philosophy and method of building that I’ve done has been to …bring nature into the house as well as have homeowners respond to nature by getting out of the house.”
Harper purchased the two lots, drawn to their “privacy and the beauty,” intending them to be the site of her next energy-efficient project. She had originally planned to build a new home for herself and her husband on one of the lots; the other would be for another “Passive House.”
Ultimately, she chose to do things differently.
“We decided that, as stewards of the Earth, we were going to do a much better job than anybody else would ever do in renovating and restoring the old house that we [currently] have, built in 1892,” she said. “So, we did a deep energy retrofit on that house instead of deciding to move and build a new house at this time.”
Harper began moving forward with the process of selling her recently acquired property, while also starting the process of preparing the land for development.
Harper said that managing stormwater on the property appropriately is important to her.
“Stormwater has become a much bigger issue for the City and for all cities and towns, because we have just a huge installed housing stock that has no capabilities of removing their storm water,” she said. “That is going into the City stormwater drains, so we want to minimize as much as possible what goes in there.”
The Stormwater Issue
Harper said that her proposed drain extension would be a standard 12” pipe connected to the end of the current City pipe.
To Harper, it should be something “of no controversy. …[There’s] nothing special about that pipe and absolutely no risk to the properties on the road, and it’s a benefit — [neighbors] can tap into that pipe if they choose to.”
But to residents, the drain extension is just one piece of a larger puzzle. According to Chapin Road resident Ingrid Schroffner, Harper’s stormwater management plan as a whole will have serious consequences for the rest of the neighborhood.
“The broader development plan requires regrading the site so as to cause stormwater runoff to flow into the municipal drainage system and onto private property,” she said. “The public road has a long history of surface flooding. The neighborhood has a long history of basement flooding. Funneling more water into the problem area is a bad idea.”
Schroffner is part of a group of at least 11 households expressing concerns about Harper’s plan. They’ve attended and spoken at multiple Public Facilities Committee meetings, reached out to City Councilors, and hired a lawyer and an engineer.
Schroffner said that the approval process for the drain extension might be the only opportunity for residents to voice concerns about what they see as a larger stormwater issue, so they’re speaking up now.
“As I understand it, after the drain extension is approved, the developer would then need to get approval for a stormwater management plan, and that approval is required in order to get a building permit. That sequence of events might make sense with ordinary building sites, but this site has such a high water table, and is so obviously flawed from a stormwater management standpoint, that the developer may not be able to come up with a plan that complies with state and local requirements,” she said. “That’s why the City Council needs to look at this project holistically and not with tunnel vision focused on the drain application alone.”
Chapin Road resident Raphael Bruckner voiced a similar perspective, saying that it is important for the City Council to have an understanding of a larger issue at play before coming to a decision on the drain extension.
“We fear this arrangement — a developer who is substantially out-of-pocket for public works spending, who is then applying for approval of the stormwater management plan for their flood prone lots — creates a situation where the City cannot deny the developer’s application, though the application may not meet the requirements of the stormwater ordinance,” he said. “That is why we are arguing that the City Council needs to understand the full stormwater issue now and make a decision based on a holistic analysis.”
On August 4, Dennis Murphy, the neighbors’ lawyer, submitted a memo to the City Council, taking the position that the stormwater management plan for the property subdivision “does not comply with at least half of the objectives” of the Stormwater Rules and Regulations in the City’s Stormwater Ordinance.
Additionally, an April 30 report by engineer John Chessia — whom a group of neighbors hired to evaluate Harper’s stormwater management plan — expressed a variety of concerns. According to Murphy, the report concluded that “[Harper’s] application lacks critical information, the drainage calculations reflect ‘a fatal flaw,’ and excess runoff will flow onto their abutting properties, resulting in a ‘significant impact’ to those properties.”
Harper said that she is working to implement a solution that meets everyone’s needs.
“We’ve made changes to be responsive to some neighborhood concerns and make the plan better,” she said. “We think that the neighborhood and I are very much aligned in having the same objective — that we need to have a robust system that works.”
Those changes, Harper said, include the addition of two “catch basins,” which she said will capture stormwater, preventing it from sitting on the street. Additionally, she plans to add granite curbing to two existing catch basins, which she said will prevent debris from blocking the flow of water through them.
However, Natalie Noonan — who owns property abutting Harper’s lots, but not on Chapin Road — said that the changes won’t protect her property from flooding. Part of Harper’s development plan involves elevating the two lots, and Noonan said that this could be especially damaging to her property.
“This drain extension and the associated catch basins will not help with any runoff from the development that will be diverted onto our property,” she said. “The proposed plan has 3-5 feet of fill added to elevate the site, so that our property will now be downhill and one of the new low points. The drain extension will not help to drain any of that water.”
Harper also said that the drain extension would be a “public benefit” that neighbors could choose to connect their homes to.
Schroffner said that she isn’t sure she sees a public benefit.
“Assuming it would actually help, each homeowner would have to pay in the $30,000 range, maybe even more, to actually take advantage of that feature,” she said. “That would be the cost of digging up our front lawns to make it happen. We would end up with manhole covers on our front lawns where the sump pump discharge pipe meets the stub. It would do nothing to improve the situation for the residents on Stafford Road, which merges into Chapin Road and has the same water problems. And all that assumes the development project does not alter the water table in a way that causes more water to flow into our basements than the pumps can remove.”
The City Council responds
With Harper’s team and the neighbors’ engineer presenting two different narratives, the Public Facilities Committee was initially divided on the drain extension proposal.
On July 28, the proposal narrowly passed in Committee, with 3 votes in favor, 2 against, and 1 abstention. When the proposal was sent to the City Council for a final vote, the Council sent it back to the Public Facilities Committee for further discussion.
City Councilor Susan Albright (Ward 2), who chairs the Public Facilities Committee, said that having been presented with conflicting reports, the Committee wanted to hire a peer reviewer to get a clearer picture of the issue.
“What occurred to many of us on the Committee was that we had dueling engineer reports saying opposite things and that we needed some clarity,” she said. “I served on the Land Use Committee for 12 years, so I know that one of the ways that helps Councilors make decisions is having a peer review.”
City Councilor Andrea Kelley (Ward 3), who serves on the Public Facilities Committee, said that it is important for the Committee to consider larger issues relating to where the water in the Chapin Road area comes from and goes to — particularly in light of the City’s ongoing discussions surrounding the Bullough’s Pond Dam.
“There is a larger watershed issue regarding where the water comes from and where [it] goes that is concerning; however, the Public Facilities Committee has been directed not to consider that as part of this item,” she said. “It is important for the City to think about the goals of the Stormwater Ordinance in tandem with the drain extension as they are related. If this potential development violates the goals of the Stormwater Ordinance, it is highly relevant.”
The project’s status remains in limbo, but Councilor Albright said that depending on the timing of the peer review, the full Council could vote on the question of approval as soon as November.
Theo Younkin is a Fig City News student reporter, a senior at Newton South High School, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the NSHS Lion’s Roar.
