First Test of Milford's $1,000-a-Day Wetlands Fine: Christopher Saley's LLC Pays Nothing — So Far

The owners of 674 Naugatuck Avenue blew past the June 7 deadline for a professional inspection report. Wednesday night, the agency gave them until June 16 — and the new fine authority was never discussed.

MILFORD — Milford's Inland Wetlands Agency voted unanimously Wednesday night to uphold its violation order against 0674 Naugatuck Ave LLC, the private company co-owned by city Public Works Director Christopher Saley — but softened the order's requirements and set a new deadline after the owners missed the original one.

The special show-cause hearing, held via Zoom, was the first enforcement proceeding since the Board of Aldermen adopted an ordinance on June 1 authorizing fines of up to $1,000 per day for inland wetlands violations. The word "fine" was never spoken. No commissioner raised the new fine authority, and none was imposed.

Instead, the agency's action came down to this: the violation stands, the owners get six more days to produce the professional report the city ordered them to submit by June 7, and the second row of silt fencing the order originally required can be skipped — as long as an engineer or wetland scientist certifies the single row now in place is doing the job.

A Missed Deadline

Wetlands Compliance Officer MaryRose Palumbo opened the hearing by walking the agency through the formal order, issued June 4 to Saley, Richard Jurzyk Jr., and Francis Basile as the LLC's owners. Violation IWC 26-004 — listed on the agenda as 26-005, an error alternate member Warren "Buddy" Field flagged and Palumbo confirmed as a scrivener's mistake — cited the deposition of soil within 100 feet of a wetland in the Housatonic River watershed without a permit.

The order required the owners to cease all work in the regulated area, install a double row of sedimentation and erosion controls per the site plan prepared by CT Civil Group, and have the controls inspected by the project engineer or a professional wetland scientist, with a report submitted to the agency before rain expected the weekend of June 7.

Palumbo said Saley hand-signed a copy of the order on Thursday afternoon, and that it was also sent by certified mail and email.

The weekend came and went without the report. Palumbo's June 9 site inspection found that a single row of silt fencing had been installed and properly buried — fencing she had described a week earlier as stretched and ineffective — along with a newly dug "plunge pool" roughly 12 by 15 feet and two to three feet deep, positioned to catch runoff before it reaches the fence. But the double row was not installed, and no professional had certified any of it.

"That's My — I Own That"

Saley, addressing the agency, said the missed deadline was a misunderstanding on his part. He said he believed the agency planned to visit the site together with the project engineer, and that he thought the next proceeding was the agency's June 17 regular meeting.

"I misunderstood that. So that's my — I own that," Saley said.

He told the agency he had already texted the project's engineer of record, Ron Wassmer of CT Civil Group — the Milford firm that prepared the site's erosion control plan — and expected to meet him at the property as soon as Thursday.

Chairman Brendan Magnan, who was absent from the June 3 meeting where the violation first surfaced, presided Wednesday and said at the outset that he had listened to the recording of that meeting and been briefed on the correspondence. He told Saley that site walks are not the agency's standard protocol for violations.

"What we expect with any of these violations is that the property owners remediate the issue and show evidence of that through an expert," Magnan said. "We want to make sure we treat you just as everyone else is treated."

The Fill Dispute

The sharpest exchange of the night centered on a question Palumbo said the agency cannot answer from photographs alone: whether fill material was brought onto the property.

Palumbo presented aerial photography from the city's Nearmap system showing the site undisturbed last September, then showing downspouts removed, new sidewalk, and grade changes along the building by this spring. She told the agency that a wetland scientist can verify whether silt fencing is installed correctly, but cannot determine whether the cuts and fills on the site balance. "If the agency has a question about whether fill was brought into the site or not, an engineer could use his tools to show that to us," she said.

Saley was emphatic that the piles of material visible in the city's photographs came from on-site excavation for stormwater infiltration chambers — not from imported fill. The only material brought in, he said, was roughly 100 yards of clean stone required by United Illuminating for a transformer pad.

"There was not one speck of dirt ever went into that wetlands," Saley told the agency. "I'm willing to testify under oath. I'm not going to perjure myself over a few piles of dirt."

He also disputed the suggestion that site work damaged a partially toppled oak tree visible in inspection photos, saying the tree had been leaning for a long time and that two other trees fell in a storm roughly two months ago.

What the Agency Decided

Commissioner Nick Ricci moved to uphold the violation with modifications, seconded by Vice-Chairman Matthew Connors — who chaired the June 3 meeting in Magnan's absence. The final motion upheld order IWC 26-004 and modified it to require the owners to submit a sedimentation and erosion controls inspection report from their engineer or a professional wetland scientist by June 16, one day before the agency's next regular meeting.

Commissioner Scott Marlow then raised the unresolved question hanging over the original order: the second row of silt fence. His amendment, seconded by Julie Valvo, provides that the second row need not be installed so long as the professional certifies the existing controls are effective. Magnan framed the reasoning plainly: the original order demanded two rows and only one was installed, so the record needs the expert to acknowledge that one is sufficient.

Both the amendment and the amended motion passed unanimously on roll call votes, with Field and Raymond Gradwell designated as the evening's alternates and Field voting.

Before adjournment, Magnan issued one more instruction to the owners: no further activity on the site until the violation is resolved and a permit is granted, if one is. The LLC's underlying permit application, IW-26-0038, remains pending and will be taken up separately — a situation Magnan acknowledged is unusual. The agency, he said, has never before had an open permit application and an active violation on the same site at the same time.

"We'll get this resolved as quickly as possible," Saley said before the meeting adjourned.

What Happens Next

The inspection report is due June 16. If it satisfies the agency, commissioners could vote to release the violation at the June 17 regular meeting and proceed to the permit application — the path Magnan repeatedly urged: close the violation first, then take up the permit.

Whether any fine will ever attach to the violation remains an open question. The June 1 ordinance places fine authority with the city's inland wetlands enforcement officer through a citation process, separate from the agency's order. As of Wednesday night, no citation or fine had been announced.

The Milford Times' previously reported questions to the city — whether Saley made any disclosure of his interest in the LLC under Section 2-27 of Milford's Code of Ethics, which requires officials and employees to publicly disclose any financial interest in a transaction with a city public body, and whether the city has any recusal policy for department heads with business before city agencies — remain unanswered.

The Inland Wetlands Agency's next regular meeting is June 17.