Arlington Conservation Commission Approves 66 Dudley Street Restoration Plan 4-0

ARLINGTON -- April 2, 2026, Arlington Conservation Commission advances long-running Dudley Street enforcement order with unanimous vote. The commission voted 4-0 at its April 2 remote meeting to accept a revised restoration and planting plan for 66 Dudley Street, authorizing Conservation Agent David Morgan to finalize a maintenance agreement and rewrite the enforcement order. The plan, presented by engineer Al Gala of Gala Simon and Associates and ecologist Nicole Ferrara of LEC Environmental on behalf of property owner Evelyn LaRusso, calls for removing roughly 757 square feet of impervious surface and installing 45 native shrubs across approximately 970 square feet of restored buffer along a shared brook corridor with neighboring 993 Mass Avenue. The commission required at least a three-year maintenance term and directed that the seed mix be sourced from New England-specific ecotypes rather than mid-Atlantic coastal varieties. In a separate discussion, member Brian McBride raised the question of whether the commission could use wetlands enforcement authority against the MWRA over combined sewer overflows into Alewife Brook, with Morgan calling the option legally complex and "kind of a nuclear option" given that the discharges originate from Cambridge and Somerville.