The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My WebLink About20181117 Ver 1_Endangered Species Review_201808091 Peter Galan From:Peter Galan Sent:Wednesday, August 08, 2018 1:26 PM To:'Wells, Emily'; Dailey, Samantha J CIV USARMY CESAW (US) Cc:Suiter, Dale; Brian Johnson Subject:RE: [EXTERNAL] Endangered species review Hi Emily, Thank you for your quick response! We appreciate you taking time to address our project so that we can get the PCN moving forward. If we do come across the woodpecker or its habitat as construction begins, we will certainly get ahold of you as quickly as possible. For your information, the crossing of Pig Basket Creek you noted (and almost all other crossings of perennial streams) will be completed by directional drill. We will cross perennial streams in two locations by open cut, but will take proper mitigative measures at each location (going over the culvert in one case and encasing the water line in steel encasement/having the line installed a minimum of 3’ under the stream in the other). And we will certainly adhere to the final sediment and erosion control plan as approved by the erosion control review office. With a project this big, it’s going to be important to make sure we’re having as little of an impact as possible! Thanks for passing Dale’s contact information along; we’ll get in touch with him in the not‐too‐distant future to get something set up. Again, we appreciate the timeliness of your review. Thanks, Peter Galan, EI Assistant to Project Engineer The Wooten Company 120 North Boylan Avenue Raleigh, NC 27603 p.919.828.0531 f. 919.834.3589 www.thewootencompany.com From: Wells, Emily [mailto:emily_wells@fws.gov] Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2018 11:29 AM To: Peter Galan; Dailey, Samantha J CIV USARMY CESAW (US) Cc: Suiter, Dale Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Endangered species review Hi Peter, Thanks for the additional information. 2 It appears that tree removal and the potential for RCW habitat impact shouldn't be a problem per your description. If anything changes and suitable habitat is encountered or birds are seen then call me ASAP, so we can figure out the next steps. All of the crossings of streams from what I saw on the maps do not drain to Swift Creek, which is one of our most important streams in the area for aquatic species, so that is a good thing. They all seem to drain to Pig Basket Creek or Stony Creek on the south side of Red Oak and Dortches. There are records of state listed species (Notched rainbow) in Pig Basket Creek from 2009, but I am not finding anything since then, or Federal species. There was one crossing of Pig Basket Creek shown on the topo quads and one just upstream of Pig Basket Creek. If the mainstem Pig Basket Creek ends up needing to be open cut or impacted then you might want to check with the state to make sure it won't be an issue. We would certainly encourage strict adherence to sediment and erosion control measures to reduce sedimentation making its way downstream into more sensitive areas. Going above what is required in the features draining directly into Pig Basket Creek would be ideal. Planting the disturbed areas back with native species also should be done. For plants, it was suggested that you all do surveys in suitable potential habitat for Michaux's sumac. This would be non-grassed, but not completely grown up areas that get mowed every 1-4 years. Given the majority of your ROW areas will likely not meet those descriptions, it shouldn't be a lot of actual survey time. You can do the survey now through the fall, so there will not be any hold up for your project in regards to time of year requirements for surveys. I have copied Dale Suiter on this email, who is our plant biologist in the office if you have additional questions about the survey details. Thank you and let me know if our office can provide any more information for this project. ~Emily On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 11:12 AM, Peter Galan <pgalan@thewootencompany.com> wrote: Good morning Emily, Thanks for getting back to me and for your questions. I have provided answers in red below. I have also provided a link to our Sharefile site with the USGS/SCS soils maps showing the approximate installation locations for our water lines. Hopefully this gives you a better idea as to where (in relation to streams etc.) we will be with this project. I have also included the full (95% complete) plan set to answer any other questions that may come up. https://wootencompany.sharefile.com/d‐s63315996c5544c7b Please let me know if you need any further information. Thanks, 3 Peter Galan, EI Assistant to Project Engineer The Wooten Company 120 North Boylan Avenue Raleigh, NC 27603 p.919.828.0531 f. 919.834.3589 www.thewootencompany.com From: Wells, Emily [mailto:emily_wells@fws.gov] Sent: Monday, August 06, 2018 1:04 PM To: Peter Galan Cc: Dailey, Samantha J CIV USARMY CESAW (US) Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Endangered species review Hi Peter, Thank you for the email. I have a few questions that will help me better evaluate your request in regards to T&E species. When you say "installing" what does that mean. Are you open cutting these lines, or directionally drilling/boring these lines? All three methods of installation are proposed – open cut, bore and jack, and horizontal directional drill. This project has ~275,000 LF of water line, diameters ranging from 2” to 12”. Any directional drilling we propose will start and end outside of Zone 2 of the Tar Pamlico Riparian Buffers. The directional drills are separated from the rest of the project sheets into its own series – the sheets starting with C‐7.xx are directional drills (with a couple of places where we modified the installation type from directional drill to open cut). 4 What types of vegetation/trees will be removed for the new areas? There are older records of red-cockaded woodpecker nearby so if large pines are proposed for removal then we might want to discuss that potential as well. The general answer is that we are NOT proposing to have any trees removed in the project corridor. Minor clearing and grubbing may be necessary, especially where we are outside of the ROW, but this should be minimal and only in a few locations. See bullets below for more detail: • The majority of the project is inside the existing maintained ROW. The hope (and, after driving through the project corridor, the reality for most, if not all of the project) is that there are no large trees in the existing ROW that will need to be removed. There may be cases where a contractor cannot work around a tree in or near the ROW and may have to impact said tree; however, we are NOT proposing for any trees to be removed in the ROW itself. • There is one location where we are proposing to acquire a full 10‐foot permanent easement (Sheet C‐7.09). We are NOT proposing to remove any trees for this location either, but again, contractors may discover that removing one or more trees would be necessary to complete the installation. • All other areas outside the existing ROW are partial 10‐foot widths of new permanent easement. There are places where we will have to purchase, for example, a 4‐foot‐wide easement to maintain a full 10‐foot maintenance corridor. But again, tree removal is NOT proposed in our plans. Will there be streams/wetlands crossed (I am guessing this is the reason for NWP), and if so which ones and how are they proposed for crossing. We are crossing both intermittent and perennial streams in this project. Minimal (if any) wetlands will be crossed. Each of the intermittent streams that are proposed for crossing currently run through drainage culverts; we will cross those by open cut – these crossings will be either over top of, underneath of, or around the end of the culvert, depending on the conditions (i.e. depth of cover). Most perennial streams we cross will be completed by horizontal directional drill, with the drill beginning and ending outside of Zone 2 for the Tar Pamlico riparian buffers. There are two instances where we cross perennial streams by open cut (Sheets C‐7.06 and C‐7.09). The crossing on C‐7.06 is of a culvert, while the crossing on C‐7.09 is of an open stream; the crossing on C‐7.09 will be crossed by bore‐and‐jack with a PVC pipe inside steel encasement. We also have some aquatic species in that area, so if you have a map that overlays the project area with a topographic map or something showing the waterways that will be crossed that would be helpful as well. The general project layout map doesn't easily show the streams or water features, so that would be easier to review on one map vs back and forth comparing on multiple maps. See the link provided above for USGS quad maps and SCS soils maps. I am going to check with our plant biologist about any records in this area for plant species in potential ROW, but how the lines will be installed and the type of clearing and maintaining the areas plays a big part of that discussion as well. Thank you!! Thank you and I will look forward to getting more information to evaluate. 5 ~Emily On Thu, Aug 2, 2018 at 4:24 PM, Peter Galan <pgalan@thewootencompany.com> wrote: Hi Emily, As I indicated in the voice mail I just left you, Sam Dailey with the USACE said I should give you a call to discuss the possibility of endangered species in our project corridor. We are installing ~275,000 LF of water line in Nash County, near Red Oak and Dortches. These lines will be in the NCDOT/county ROW for the majority of the project, with the rest being installed in new permanent utility easement. Sam indicated we should talk because she said there were a couple of species that are prone to growing in the maintained ROWs. I have attached the sheet showing the full extent of the project, so that you have a better idea of where our project is. Please take a look and let me know what (if anything) we will need to include on the PCN. Let me know if you need more information (i.e. all plan sheets for the project rather than just the overview). I am out of the office tomorrow and Monday, but please feel free to respond via email or call and leave a message! Thanks, Peter Galan, EI Assistant to Project Engineer The Wooten Company 120 North Boylan Avenue Raleigh, NC 27603 p.919.828.0531 f. 919.834.3589 www.thewootencompany.com 6 -- Emily Wells USFWS Fish and Wildlife Biologist Raleigh Ecological Services Field Office 551-F Pylon Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27606 Office # 919-856-4520 x25 Fax # 919-856-4556 Mailing Address: P.O. Box 33726 Raleigh, North Carolina 27636-3726 NOTE: This email correspondence and any attachments to and from this sender is subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and may be disclosed to third parties. -- Emily Wells USFWS Fish and Wildlife Biologist 7 Raleigh Ecological Services Field Office 551-F Pylon Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27606 Office # 919-856-4520 x25 Fax # 919-856-4556 Mailing Address: P.O. Box 33726 Raleigh, North Carolina 27636-3726 NOTE: This email correspondence and any attachments to and from this sender is subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and may be disclosed to third parties.