ROTE — Land development plans were signed after a lengthy discussion in Lamar Township.

Engineer Dennis Norman was visibly frustrated over the postponement of signage of land development plans for Jonas Esh’s dairy barn during Tuesday’s supervisors meeting.

The plans are for a water drainage system that were proposed in January and have been put off over 60 days from a conditional approval by Lamar Township Supervisors in March. They came in front of the planning commission in February. A lengthy back and forth discussion between Norman and supervisors took up a major chunk of the board’s regular meeting.

The delay in signage by the supervisors was due to late comments from the township’s engineer, Randy Webster. However, the supervisors mentioned Webster is behind schedule due to recently losing an engineer.

Norman brought forth two areas of concerns that Webster had in a letter. One was where the barn’s manure would be going.

“The plan’s signage has been put off due to concerns of where the manure is going to be stored and how it’s going to be stored,” Norman said.

He added those concerns did not belong in land development. The other issue was where the water runoff will go.

“We are capturing all of the runoff from the roof of the dairy barn. I am doing it in a four foot deep trench all the way around the dairy barn,” he said.

There will be an eight inch polyethylene, solid, corrugated drainage pipe that will go into a four feet deep stone trench. The trench will be below frost level.

“The water goes in the downspouts and goes into that pipe and collects that. Everything that goes into that pipe at that point is either running off the roof… or it’s going through a filter fabric that’s around the stone. From there it goes down to suitable soils, going down into an infiltration trench,” Norman said.

Any gutters with overflowing water that will come off the roof will all go into the eight inch diameter pipe down the hill, he said. The pipe will have a 20 foot radius bend with various slopes. It will stay underground, “never to see the light of day again,” according to Norman.

Webster suggested wherever it changes in slope/direction, there should be an inlet box and use flatter slopes. Norman added there would be a total of seven inlet boxes at various depths via recommendation by Webster. However, Norman stressed it is not a storm sewer system which would require inlet boxes. It is just for water, he said.

“It would be about $30,000 for the inlet boxes. What I’m saying is, this is a dairy barn. We are taking all of the water off of the roof and I am putting it into an eight inch corrugated pipe. There is no sediment going into it — it’ll get there,” Norman said.

He continued saying that they do not need to spend $30,000 for a dairy barn. The barn has already been built and just the drainage system needs to be installed, according to Norman.

Webster made his comments regarding the plans in February. They were then sent to Norman.

The necessary changes to the plans were made, fixing the issues Webster had, according to Norman. However, comments on the resubmitted plans did not reach him until April 27’s canceled planning commission meeting.

“The last comment I received from your engineer via email a few days ago, a week ago. And he still, from his comments 70 some days prior to that, he still had a couple of items which I have detailed in the letter,” Norman said.

The planning commission did not have a problem with the plans, according to the commission’s secretary, Esther Galentine.

“When we reviewed the plans, everything was good,” she said.

Supervisor Dan Chappell did not disagree with what Norman was saying. However, due to the township having other projects with disagreements between engineers, he did not feel “comfortable” with approving the plans.

“I don’t disagree with what Mr. Norman said. However, we have a couple other projects that our engineer does not agree with their engineer and we’re not approving it. My problem with it is, that we say ‘okay’, where does that leave us on the other projects?” Chappell said. “I’m not comfortable approving this when we didn’t approve theirs.”

Chappell did say later in the meeting that nothing in the current plans were against township ordinances.

“You cannot go that far without having your reviews. You can’t let a project take that long. As a matter of fact, the municipal planning code says you have 90 days to make a final decision. Either reject it or approve it,” Norman urged. “I think there has been more time spent reviewing the dairy barn plans and writing the reports than I spent in the design… You cannot have your engineer taking 60 days to review something without any response back about the design.”

Supervisor Larry Rhine pointed out how the water drainage could be beneficial for the township.

“All of this water goes back into the ground. It might help some people’s wells,” he said.

Despite the ongoing back and forth discussion during Tuesday’s meeting, the supervisors approved to sign the plans. They planned on contacting Webster regarding the signing.

In other business, the parks and recreation committee is on temporary halt. Two of its members have recently resigned from the committee. They are looking for new volunteers to join in order to continue as a committee.