Spray Avenue Waves Trigger Battle Over Engineers

Neither David Groom, who heads the Groom Construction Co., nor his lawyer, Paul Lynch, are ones to take no for an answer without a fight.

Through his attorney, Groom, whose company owns and is renovating the house at 15 Spray Avenue on the Atlantic Ocean, tried this month to have the Conservation Commission's choice of an engineering firm to review the project overturned.

In what opposing attorney Carl King called “skulking about Abbot Hall,” Lynch asked Town Administrator Tony Sasso and Chief Procurement Officer Becky Curran to have the Board of Selectmen void a contract with the engineer approved by the commission to study the wave action at the house.

At issue is a Groom proposal to raise the seawall at 15 Spray Avenue five or six feet to deflect storm waves from the ocean that shower the house and its yard. Because of the huge storm waves that hit this cove, Spray Avenue was once called Ocean Spray Avenue.

Groom, which plans to sell the house once it has been renovated, has started work on the house and yard. He said the renovations are designed to improve “another delapidated Marblehead house.” His company has the commission's permission to work on the house, but must win approval from the commission to raise the wall.

Neighbors to the south of the property on Bass Rock Lane oppose the higher sea wall, claiming it will move the large waves onto their properties and cause damage to their property.

Both Groom and the neighbors hired engineers at the beginning of the project to study where the powerful waves will go if the sea wall is raised.

Engineering Firms Do Not Agree on Waves' Impact

The two engineers – Hayes Engineering for Groom and Bourne Consulting Engineers for the neighbors – could not agree on the waves' impact. The Conservation Commission decided to hire a third engineering firm to review the project and asked four firms to submit bids. Only two did. The commission voted four to two to hire CLE Engineering to review the project.

Groom's choice for the third engineer was Childs Engineering Co. of Medford.

Before the commission and later with the town adminstrator, Lynch protested the hiring of CLE because its bid for the review work was $3,950. Childs Engineering submitted a bid of $2,500. The fee is paid for not by the town, but by the applicant.

After Lynch tried to get CLE kicked off the project, Commission Chairman Walter Haug talked with CLE's Carlos Pena about the fee. Pena agreed to lower its fee to $2,500.

The attempt to get CLE off the project seems to have been triggered by Pena's oral and later written report saying more information and more work about the wall and the waves were needed. That would delay the project's approval and be more expensive for Groom.

King Accuses Lynch of 'Skulking About Abbot Hall'

In an email to Lynch and all the conservation commission members, King, who represents the opposing neighbors, wrote, “It was as a result of Mr. Groom's report to Mr. Lynch of Mr. Pena's preliminary conclusions concerning the inadequacy of the NOI (notice of intent application to the commission) that Mr. Lynch went skulking about Abbot Hall on April 27th in an effort to prevent Mr. Pena from filing his final report.”

King pointed out that Lynch did not approach Sasso and Curran about the CLE contract “until almost two weeks” after it was approved by the commission, “and then only after he (Lynch) knew the report would not be favorable to his client.”

The preliminary report from CLE noted that the state Department of Environmental Protection has said, “it appears that the project cannot be approved as designed.”

The DEP further stated: “It appears that the increase of the seawall height and 'wave energy dissipating riprap' may cause adverse effects to the adjacent lands and coastal beach due to wave action, which may result in accelerated scour and erosion to the beach and seawall.”

CLE told the commission that “The applicant (Groom) has not complied with a majority of the regulatory requirements” for the project to be reviewed by the commission. It proposes that Groom hire a “Registered Professional Engineer experienced in the evaluation, design and construction of waterfront structures” to study the project and determine if the raising of the sea wall will “have a detrimental impact on future property owners and their neighbors.”

CLE's Pena met with Groom's engineer, Peter Ogren with Hayes Engineering, on May 12. According to a phone call from Pena to the commission after the meeting, Ogren promised to complete the analysis of the project and submit it to CLE for review before CLE issues its final report to the commission.

The commission meets again on June 9, but it is unclear if the issue will be discussed at that meeting.