Tonight, the heroic volunteers at Zoning Board of Appeals, lots of paid “expert witnesses”, a resident developer and his crew all get ready for another three-hour tour about a not-so-tiny ship nicknamed The Whopper. Yes, 518 South Avenue’s continued hearing is tonight, January 31, by zoom at 7 pm.

If you moved here yesterday and have no clue about the Whopper, you can get past information about this 40B project at the factual page for it at weston.org, or from not-quite-the-news here, or by watching past hearings on Weston Media Center’s page. You will need a lot of spare time which really you should be using to ski at Highland Forest. Such a nice day.

Anyway, tonight’s hearing seems to be ongoing he said-she-said-they-said-nobody-said about the hydrology. I try very very hard not to editorialize on the affordable housing side of things because while everyone knows Weston needs to do better on it, some of these large projects seem very dangerous to wetlands, which cover 4000% of this town.

Note: I am not a wetlands expert–I just like to protect them. In the Owl’s role as a Weston Forest & Trail trustee, last week I got to stomp around the woods at Blaney Aquifer which is just south (downstream) of the proposed project (as well as south of the high school, Mass Pike, and other worrisome things). Conservation and WFTA are discussing the possibility of completing a trail loop that currently dead-ends into a stream that doesn’t even show on the Weston town gis map. While we tromped about, four ducks effortlessly coasted downstream. I worry for them.

Oops, got de-railed again. Tonight stormwater and groundwater and wetlands will be upfront at the ZBA. Be there.