Follow Up on the News
Each of the 12 separate findings indicates the judge’s decision that information provided on the subject in the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement and additional testimony was inadequate to allow the project’s permitting to go forward. Each of these issues has now been determined legally “substantive and significant,” and will require extensive review through what amounts to a formal trial-like proceeding with sworn testimony and cross-examination of witnesses. That process, generally lengthy and costly for all involved parties, is now likely to commence sometime this winter or next spring.
The scope of issues requiring adjudication was, by consensus amongst the parties to the proceedings, unusually large. Plans for the region’s only similarly scaled project, the $350 million St. Lawrence Cement plant proposed for Greenport which had 6 issues ruled adjudicable, were cancelled in April after a major permit was denied by the Department of State. And while the full implications of last week’s decision are still being sifted, all parties reached for comment regard it as enormously problematical to developer Crossroads Ventures.
“With this ruling, Judge Wissler has sent a clear message that the environmental review of a project of this scale and scope must be totally comprehensive and highly detailed,” said Marc Gerstman, lead counsel for the 11 local and regional environmental groups of the Catskill Preservation Coalition which raised and presented most of the issues now successfully challenged. Gerstman, a former lead counsel for DEC, characterized the ruling as “a forceful and dramatic pronouncement for a careful, deliberate process of environmental review as mandated by state law.”
“My opinion of the tedious and attenuated intricacies of the DEC challenge process has not changed,” said Crossroads Ventures managing partner Dean Gitter in a statement responding to the decision. “It is a constant drag on the economic fortunes of our state and should be revisited and amended by the legislature…We believe in the importance of this cause. We intend to appeal to the Commissioner of the DEC for reversal of several of the judge’s rulings. And we will continue to fight our way through this outrageous and endless SEQR process until we have totally satisfied those in positions of responsibility that our project is both environmentally sound and economically imperative.”
The subjects covered by Wissler’s ruling include virtually all areas of potential impact from those governed by hard science and data to the full range of social, economic, and community related issues. Each ruling systematically outlines the positions and major arguments presented by the parties at the project’s SEQR Issues Conference, held over 28 days of hearings in Margaretville in the summer of 2004. In his decision, those arguments are followed in format by the judges’ analysis of them in discussion form, and by his ruling on each of the issues.
The first issue designated for adjudication was Water Supply for the Big Indian Plateau portion of the project, on the basis that testing performed for Crossroads Ventures appeared to prove that available water may actually be inadequate and projected yields from its primary underground sources may be unsustainable. It also appears to reflect concern that pumping at the proposed rate of 190,000 gallons per day from two wells just east of Pine Hill Lake at the base of the project site could have the effect of drawing down residential wells for many miles surrounding the project site. Closely related was the issue of Aquatic Habitat, where the possibility of the destruction of trout fisheries in Birch Creek and Emory Brook might also result from the same groundwater pumping to service the eastern half of the resort.
Stormwater Impacts was as widely expected ruled adjudicable, one of only two issues, along with Secondary and Induced Growth, where testimony from New York City’s DEP played a significant role. In his analysis of stormwater data, Judge Wissler noted major problems with the adequacy of the project’s computer modeling, verification of field data, stormwater flow paths and pre-development flows, pollutant loading levels, and other issues. Problems with secondary growth according to the judge, include “reliance on inappropriate case studies and computer modeling” related to housing data.
Impacts to the Catskill Forest Preserve will be adjudicated because, according to Wissler, the project’s DEIS “lacks the discussion and evaluation of impacts” to public lands “necessary for an appropriate SEQRA review.” Impacts to Wildlife were “for the most part… adequately evaluated and…where appropriate, mitigated” but will go forward to adjudication based on lack of adequate study for 4 potentially impacted bird species. Noise Impacts were adequately addressed for construction phases of the project but will require adjudication due to “lack of a noise impact study addressing the operational phase of the…project.” Visual Impacts, whose analysis was deemed “not thorough enough” will be included because of the developer’s “failure to provide” a required inventory of aesthetic resources and “failure to consider the effect of seasonal changes in viewsheds.”
Traffic Impacts are set for adjudication, based on the project’s failure to factor in “the effect of planned growth” of the adjacent Belleayre Mountain Ski Center. Similarly, Cumulative Impacts between the Ski Center and the resort intended to surround it will also be adjudicated, with Judge Wissler rejecting arguments by his own agency’s staff that because they’ve so far withheld release of the Ski Center’s new Unit Management Plan, its projected growth doesn’t need to be factored into planning for the resort. Apparently it will need to do that going forward. And the broader issues of the project’s impact on Community Character including all economic costs and tax impacts will go forward to adjudication...as will the required consideration of Alternatives to the resort as currently proposed, including scaled-down versions of the project which thus far Crossroads Ventures has refused to provide.
“The Belleayre Resort holds the best promise of a viable economic future for the people of Shandaken,” said Crossroads’ Gitter in a final set of comments provided before this story’s deadline. “Those taxpayers will soon be opening their September school tax bills. They will find an increase of 10%. They’ll probably find a similar increase next year. Were the Belleayre Resort in existence –which it could well have been at this point but for the intervention of local not-for-profit groups – that school tax bill would have annually been going down, not up.”
“It is a good sound bite,” responded CPC’s Tom Alworth, “but I’m hard pressed to think of a place where there was increased development and taxes actually went down. The judge who conducted an independent evaluation of the environmental impacts of the project has recommended 12 issues move forward for further examination, and therefore, in his opinion, the project has not met the required standards.”
Said Gitter, “We have been disappointed in the manifest ill-will and self-importance of these opponents who seem to have no regard for the economic circumstances of the town and its shrinking tax base. They have struck a blow not just at Crossroads, but at all the tax-payers of Shandaken and Middletown. Those foolish enough to be publicly rejoicing at the current turn of events are, in fact, once again thumbing their noses at the people of this region who still struggle to get by.”
“The Judge,” responded CPC counsel Gerstman, “sent a clear message that the project sponsor should look inward and not seek to cast blame on others.”
The deadline for appeals to Wissler’s rulings, following a Sept 9 conference call between the judge and all parties, has been set for October 12, with reply briefs to any appeals filed due November 7. As to possible challenges to the rulings apart from Crossroads’, DEC staff, according to agency spokesperson Maureen Wren, are still reviewing the judge’s decision, as are counsel Jeff Baker and Kevin Young representing the Coalition of Watershed Towns, Delaware County, and the town boards of Shandaken and Middletown, all strong supporters of the project as presently proposed.
Following receipt of appeals to the ruling, any filings and reply briefs would normally be sent to DEC’s Commissioner for a final decision; in this instance since Acting Commissioner Denise Sheehan has had prior involvement with the project, she has recused herself and designated Deputy Commissioner Carl Johnson to serve that role. After a decision on any appeals has been rendered and a discovery process undertaken, the actual adjudicatory hearings will be scheduled, proceeded by pre-file direct testimony from what promises to be a enormous lineup of expert witnesses. The time frame for these introductory phases of the hearings process is indeterminate, and there are no time frame parameters either for the actual hearings, various briefing periods, or any ultimate decision by DEC on the outcome.
“As we have always maintained, we will see the process through until everyone is satisfied with the environmental bona fides of our project,” said Gitter.”The project perseveres.”
Previously, Gitter has announced the company’s intention to sell the permits for the project, if granted, to a major international resort operator as yet unnamed.
Judge Wissler’s ruling is available in its entirety at www.phoeniciatimes.com.
Effluent Community
Those that want to see the maps of the district, including the proposed layout of the mains, can view them at the town clerk’s office at town hall.
The $11 million is coming free from the City of New York, but the estimated $375,000 annual operating budget is only partially funded by the big apple, which would kick in $82,000 toward that annual expense. That leaves another $292,500 to be flushed out of the community to keep the system running regularly.
On Monday, September 12, Attorney Kevin Young walked a crowed town hall through the details of the ordinance. He explained that it would cost each home $100 a year for the service and businesses, actually called non-households in sewer speak, would pay a minimum annual charge of $200, plus pay more depending on what amount they actually discharge into the system.
Young figures a non-household using 150 gallons of water a day would pay a total of about $455 a year for the service.
And if someone didn’t want to hook up to the system, they could go to the town board and ask for a variance from doing so at no penalty. Young noted that there needed to be some compelling reason for the variance however, and used the example of a restaurant already having a new private septic system recently installed. In that case, the restaurant could delay hooking up for several years. However, they run the risk of not having an opportunity to hook up if others get their first.
The system is only big enough to handle the existing hamlet with room for only minor expansion. Once it operates at capacity, the gates to new users are closed. The goal, Young said, is getting the system to run at as close to full capacity as possible because when it does, it will operate more efficiently.
“These systems need crap,” he noted.
Speaking of new users, they will be charged a hook up fee of $3500. The example used was a vacant hamlet lot. Since there is no building on it, the town will run a hook up line, called a lateral, to the property line and leave it. If at a later date someone builds on the lot, they can hook up for the $3500, unless the system is already at capacity.
There are more costs too. For everyone. Young figures that it will cost between $800 and $2000 to continue a hook up from the property line to your home or business, plus complete the mandatory disabling of your current septic system or cesspool.
The town is going to apply for funding to help income eligible citizens pay for the hook up. Project Engineer John Brust said that for those who don’t qualify for those funds, there may be a surplus from the projects construction budget that would be used to help pay.
Other costs involve the $100 a year fee for households only staying at that rate for three years and then getting adjusted for inflation. Also, the town has the ability to add an extra charge on users to build a capitol improvement fund. While they have not done so yet, it is under discussion.
Town Justice Bart Guglielmetti, also a hamlet resident, noted the risk of the district being socked with severe penalties in the future should something go wrong. He reminded Young that the Phoenicia water district was under threat of being fined $10,000 a day unless it built a water filtration plant, which it finally did last year. The district just borrowed $55,000 to help pay for the plant.
Another sobering thought came from one resident that theorized that property values would go up as a result of having a sewer system. Therefore, she asked, would property taxes go up as well?
Young’s answer was yes. He assumed that Phoenicia properties would be reassessed once the system is complete.
“Remember, higher property values is a good thing,” he said sheepishly.
The Phoenicia sewer committee, which handles all the sewer issues and is responsible for preparing the project, meets the second and last Tuesday of each month at town hall.
Committee Chair Charles Frasier urges everyone to attend.
“The more input we get from the community the better the system will be,” he said.
The growth, she says, is partly through students entering Phoenicia from other areas via variances, but moreover because of new families moving into the Shandaken area, drawn by its promise as one of Ulster County’s best rising communities.
Having a good elementary school, she says, is helping that reputation.
As for special programs at Phoenicia this year, Sella was particularly excited about a pilot reading program, Balanced Literacy, being led by several district-wide elementary teachers who attended a special reading/writing program at Columbia University this past summer.
According to Onteora’s director of elementary education Laurie Cassell, who doubles as the principal of the Bennett Elementary School in Olive, “Everything’s been sparkling,” said Cassell, of both the weather and the extra shine the district’s elementary schools’ teachers put on their classrooms just before students’ first arrivals last Tuesday, September 6.
Cassell spoke about how she’s looking forward to the fact that the three elementary school PTAs are getting together more now as a district-wide PTA Council, seeking to increase collaboration and togetherness between the sometimes disparate parts of the wide Onteora District.
On September 30, she said, the PTA Council will be putting on a special concert at the newly renovated Junior/Senior High School auditorium within sight of Bennett, featuring The Uncle Brothers, a group Cassell says is “really very hot in kids circles.” The concert will start at 7 p.m.
Onteora superintendent Justine Winters said that district-wide, the recent semester opening had a bittersweet quality, due to the death of a high school student in a car accident over the Labor Day weekend. The result was “a somber mood” at the high school.
But Winters also noted that, having rode the school buses the afternoon of the first day, she’s got nothing but kudos for Onteora’s new transportation director, Maureen Stancage.
She further noted that last year’s worries about overcrowding at the Woodstock Elementary School, which incorporated the student body for the now-closed West Hurley School last year at this time, had apparently abated with a lesser enrollment than expected.
“Bennett and Woodstock are almost equal in terms of enrollment now,” said the superintendent. “We’ve got a nice balance between our elementary schools right now.”
Cassell said that as director of elementary education, she and the other school principals are “looking forward to meeting the challenges of the ‘No Child Left Behind’ act, which are mandating new tests in grades three through eight.”
Sella said she’s looking forward to hosting the Board of Education’s next meeting at Phoenicia on Tuesday, September 20, and getting more of the local community involved in school life, on a Phoenicia School and district-wide level, over the coming year.
“We’ve got many exciting things on our horizon,” she said. “It’s looking like it’ll be a great year.”
We caught up with Kunstler, a friend, this past week after gas prices rose well above the once-taboo $3 a gallon mark, after everyone started assessing the Katrina damage, and cost of Gulf Coast reconstruction, in figures well over the equally taboo $150 billion mark.
We wanted to find out what Kunstler felt, seeing things he’d predicted reported as news.
“How should I put this, it isn’t the end of the world as we know it but we can see that end from here” he said by phone from his Saratoga home, where he’s been fielding a slew of radio interviews all week. “Americans can now feel the pain. The issues I’ve been raising about us all being nearer the end of the Easy Motoring era are getting a lot of attention.”
As for the hike in prices, Kunstler feels there will likely be a correction, albeit not one going under the $3 benchmark again.
“Once that psychological level was breached, retailers won’t go back,” he said. “Besides, all this reserve material they’re releasing, sour crude versus sweet crude, can’t be handled by most of our existing refineries.”
Kunstler, whose book caused its first big stir when excerpted in Rolling Stone, then heavily blogged, this past Spring, sighed for a moment before going on.
“More to the point, I think what you’re going to see is that the natural gas prices – and you have to remember that 50 percent of our housing is heated in such a way these days – that’s the area where these costs will really be hitting in three or four months,” he added. “That’ll end up combining with the high pump prices to really knock the middle class on its ass.”
Explaining the natural gas market, Kunstler (who regularly blogs himself at www.kunstler.com) pointed out how such prices have already risen from a 2003 level of $3 a unit to a current price of $12 a unit, now expected to jump another $4 in the coming weeks.
“Watching all this unfold, I’m not sitting here trying to prove I’m right,” he says. “But what’s happening is an exqulisite example of what the subtitle of my book’s all about.”
He talks about how our lack of planning for a future beyond oil dependence, along with suburban sprawl and bad environmental policies, has left us all susceptible to a vortex of problems that will just keep getting worse.
“It would be tragic, for example, for the people along the Gulf Coast to now be led into re-investing whatever wealth they have left in this same form of infrastructure that has no future,” Kunstler says, in measured words. “People have to start re-thinking where they live, not in terms of regions but in terms of how far they commute each day, how far they are from both essential services and agriculture.”
“There’s just so much potential right now for disruptive events of so many kinds,” he added. “Maybe we shouldn’t expect a slow and steady march into the Long Emergency of our oil supplies ending any more. Maybe, once we get past this blame-orama phase, we need to really start looking at how we all live in this country.”
Kunstler pauses, before entering a new subject we’ll not go into here: the liquidity, or lack of same, of our nation’s mortgage-based economy.
“What it all adds up to,” he says, “Is the end of this Easy Motoring age. Get ready...”