December 2, 2010
[In brief]  Meeting runs 5 hours. 52 speakers address the Board with objections to the project. Ken Zebrowski and Ellen Jaffee send reps to voice concerns over aquifer and the Columbia gas pipeline. Leonard Jackson Associates withholds critical information from public and Town professional staff. Planning Board member nods off. Shortly after 1am, public session is closed but no vote is taken. Vote not scheduled for any particular time.

Photo shows proposed layout of project at Patrick Farm

Many arrived before 8pm, the scheduled starting time for the Planning Board meeting, and were kept waiting in the hallway outside the room. Posted on the doors were signs instructing that no one will be allowed in before eight. Guess they don’t want us to hold our pre-meetings in there anymore, quipped one attendee. Before the last Town Board meeting, an overflow crowd that showed up to protest the transfer of public land to St. Lawrence’s Local Development Corp met inside, an hour before the meeting began, and listened to several speakers opposed to the transfer. The assumption in the hallway on Tuesday was that the Supervisor probably decided not to let that happen again.

Five-minute Rule
As the meeting began, Board Chairman Sylvan Klein reminded everyone that this was a continuation of the public comment session that had run over into its third meeting, and that those who wished to address the Board would have 5 minutes to speak. Before the evening ended at around 1:15 am, 52 speakers got up to offer both specific and general objections to the Patrick Farm project—lawyers, laymen, scientists, planners, neighbors, assemblypersons, environmentalists, local historians, and taxpayers. Every speaker got up to ask the board to reject the project as it was proposed. And they had the support of a room filled with people of the same mind, except for a small group of two rows of consultants and the developer’s principals.

The first speakers presented remarks from the developers Yekiel Lebovits and Abraham Moscovits. They addressed issues that were raised in the last, or the first sessions. Dennis Rocks, an engineer from Leonard Jackson Associates discussed the question of endangered species, rattlesnakes and box turtles. He cited a report from Columbia Gas about the natural gas pipeline close to the proposed buildings. He said a report of the possible impact on the East Ramapo had been submitted, and he discussed other objections that had been previously raised.

The problem with Mr. Rocks’s presentation was that he frequently referred to material that had not been made available to the public prior to this meeting, perhaps the most important of which was the report from Columbia Gas. This became an issue later in the evening when he was asked when his consulting firm, Leonard Jackson Associates, had received the report.

At the very end of the evening when the comment period was over, Rocks admitted they had gotten the report on Oct. 28, one full month before the meeting. Both Rocks and Leonard Jackson were asked by Preserve Ramapo why they sat on the report for one month and kept it not only from the public, but also from the professional staff at Ramapo—engineers and planners did not see a copy of the report until the morning of the meeting.

Preserve Ramapo to Dennis Rocks:

"When did you make the report available to the public?"

No response.

Question was repeated and Mr. Rocks responded: "I’m not going to answer that question."

PR to Rocks: "When did you give it to the engineering staff to review?"

Rocks: "This conversation is over."

Leonard Jackson was asked the same two questions, and he also refused to provide any meaningful response.

The Columbia report was not the only information kept back. A Preserve Ramapo representative was at Town Hall as late as 2:30 in the afternoon looking for new information and responses from the developer and his engineering consultant and he found no new significant information from the last session. Attorney Suzanne Shapiro complained to the board that she was given a multi-page report that day with no time to review it carefully in order to prepare for the meeting that night.

By closing the public comment at the end of the meeting, the Planning Board compounded the problem. What began as a lack of transparency on the part of the developer’s representatives became a denial by the Planning Board of the public’s right to review materials to present informed comment. No further public dialogue will be heard concerning this stage of the application.

Both actions call into question whether the proceedings value public input and provide an adequate, ethically guided structure to register these opinions.

And there’s yet another problem. These videos seem to indicate an inattentiveness that has no place in a discussion about the largest high-density project ever to endanger a sole-source aquifer in Ramapo.

The single most influential voice involved in this action was not present, but several of his comments were aired. Had it not been for several rounds of downzoning and the creation of his Adult Student Housing zones, Christopher St. Lawrence could not have provided a developer with the possibility of planting 500 homes on this pristine 200-acre site.

But in 2001, St. Lawrence saw himself as a crusading environmentalist as he announced in his State of the Town address: "The proposed power plants in the Torne Valley are an environmental horror. The placement of the power plants on top of a sole source aquifer for Rockland’s water supply is an environmental risk this Town will not accept." It seems the "environmental risk" fades however when the sole-source aquifer will be buried beneath housing and roads for thousands of bloc voters.

Another speaker pointed out St. Lawrence’s public opposition to the desalination plant which United Water cites as their means by which they will be able to supply water to this enclave of thousands of new customers.

Speakers
There were far too many speakers to include in a summary here, so we will offer a sampling of the kind of objections raised by the public.

Bruce Levine pointed out that the engineering firm had offered conclusory statements about which this board must ask for specific details. A promise of compliance is not adequate to cover the many shortcomings of the plan. The fact that documents were dropped off so late, some the day before Thanksgiving, some on the 29^th, the day of this meeting, was unacceptable. That the developer said he would sell some of the affordable units to a nonprofit was also unacceptable. Some of the buildings are less than 500 feet from the gas line. A potential for disaster on the site has to be planned for. There need to be fewer units, and the sequencing is designed to build the multifamily dwellings first. Bruce concluded by telling the board they need to develop their own proposal, and they need to move those homes away from that pipeline.

Veronica Boesch opened by saying the board has to table this project. If this project is planned for orthodox residents only, then the plan is a thinly disguised effort at segregation and is in violation of federal housing law. She told the members of the board that if they are "encumbered" in this proceeding, they must recuse themselves.

Scott Goldman called the project an abomination—a sin of environmental destruction. His estimate of the total residents was 3,397, and he reminded the board that it’s not their role to guarantee the developer’s profit.

Jerry Fox asked the board to remain open-minded. He said once you lose the aquifer there is no way to replace it. Desalination would be expensive and would negatively impact property values. He asked why certain developers are given preferences.

Robert Rhodes said he was at Town Hall in the middle of the afternoon and was not shown the papers for the Columbia pipeline. There was a legal requirement to provide that information to the public.

The developer must get approval by the Dept. of Transportation, and comments like, "We had a nice meeting" do not meet the standard of legal compliance for permitting. He asked about the absence of the Army Corps of Engineers—the agency responsible for protecting the waterways on the property. He said the wetlands were not properly presented in the plan, and he asked if the DEC gave this applicant a waiver to develop more than 5 acres at a time. One-half of this development is directly on top of wetlands.

Two representatives from the offices of New York State Assembly persons Ken Zebrowski and Ellen Jaffee said the two had serious concerns about damage to the aquifer, and they also saw the Columbia gas line as a public health threat. They wanted to see federal and state agency findings before approval, as well as DEC, DOT, County Fire and Emergency and Drainage permits. Zebrowski and Jaffee said they would monitor the state role in this.

Alan Sorenson questioned the quality as well as the quantity of the water captured as run-off from the rooftops of the buildings and reminded the board that massive removal of vegetation will have a drastic affect on the aquifer beneath. The size of the detention basins will create unacceptable viewscape violations. The plan, he said, had developed to the point where it was inconsistent with the finding statement.

William Carnahan, a hydrologist, urged the board to hire their own, independent hydrologist to study the impact of the project on the groundwater and wetlands.

Lee Ross told the board, "You’re working for the Town of Ramapo, not the applicant. You should be hiring people from outside the sphere of influence—objective people who can report to you their true, engineering, scientific facts."

Noel Fernandez read a letter from Nicholas Christie-Blick, resident scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Lab. Blick warned of possible multiple-year droughts that a desalination plant could not handle and which would be exacerbated by population growth of the kind allowed in this project. None of the towns are prepared for this.

Bill Pam pointed out that the engineering firm said the dam, which had been damaged in the first attempts to divert waterways on the property, would have to be repaired, but the plans show no reconstruction.

Doris Ullman, attorney representing the Village of Pomona, presented a number of legal reasons for non approval as the project now stands. Among these, she said the board has not required a SEQR review of the impact on the aquifer. She listed a number of lots that currently violate size limitations. The project doesn’t comply with the Town’s scenic road law. There’s a large area where the homes encroach on the envelope of the gas line and wetlands.

Ron De Paolo said that with the risk of accidents involving the pipeline, there are also security concerns that should be discussed with an agency like Homeland Security. You will put a target on Rockland County with this project as it stands.

Craig Felixson pointed out that the developer bought the property and already closed on it. An unusual way to proceed , implying perhaps that the developer has assumed a clear path from St. Lawrence’s Town Board through the rest of the steps.

Others pointed out the failure to provide a 3% space requirement for children to play in, the 50 mph speed limit on 202 into which hundreds of cars from this complex will be entering, the fact there are no mature trees standing on Mariner Way, one of Lebovits’s other local developments.

Susan Shapiro, a lawyer representing neighbors suing the applicant, and Bruce Levine, doing the same for other neighbors, closed the public session with long lists of legal problems that have not been resolved, or even looked at in some cases.

I’m an engineer, and you’re not!
The applicant was given one final chance to answer what objections they could. Dennis Rocks of Leonard Jackson Associates generalized on how his firm had taken a lot of time on the plans. Of note, he did answer two questions about documents never made available to the public. The letter from Columbia Gas was sent to them on October 28, 2010, and there was a letter from the Army Corps of Engineers dated Oct. 22. Both well in advance of the meeting, both required to be made available to the public and the professional staff at Town.

Then Leonard Jackson got up, and rather than just repeat everything his employee just said, Jackson repeated again and again, as he went from point to point, the fact that those in the audience were not engineers and that’s why they misunderstood the facts and the situation.

Rather arrogant and almost comical when you consider that among those on the long list of those objecting, there were two municipal lawyers, a hydrologist, two professors, one with an international reputation as an expert in water at a world-class laboratory, another person experienced in traffic studies, county historians, and state legislators. And yet Leonard repeated a number of times, referring to a number of people, that the reason you are objecting is because you don’t understand—you’re not an engineer. Further weakening Mr. Jackson’s appeal for credibility and respect was the fact that his firm is helping to build the ballpark over in Pomona, and just a short while ago, the DEC shut down his operations for weeks because he stood in violation of a number of state laws related to drainage and water management on the site. Possible fines were in the range of $37,000 a day. I’m an engineer and you’re not? I don’t know--leaky logic Leonard, very leaky logic.

It was after one in the morning, and the board at this point voted to end the public session, 5 to 1 (Reverend Brightman voting against), and they also decided not to vote on preliminary approval until a later time. The later time was not set nor scheduled, so at this point, we have no idea when this shoe is going to drop.

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