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03-10-2015 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING SPECIAL MEETING MARCH 10, 2015 INDEX Site Plan No. 12-2015 Just Beverages 1. Tax Map No. 294.-1-1 THESE ARE NOT OFFICIALLY ADOPTED MINUTES AND ARE SUBJECT TO BOARD AND STAFF REVISIONS. REVISIONS WILL APPEAR ON THE FOLLOWING MONTHS MINUTES (IF ANY) AND WILL STATE SUCH APPROVAL OF SAID MINUTES. 1 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD SPECIAL MEETING MARCH 10, 2015 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT CHRIS HUNSINGER, CHAIRMAN STEPHEN TRAVER BRAD MAGOWAN DAVID DEEB GEORGE FERONE JAMIE WHITE, ALTERNATE MEMBERS ABSENT TOM FORD LAND USE PLANNER-LAURA MOORE STENOGRAPHER-MARIA GAGLIARDI MR. HUNSINGER-Good evening. I'll call to order the meeting of the Town of Queensbury Planning Board. We have a special meeting this evening, Tuesday, March 10, 2015. There's only one item on the agenda. It's under New Business. NEW BUSINESS: SITE PLAN NO. 12-2015 SEAR TYPE UNLISTED JUST BEVERAGES AGENT(S) NACE ENGINEERING OWNER(S) CITY OF GLENS FALLS ZONING LC-10A LOCATION EAST OF BUTLER POND ROAD ALONG EXISTING LOGGING ROAD WITHIN WATERSHED PROPERTY ZONING AMENDMENT: PLANNING BOARD TO REVIEW ZONING CODE AMENDMENT TO INCLUDE USE OF WATER EXTRACTION. SITE PLAN: APPLICANT PROPOSES TO INSTALL, OPERATE AND MAINTAIN A CITY-OWNED WELL AND TRANSPORT WATER FROM THE WELL SITE TO THE COMPANY'S WATER BOTTLING FACILITY IN THE CITY. PURSUANT TO CHAPTER 179-3-040 OF THE ZONING ORDINANCE WATER EXTRACTION IN THE LC-10 ZONE SHALL BE SUBJECT TO PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL. PLANNING BOARD MAY ACKNOWLEDGE LEAD AGENCY STATUS, COMPLETE SEAR FOR ZONING AMENDMENT AND SITE PLAN REVIEW. CROSS REFERENCE TB RESOLUTIONS - 93 & - 94, 2015 WARREN CO. REFERRAL MARCH 2015 APA, CEA, OTHER NWI WETLANDS, STREAM OVERLAY LOT SIZE 686.41 +/-ACRES (PORTION) TAX MAP NO. 294.-1-1 SECTION 179-3-040 MICHAEL BORGOS & TOM CENTER, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-1 don't know if there are really any copies of the agenda on the back table, but there is on the back table two documents that you may find interesting. One is a copy of our public hearing procedures. We do have a public hearing scheduled this evening. We will be taking public comment. There is also a signup sheet. If you wish to speak during the public hearing, I would ask, since there's so many of you, to sign the sheet, and then when it comes time for the public hearing I will call you up that way rather than have a show of hands, and we can talk in more detail when we come to the public hearing. With that, Laura, if you could introduce the item, please. MRS. MOORE-Okay. Good evening. I just want to make sure the public understands and the Board understands, we are under new microphone systems. There are cordless mics above our heads, and then there are also recorder mics at each Planning Board member's spot and the applicant has a cordless mic at their desk. So if you cannot hear us, I apologize. I can speak up more so, but my hope is that you can hear us throughout the evening. Tonight's project, there's two items that we're covering, the Town Board zoning amendment referral to amend the allowed uses for Land Conservation to add water extraction and the review standards, and the other item is the applicant proposes to install, operate and maintain a City owned well and transport water from the well site to the company's water bottling facility in the City. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Good evening. MR. CENTER-Good evening. Tom Center with Nace Engineering, Mike Borgos with Borgos and DelSignore is the attorney with the applicant, and Mr. Jim Siplon with Just Beverage. 2 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) JIM SIPLON MR. SIPLON-Hi, I'm Jim. This is my first one here. So I hope I try to do this in a way that meets your protocol but also informs everybody. First of all I want to thank you all for giving us this opportunity to come see you and talk about our project. You can tell that it generates a lot of interest. We're always thrilled about the fact that there are so many people that are interested in what's going on with us. I want to first start by saying I went through the planning process in Glens Falls a few months ago, and at the end of one of the meetings there was a question about why am I wearing red pants. Is that some symbolic thing? It's really simple. I have season tickets to The Flames and any time I have worn these pants to see The Flames they have not lost, and it's getting a little tiresome, but I wear them now every time that I think that I might have a chance to go to a game. There is a game tonight, and so I hope people will excuse the red pants, in the interest of what I think is a good civic goal to try to get The Flames into the playoffs. Let me, if I may, I want to try to share with you, as the Planning Board, and obviously anybody in the public that's not aware of who we are and what our application is. The first thing to understand about us is Just, as a business, was birthed a number of years ago, and in fact the brainchild and one of the key founders of our business is Drew Fitzgerald who is from this area, went to Glens Falls High School, a resident of Queensbury. His parents, I think, are well known here, and it's a fundamental part of our business to be here because Drew is here, because Drew is from here, helped us understand that this was a community that might be well suited for what we were trying to do, and what is it we're trying to do? This is just a simple way of trying to capture some of the core values that we are all about. So before we get into the specifics of exactly what we'd like to do at the site, or what we propose to do, and answer your questions, it's important to understand maybe just a little bit about us. We're, as a company, we're committed to trying to do things very differently than what we see going on in not only corporate culture at large, but in the consumer goods space in particular. We believe that there is a much more enlightened way to bring such products to market, and we'd like to do that in collaboration with a community. So we chose this community very consciously, and since we've been there, there've been a number of things that are, you know, help define what we're all about. I'll touch on just a couple. One is that we are seeking very much to do something that we believe is aligned with the community's interest. So we spent a lot of time trying to engage the community to ensure that that's actually true. We focus very much on everything that we do being as local as possible. We've procured the St. Alphonsus church is what we hope to be the production home of our whole core operation. It was a deliberate attempt to try to re-purpose a building that had been idle for many, many years, and that was struggling to find a new life. In that process, we engaged local vendors to help us with that process. You see Tom. You see Mike. But it goes well beyond that. Brian Rozell's engineering firm and construction firm has been next to us. I think they've done considerable work over the last few months. Joe Gross's electrical firm. We could go on with a list. Kirby VanVleet is our hydro geologist. Virtually every skill and every product that we have purchased, now well over a million dollars, has come from this zip code with less than a handful of exceptions. That, too, is part of who we are. An important thing about us is the fact that everything we do, we want to be as sustainable as possible. We believe that there is a much more consistently sustainable way of operating a company, operating a facility, and in this case packaging water than is currently being done. You'll hear a lot about that tonight in terms of our hopes for this particular site in Queensbury, but it extends well beyond the site that we're talking about tonight. You will find aspects of clean technology are weaved into virtually everything we do. You'll hear specifically about several initiatives where we're actually pushing the boundaries on what is available today and, you know, there are many other things, maybe one other thing I would touch on is that we quite deliberately stepped away from tax incentives, even though we did explore those as a new business here. After engaging in Startup New York and the IDA process, we felt like if we were going to be the maximum impact that we wanted to be in this community, it would be well suited for us to focus on being a tax paying citizen from the beginning. Not to arbitrize on that. I would say that that's met with some interesting reviews. I oftentimes get asked by other businesses, hey, why did you do that? Do you not believe in tax incentives? We do. We think that tax incentives are probably the cornerstone of continuing to attract good business here, but for us we know our business is going to generate interest, and for us we felt like one of the ways we could demonstrate that we're committed to doing things differently would be to show in some of those very first decisions, that we're ready to do things that may actually have a financial impact on us, but we believe will demonstrate our commitment to trying to contribute to the community as quickly and as positively as we can. Obviously we will talk about any of these aspects of our company that you'd like, if you have questions about them, but I don't want to spend too much more time on that. I want to get to, I'm sure that there are things that you would like to talk about, which are the decisions and agenda items that you've been asked to address. The first thing to understand is that this is a water business, but this is not a business, maybe we should start with, you know, how we even got to you. It's not a business where our water site was fundamental to what we did from the get go. We showed up here last January, January of 2014, on a really cold day. I mean, this winter's been cold, but that particular day 1 3 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) think was like 23 below, and I showed up here thinking, really, this is where we're going to go? We met with the economic development community here in the Queensbury Hotel. It was our very first opportunity to engage with the public, for us to meet people, and for them to meet us. From that point, this is our 18th forum that we've had in the public since January of last year. I think this is really important because sometimes I've listened to what I believe to be somewhat misguided criticisms of us, about the fact that we are, in some way, not engaging the public. 1, quite honestly, can't figure out how we can engage the public more than we are. Eighteen meetings in roughly, you know, thirteen months, fourteen months is a lot of public forums to prepare for, to make sure that we're responsive to, and that we're accountable to and that we can then move from that place to another place. In fact, I don't know any other business that has been meeting with the public at that rate, but, some of those places that we've been have raised questions here in Queensbury as to well, okay, why did you start where you did? Why did you start in Glens Falls and why has it taken until now for you to come out here to Queensbury? Let me briefly just walk you through that process so you can understand that that was probably the only way that this process could have played out. When we first showed up, we knew we wanted to build a water production facility. We didn't necessarily know where that water was going to come from. At the same time as we were exploring where would we do this, and we looked at more than 30 available properties in Glens Falls and Queensbury proper, trying to find a home for what we would eventually put at St. Alphonsus church. We also were simultaneously exploring where we would get the water from. We engaged a number of private landowners. We engaged private water haulers or distributors. We engaged other bottling entities. We even went over to Vermont to Pristine Springs that's supplying to other bottlers in New York. Every time we did that we recognized that there was something that didn't quite fit with our core mantra of trying to be as sustainable as possible. The idea of bringing water from a significant distance to this community to package didn't make sense to us. Meanwhile, as I got closer to understanding and learning about the community, I spent more and more time exploring the natural resources and assets of this community. I spent some time understanding what it is to be at the base of the southern Adirondacks. In an exchange that we had with both the EDC and with the City of Glens Falls, the idea was generated, is it possible that the City could provide you with the water? And we said it's important to understand that the market requires a certain kind of water. It has to be unfiltered. We can't untreat it. I shouldn't say unfiltered, but certain untreated. We can't have significant amounts of chlorine or fluoride in it or that would be very hard to distinguish from municipal water. So we needed a source that we could bring from the ground up in an untreated way. We met with the City and asked, is it possible you have that kind of water. It looks to me like you do. In fact the City then said why don't you go out to the watershed property and decide for yourself if there's an opportunity, you think, for capacity for additional water extraction. We engaged Hansen VanVleet who is the hydro geologist that understands this area the best. Not only has Kirby VanVleet been the consultant to municipalities throughout the area on their water needs, but he lives at the base of the southern Adirondacks, and quite honestly, and Kirby can speak for himself, but I think he knew those woods and that property pretty well. He has walked or ridden his bike through most of it, and together the two of us mapped out 11 sites where we thought there was potential of bringing the kind of water the market might want, and we wanted to find out if it's viable. We drilled at one site, then another site, finally a third and a fourth site. At the fourth site, which is the site that you are being asked to consider tonight, which is near lower Butler Pond Reservoir, we found what we considered to be a sufficient quantity of water to get started, roughly 50 gallons a minute, and of the type and quality that we felt the market would be ready to receive. We weren't sure about it, but it certainly felt like that. We asked for permission from the City for us to be able to access the groundwater so that we could test it. Could we go find whether or not the market would actually want this? The City provided us the access to do that. We put in a test well. From that test well, we then brought that water to blind consumer tests over the course of the summer. What we found was the water was very well received, both in blind tests as well as tests where we actually explained where it was from. In either case, it was predominantly chosen over other named brands. That was very encouraging to us. Next thing we did was come back to the City and say, okay, it looks like we have enough water and it looks like the water makes sense to the community, I mean, to the consumer. Now we have to figure out is how would we do this collaboratively with you. We're not quite sure how this works, and I bet you don't know quite how this would work. So I said why don't you tell us how you sell water to businesses today. They then produced a schedule to us and said these are our rates. This is what we charged say a business like the concrete factory or the Hospital as a commercial entity for water, and we said, well, one of the problems that we see with this is the fact that, I mean, I don't want to tell you how to do your business, but I don't think you're charging enough for the water. I think you're undervaluing this resource that you have, and they said thank you very much for your interest here, son, but that's not what we asked you for, and I said, well, we'd like to actually pay you much more for that, and let me tell you why. Part of what's wrong with the way that the bottled water industry works today is that it seeks to take the core asset, the water which we put in a package and treat it as the least important aspect of the product. It's not only the most important aspect, it needs to derive significant value so that the community that owns that water resource can use those funds in a way that makes water 4 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) more accessible, stabilizes the cost, allows communities to begin to develop infrastructure solutions that they don't currently have the funds to do. If a community has excess water, and we believe that this one does, a use of it to bring it to another market is clearly a secondary use. It is secondary to meeting the needs of the citizens of that community, and in this case it should deliver a greater value to those citizens. They said that all sounds good. Why don't you tell us how this all works, write it all down. We spent several months, and you'll see a number of these meetings were spent on that process, primarily with the water and sewer board, and eventually with the Common Council of Glens Falls. The reason we're going through that and I'm explaining this in great detail is because had we come to Queensbury knowing that this well is obviously in Queensbury, I wouldn't be quite sure what I would be asking you to evaluate. We didn't yet have an agreement with the City. We didn't yet have any parameters about how we would use the water, how much water would we use, where would we take it. We didn't yet own St. Alphonsus church. We didn't yet have the ability for us to operate a bottling facility at St. Alphonsus church. Only when those things were met would we have enough to actually bring to you in terms of definition so we could find out, what is the process we must engage in in Queensbury, but I want to make sure you, as a Planning Board, understand it was never because we didn't expect to come see you. It was because we needed to come see you with something you could evaluate, something that would actually allow us to put a project down in real terms, but you can see that we have been engaging the public, both through government forums and through their own forums, things like the Tri County Transition Alliance. I actually attended one of their meetings, made myself available to answer their questions. They had written a number of letters to the editor suggesting that they were concerned about the project. I went to their meeting and said it would be good if you just asked me whatever you want to know. I'll share it with you. That doesn't mean we have to agree. In fact I'm sure that by the time we're done maybe we won't, but I'd like you to have the information that you need directly from us, and I want to make sure that you continue to have it from us. There are members of the Tri County Alliance that I continue to dialogue with regularly. We don't necessarily see eye to eye on everything, but they have learned that anything they want to know, they can find out from us, and good people can disagree. They may think that what we're doing is not necessarily in the public good, and I don't want to speak for them, but I think they're finding that they can get the information that they seek from us, that we are as transparent as we claim to be. Finally, we've been engaging the Queensbury public in anticipation of the forums that we are now at with you. That was quite deliberate. When we first introduced ourselves to the Town, we weren't quite sure what was the process to follow. The City itself owns the watershed property. We are the agent by which has been granted the ability to access the water through their watershed property, but obviously this is a little bit of a unique arrangement where the City, the Town and a third party are all involved. So we sat down and said how do we do this? Do we just make a formal application through the Planning Board or is there another venue that this should be resolved. After discussing that, they said we're not quite sure, but here's what we think would make sense. Why don't you have a meeting with the public and open yourself up to answer any questions that the public may have. We did that in January. Many of the people who are here I think came to that meeting. Our objective in that meeting obviously was not to advance the project, but to advance the cause of information. How can we answer the questions that people have that will allow them to participate in whatever process plays out as effectively as possible. I have to tell you, we weren't necessarily counseled to do this. This is not in the corporate playbook for how one should go about advancing a project through a community, particular in multiple community kind of setup, but it is how we do it. When we were asked to do it, we said how fast can the meeting be set up, and we set it up the following week. Even a bigger crowd than tonight came, and at that meeting I distributed my cards and I invited every single person who came to come down to the factory or to contact us directly if they had more questions. A few of them did, not as many as I would have hoped, but we continue to keep that invitation alive. Now there was some particular community members that did feel strongly about that and did seek us out. They're the ones that are closest, in many cases, to the site that we're going to talk about tonight, and I would refer to them as the direct neighbors. You will, I'm sure, hear from some of them tonight, but we specifically sought to engage them. In fact not only did we engage back and forth with them in their neighborhood, I canvassed their neighborhood twice, and I left my contact information with every home that I was not able to make personal contact with, but we actually, at their request, had a meeting in their neighborhood to further address their questions and needs. You will find that we will continue to do this as often as we are asked. There may be dissatisfaction, but we certainly don't want there to be any limit in terms of access or any loss of information or transferability or transparency in what we do. That brings us to where we are now, which is in front of you. We made application in late January. It took until now. I can tell you as a businessman it's hard to sit from late January until early March hoping to kind of move forward, but we certainly understand that this is a process, and we're engaged in the process. We're eager to move through the process with you at whatever pace is appropriate. There's a few things I want to point out to you. At every step of the process as we've been listening to people, we have learned that there are possibilities that can start to be put in play to address any concerns. Our objective is to solve problems, we said relentlessly. We don't wait necessarily until we are 5 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) asked to begin to identify the issues that people have raised, and then start to sort out what could we do about it. This runs a little bit counter to the way that oftentimes we might be coached to come to you, which would be to say why don't we just throw it all at you and then you tell us what you want us to do. In our case we think there's enough interest and there's certainly enough viable solutions to start to dialogue with the public about them. Some of those have already been put in play. We've made commitments to the idea, for instance, that we would put up a fund with the Town to pay for any direct road repairs that are believed to be because of any traffic that we have brought incrementally. As far as I know we're the first business to ever do that. Quite honestly all I'm looking for is to try and define that with the parties that would best represent the Town's interest there, but we've made a commitment to do that. In addition, Dr. Judkins' wife Dawn, very early on in the process, identified concerns with school bus traffic and children in general, in the area where some of our vehicles might actually transfer through. We immediately said, whatever times are appropriate to block out to ensure that there's not any chance that our vehicles will be there at the same time as children are waiting for, getting on or getting off the school bus, we're happy to do that. All we need is people to identify those to us and we will commit to that. In addition, others have raised issues about would you want to run trucks around the clock, what size would the trucks be, how many truck trips would you be willing to take. All of those things we have said we would be happy to consider any reasonable limits, and we've encouraged people to suggest what they believe those to be. On our own, we have further, even though no one has asked us to do it, and I think this is an important point to make, is that we have already chosen a truck size that is much smaller than what is imagined to be. If I could for a second, let me just show you what are the possibilities, in terms of trucks, that transit not only this community but in some ways some of these not very often and some of these maybe more often than others, transit the particular route I'm talking about. You all know that there is occasional logging activity up on the City's watershed property. So we went to the purveyors of that and said how big are those trucks typically, and they told us and we wrote it down. We also know that on occasion there are semi's that go through this general area, maybe not on Butler Pond Road, although I have seen more than one semi on Butler Pond Road in the times that I've been here, but not very often, but there are semi's that go. In addition there's obviously school buses. We've seen many oil trucks. In fact we were able to validate with the vendors of the various fuel oil companies that they make deliveries in this neighborhood. There are garbage trucks. There are maintenance vehicles from both the City and the Town, including snow plows, that are quite regularly on those roads. We'll skip ours for a moment. There are panel delivery trucks, things like FedEx and UPS. There are cars and there are trucks, and they all have size. They all have sound. They all have, you know, their attendant parameters around them. What we quite deliberately said was, you know what, it would make sense for us to try to make whatever we do be as least impactful as possible, and so we purchased a truck and literally cut the back end of the frame off. It was, it used to be more than 34 feet long, and we turned it into one that was roughly 28 feet long. Basically the same size form as a fuel oil truck. The reason we chose that was quite deliberate. We see fuel oil trucks quite often in these neighborhoods without much concern. There has not been a hue and cry about the potential risk of a fuel oil truck. So our view was if that looks like an acceptable form, then let's try to mimic that. Now the converse is that is obviously if we had decided to do something that was on this scale, we would probably need to make fewer trips back and forth to the well. So obviously there's a balance here between the number of trips that one might make and the size of the vehicle, but long before we ever came to see you, we've already made the decision that we believe it's in the community's best interest, both in the City as well as in the Town, for us to have this be the smallest vehicle that is practical. One last thing is that it's been kind of well publicized, but in case you don't know, I'm oftentimes lampooned for chasing a rainbow here. We are attempting to be the very first ones in the marketplace to electrify a tanker truck. This does not exist commercially in the marketplace. You may hear from others tonight that it is meaningless since it does not exist. I would tell you that our bottling plant did not exist even a few months ago. Within a few months we will find an answer to this. In fact we've engaged three major equipment vendors and five or six smaller engineering firms and we have one of those representatives coming to see us tomorrow to figure out how could we possibly take the truck that we have and either hybridize it such that it's essentially the world's largest Prius, or fully electrify it. We chose the form of truck that we have to have additional capacity to be able to support the weight and the size of the batteries. We know how it can be done. We just need a partner who's willing to engage with us to do it. When we do that, and I cannot tell you exactly the date, but I can tell you that we are committed to the process, and I am certainly willing to sign up to a date. When we do that, these vehicles will both be, they will have zero emissions. They will have virtually no noise, in addition to a smaller form factor. We're doing that whether you ask us to do it or not because we believe it's the right thing to do for the community. It's the right thing to do for the brand, and we think it's the right thing to do to advance others to say why aren't you doing this. This is a way of doing, taking a relatively straightforward task and making it less impactful. Finally I would tell you that in the dialogue we've had with the neighbors, one of the many things that they have asked us to do is to consider alternatives to having to send a truck at all up to the general well site, and I know that we're skipping ahead here because we haven't gone through the details of 6 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) exactly what the well site looks like, and we will do that, but I will tell you that from the very first time that Dr. Judkins suggested that to me in my very first conversation, I thought it was a brilliant idea, and we began conversations immediately with the City as to how would we do that. I sat down with the Mayor and said I don't understand how your right of way works for your current pipeline, can you share it with me. We then engaged with people in the water and sewer department who are better served to be able answer that question. They then said, unfortunately we can't tell you whether or not we've got additional capacity and we can't tell you exactly what the condition of those pipes are until we get at them in the Spring, but we'd love to do it, and I said, well I'd love to do it because I'd love to be able to bring that water down the hill to a site on West Mountain Road. I think this is a great solution, but it's also one that is not quite there. It's a little difficult for me to envision exactly where would we do that. There are parcels of land that might be available to us and we're exploring that as quickly as we can and we've also talked to the City about potentially using the property that they own on the other side of Butler Pond Road, all the way where the old supervisor's home for the watershed is. I forget what the name of it, or the number of that parcel is, but it's on West Mountain Road, less than a quarter of a mile from the intersection where West Mountain Road and Butler Pond Road come together. Both of those are viable options. We're pursuing them with all vigor. I simply can't give you the details on that because we don't have them yet. We don't know how much it would cost. We don't know how long it would take, but I'd like to do it. It makes a lot of sense. Not only does it make sense to mitigate the traffic. It makes sense so that we can bring that water down the hill and use gravity to feed it all that way. So we are completely committed to that idea. I just simply don't have the details to propose to you today. However, if in your dialogue you'd like us to explore that further, provide you with whatever information that we have, and talk about the potential possibilities of exactly when that could occur, we are happy to do that, and I think you will find as you engage with us that our time lines are not measured in many years. They tend to be measured very, very quickly. So with that, let me back up for just a second and share with you the well site itself. This is what it looks like. It's on the old access road to lower Butler Pond dam. So for any of you that are familiar with the property at all, there's now a direct access road that's directly in line with the dam on lower Butler Pond. However, before that, all the work that was done a number of years ago to improve the dam, the only way you could get to it was to go roughly a quarter mile further up the road on a road that kind of wound its way down. So essentially what these pictures are is depictions of exactly what it looks like today. So you can see from the roadway, this is Butler Pond Road, looking down towards the well site. This is at the well site, and this is at the clearing that was the logging road that intersected that. We chose to use this clearing as a potential site for the containers that we'd like to put as a transfer station because it was already a clearing. It didn't require us to take any real trees out. It didn't require us to make any significant changes to the land. Important for you to understand that that's also deliberate on our part. We're trying to choose the least impactful way for us to do whatever it is that we do. So when we see a clearing, then we say is that a big enough clearing for us to be able to use. We'd much prefer to be able to do that than to say, well, over there is exactly where we would have enough space to do it, but we'd have to take out 50 trees and we'd have to extend the road. If we don't have to do that, then we don't want to do that. In fact what we'd love to do is leave that site in such a way that if you did not know that our transfer station was there, you wouldn't even be able to pick it out. In fact, this bottom picture is a depiction of what we believe that container will look like that we're proposing to put on that site when we fully camouflage it out. Drew's pretty good at this, he's a creative genius. He not only did this picture, he will be the one that supervises the actual detail work on the container itself. We'd love some input from you as to whether or not you'd like for it to be more of a spring, summer, winter or fall motif, but the idea is that we'd love to set it into the setting such that it's almost impossible to pick out. A lot of times people look at this picture and say I can't even see what you're talking about. Where is the container? That's the object. We'd like to figure out how to make sure that that container is not a visual problem at all, that it blends with the landscape, that from a sound and an emissions standpoint, that it doesn't represent any significant risk at all, and those are the kinds of details we'd like to go through with you tonight. There's other stuff about the watershed, total amount of water. I don't know if that's relevant to your conversations tonight. If it is, you feel free to ask me the questions and I will walk you through that, but what I want to do is start to get to the specifics of the site itself. What do we imagine in terms of the very minor alterations that we could potentially see for the site itself, and then how do we also address any questions that you might have that will affect your input to the proposed zoning. What you see in front of you, and I'm sure that Laura has shared with you, is the drawings associated with the site. The access roadway that we've been referring to off Butler Pond Road is here. That roadway extends all this way down towards the dam. The well site is at the corner here. However, we do not propose moving trucks in and out all the way to the well site, because that would require us to improve that roadway more than we think might be necessary. The first clearing is this logging road. What we'd like to do is at least propose to put our containers in that clearing, which is roughly 100 feet from the roadway. We would pave that section of the road with permeable pavement, designed to not only mitigate runoff, but I think actually make the runoff situation better than it is today with an unimproved road. In addition, all of our traffic will simply make its way to this particular turnaround station, will load or 7 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) pick up their water, come back out in a way that will largely be invisible to anybody on the road. By tucking it into this clearing here, unless you're literally right there, you can't even see what we're talking about. So, we chose all of that quite deliberately. There's a little bit of earthworks that are suggested here in terms of improving the swales, and I'm sure Tom can answer your specific questions about the civil and earthworks associated with this, but the idea is to make sure that we effectively sort any kind of drainage or stormwater issue, address those concerns of any runoff, make sure that that's being handled appropriately, but to also do this in a way that does not demonstrate any significant development. What we'd love to do is to try to do this in such a way that makes it almost imperceptible to somebody that improvements have been made to the land. Down at the well site, the only thing that we're proposing to do, and in fact you can see it in the picture. The well site is pretty nondescript. This is the well head. All we're proposing is to put a fully lockable and securable protection around that. We believe we can do that without even putting a structure like you might see as a well house. We believe we can do that with something that is akin to a dome that would essentially just cover this and be a secondary protection from a security standpoint, and then this plumbing that you see here is simply so that you can see where would that well site then transfer into a plumbing conduit to transfer up to the transfer station that we've proposed. That's the total extent of what we would like to see down at the well head itself. Maybe, are there specifics that I haven't talked about that you think need to be raised? AUDIENCE MEMBER-How many gallons are the trucks? MR. HUNSINGER-The public hearing, sir, will be later on. MR. CENTER-The nature of the transfer station is being, so nothing permanent in structure. MR. SIPLON-Again, quite deliberately chosen, such that if it was appropriate for us to physically pick up, as we've been talking about, for instance, by designing the transfer station at the base of West Mountain Road, that the facilities that we put there would be easily moved, without any impact to the site. So that there's no evidence that there was ever anything there to begin with. So we chose a Connex box quite deliberately. The other thing that the Connex box allows us to is we can put the transfer tanks inside of it. Inside of that Connex box is also a small generator, an LPG generator, which will allow us to keep this entire complex off grid. It will be operated inside, but exhausted to the outside so that it has proper ventilation. We're insulating the Connex box in such a way that although the loudest piece of equipment inside the box would generate 60 to 70 decibels, with the insulation and the closed doors, as soon as you close those doors, the noise level is roughly 20 decibels on the outside. When you begin to move away from the Connex box and you get to the roadway, which is roughly 100 feet away, it's at single digit decibels, essentially imperceptible below a human whisper. By choosing a Connex box, we can put a very thick level of insulation that will essentially allow us to try to mitigate any potential sounds, and any potential emissions. We can direct the exhaust any way that we choose, and the long term plan, to the extent that we would even stay there for a long period of time, is contained inside the water agreement with the City, which is to develop a potential solar field nearby in the clearing that's by Butler Pond, so that we could run without even a generator. We could run off of pure solar power. That's a whole other project that we would have to bring to you at another time, but I did want to share with you that our object would be to put that in at some point in time. Not only to provide us with power to run this transfer station, but also I offered to both the City and the Town that any excess power would be available to them, in the interest of anything that they were doing, in terms of joint recreation. We quickly realized, when we get involved in this process, that that was an opportunity, and so what we said is, listen, you guys have got to go do your thing, but to the extent that we can help you, we would love to help you, and this might be one thing that we could do. We make no commitment to it simply because we haven't been given the permission to do it, but at least we identify the possibility that it could be done, and in fact, we think it might be a really great way to kind of meet multiple needs in a very non-impactful way. In terms of the rest of the site, I wish I could tell you more except that there's not very much to tell. It's an existing roadway that we're going to pave with permeable pavement, and we're going to take the existing drainage and enhance it such that it can take whatever flows have been determined by our engineering firm need to potentially be addressed, and to do that in a way that is completely compliant with your stormwater and your drainage codes. Am I capturing that right? I mean, I've been talking forever so I apologize for that. I wanted to make sure I gave you a good grounding and then I wanted to make sure that I'm starting to address your questions. MR. HUNSINGER-All right. Questions, comments from members of the Board? MR. TRAVER-How many gallons do the trucks hold? MR. SIPLON-We modeled everything that we originally did on 3,000 gallons. However, today we had a 4,000 gallon tank delivered to us. We believe that we can make that 4,000 gallon 8 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) tank work. In fact it's being modified to be put on the truck as we speak. So the answer is either three or four, and I think we can do the math both ways, but I'm very confident that we can make four work, which, again, would mitigate the number of trips that we would need to take. MR. TRAVER-You mentioned that you began discussions with the City about using City water, but that wouldn't work because obviously they treat it for domestic use, but what about sharing their source, and just tapping into it pre-treatment? MR. SIPLON-We considered that. The surface waters of all the reservoirs themselves wind up being exposed to a number of contaminants in the environment that we would then have to treat out. One of the advantage of groundwater is you don't see anywhere near the same level of voc or organic contaminants, and one of the things that consumers are after is what they consider to be a spring water which emerges out of the earth in kind of their, you know, mind of stepping into a stream while they're camping, and so, you know, it's important to understand that this only works to the extent that the public is ready to receive your water. While I could see how we could potentially treat the water to meet what you talked about, I don't think it would be a viable commercial strategy. It would begin to look like Aquafina or Dasani which is a processed water, and what we're trying to bring to market is a water that is what you absolutely have in abundance, which is spectacular, clean water flowing off of the southern Adirondacks, making its way to the Hudson River. We simply want to capture at below ground before it gets exposed to those contaminants. MR. TRAVER-If you can't do that, what about putting in a well at the bottling site? MR. SIPLON-Well, there are a number of facets with that. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the site, but it's pretty dense. By the way, I would have loved doing that, but there are also a number of former industrial operations that were very nearby. I am fairly certain that once we drill into that ground that we're going to find lots of industrial contaminants on that site. Right across the street was a former mill and tannery. It's highly likely that we are going to be exposed to issues in the groundwater there. However, if we could have figured out how to squeeze a drill rig on the site, I probably would have put a test well in to find out. We simply couldn't do it. MR. TRAVER-So you haven't done that testing? MR. SIPLON-At the site? At the City site? No. MR. TRAVER-Okay. That's all I had. MR. HUNSINGER-Other questions? Jamie? MS. WHITE-Where on the City site will the trucks actually be delivering this water? Because that site is very tight. MR. SIPLON-Yes, I don't know if I brought a, I have a graphic that actually covers that, but I don't think I brought it. MR. CENTER-1 can answer that question. The trucks will actually come in on Pine Street, and we've made a turn in and back in area for a three point turn on the parcel. They'll back in on the east side of the church on Pine Street. So as you turn. MS. WHITE-Is that where the Salvation Army is? MR. CENTER-No, it's on the other side of the building. MS. WHITE-On the other side. MR. CENTER-On the opposite side of the building. So they'll come off of Broad Street onto Pine Street, turn into the site, and then back into the building. MR. SIPLON-One of the reasons we chose the form factor of the truck we did was to make sure that they could successfully navigate that intersection without any modification. So they'll immediately turn left there and continue that left turn into our lot. They will not have to back in. They'll be able to pull in and then they will be able to back up into our facility to dis-load, and dislodge their water. As I said, we chose that form factor to try to make it workable at both the well site as well as down at the operation site. MR. FERONE-You talked about the truck. You said you're working towards having something engineered to be an electric? 9 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MR. SIPLON-Yes. MR. FERONE-Okay. You wouldn't start production before that truck was available? MR. SIPLON-We own a truck today. The truck is a clean diesel truck. What I'd like to do is convert that truck to be either partially or fully electric. Those exist, by the way. There are trucks bigger than the one we're talking about that have been electrified. However, none are for a tanker and for that load, and so what we're essentially doing is pushing not a form factor, but the weight factor. It really has to do with the ability to be able to generate torque for the back wheels under that kind of load. I can go deep on the engineering on this, but the thing about it, it's doable. In fact, this is a perfect application for electric. Electric is good at low end torque. That's why locomotives use it to start up an electric locomotive. You can get a lot of weight moving, even up a slope, with an electric motor because it generates torque much better. Here's what it's bad at. It's bad at long range and high speed. We don't need either of those. We're, you know, six miles, door to door, and we're talking about going no more than 35 miles an hour. In fact, it's also a good application because we go down loaded and come back empty, which means that we can take that load and use that to generate energy on a regenerative breaks. So every time I talk to somebody about this application they look at it and say, yes, this is doable. In fact, this is a great application. We just haven't done it yet. So let's sit down and figure out how long it'll take and what it'll cost. We're at those levels of discussion with multiple vendors right now. MR. FERONE-But the project is not dependent on that truck becoming available? That you would start production. MR. SIPLON-We would start with it as a clean diesel truck today, and then we would use that vehicle until we're able to transition it. I'd like to do that, you know, within months. I don't how long it will take. MR. DEEB-As far as gallonage and projections, what are your initial projections for the amount of water that you're going to transfer per, you know, how many truckloads to start with, and then what is your ultimate goal? MR. SIPLON-Let me share the numbers associated with this, because sometimes this gets confusing to people in the Town, and good people can easily get lost in this. First thing to understand on all this math that went into how much are we going to actually take is that we had an independent hydrogeological assessment done that says that there's more than three billion gallons falling on the City's watershed property alone, with several thousand acres that the City owns within Queensbury for this purpose, where it houses its reservoirs and maintains its watershed activities. Some years it's well more than three billion gallons, but that's the catchment area. Of that three billion gallons, we looked at the last 50 years' worth of withdrawals. A typical year is about, and very close to last year, is about 1.3 billion gallons that is withdrawn by the City into its water treatment facility for delivery to its customers. Now, the important note, they only have 800 million gallons worth of demand. What that means is they have to process 1.3 billion gallons to give 800 million gallons to their customers, or, put another way, they're losing 500 million gallons a year in transit. That speaks to the condition of the infrastructure, which was an engineering marvel when it was built. Unfortunately much of it built in the 1800's, and desperately in need of modification and repair. So this is a problem, by the way, that exists in many communities across America. It's not unique to Glens Falls. However, what we said was, okay, if the City's taking 1.3 to meet their 800 million gallons, that means that there's 1.7 billion gallons in a typical year left as excess, that either sits in those reservoirs or floats through the groundwater system ultimately to be discharged to the Hudson River valley. Of that, we're proposing to use between 10 and 25 million gallons. Let me tell you where those figures came from. The water agreement, which I think that you've been provided by the City, is a 99 year agreement. That 99 year agreement allows us to extract water over that period of time in a variety of ways. However, it defines our limit as initially being set at no more than 25 million gallons. That 25 million gallons came from the maximum output we thought, from an engineering standpoint, our facility down at St. Alphonsus church could package. It turns out, we wrote that, you know, when we were looking at maximum impact for the planning process down in Glens Falls. It turns out that it's much more likely that we're going to operate at 10 million gallons. In fact, I only have line of sight from a business standpoint, to 10 million gallons of production. I think modeled to the City, listen, we have to, for SEAR purposes and for planning purposes, tell you what the maximum impact would be, but I don't want you to believe that we're actually likely to get to 25 million gallons worth of billing. What we're likely to do is closer to 10 million gallons. In fact I laid out a proforma for the City that said, here's what I believe your financial projections should be. Over the next five years it will take us, I believe up to five years, to get to roughly 10 million gallons worth of withdrawal and packaging. Past that, I don't believe that the property itself, also with the limitations that we've agreed to based on the 10 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) planning process and the court case that ensued down in Glens Falls, I don't believe that we have line of sight to do much more than 10 million gallons. When you triangulate the number of truck trips that we are limited to, the physical limitations of the site, the capacities of the machines that we use to package the water, all this leads to a figure that is generally right around 10 million gallons. So when you do the math, it's important to say what the maximum would ever be, which would be if we somehow manage to figure out how to get to the theoretical capacity of the site, we could potentially need to extract as much as 25 million gallons, but the likelihood and the only thing that I've been approved for planning purposes in the City of Glens Falls is for roughly 10, and so the math is either three or four thousand gallons a trip into 10 million gallons. So what you'll see is that the peak, is that the most that we could ever really imagine needing to do was as much is 16 trips a day if it was at three thousand gallon and we were at the top number. The truth is I don't think we're even going to get there, but what we would really like to do is figure out from you what is an acceptable limit which we will integrate into our business planning. I think the 10 million is kind of the figure that we tend to operate around and the associated trips associated with that, but to the extent that you want to talk about, you know, what would be the maximum impact, I want to make sure that I'm sharing the entire envelope with you as well. MR. DEEB-So you're anticipating 16 trips a day to start? MR. SIPLON-No, I believe that it would take us more than five years to get to 16 trips. We only have line of sight to be able to process roughly one to two million gallons in the next several years. We then go to market. If the market receives our water well, we will grow. The proforma goes from one to three to five to seven to ten. Only at 10 are we approaching 16 trips a day and based on 4,000 gallons it would be even less than 16 trips a day, but that's also based on a theoretical limit. If you, as a Planning Board, or others were to come to me and say that we believe that there's a limit that we think that we should apply that's less than that, then obviously then we would adjust to that. I think what we're trying to share with everyone, we try to be transparent about what we think the maximum impact could ever be. So 16 is what we believe the maximum impact could potentially be, but I would tell you that based on the discussions we've had with the neighbors, that I'm not sure that that's possible with the limitations that seems like makes sense to them. I think we need to figure out a way to put some of these mitigation strategies in place to maybe avoid ever getting to that. That's the dialogue I want to have with you. I want you to help me figure out what that should be. MR. DEEB-Do you have a minimum number for your company to be profitable? MR. SIPLON-Well, you know, it moves from two to three a day, which would be what I anticipate over the next year, 18 months, and when we install a second machine, there's only one machine to do packaging right now, then there would be a staff function that would increase. I think that the envelope that I shared with you, which is starting at something like two to three and being something less than 16, all of it is potentially profitable. We would have to scale our business to whatever was allowed. I don't anticipate, from the very first day that we push a case out, I'd like us to be profitable, but I'd like us to be scalable as well within the boundaries that we've already, you know, defined as what is our total withdrawn. I'm trying to make sure I answer your question. Sixteen is the theoretical max. I think it's likely that a solution something less than 16 would be the right place for us to find ourselves, but that's your job to tell me. I want to make sure I'm not telling you what the answer should be. I'm telling you what all the possible answers might be, and we're willing to talk about any of them. Did that answer your question? MR. DEEB-I think. I'm not quite sure. I'm not sure it's up to us to tell you how to run your business, how many trips you should make or. You're the one that has to determine that. MR. SIPLON-Well, I've brought to the process, it's part of our application, that we propose that the most we could ever do is 16. What I'm saying is I'm open to the idea if there is a rationale for us to do something less than that and to accommodate that with some of the mitigations we've already put in play, I'm willing to consider that. Sixteen is the business plan. MR. DEEB-Okay. That answered my question. MR. TRAVER-You mentioned, when you started the discussion about the trucks and the trips, that you felt that this relatively small truck was better than perhaps the largest truck, but, I mean, just thinking myself, looking a traffic going down my road, I don't know if I would prefer to have many more smaller trucks traveling around, versus a couple of larger trucks traveling around. So I'm just wondering your thought process, how did you arrive at the conclusion that many more smaller trips were preferable to a couple of larger vehicles, particularly, as you point out, if larger vehicles are on that road. 11 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MR. SIPLON-Yes, that's a great question. There's a lot of non-intuitive stuff that I have learned in this process, because I started with certain perceptions that I have found out from engagements with the public is not necessarily widely viewed. For instance, let me give you an example. We were down at the church and going through the planning with the City. I assumed that the City Planning Board would want us, and the citizens around the facility, would want us to not have deliveries at night, and in fact I make our proposal to the first Planning Board saying that we'll block deliveries out at night. What I got back was feedback from the public that said what we're really concerned about is traffic during these daylight hours. In fact, we would much prefer to see traffic, even from midnight until four in the morning was actually viewed as the most ideal time for a truck to transit the neighborhood. That was not intuitive to me, and so I only got that by listening to the neighbors and then listening to the planning process. So we said, listen, you tell us what is an appropriate step for this community, and we will figure out how to abide by it. I learned quickly not to say I know it all. In this particular case, we've observed the traffic flow that goes on in that, not only in that neighborhood but in that entire corridor, from Butler Pond down to West Mountain Road, down Corinth and all the way into the City of Glens Falls, and what we see is that when we engage people and ask them, what do you think about trucks, they don't think of a fuel oil truck as a truck. They think of a truck as a semi-truck. So it took me a long time to understand what they were saying is I don't want semis during this period, but if it was that big, well, that doesn't even matter to me. So that started to inform us as to, okay, they seem to think that this is ambient. This is like a big pickup truck to them. I didn't come with that idea. We learned that by engaging the public. Their view is a fuel oil truck is in my neighborhood every day. It's smaller than a school bus, which is there every day. It's smaller than a garbage truck which is there quite regularly. It's a little bit bigger than a delivery truck which is there quite regularly, and so I heard this so many times that we finally realized that we need to start listening to what people are saying. What they're saying is, if you can figure out how to make it be like that, it would be a lot better for us, but I agree with you. I wondered, what is the tradeoff? And quite honestly I think that we could continue to ask that question, and we would be very happy to try to listen more. Does that answer you? MR. TRAVER-Yes. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-The aquifer watershed recharge evaluation that's mentioned in this report, has that been shared with the Town Engineer? MR. SIPLON-Yes. I'll be honest. It's been shared with the Town. I don't know, within the Town, whether or not it's been shared with the Town Engineer. MRS. MOORE-We have not forwarded information to the Town Engineer at this time. We will be. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Now is that more than what we have here? Because I assumed it would be. MRS. MOORE-Yes. MR. CENTER-Yes. You have an executive summary of that, the actual document that was submitted, and there's a full copy for your review, and we submitted three to the Town. This is the full document that covers the hydrogeological study, and you have Mr. VanVleet here if there's any questions in regard to the study itself, if there's a specific question. MR. HUNSINGER-I don't have a specific question. I just wondered if the Town Engineer has weighed in on it. We don't have any comments yet so that's why I was asking the question. Because, you know, some of these more technical things, I mean, I don't pretend to be an engineer, no one else on the Board usually does. We really rely on the Town Engineer to provide our comments, you know, to provide comments to us so that we can make the determination and make a judgment as to whether or not we think it's okay. So I'd be looking for the Town Engineer's input on that. I mean, the numbers that he's presented this evening, it sounds like it's going to be a miniscule amount of what you're proposing to withdraw, versus what the volume of the recharge area is, but I don't really feel as though I can make that proper conclusion. MR. CENTER-Correct, and we're also limited to the production of the wetland that's there, the well production. MR. SIPLON-Let me just supplement a couple of things there. The DEC has its own threshold by which it evaluates water withdrawals, and it's currently monitoring the City's water withdrawals with a series of existing water withdrawal permits. So the City has made application to DEC to modify the existing water withdrawal permits with the incremental proposed volumes here. So DEC will do an evaluation as part of this process. The second 12 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) thing to understand is I don't want, you don't necessarily have to read through the whole water agreement for me to give you the high points. The water agreement is such that not only do we delineate exactly how much water we propose to take in max and the likely volume, but we also have several limits that we've put in place. One is that we will monitor, at our expense, using test monitor wells as well as the level of the well that we have, hydrogeological data for the entire strata. We'll report that quite regularly to the City. I believe that the City has also offered that in their own dialogue with the Town, to share that with the Town to make sure that everyone can see that the water levels associated with this watershed are not being affected by our withdrawals, which we believe to be very, very minor, but obviously the monitoring will determine that. The second thing is, if the City were to restrict flow out of the watershed in general, we've made ourselves subject to all of those same restrictions. So if they put some kind of conservation on for the general public that would affect us. If they were to put on any specific water restriction on this particular extraction, that would apply to us. Finally we said that if there's ever a condition extended drought where they feel like they have to limit the withdrawal of the entire thing, then we would be subject to that. What we're trying to say here is that we're like anyone else. We're a citizen of the City. We just happen to be getting the water out of a well instead of at the end of a pipe, but all of that water is coming from the same place, and our object is to be sustainable at our core. If this water cannot be replaced in a demonstrable way then we're not meeting our corporate mission, and it's not just the fact that we're concerned about the limits that we negotiate in a contract with the City, it's just not who we are. So we were quite ready to sign up to those limits and I view them as a template for anything you would see as potentially a valuable to Queensbury. We are quite ready to agree to any reasonable limits that are in the community's interests. MR. DEEB-Could I re-address the water transfer on Butler Pond? You said that, if I recall, that if infrastructure's okay and the piping's okay, you would consider piping down to West Mountain. Right? MR. SIPLON-Yes. MR. DEEB-So it would eliminate the trucks going up Butler Pond. MR. SIPLON-Yes. MR. DEEB-So, and you're going to look into that in the spring? MR. SIPLON-Well, we're looking into it right now. We simply can't do the detailed research on the condition of the pipes because they're not able to access all of that, but what we'll do is engage with the City in sampling the condition and the capacity of their existing series of, they have a network of pipes that come down from this general area and feed their water treatment facilities. I'm not quite sure, I want to make sure that I'm not speaking specifically for the City, but in all the conversations that we've had with the City, I believe them to be very supportive of this in any way that would help the project. So I believe what they have said is that we would support our ability to use that right of way to bring that water down to at least the junction of West Mountain Road. Now the question becomes one of land acquisition and further hearings and permits about whatever we would propose to do at that site, which we would clearly engage you in every other part of the process, to do. So imagine, for a second, that it was viable for us to bring that down, we would then do a site plan like the one you see here, but first we'd have to acquire or in some way have access to a parcel of land. I don't have that today. We only have a couple of ideas of who we would approach for that. Once we had access to land, whether we leased it, bought it or had grants to it, then we would then do a site plan like this and come back to you and say here's what we propose, but what we're suggesting is that, in the interim, we be able to move forward with what we've got here. Quite honestly I think that plan of bringing it down the mountain is more scalable. It just makes sense for everybody. However, I don't think that we should be limited in our ability to proceed as a business, simply because we can imagine that there's a more scalable way. What we have right here is what we believe to be a very non-impactful way for us to get started, and if, in the process of getting started, we wanted to cap that, I saw, for instance as I researched the history, that as Great Escape grew, there was a process, I don't know if it was this Planning Board or subsequent variations of it, but there was a process by which once their attendance figures got to a certain point, there were certain mediations they had to put in, such as the pedestrian bridge. I would suggest that a process like that is something that would make sense here. If what we could do is say this is what we believe to be a reasonable level, in terms of the site itself, and once the demand got to be above that point, we would believe that a mitigation would be required, and here's the series of mitigations, I feel like there's a template for how we might do that, and we would be happy to consider that. I hope that makes sense. MR. DEEB-Yes, well, I wasn't suggesting any limits. I was just questioning, you know, how committed you are to that, and what about affecting water quality, if it has to travel down certain. 13 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MR. SIPLON-Yes. That's why we have to look at the condition of the pipes. They're most likely cast iron pipes that are very old, and so my personal, at least hypothesis, is that we're probably going to have to put in new plumbing from the well site itself, down to West Mountain Road, which is a significant engineering task, and a significant cost. So I've said this quite openly, and to everyone here, the best way for us to make that happen would be for us to be able to sell some of our water, because we can't continue to make investments in potential land development if we can't ever get to market, and we believe that the market is ready to pick our water, and we believe that we could bring an incremental strategy that would allow us to get started this way and then to take some of the revenue that we're able to derive from the sale of the water and use that to make these further changes, and we would be willing to commit to that kind of process. MR. DEEB-All right. Thank you. MR. TRAVER-You mentioned, again getting back to the pipes or the plumbing issue as it goes down Butler Pond Road from this site that you're thinking about possibly tapping into with the cooperation of the City, where do those pipes go now? MR. SIPLON-They're going to the water treatment facilities. They come to a junction on West Mountain Road. They kind of jag over to Aviation and then they move down Aviation towards the City's water treatment facilities on the other side of the Mall. So what we're talking about doing is riding with them down West Mountain Road, at which point we're now deviating from their path and having to go figure out either our transfer station there, or we would have to find a nearby parcel, and I'm suggesting that one possibility would be the City's property which is located on the other side of the intersection, but that, itself, is a significant transfer task. We're probably talking about between a quarter and a half mile worth of underground plumbing that we would have to both get permission to do and then we would also have to fund to do, to move it to the City's property and make a transfer station there. All this stuff takes time and costs money which we're quite happy to do. I just think that we have to talk about what it is that we can do today, most specifically with you, what we are proposing to do today, we believe, is, you know, a very not, it's a very light impactful use of the site, and what we're willing to say is if you want to somehow say that our use of that particular facility only makes sense to a certain volume of either truck trips or withdrawals or whatever, then we would be willing to try to figure out how would we make this process work to transition to another answer, as the time and funds allow. MR. TRAVER-When I asked the question earlier about getting the City water pre-treatment, you said you didn't think that would work because of various contaminants or elements that the City would be treating out, but what about this same water that's going, as you say, to the treatment center? You said that when you described the route it goes down. MR. SIPLON-All that water is taken from the reservoir. So it's all subject to the kind of airborne contamination that I was telling you about. Basically any voc or any runoff that's associated with nitrates and fertilizers and all that stuff is making its way into the reservoirs themselves. The water quality associated with the reservoirs is decidedly different than the water quality associated with the groundwater, and what we're suggesting is that we could treat the water that comes out of the reservoir, but unfortunately the marketplace doesn't see treated water in the same way that an untreated water from the ground is seen. So while it is technically possible to do what you're saying, I don't believe it's a viable market strategy? MR. TRAVER-So you weren't, in our discussions about setting up a facility on West Mountain Road, you weren't talking about sort of tapping into an existing plumbing. You're talking about adding new plumbing? MR. SIPLON-We're talking about taking the well site that we have, initially, I would love it if we could use the existing, the City may have an open pipe way basically from that dam where it is harvesting water today, they may have additional pipes that aren't being used, but I have a feeling they're old and they're very leaky and they're cast iron. I won't know until they give me access to go evaluate, but what I'm suggesting is that we would likely have to replace that plumbing aspect, but what we would be connecting it to is our well, not the reservoir. They're very close to each other. They're within several hundred feet of each other, but they are not the same. MR. FERONE-1 have a multi-faceted question. One of the things you mentioned is that your power for the site is going to be generator. So, why not on the grid? Why generator? Is it diesel or natural gas? If it's diesel, you're going to have to have a fuel tank on site. How many gallons and how many times a week will that need to be filled up? MR. SIPLON-So let's take it one at a time. 14 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MR. FERONE-Okay. MR. SIPLON-The reason we don't want it to be on the grid is the grid doesn't extend to there. We were trying to keep, our belief is that that watershed property is an asset in an undeveloped way. So what we'd like to do is continue to keep it that way. So whatever we do we believe has to be viable and off grid. The very first strategy we looked at was a diesel generator. I don't like it for several reasons. Not only the ones that you talked about, in terms of the fuel, but also just the emissions themselves are not as good as Ipg, so essentially what we're going to do is we're going to have a small scale generator that can be fed by small scale Ipg tanks, and I'd like to make it such that it was literally the size of the ones you would use at home, you know, the kind of cans you can literally carry. We're still evaluating whether or not we can do it with a tank that small, but no matter what, it's going to be a very, very small tank, and it's because we're going to have people on the well site daily. So we can bring new Ipg to the process literally every day, because we're already making a trip there. We don't want a big tank. We don't want a big footprint. So LPG is cleaner and it's quieter. It's a little more expensive but we've already specked it. MR. FERONE-What size is the generator? MR. SIPLON-It's not very big. MR. CENTER-It's a three phased pump. It runs the well pump and the transfer pump. MR. MAGOWAN-Eight or ten kva? MR. BORGOS—You've got to run the three phase pump to pump the water into the tanks and then the water out of the tanks into the transfer pump. I believe all the technical specifications are detailed in the drawings associated with the Connex box in the site plan, but we'll get you that answer. MR. HUNSINGER-Other questions from the Board? There's actually a couple of things that we're hoping to accomplish this evening. As members of the audience may or may not know, currently the Town Code does not permit this use that's been proposed. The Town Board is in the process of considering a zoning amendment. That will be considered in the future. So part of our task this evening is to review that Code amendment and to provide a recommendation to the Town Board. The other is to initiate the SEAR process, which is the State Environmental Quality Review Act. We have requested to be the lead agent. We have not yet been established as the lead agent. We're still waitingq for other affected parties to provide comments. That may or may not occur on March 28t , but what we have determined that we would do this evening is to open a public hearing process so that we can begin to solicit comments from the public who are interested in this project. Public hearings for the Planning Board are designed for members of the audience to provide comments to the Planning Board. They're not designed to be a dialogue with the developer. Anyone who wishes to address the Board will be asked to address their comments to the Board, and it is the Board that then uses that information in our overall deliberations. The meeting is taped. The tape is then used to transcribe the minutes of the meeting. The tape is also available on the Town website. So in the future if you want to listen to the hearing, you can go to the Town website to hear the meeting. We do ask anyone who wishes to address the Board to state their name for the record, and then we will begin the public hearing process. We do have a signup sheet, Laura. MRS. MOORE-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-How many names are on there, quite a few? MRS. MOORE-1 have 13. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Do you want to call the people up, or I can. MRS. MOORE-Chris, do you want a timer? MR. HUNSINGER-Is there anyone who wishes to address the Board that didn't sign up? Okay. So there's a couple. Oftentimes when there's a lot of public comment, we will ask people to limit their comments to three minutes. If that's a hardship you can tell me before you come up here. We will try to enforce that. There is a timer and you'll hear the timer go off. When that does go off I would ask you to wrap up your comments, and I would ask the public to try not to reiterate the same comments that have been stated by another member. Again, once it's on the record, it is on the record. Many of the concerns have already been addressed by the applicant, but if there are certain concerns that you feel have not been addressed, those would 15 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) be fair game. With that, Mr. Derek Slayton. You're the first one to sign up. If you'd come up to the table here and speak clearly into the microphone. PUBLIC HEARING OPENED DEREK SLAYTON MR. SLAYTON-Good evening to the Planning Board. My name is Derek Slayton. I live on Thunderbird Drive, right around the corner from Butler Pond Road. I use the property going up Butler Pond Road to ride my bike, walk my dog, as do a lot of other people, and just a little bit of entry there, not much, but I know I have a limited amount of time. My concern, as a neighbor and a taxpayer and resident of Queensbury, is one that addresses the zoning that's not zoned, or property that's not zoned for a commercial business or activity that here is being considered to be changed for a commercial activity or commercial business. I applaud Just Beverages as a business for wanting to be responsible. I applaud the business plan for using local residents and businesses, very much so being a business owner. It's just my concern is over the zoning. If this is passed for commercial activity, what precedent does that set for future businesses to potentially do the same, and what that means for an area where it's pristine land, it's protected land. It's watershed property. There is not a lot of activity over that way, but what's used for recreational purposes could mean a lot of other potential commercial activity. That concerns me as a person there. Thank you for your time. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Mr. David Judkins. I was going to add, since this is a public hearing, that any members of the audience are welcome to provide written comments, either through the Town's website which is queensbury.net or to the Queensbury via mail. Any public comments do get read into the record and/or distributed to the Board. DAVID JUDKINS DR. JUDKINS-Hi. My name is Dr. David Judkins. I live at 286 Butler Pond Road. I did not realize that our time would be as limited as it is. I'll try and be as quick as I can. Just a couple of quick things I just want to comment on. There are no school buses or semi-trucks that go up Butler Pond Road and there's very limited fuel trucks that have natural gas up to the last two houses. Any semi-trucks that go up there are lost, and the school buses stop way down at the bottom near the church so that doesn't happen. What we have currently is the City of Glens Falls and the Town of Queensbury with a self-sustaining operation of municipal water collection. This system now contains a watershed, a reservoir and supplies water to a filtration plant by gravity. This appears to be an existing nonconforming use, located in a Land Conservation neighborhood zoned area. What the applicant is proposing, and I might stop just there for a moment and say I'm not exactly certain who the applicant is. There were two SEAR applications put in. The first one was put in by the City of Glens Falls. That's the first one. I got this by FOIL. The second one is put in by the City of Glens Falls and the Town of Queensbury. I'm not certain what that means. I'm not exactly certain who the applicant is. Yet in the presentation that was discussed prior to this, it was described as our application by Just Bev, that they are a citizen of the City of Glens Falls, when they're actually a business partner because there's a signed contract between Just Bev and the City of Glens Falls and do not want to be limited by their ability to operate a business were the exact words that were used. So I'm not 100% certain who the applicant is, and maybe you folks could sort that out for those of us that are unclear. Why the Town of Queensbury would be on the application with the City of Glens Falls for a commercial operation in a neighborhood I don't quite understand. But nonetheless, what we have now and what the applicant is proposing is a nonconforming use to a commercial venture, a sale of water to a privately owned company that is now a business partner in the City of Glens Falls, which includes but is not limited drilled wells, pumping system, electric or fuel powered building sheds, storage sheds, which is on their application, on site employees daily, trucking operations that have not been quantified, in-ground piping that is already in place, one of the things we're looking to give them permission to do through all of this, some of which is already done, and an in-ground storage tank. It would be hard for anybody to say that amendments to the current law or the current zoning would be consistent with this degree of change of a zoning law. An amendment by definition means zoning change. This is far, far, far different from what exists there today, and it'll be far, far different for the neighbors that exist there. I realize my time has run very short. I would just like to point out a couple of things to you. The truck safety issues on Butler Pond Road. The truck weights of 65,000 pounds, I should also point out to you that shortening the truck has nothing to do with the safety of Butler Pond Road. It's the pivot point to the front axle of the turning box that determines the turning ratio of the truck, not the length of the truck. The trucks are shortened so they can park them at St. Alphonsus. There's no shoulders. There's multiple blind curves. There's no sun exposure in the winter. There's steep inclines. There's three blind driveways, prolonged stopping distances down the hill, 65,000 pound trucks. Risk of rollover while descending, yes, they have baffles. They limit it. They don't stop it, and then we talk about pedestrians, 16 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) runners, bikers, pets and plows. If you look at Page Two and Page Three, I have a letter from Kevin Sullivan who is the track coach and cross country coach of the Town of Queensbury who has raised concern to the Town Board and to you, as the Planning Board, that there is a significant concern regarding the high school students who use that road to run and train regularly. That's Page Three. Page Two there is a letter from a member of the Adirondack Runners, Dan Olden. Many of you probably know him. He's been an officer there, who expresses the exact same concerns. The safety issues at the intersection of Butler Pond Road are even greater. That intersection has already been identified as a high risk intersection. It has had the signage at that intersection changed not once, twice, three, but four times. There are now blinking red lights at that intersection. I spoke to the Undersheriff. There are four two car accidents on average there a year. One every 90 days. Every one of these 65,000 pound trucks is going to either have to cross that intersection, that's if it goes straight and goes through the Prospect School area, where all the disabled kids cross, or it's got to turn onto West Mountain Road. So how long is it going to take one of those trucks to get up to the speed limit of 45 miles an hour on West Mountain Road? Well actually there's two ways to calculate that. One is you can go to the Department of Federal Highway Administration. There's charts that'll tell you the weight and how long it will take a truck to get 45 miles an hour, which is the speed limit. It's approximately 2,000 feet, over 1/3 rd of a mile, or you can use standard driving practices. How many gears will it take and how many seconds does it take per gear for a driver to get to that gear. It's about 90 seconds. Even if these numbers are half right, there is a significant safety issue at that intersection as well as Butler Pond Road. Not to mention the 65,000 pound truck when it turns on to Butler Pond Road is almost certainly going to encroach on the oncoming lane. I will close, and I'm sure you're glad, I will close with two things. Number One, the land purchase agreement between the City and Just Bev has a clause in it that I'm not entirely certain that everyone understands. Just Bev, at its sole discretion and sole cost and expense with prior written approval, a paraphrase, they can sell this contract to anybody, at any time at their own discretion. It's a 99 year lease. So while I applaud everything Just Bev is doing, I have no ill will towards Mr. Siplon, I think their endeavor and their efforts to be green and all that are very good, but that's a significant clause in this contract that the Town of Queensbury needs to know. He could sell this tomorrow, or once they get approval, and we've lost control dealing with Just Bev. Lastly, if you'll look at Page 5 of the handout that I gave you, I would like to remind everyone on this Board what Land Conservation 10 acres stands for in the Town of Queensbury. It encompasses areas where the land has serious physical limitations to development or unique characteristics that warrant restricting development to very low density. It is also an area that adds to the Town's rural character and should be protected as such. Article 179 of the Comprehensive Plan of the Board of the Town of Queensbury says that the first responsibility of any member of the Town is the safety and well-being of the members of the Town of Queensbury. I did include a page there where I talked about the potential liability. I think it was Page Four. I'll leave that, out of respect for the time, I will leave that for you to look at. Sir, you asked about the number of trucks, there's two ways to calculate that. One is what they've requested here in the application, 42,000 gallons per day, divided by 4,000 gallons per truck is 10.2 round trips per day or 24 trucks per day by Butler Pond Road. Or the contract with the City, which is 25 million gallons per year, and if you do the math, trucks, number of days, etc., etc. It comes out to 24 round trips or 48 trucks up and down Butler Pond Road today. The issues with road maintenance, the beating those roads are going to take, the safety issues on that road and the intersection, and the question of how is this considered an addendum to an existing zoning code when it is so starkly different and so obviously a commercial enterprise. I thank you for your time. I'd be happy to answer any questions. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. I just have a comment to make. While I respect your comments about the zoning code, that's the Town Board's decision to make, not ours. DR. JUDKINS-1 understand. I understand. MR. HUNSINGER-Just so you understand. Thank you. Next on the list is Mr. Ernie Martindale, and then after that Kirby VanVleet. Good evening. ERNIE MARTINDALE MR. MARTINDALE-Good evening. My name's Ernie Martindale, and I happen to live on the corner of West Mountain and Aviation Road, the road, the intersection that Dave had mentioned, and he stole a little bit of my thunder, so I'll be shorter, but one of the things is, it is a very dangerous corner. I've had Mr. Strough over there. I had Dan Stec over there, because one year we had eight accidents in eleven months, which is a lot of accidents, and they end up in my yard. They've run into the bushes. They've run into the fire place, and my concern is living at that corner, when Just Bev comes up, there's a stop sign, flashing lights, everything, but if it's only 16 trucks, that's 32 stops that they're going to make in front of my house, and I don't know, they weren't clear as to when they were going to run the trucks. If it's at night, we have my 17 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) grandchildren on a weekly basis. I'm afraid we won't be able to have the windows open, so that they can sleep, or in the summertime you can't have the windows open. They said it's non- impactful. I disagree totally. You have myself, we've been there 42 years. I know other neighbors who've been there 50 years. It changes the whole way of life, that when you get ready to retire all of a sudden your way of life has been changed. I also think there's safety issues. We have children up and down the road who are out in their yards playing. That many trucks going up and down the road, my concern's for their safety, because children don't always look. They run out in the road to chase a ball. They do other things, and once the trucks start to roll, who's going to count the number of trucks that are going up and down the road, and when they say there are those size trucks in the neighborhood, I don't see them every day There might be one garbage truck during the day, there might be one fuel truck, but they're not consistent, and they're not 32 round trips a day. Thank you for your time. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Mr. VanVleet and then after that is Travis Whitehead. KIRBY VAN VLEET MR. VAN VLEET-I'm Kirby VanVleet and I am the hydro geologist that was involved with Just Beverages, but I'm not here as a paid consultant. I'm here as a resident of Queensbury tonight. We've done quite a few developments of wells throughout Upstate New York over the years, and I just want to be very brief and say that groundwater extraction is a very benign use of a piece of property. It's not like building a factory or anything like that, and I feel that it's appropriate for the watershed property. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. And after Mr. Whitehead is Patty Martin. AUDIENCE MEMBER-1 didn't hear that gentleman say where he lives. MR. HUNSINGER-Sir, would you mind. MR. VAN VLEET-19 Amethyst Drive in Queensbury. AUDIENCE MEMBER-Thank you. TRAVIS WHITEHEAD MR. HUNSINGER-Good evening. MR. WHITEHEAD-Good evening. I'm Travis Whitehead. I live over at 22 Brookshire Trace, off of Corinth Road, and I'd just like to quickly say about the zoning change, which has been brought up a couple of times, that you'd have to think very hard before you did that because you may be faced with not so kind and gentle a group of people, you know, down the road you might have Poland Springs here with their Nestle lawyers, and I believe that you would just as soon not have a zoning change, but maybe have a use variance with some very specific conditions so that somebody else wouldn't come in here and say, you know, we've got full rein here to do what we want. I don't have those concerns with this group. My main concern is the issue of the loading station, the potential for a loading station on West Mountain and it makes perfect sense to these people, it seems to make perfect sense to everybody else. I know if I lived in that area, I would not want to see that truck traffic that they're talking about. I don't think they ever envisioned it. I don't think they deserve that kind of truck traffic, and it would make a lot of sense to have a loading station down on West Mount, and I believe that, you know, you stated that you should not be limited to proceed as a business. This is because you don't have the West Mountain loading station, but I would take exception with that because it's not your problem if they didn't think this through ahead of time. It's their problem, and if you were to give them a variance, you know, maybe you'd have a pretty specific time like, you know, you're saying now two to three trips a day for the next year. Maybe the residents here would be okay with that, and, you know, over the course of the summer while they can get all of their, you know, act together as far as trying to get a pipe down there. Getting a pipe down there should not be a problem. This is a 50 gallon per minute well at the most. You don't need much of a pipe for 50 gallons per minute. You could take a PVC pipe and run it through the old cast iron pipes that they say are probably in disrepair. I mean, there's lots of things they could do. They should have thought about this beforehand, and it's not your concern to worry about whether they thought about this before or not, and that's all I'd like to say. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Patty Martin, and then after her is Sean Craine. Good evening. PATTY MARTIN 18 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MS. MARTIN-Hi. My name's Patty Martin. I live at 7 Aviation Road, which is between Ernie Martindale and West Mountain Community Church. I've lived in that area pretty much my whole life, over 50 years. I grew up on that mountain. I rode horses. I've hiked. I've skied. I've biked. I've lived a lot of my childhood and adult life up on that mountain. When 9/11 happened, for whatever reason, we were very limited as to where we could go there. Glens Falls watershed posted the property. We were not allowed up there anymore. Now all we have is the road. Every single day year round there are many, many, many people going up and down that road, for biking, hiking, walking their dogs, running, whatever, and now I feel that that's being taken away from us as well because of the safety issues. I'm also concerned about with the road conditions. Mr. Siplon did say that they were going to be paving. I don't know whether that was the whole road or whether that was just their part into the well, but if you've got that many trucks, that heavy trucks going in day in, day out, something is going to happen to the road. So who's responsible for that? Us, as taxpayers in that neighborhood, are we going to be the ones that are paying for those road repairs? So, thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Sean, and after him is Gretchen Steffan. Good evening. SEAN CRAINE MR. CRAINE-It's Sean Craine. I'm a Queensbury resident, 247 Butler Pond Road. I moved here in 2014 in the summer, brought my family here, in part because of the principles of conservation that this Town has put into the Comprehensive Plan and I saw new trails being formed and I thought it would be a great place to raise a family. I looked into the zoning of the land, of the road, and had lawyers look at it, and it became evident that such a thing as a commercial activity would not be legal. So hearing about this project, I see a little bit of a contradiction. We're proposing to change and amend the zoning land use for a single entity, in this case Just Beverages, which wants to extract a natural resource, water, and this changes, it contradicts the very zoning law itself, which states that the purpose of this land is to protect the natural resources. So this clear contradiction, and the general circumstance in which performs, seems that, it smells of spot zoning. So that's a major concern of mine. Here's an amendment to the zoning, I think it's necessary to look at the spot zoning aspect of it. That furthermore we know that the law specifically states zoning must be in accordance with the Town's Comprehensive Plan. I looked at as much of the Comprehensive Plan before this evening as I could. I took a lot of notes about how this is in complete contradiction of the Town plan. I won't go over it all because we're limited over time, but some key points is it says environmental sustainability goes hand in hand with economic sustainability. Factors such as quality of life, property values, commercial desirability, tourism are directly related to environmental protection. So I think it's very important we protect this land, we stick to the zoning and not amend it. As someone pointed out, if we amend the zoning, another company such as Nestle could move in, buy this company, and they've got powerful lawyers. I would suggest you all read about what's going on in Freiberg, Maine and other communities where a water company comes in here, markets itself as very friendly, earth friendly, green bottles, green trucks, community, etc., and then sells out to a large entity such as Nestles, who starts to bring in their lawyers, bring in their power, re-define the contracts, and it really transforms towns. So please look into Freiberg, Maine. Look into other communities that have been devastated by bottled water companies. I'm not saying at some point I doubt that this is Just Beverages' cause, but who's to say, this is a 100 year contract. What's going to happen to the Town, what's going to be our legacy? Finally SEAR. I hope the Planning Board and the Zoning Board will both hold the highest standards of SEAR when reviewing the SEAR, and evaluations include a hard look at such items as everyone's been pointing out, the truck traffic, noise, roads, etc., etc. I think we really, really need to hold SEAR up to its highest standards. I think it's our obligation to do that before we put in place any of these types of plans. I really appreciate the time and your consideration. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Gretchen? And then after that is Terry Howk. GRETCHEN STEFFAN MRS. STEFFAN-Greetings. My name is Gretchen Steffan. I live at 73 Buckbee Road in Queensbury. Most of you on the Planning Board know me. I served seven and a half years on the Planning Board. I was a member of the Comprehensive Land Use Plan re-write, as well as the Planning Ordinance Review Committee that helped make recommendations to the Town Board for revision of the zoning. I actually am very proud to say that I wrote the vision statement in the Comprehensive Land Use Plan. My concerns are regarding utilization of Buckbee Road. In the last meeting that we had here with Just water, some of the conversation geared toward, well, we can, instead of utilizing Butler Pond Road we could also utilize Buckbee Road, and the slopes on Buckbee are even more significant than those on Butler Pond, but what I can tell you about Buckbee Road is we've been, we bought our property 12 years ago, and when we bought our property the road was dirt. The Highway Department paved the road with 19 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) leftover paving from summer jobs, and that was about 10 years ago. So the road was not planned for industrial traffic. There are about seven homes on the road and soon actually at the end of the month you'll be looking at a subdivision on our road. So there'll be nine residences in a rural residential area. Our property is zoned rural residential five acres, which does not imply industrial or commercial development or transport of materials, even water, at the levels that will be comparable to commercial or industrial development. Otherwise we will no longer be rural residential. The other concern that I have is the inclusion of the amendment regarding water extraction on our Land Conservation 10 acres. This will open the door for other extraction or more intense water extraction in the future, and potentially further erode the quality of life in the rural residential zone, and the other thing, I know you're going to be doing site plan review on this particular project at the end of the month and I can tell you that in my time on the Planning Board, seven and a half years, I never saw a traffic study that identified that there was an impact, a significant impact to traffic, so, and you guys have been here as long, some members. I like hearing the applicant's statement that, you know, from their perspective they want minimal impact and it fits with Land Conservation. They want to keep the sound to a minimum and they want to keep the amount of trees that are taken down to a minimum, and I appreciate that, but since the Planning Board is making recommendations to the Town Board, please remain cognizant that developers develop and often move on. The taxpayers remain the constant in paying the bills for the infrastructure for development in our community, and often the taxpayers are the ones that suffer the consequences of the development. So I think that's important to keep in mind when you're making your recommendations. I certainly wanted the opportunity to be heard. I thank you for the opportunity and for your attention, but I also want to try to keep our rural residential area true to its current zoning. I know that, you know, a lot of folks, I know when I was on the Planning Board, talk about NIMBY's, Not In My BackYard, but for those folks who it's not in their backyard, they don't have some skin in the game, and so I think that it's important that we have a great turnout for the folks in the community, and one comment that I will bring forward when I'm here on the 24th regarding the site plan review is what happens to any of the homes in the vicinity that may experience a well going dry after the commercial extraction, and so are we on our own, but that's for another day. Thank you very much. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Terry Howk. Then after Mr. Howk is Brian Rozell. Good evening. TERRY HOWK MR. HOWK-Yes, my name is Terry Howk. I live on Thunderbird Drive. A lot of what I've seen here tonight really concerns me more after I've seen kind of the snowstorm that came in and the truck traffic that they show that doesn't exist out there. I've been a neighbor in this community and that area since I was born. I'm 55 years old. I walk Butler Pond every two or three days a week. My daughters I push up there in strollers. Now I'm gifted I can push my granddaughter up in there in a stroller. This we don't want to change. When I walk along Butler Pond, I talk to all the neighbors. I can tell you every neighbors in every house. I know them all. This is what's going to change here. It's not just a truck going up and down the road once in a while. This truck is going to travel this road constantly, and at that end of the Town, we don't have a park that we can go to. The nearest thing is Queensbury school district where I work. So our park is Butler Pond Road. When I walk Butler Pond Road, I may see one car go by, and it's usually somebody else that's walking, somebody else you know. If you see a couple of other cars go through there, you wonder what's going on. Because there's not many cars that go up through there. There is not a traffic flow that goes up Butler Pond Road. Another thing that concerns me is they said they couldn't tell what the pipes were that go out of the reservoir that's there. You can run cameras in pipes and see what condition the pipes are. If they have to run a new pipeline from this well, a two inch line will cover far more than 50 gallons a minute, far more. How hard is it to put in a two inch line down through West Mountain Road, and how much money are they talking? They should have looked at this avenue before they went up there, because the biggest concern with everybody here is the zoning change, that when you buy your house and stuff, you expect and you look at the zoning that's out there and you say I'm pretty much protected with my house. My kids can go out here and play. I don't have to be real concerned. This is all going to change. It's not going to be what it used to be, and I see in here the proposal is for 600 and some acres. Well, if they're only doing just one little well on this one little spot, why is it only half an acre to change, why is it 668 acres? How many more wells are they going to put in and how much more traffic is going to come up there, because it's not going to stay the same. This is only the start, and once this ball starts rolling with commercial property going in a bedroom community, which this is, it's only going to grow and destroy what we have. This is the time to stop it, not let it happen. This is why we're here today. We don't want this to happen. Every neighbor I've talked to in this neighborhood says, I don't want these trucks going up through here. This is what we have. This is why we're here. This is why we love the Town of Queensbury and we don't want that to change. That's why we're looking at you today and we appreciate the time you've given us to say please help us stop this and not 20 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) make this happen in our neighborhood. That's what this is all about. Thanks a lot for your time. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. After Mr. Rozell is Dan Nussker. BRIAN ROZELL MR. ROZELL-How are you doing? Brian Rozell. Resident of Queensbury. I live right over here just off of Hiland. We've been dealing with Just for probably about eight, nine months now, and I will say they are the real deal. Thirty-four years we've been in business in this area in construction. We've dealt a lot of different factories and so on, and different people. These guys are probably the best guys we've ever dealt with, and they really are community oriented. Okay. They really do care about what the public has to say. The bottom line is is that the City of Glens Falls has been pumping water out of there for 100 years, okay. This is all they're trying to do is continue with, it's 100 feet away from what the City is already doing, all right. I know the residents are concerned about truck traffic. It's a public highway. I know that it sounds nice to be able to go up and down, I mean, I wish I owned the road I was on, okay. You go on a Saturday, look at Haviland, okay, on a Saturday morning. All you see are bikes and runners. There's not a busier road for bikers and runners, okay, but I can't say, no, trucks can't go down there, okay. It would be great to say that. We don't own our own roads, you know, these are our tax dollars that we're using to maintain those roads, okay, and we need these tax dollars, all right. In our business we are about really sick and tired of taking businesses from this area and shipping them to Mexico and out of state and such. We need to be able to send a message that we want businesses in the area. It's not a formaldehyde plant. This is a great project. These are the projects that we need here, all right. These are jobs for us, all right. We need the jobs. I mean it's nice just to be able to say, you know, everybody wants recreational. Everybody's thinking recreational. Well, those aren't the jobs that, you know, buy the houses and, you know, pay for the three, four hundred thousand dollar houses that are getting built and such. You need solid jobs in the area, and we're just tired of, you know, Native Textiles, I mean, Nibco, you can just go right down the list, Kavidien, all we're doing we pack them up and ship them out. We've got somebody that wants to come in here. These people have a great product and we need to support it and, I mean, we need to just fall behind it and support it, and if they say they're going to do everything they can to appease the neighbors, they will do it because they're really are a good product. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Mr. Nusskern and then after him is Joseph Gross. Good evening. DAN NUSSKERN MR. NUSSKERN-Dan Nusskern. I live at 1 Westmore Ave. I live, grew up in the area, moved away, moved away to Maine, not far from Freiberg. Then I moved back to the area. I would highly suggest the Board contact board members in Freiberg and also Sterling Massachusetts. These are two places where Nestle has invaded and taken the water supply from people. This groundwater, the 1.7 billion gallons that they mentioned, doesn't go away. It doesn't drain off into the Hudson and go down into the river. It supplies Glen Lake. It supplies all the water sources between here and there. It is not just wasted water. So when we talk about the groundwater, if I was to drill a well on my property, it's the same groundwater that I would be pulling from here. I think this project should be shut down completely. Once you let this genie out of the bottle you can't put it back in. So I highly suggest that you contact Freiberg and Sterling, Massachusetts. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Mr. Gross? Good evening. JOE GROSS MR. GROSS-Good evening. I'm Joe Gross. I live at 41 Thunderbird Drive. I also own Gross Electric. We've been doing the electrical work. I'm here to speak about Just Beverage. I'm a neighbor. I have great neighbors up there and of course I'm a new neighbor and they've been very patient with me with construction, excavators and dump trucks. Thank God it's over and they've been very good. So, Just Beverage, I've got to tell you, we've worked with a lot of different clients. We've worked with Global Foundries. We've done chip plants. We've done all of SUNY nanotech. I really applaud them what they've done with the church. I went in there and it's just first class. Everything they've done and said, they're a handshake type of business that I deal with and they're not all like that. Unfortunately I put my lawyer's kids through masters college and my kids might have to, it's a struggle for them because everything's legalities. They've been honorably in everything they've said. They're doing a fantastic job. They pay their bills. I wish every client paid like they do. I would, you know, I know everybody's concerned. I know nobody ever wants change. I think they're trying to be community friendly in 21 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) how they do it and I would encourage you give them a try. I think if you read between the lines there, they're saying that they're willing to take a limited amount of trucks up there. I think if you give them a limited amount, it's only in their best interest to try to, it's going to encourage them to find an alternate source to this pipeline that everybody would like to see, to let their business grow. So, but just totally shutting them down and having them pack up and take their business and take good paying jobs, because they are good technician jobs paying well, I think is not beneficial for the whole area. So but I think there has to be compromise and I think you have to be somewhat open-minded. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Is there anyone that did not get a chance to speak that wishes to address the Board? Yes, in the back, ma'am. KATHLEEN ROWE MRS. ROWE-Good evening. My name is Kathleen Rowe. This is my husband Steven. My seeing-eye husband. In any case, many years ago when the Red Lobster decided to come her to Town my address was June Drive, and after joining the Planning Board and fighting the Red Lobster and keeping it from going in on our beautiful plot of trees across from Friendly's, and into the plaza where it belonged, I moved my home and my family because Wal-Mart decided to go on my other property line. I now live and reside at 4 Cardinale Court, off of Potter Road. I see nothing but trouble from the coming of Just Beverage. Changing the zoning to commercial allows for any use of the property, and there is nothing that will stop anybody who wants to come in at a later time and convert that commercial property to something else, whether it's Nestle or anybody. I'm tired of moving and changing my address to stay away from the commercialism. There is no reason on earth to put this bottling company up on that road. No, it does not directly impact me, but Queensbury is supposed to be a beautiful place to live, and it was a place that 30 years ago we chose to come and settle ourselves. I want to leave a legacy for my children and it's not another Home Depot or another Lowe's or another kind of commercial business we don't need. We have our fill of box stores and nonsense, and even now as you look at the corner of Aviation Road and Quaker Road, a restaurant is trying to come to this location, which I'm told cannot come because of waste from gasoline engines and things that has to be removed from the property. What damage will be done up on Butler Pond Road by driving their 22 trucks and other things, as much as they say to you, you cannot stop them once the zoning is changed. They have a right to use the property how they will, and as you know, as we've seen in this area over my last 30 years, properties have been changed. They've been re-zoned. Companies have come and gone and many of the people who spoke for Just Beverage said the very same thing. Over the time I worked on the Planning Board and was responsible for changes in the Grossman's building, which no longer exists. Red Lobster that I fought so hard is now in the hands of a company besides Darden, the company that fought us to put that Red Lobster here. You cannot stop the progress that's headed up this way. I moved from Long Island to come to a place of beauty and what am I finding? Another Long Island is following me up the Northway. Look at the changes that have occurred in Saratoga Springs. Is that for the better or for the worse? And are we bringing it on ourselves. Thank you very much. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. STEVEN ROWE MR. ROWE-While I'm right here, if you don't mind, I'll just make a comment. The only thing I've got. MR. HUNSINGER-Your name, sir? MR. ROWE-Steven Rowe. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. MR. ROWE-You're welcome. The only comment I want to make and just remind everybody looking at the project is, there is, I don't know if I want to say it's a conflict of interest but Glens Falls is, kind of has something at stake here, and every time you turn around, it seems like they are trying to push their weight around. They've threatened to file lawsuits over different parcels that they've had in the Town, and I just hope everybody keeps that in mind that doesn't make that a factor just because they threaten or because they have a stake in this. Obviously they want it to go through on there, because they've got something at stake in it, but I just don't want to see their influence or their pressure from them threatening a lawsuit if we don't follow suit and do what they want. We've avoided one, I think it was Cole's Woods, that they threatened because of the zoning there, and again, they do have a stake in this. So that should not factor in to anybody's decision. Thank you. 22 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Sir, in the back? Good evening. MARK MAYNARD MR. MAYNARD-How are you doing? My name is Mark Maynard. I live on the other side of Queensbury, not really affected by this per se like the local residents. I just, I had a very simple statement to make, and that is I would like to think if the members of this Board and the Planning Board and even the members of Just Bev lived on that road, I'd like to think that they moved there for a reason. There's a certain way of life up there. I've been up there a number of times. It's a beautiful spot. People live out there in the woods for a reason. This was not what they asked for when they bought that property. You guys shouldn't even consider changing the zoning up there. At the very least, the minimum for this project to go forward, I think you guys are good guys. I like the sustainability, the idea of it, and at least the way you're talking it sounds like you've done a good job with a lot of the local Planning Boards and things like that we've talked to, but at the very least I think they should be forced to move the reception point down to West Mountain Road. That should be the bare minimum for this project. There's no reason for them to drive up that road essentially. Pipe it down to West Mountain and start the project over from there. That's it. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Yes, sir. JOHN DAVIDSON MR. DAVIDSON-Good evening, John Davidson from 13 Ashley Place, Queensbury. Thank you for this opportunity to speak about this project. I've been aware of this project for over a year. I met the Just goods people last January. They came to our facility to see what we were doing at the new Queensbury brewery. 1, too, use Butler Pond and Buckbee Road to bike and run so I have the same concerns, a lot of people have concerns. There's one thing that I know is the Just people will do everything in their power to keep this a safe road, but what I want to speak about is the zoning up on the site. When my brother and I were looking for a new brewery, we were bringing our production from Portland, Maine down here to open our own brewery, we looked at, our whole purpose was to re-use the building, you know, put an existing building that was underutilized, hopefully, in a depressed area, back into use, significantly in Glens Falls and Queensbury about two years. We almost gave up. We had looked at the building we're in now, and a year before we ended up talking to the Town, someone convinced us to go to the Town and talk about zoning, because we knew it wasn't zoned for manufacturing, for a brewery. The Town took us in, thank God, and allowed us to move forward with proposing a zoning change. Otherwise we would have moved our business to Wilton, NY. It would have been three exits down the Northway. You would have taken the tourist dollars and the potential business that comes back and forth from the brewery down the Northway. So, I look at the Just plant very similar to ours, and it's similar to the local wineries and distilleries. We're all doing a craft product that's considered, you know, above average. It's not your Dasani's or these other packaged waters. So, you know, let's bring Glens Falls and Queensbury to a new level, and bring people in and see what we can do positive. Let's not turn away another business. Every time we turn away business, we turn away tax dollars, and this is the kind of business we don't want to lose. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Yes, sir. MATTHEW MONTESI MR. MONTESI-Good evening. MR. HUNSINGER-Good evening. MR. MONTESI-I'm Matthew Montesi. I live at 9 Hillside Drive which is in Stonecroft. That's right by VanDusen's old farm. I was born and raised in Queensbury. I've lived in that location for 17 years. I applaud Just Beverage for being above board with everything. I believe it's a good project. I think it should go through. I do believe in everything there should be compromise. The last gentleman's statements that I don't want to see more business being lost to the area, but there was, on West Mountain Road, on Queensbury property, where the water tanks are, I'm about 60 yards to the water tank, maybe 100. They put a cell tower in my backyard. I wasn't crazy about it, but I don't own the view. Do I hear the generator occasionally or something up there? Yes. Up the road at Exit 20, a developer wanted to put in for a business for 3 or 400 employees. I wasn't crazy about that, but you can't stop progress. You can control it and you can compromise, but you can't stop it. This type of industry, how much cleaner of an industry do you want in the area? So, again, I'm for the project. Thank you for your time. 23 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Good evening. CHUCK BARTON MR. BARTON-Good evening, my name is Chuck Barton. I live on Brown's Path. I'm born and raised in Glens Falls, and for full disclosure I'm also the Chairman of the Economic Development Corporation of Warren County. I want to talk about jobs. The reason why I volunteer for my Economic Development, is because I worry about local economy. I worry about jobs, and this is a wonderful opportunity for Just that they've come to town. Tonight, though, we've heard some concerns, and I applaud this process and hearing those concerns, and my suggestion is that we work towards compromise. We find some solutions. Not only do I play a role hosting economic development here in the County, but I also work to grow the business that I work for, and I do economic development elsewhere, and it's a tough process, and a business is dealing with investment, changing market, competition, labor force issues. It's very difficult, and I think we, as a Town, can work with this very good business to do a win/win. So they grow. Because if they grow, then we have a healthier community. My suggestion is we find compromise and find solutions. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Anyone else? Yes, sir. RON BALL MR. BALL-Ron Ball, Queensbury. I currently own some property right near a cell tower and a water tower on the West Mountain Road, and I used to own a house that was on that property, and why I'm bringing up that house is that used to be the very last house on West Mountain Road but it was called Sand Road, S-a-n-d Road. At that time, that house that I bought and I re-did was just a farm, and they farmed all that property where Lehland Estates is, and why I'm bringing that up is because they've dug a hand well there, because there was no Town water at the time, and that hand well is still there, and t here's still water coming from it. Now if you go where that house is and you just go up over ridge and it will be the back of my property, not too far from where John Strough's house is. In between that property and John Strough's house there's a stump that, the tree's been logged off and there's a stump and water just constantly comes out of it. This is at the base of the mountain. So why I'm bringing this up is because Just Beverage has touched on the fact that they wanted to bring water down the mountain in a pipe. I don't believe they have to bring the water down the mountain in a pipe. I think at the base of the mountain, right where City of Glens Falls owns a big building now that they've been trying to sell, and it used to be where they stored all their water pipes and water lines and other equipment to construct a water line, I bet you if they drove a well there, they could draw out 50 gallons a minute, that would be the same water that they've got to pump up to the top of the hill. I don't really believe that's necessary for them to go up there and, with their trucks when they can do it right there on the West Mountain Road. It would be away from that intersection, and it would save a lot of the traffic that's going up and down there. I honestly believe there's more than enough water to do it. If you drive your own well you're going to find out it's the same clear water as what's up at the top. Thank you very much. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. We will conclude the public hearing for this evening. The public hearing will be left open. We are scheduled to hear this project again on March 28t". Would the applicant like to come back to the table? I think mentioned earlier in the meeting, the Planning Board will not be taking any action on this project this evening, for a couple of reasons. Number One, we're still waiting for the Town Board to vote to change the zoning, and we're also waiting for the other impacted parties to confirm SEAR and whether or not the Planning Board can be the Lead Agent. Do you have any final comments you'd like to add? MR. SIPLON-Thank you. There's a couple of things I just want to make sure that we clarify. I want to clarify just a couple of comments. This process is one that we try to engage as much information transfer as possible, but it's complicated and it's easy for people to get confused, but there were a couple of things that were said that I think we need to clarify. The first is there's a notion that there's no way to keep scope creep from occurring here in some kind of transfer, and I actually understand and I sympathize with this view. I've worked in the package, the consumer goods industry and the water industry, for many years and I'm familiar with some of the concerns that are being raised here. However, this was made in Glens Falls and I felt so strongly about it that we could find a way to limit it, that we put that in place. There is a deed restriction associated with our property at St. Alphonsus that limits the total number of trucks, not simply to us, but to any operator that would operate that facility, and so what I would say to those people who have raised that very legitimate concern is I thank them for that and what we need to do is talk to each other about what kind of limits are reasonable for us to put in, and how do we limit, how do we put them in in such a way that transferability is no longer an issue. I can 24 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) assure you that it is not our intention to turn any of this over to Nestle or anyone else. We are fierce competitors with the people that are being expressed as the bogey man that you should fear. The best way to ensure that Nestle does not continue to exploit resources the way they do is to allow this kind of plan to advance, for us to work together to figure out how to do it in a way we can all be proud of, and for us to create a model to the industry that says that they way that they are fearful of is not the way that communities will partner with companies going forward, and any input that people can provide to us to make that happen we welcome. So, in addition to that, there was a concern raised about whether or not we were only talking about paving roads at our well site, and I want to clarify the fact that we have made the offer to the Town to put in escrow funds to directly repair roads in proportion to our use. We simply want some input as to what is an appropriate level to do that. It's without precedent. No company has ever done it. So there isn't a program for us to just plug a dollar value in. However, as soon as people can sit down with us and start to problem solve, we will put that money in escrow. There have been concerns raised about whether we would limit traffic around things like school buses and quite honestly I have never met the gentleman that is the head of the cross country and track team, but if there is a use that would require us to block out traffic during a period of time where people are actively running on the road and that's of community value, we would entertain that. What I would encourage people to do when they have those kinds of concerns is to bring them, take us up on our invitation. Raise it to us and allow us to try to fix it. I have yet to find a problem that anyone has presented to us that we cannot provide a credible solution to. We may not see eye to eye on everything, but we will embrace every input and try to come up with an answer. There was a question made about whether or not we would engage in a traffic study. Quite honestly we've already begun one, but we'd like for you to tell us exactly what you would like. We believe it's imperative on us to clarify, not only what our traffic counts are, but what ambient traffic counts are in there. What we just simply don't know is how you would like to receive the information. That information is critical to us, in order for us to figure out what the right level is. So I embrace that question. Somebody else raised a question about whether or not we would be accountable to wells running dry. The first thing I would say is that we will enter into the record a formal statement made by the hydro geologist that expresses the science associated with where the well itself is. It is at a datum level several hundred feet above any residential level of a well that exists in your community. In other words, let me put it to you another way. We're extracting water above the roof level of their homes. We're talking about completely different water systems, and it's not my supposition that this is true. It's a hydro geological formal scientific assessment that it's true, but beyond simply the claim that it is probably physically impossible for us to affect the dry or the water levels of existing wells down below us, we have put in place tools to monitor that in such a way that if any of that is occurring, we would immediately restrict our withdrawals. That exists in the water agreement. We put those in because we cannot stand, as a brand, for us to go out to the public as if we are yet another exploiter of a resource. If what we're doing is costing the community water, our brand supposition is false. However, we believe that by taking 10 to 25 million gallons, which is the maximum that we currently have in the agreement to take, although I don't have line of sight to even figure out how to attain 25. We believe that we can actually leave several hundred million more gallons in the water shed. Why do we believe that? Because the water shed itself is producing this enormous amount of water that the City has to extract and lose in the process of bringing it down to town. They lose hundreds of millions of gallons a year in the process of just bringing it down the hill. Why is that happening? Because they don't have the funds to fix it. How do we fix that? We fix that by providing them with a revenue source that allows them to go target where are they leaking the most. If we can now float a bond, the City of Glens Falls, and I say we because I live there now. I'm in on this. I want this to happen for this community because I'm part of this community, and I want to see a community be able to put its arms round its infrastructure problem with a source of funding that allows them to really fix it. With the amount of money that we provide them they can float a bond that can begin to fix these infrastructure issues piece by piece. We have a credible pathway that we've worked out with the City engineer where we believe that over several years we could help them keep several hundred million gallons a year in the water shed by plugging the holes in their existing system. So by extracting 10 million gallons, we believe that we will actually create a net surplus of water, but we're not simply claiming it. We're honoring the requirement for us to measure this. We believe that over time, and we're willing to monitor it and report on it, that the water shed levels are actually going to rise as a result of this targeted work, and we're willing to stand here and be accountable and say we will keep working with the City until that is true. I understand the concerns that people have raised. I'm getting scared about stuff, too, and I have a house. I have children. I have all the same concerns that everyone else has. What I hope is that when I run into problems I need somebody that's willing to listen to me, problem solve with me and find a way. That's what we keep trying to do. I would encourage not only you as Planning Board members but every member of the community that had a question to continue to bring those questions to us, give us a chance to try to honor and respect that input. Everything that people say is valued to us. We may not agree with all of it. 25 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MR. TRAVER-1 have a question. With the information that you've accumulated, and the time that you've spent working on it, and looking at the issue before us in terms of looking at whether or not we should amend the zoning, don't you think it's a bit premature at this point to consider a change in zoning? When we have, we're weeks away from the ground being clear so you can find out what the, I mean, you have spent, when did you say you started, January 2013? MR. SIPLON-2014. MR. TRAVER-And you have emphasized and I think demonstrated and people have talked about the effort you have put in to minimizing the impact of this project. We are weeks away from the ground thawing, and you're going to have access to these pipes, so that you can avoid this whole issue. I mean, we have dealt frequently with this concept of NIMBY, we heard somebody reference that tonight, Not In My Back Yard, but this is a Land Conservation zone. This is not a NIMBY. This is our backyard, not somebody's my backyard, and I just think it might be, I believe it's premature to talk about a potential change in zoning when you still have options that weeks away we will have more information to see if perhaps we can avoid that issue all together. You also haven't done testing in your own front yard. You talked, at one point, about I'm like everybody else in the Town, but you haven't explored the possibility of putting a well on your own property, and I understand you have concerns about the environmental concerns, but why don't we take a look at that data and do a test well and see what the possibility is there. MR. SIPLON-1 appreciate all your thoughts, Mr. Traver. Let me address them one at a time. The first to understand is that I'm not proposing any zoning change. I don't even know how to propose a zoning change. I'm simply somebody who's proposing a project, and others have suggested that there is a zoning change that may be appropriate for that. I'm not trying to split hairs, here, but I wouldn't even know how to suggest to you to make a zoning change. I'm not a Zoning Administrator. I don't really understand zoning as well as you or anyone else that's involved in the process of zoning. All we have done is made application to say this is what we would like to do on a particular site. The Town and the City have engaged in a process which I believe has led to a recommendation of a zoning change. I have literally nothing to add to that. Simply want to clarify. MR. TRAVER-We do. We have a role. MR. SIPLON-1 understand that, sir, but I can't answer that question for you. All I can do is answer questions about our project. MR. TRAVER-Well, and I can't answer it, either, and I would like some more information, and I think that you can provide us more information. It might deal directly to any potential discussion of the zoning change. MR. SIPLON-Okay. Well, I'm happy to provide anything that you require. To address your concern, or at least your question about whether or not we will explore the process of extracting water down at the City's well site, I mean, the City's, are operational site on the City, I don't believe it's practical on the land itself. I can't figure out how to get a drilling rig in there. I can't figure out how I would make it happen. There are underground pipes in a dense commercial zone. I've never engaged the City in even attempting to do it. I don't know anybody who is extracting water at that level in the direct City center. However, if the City believes that that is a viable path, and would partner with me, I would explore it. Because I'm willing to explore anything. MR. TRAVER-Have you explored other parcels of land, other than the conservation zone that perhaps aren't on your current property where you could put in a well? MR. SIPLON-We've explored many, many sites, some of which are public and some of which are private. The process that we went through with the hydro geologist, Mr. VanVleet, that he shared with you in the study which is available to you details the process that we went through of identifying across the City's water shed property more than 11 potential sites, and it also includes the parcel that the gentleman that spoke last we actually talking about, which is at the back of the former supervisor's compound. All of those were, in fact, we actually put in a small test well at that particular site. It neither produced the volume nor the quality of the water that was required. I think if you read the study that we provided, it's several hundred pages long, you will see the depth to which we have explored all the possibilities. I think we spent the better part of a year trying to identify where are we likely to be successful, and then once we find a potential site, how amenable is that to minimizing the impact. I told you that one of the things we did was identify those sites based on, how close are they to existing either right of ways or roadways so that we wouldn't have to clear land. That's not the way a hydro geologist would work. They would typically work by saying the geology formations actually look good here and they look 26 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) good here. If it wasn't close enough to a road where we didn't have to do significant new development, we would put it away as not a primary site for us to explore. I believe we could have probably found a higher producing well by being willing to consider places that would have required us to put in extensive roadways or do extensive development. What we believed was that in balance that wasn't the right approach. We wanted to find a place that required minimal development, minimal invasiveness that would minimally meet our requirements. I believe we found that, and I believe that roadway existed before I ever showed up. The public roadway that takes somebody to it existed before we ever came here. It was a part of why we chose it was because we wanted to find something that didn't require us to, you know, ask anybody to engage in additional infrastructure or to disturb anymore land. We believe that that property is beautiful the way that it is and we want to be partners in preserving that. I think that what we presented to you is the best way that we know how to do that. However, if there are questions that you have that suggest that there are either information we can provide to you that will help you believe that or that you can evaluate other alternatives, we will provide those, and I think you'll find an awful lot of that in that hydro geological study. As I said, it's several hundred pages long. It provides a great deal of information about what is possible on that entire southern Adirondack front. MR. HUNSINGER-Is that available on line? MRS. MOORE-Yes, it is. MR. HUNSINGER-It is? MR. TRAVER-Well, and as we pointed out at the beginning of the meeting, you know, we're not engineers. So, I mean, we rely on you and your staff to provide us, and by way of the Town Planning Office, the information that we need to try to begin to get a grip on this. I find it hard to believe, I mean, with respect, I understand what you're saying, but I find it hard to believe with the number of homes and wells in the Town of Queensbury that this is the only site that, the best solution is to go into this Land Conservation zone and access a well when, I just find it hard to believe that there isn't an alternative site that's not in a Land Conservation zone and maybe it would require more development than you're speaking of and I appreciate the camouflage tank and all, I understand where you're coming from, but a little bit more development in a non- conservation zone might be preferable in the long run. MR. SIPLON-Well, I think maybe we're glossing over one of the most fundamental points. Which was originally we were looking at any viable water shed, but we quickly partnered with the City by looking at the opportunities for us to bring value through our business plan directly to the City. Once we did that, the City's water shed property became the focus of our search, by deliberately. What we're trying to do is figure out how to provide resources to the City to allow them to address their water infrastructure problems. MR. TRAVER-And you should soon have access to those pipes that you were talking about, right? MR. SIPLON-Absolutely, and I'm telling you that we will proceed in all speed about developing that solution. However, I don't believe that it's mutually exclusive with evaluating the site that we have in front of you now. What I would suggest to you is, like everyone else that we've ever talked to, tell me what you believe is reasonable in terms of utilizing that site. I would like to believe it's not zero. MR. DEEB-So am I to understand, then, that you've done several studies of several sites, throughout the Town of Queensbury, and you're finding that this is the most expeditious place to put your? MR. SIPLON-We originally, our search area was originally pretty much the entire upstate of New York and part of Vermont. We slowly started bringing that in to try to be as, it's part of our sustainability mantra, we obviously wanted to bring that water source as close to the place at which we were going to package as possible. In that process we discovered that the City had enormous excess water resources that were in its watershed. Once we discovered that, our view was how could we develop that in such a way that it provides value to the City, and we limited our scope to the City's water shed. Within the City's water shed we, the study I gave you details 11 potential sites, at which we drilled a number of test wells, and this was the most attractive of them. This is the best combination of limited access to the site, water quality and water volume. It wasn't necessarily the highest performing well, nor was it necessarily the most accessible, but it was the best combination of all of them, and it was a considered process that we went through for the better part of a year before we decided on it. We expended significant resources with not just our own people but with quantified experts in the area before we did it, and I think there's a perception that somehow the City kind of, you know, steered us in this 27 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) direction. No. I have to tell you, we brought the City to the table. We said we believe there's an opportunity for us, by exploring this concept, to create a partnership that does not exist in this industry, would you be willing to consider that. The City did not bring us and say, hey, go look on our well site or are water shed property and don't look anywhere else. We looked at this as a unique opportunity to do something that we believe could change everything about the way that bottled water is brought to market, and by the way, I can tell you we're relentless about trying to figure out how to change this game, and if for some reason we cannot find a way to do this effectively in this community, we will find some place to do it. I would really love to do it for here. We've been investing enormous amounts of time here. One of our founders is from here. I live here. I want to figure out how to do it here, and I hope the one thing you take away from this is the fact that we are willing to talk about how to do it here in a way that, we want to bring as many people under the tent as possible. Whatever concerns they have we're willing to address. There is not a single non-negotiable to us. So what we hope is that you both ask us questions and provide us with input where we can find ways to say, yes, whatever that turns out to be. MR. MAGOWAN-Well, I want to thank you for bringing it here, being a business owner myself, and listening to some of the other business owners and the economic development gentleman there. I applaud this. I think this is what we need. We need to bring our industry back for our people and get our people back working. My concern is what I've listened to the public comment is a lot on, you know, safety concerns. I know that road and I know that mountain, and really what you want to do up near Butler Pond, in my opinion, is something very small, just really to extract it, and I'm leaning for, knowing the pipes that come down there in that water shed, and how they can sleeve pipes now that if you get a, you know, a small three or four, so you have a chance for two or three other wells in the future if need be, is being able to utilize those pipes where we're not using the roads where I'm sure a lot of the public comments would be appeased of keeping the trucks off the mountain and keeping everything down to a minimum where it's down at the bottom of the hill is something that, you know, you're saying you want to work for, I think would be a great, you know, a good thing to look into to be able to move this forward without so much turmoil. MR. SIPLON-First of all, I don't revel in the turmoil. What I want to do is find a way that works, and quite honesty when I did my research, I found that you had been able to craft solutions that were incremental with other much more impactful players in this community than I believe that we will be, and what we're suggesting is help us figure out how that framework works with you. If there's a certain threshold at which we cannot move beyond bringing that water down the hill or mitigating in some other way, we would be willing to entertain it. I simply don't know. It's not our place to come and tell you this is the way it must be done. It's our place to say, look, we're willing to put everything on the table. This is what we would like to do. These are the ideas that have been expressed to us about how to do it. Here's what I know. It will take some amount of time and some amount of money to go what you suggested, and I have the ability to extract, right now, from the well that we have. I believe if we put those things together in a reasonable way, if somebody says, you know what, past this amount of trips is just not appropriate, then, okay, then maybe that's what dictates the timing by which we do exactly what you suggest. We're willing to do it, but please try to understand what it's like to be us. It's not that we didn't do due diligence here. It's that everyone who ever comes up comes up with another idea, which we explore with zest, but at some point we have to come forward and say can we at least get started this way, and I think that what we're trying to do is split the balance there. Can we get started in a reasonable way and can we go work towards the solution that you and others suggested which we believe is more elegant. I believe we can. We simply need to build that road map together. You tell me what questions you need answered so that we can provide that framework, and that's what I believe we'll spend the next few weeks doing. MR. DEEB-Am I to understand, then, that you're willing to, in order to get started, you are willing to limit the number of trucks going up and down the road? MR. SIPLON-Yes. MR. DEEB-Until we can explore the feasibility of moving ahead with looking at the pipes as a viable means to transfer the water. MR. SIPLON-Yes. MR. DEEB-And to me that's a compromise, and I'm certainly willing to look at that without a problem, as long as we can mitigate some of the road traffic, and I don't think you were going to start with 16 trucks anyway, if I'm not mistaken. MR. SIPLON-No. I don't really have a credible way to even get to that number. That number is tied to the largest impactful number that has ever been put forward in the planning documents. 28 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MR. DEEB-So, if we can put a limit on the number of trucks to start with, until we can get into, until we can start looking at this, whether it be a month, two months, three months, whatever it is. MR. TRAVER-Well, I understand that point. My concern, frankly, is the precedent. If we make a zoning change to the conservation district, then the genie is out of the bottle. The toothpaste is out of the tube and you can't put it back, and we're weeks away from the ground thawing and finding out the situation on these pipes. MR. MAGOWAN-What about a use variance? MR. DEEB-We did talk use variance, and I'm wondering if that's a viable solution. MR. MAGOWAN-Doesn't that limit what goes on on the mountain? MR. DEEB-Yes. MR. MAGOWAN-Not changing the whole area, just that particular section. MR. TRAVER-Perhaps that's another question that we need to answer before moving forward. Is there a way to specify a time window, not only limit traffic, but have that project start and end during which they can explore this alternative, but in any case it would end, and it would not result in a zoning change that would be a permanent change to the nature of this conservation zone. I don't know the answer to that. That would be a great tool. MRS. MOORE-Okay. I think, so, in reference to the zoning change, you would be looking at the zoning change probably in any zone. So a zoning change request from the Town Board would come to LC-10 or some other zone within the area. So I don't think you're ever going to get away from the fact that a request for a zoning change amendment is being proposed from the Town Board. MR. SIPLON-1 told you that I don't have any expertise in zoning. I lied a little bit. I've learned a little bit in the last year. Here's what I know. Water extraction doesn't exist in any of your designations. It didn't exist, nor did water bottling or packaging exist in the City of Glens Falls code. What we're trying to do is we're trying to be very clear and transparent about what are we proposing, and then we're trying to partner with whatever municipality we're working with to figure out what is the preferred way to accommodate that. We have no dictates in this. We did not come and say we demand a zoning change. I think what happened was we came to the Town and said here's what we propose and then they suggested this would be what was required. So I said, okay, tell me what you need to support it, which is what we've done. If there's a better answer and that's what we're asked to do, then that's what we'll provide. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I guess what I'd like to do sort of to wrap up this evening, and maybe Mr. Borgos was going to try to do the same, you know, we heard a lot of comments this evening. We've heard a lot of things. We can't do anything tonight. We literally cannot. The only thing that we can do is table this to another meeting, which we were planning to do. We're going to table this to the 24th of March. At that meeting, we may be able to accept Lead Agency status and begin SEAR. MRS. MOORE-Correct, and there's only one entity that we have not received from. MR. HUNSINGER-So, that's as far as we're going to get in the month of March. MR. SIPLON-Is there anything that you need in the interim? MR. HUNSINGER-Well that's kind of what I was hoping the Board could kind of, I mean, personally, if I may for a second. Personally, I mean, we have just like absorbed so much information tonight. I don't know if I feel like I'm in a position to really say, well, I think this is a great idea, I think that is a great idea, nor do I feel compelled to because of the process that we're now engaged in. We're not going to have the opportunity to really do that. I mean we're not going to get into site plan review until, the earliest would be April. So that's when you're really going to start to hear the Board talk about, you know, site plan issues. Now we're kind of at theoretical, you know, what are the issues, how do we start to frame some of those issues, and I think we've done that pretty well this evening with some of the comments from the public and some of the comments back and forth from the Board. So I think we've made great progress this evening, maybe not as much as you had hoped, but again the process is, you know, for us. Unfortunately, you know, a Planning Board, a Zoning Board is process driven. The process is going to define a lot of that discussion for us. 29 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MR. SIPLON-1 just want to make sure that you know that we'll get you whatever you need whenever you need it. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Excuse me if I may. The one document that, personally, I requested is the full geological report, which is on line. So we can review that on line. I don't need the Town or you to copy 200 pages of a document for me to review it. I would like the Town Engineer to take a look at it. MRS. MOORE-Well, the applicant provided a CD. MR. CENTER-1 provided hard copies, I believe, and then the Executive Summary is what was included in the scanned package. So when we met with Staff, we limited it, the full report, knowing that it probably would need to go to the Town Engineer, that you would get three copies of those, one for the file, one for the Town Engineer and one for any of the Board members if they want it. Because it was quite thick. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. CENTER-If we need to provide that in a scanned version, we can do that. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, mostly I want the Town Engineer to look at it. That's my big issue. MR. TRAVER-And comment, right? MR. HUNSINGER-And comment, yes. I don't know if that can happen by the 24th or not, but it doesn't really need to, because we're not going to start site plan review until after the Town Board considers the zoning change. MRS. MOORE-But you will be considering some site plan information as part of your SEAR review. MR. HUNSINGER-Right, that's true. So that's where we're at in the process. So I guess that's how I'd sort of like to wrap up this evening. MR. SIPLON-Yes, that's what I wanted to comment on was just to revisit the process. That's really a part of this whole thing is we were here a little bit earlier than you might otherwise want us to be here, but we did so out of a respect for the curiosity that was out there in the Town. The Town Board meeting had some public comments that were inquiring about what was going on. We engaged by filing the site plan application to provide as much information to enable a forum like this to occur. So we're very much interested in whatever feedback, that I would liken to more of a scoping session tonight, just to try to introduce you to this topic and familiarize you with it, so at the next meeting when we return we might have more thoughts and questions that we could then respond to and provide more feedback. I did want to just touch on a few things that I thought we should clarify, since they were brought up tonight. There was a question from Mr. Howk about why so big. He referenced the parcel size of 686 acres. That just happens to be this particular parcel tax map number that the City of Glens Falls owns on which the well site is located. The actual area of disturbance is as we've discussed, very, very small, less than half an acre, but it is part of that much larger parcel. That parcel is in the LC-10 zone, and because it's in that zone, the zoning amendment needs to be done because nowhere within the Queensbury Code is there any definition for water extraction. So it's got to be defined and clarified in some fashion. That's my understanding why the Town Board is reviewing it in this fashion. So it doesn't matter whether there's a pipeline or not, as to whether that zoning amendment has to be reviewed by the Town Board, it would have to happen either way, and for SEAR purposes, we want to make sure that we're discussing all the possibilities. So that's why the APA's been asked to provide their comments, and the City of Glens Falls, I think, was asked to make sure that you became Lead Agent because you seemed to be the most knowledgeable and most directly responsible for site plan activities at the extraction site. It makes sense in the big picture, and we're happy to clarify if there are any questions as to how this process is developing. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. MR. DEEB-When is the Town Board meeting? When is the Town Board going to take this up? MRS. MOORE-It's potentially in April, but the Planning Board will need to provide their recommendation to the Town Board in reference to SEAR, that covers both the zoning amendment and the site plan, prior to the Town Board meeting. 30 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MS. WHITE-And we are doing that on the 24th, correct? MRS. MOORE-Potentially, it may not. It may change, but right now there is a timeline of March 24th AUDIENCE MEMBER-Mr. Hunsinger, two dates have been mentioned. MR. HUNSINGER-I'm sorry, sir, we closed the public hearing for this evening. If you want to wait until after the meeting to ask us some questions from the applicant. AUDIENCE MEMBER-It's just the dates of the meeting. MR. HUNSINGER-The 24th. We always meet on Tuesday. AUDIENCE MEMBER-Someone said something about the 28th. What is that? The 28th was mentioned. MR. HUNSINGER-Our meeting is on the 24tH MR. BORGOS-I had the same confusion. I heard the 28th earlier, too. MR. HUNSINGER-It might have been said in error. The 24th. It's two weeks from this evening. MR. TRAVER-We will be meeting on the 17th as well, but not on this project. MR. HUNSINGER-Not on this project. We're scheduled to hear this again on the 24tH MR. DEEB-The 24tH MR. HUNSINGER-We need to make a tabling resolution, but it is on the agenda for the 24tH MR. MAGOWAN-All right. So the recommendation to amend the zoning, is that for the whole? MRS. MOORE-You will be discussing and make recommendation to the Town Board about the zoning amendment. You can potentially do that on March 24th. If not, then it would adjust the time schedule for the Town Board to hear it. So if all the information is not back from those agencies that consented, then you would potentially be moving that date to another time, but you, as the Board, are reviewing that zoning amendment and providing that recommendation to the Town Board as part of the process. MR. HUNSINGER-So has the Town Board set the public hearing for the zoning amendment? MR. MAGOWAN-The zoning, is it just for that one particular property or is it for the whole watershed? MRS. MOORE-The zoning amendment applies to the Land Conservation zone. That includes LC-10 and LC-42. MR. MAGOWAN-LC-10 and LC-42. MRS. MOORE-Right. So in the Land Conservation zone the Planning Board and the public would also be looking at other uses that would be allowed in that zone, to compare that to, to have a review of the potential zoning amendment against some of the uses that are currently allowed in that zone. MR. MAGOWAN-Now is there a possibility that we can get a Special Use Permit instead of changing the? MRS. MOORE-It would still be going through a zoning amendment at some point because there's no definition in the Code. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. MAGOWAN-Well, I guess my only concern is being able to allow more industry or more, you know, the mountain opening up to more potential. MR. TRAVER-Yes, I guess as a follow up question, if we were to go for a zoning where it would become required that there be a Special Use Permit, as opposed to an allowed use. 31 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MRS. MOORE-But in reference, going through the proposed language, it requires site plan at this time. So if someone's proposing it, they will need over 200 acres. There's other requirements, but 200 acres is one of them. One of the other ones is 1,000 feet from a residential, the extraction point has to be 1,000 feet. The other one is that it requires site plan review. You can't move forward, so a Special Use Permit and Site Plan Review, but right now it's scheduled in the zoning amendment for Site Plan Review use only. MR. SIPLON-When you read the proposed amendment there are quite a few of those restrictions that Laura has referenced and there's some more as well. MR. TRAVER-But they're not time limited. MR. SIPLON-Not time limited as in a Special Use Permit, correct. MRS. MOORE-And I can highlight, I'll go through. One requires 200 acres. Two is a copy of the permit from DEC, whether it's required or not, you still have information from DEC about the site. Maximum daily quantity of water proposed to be extracted, hours of operation, projected traffic volumes, projected noise level, area lighting, any other site conditions the Planning Board deems necessary. They need an independent report by a qualified professional for hydrogeological investigation. That investigation includes four criteria. One of them is proposed extraction volumes, possible effects on the aquifer or other ground source result in disturbance of existing minerals and two others, the location of all water bodies within 500 feet, this includes survey of extraction point. Other things, the site plan may be conditioned upon appropriate tender of appropriate financial security which is the escrow that was discussed, and the other items I talked about. That's just a little summary. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other questions or comments from the Board? MR. DEEB-Well, the one thing I would say is a lot of comments came because of people were afraid of if you came in and then you ended up selling your business otherwise. I'd like to consider ways you mitigate that if something happened. Because we certainly don't want the bigger companies to come in and, for lack of a better word, rape the community. So I would think that's something you would consider also. MR. SIPLON-Absolutely. What we've already demonstrated with the agreement that we've made in the City is that once that issue was raised it was simply a matter of what was the format that was best to document that. In the case of our facility in the City, there was a deed covenant. I don't believe that's the appropriate tool here. We have to figure out what the appropriate tool is, but whatever the legal binding way for whatever commitment we make to essentially transfer, if we were to not be the entity that's doing this, we just need somebody to tell us what's the best tool to do that, and we would agree to that. MR. TRAVER-Well, the problem I think it's very complicated because you can have a holding company. I mean, there's all different ways that your company would not go away and yet some other company would be, I mean, and we're getting a little bit ahead of the game I think, and we've got to first get some water out of the pipes. MR. SIPLON-1 only want make sure that people understand that we are amenable to the process. MR. TRAVER-Sure. MR. SIPLON-And if it's hard on our part, we'll figure out how to do it. MR. TRAVER-I'm glad to hear that. MR. BORGOS-1 just want to state that we believe that we're here at the Board that makes those rules. As you know when you grant site plan approvals, you often have conditions. Those conditions are then something that Bruce Frank enforces at the Queensbury Town Court should they not be adhered to. That's the mechanism that would be in play here. So that this Board gets to set what those conditions are in Site Plan Review, and whether it be Just or any other operator doing this with the City of Glens Falls, which is the property owner, that's going to be the rule that gets followed going forward, and no modification would happen unless a future Planning Board agreed to modify it and engage in this entire process again. So we think that is the most direct, eyes on enforcement that is going to be the way to responsibly guard against that potential for some future actor over this 99 year agreement with the City. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Anything else from the Board? 32 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/10/2015) MR. SIPLON-We'll see you in two weeks. We can't wait. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. We don't have a sampling tabling motion, but if someone would like to put forward a resolution. MR. TRAVER-1 volunteer, I guess. MR. HUNSINGER-And again it's March 24tH MR. TRAVER-Yes. RESOLUTION TABLING SP # 12-2015 JUST BEVERAGES An application has been made to the Town of Queensbury Planning Board for Site Plan approval for: Applicant proposes to install, operate and maintain a City-owned well and transport water from the well site to the company's water bottling facility in the City. Pursuant to Chapter 179-3-040 of the Zoning Ordinance Water Extraction in the LC-10 zone shall be subject to Planning Board review and approval. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN 12-2015 JUST BEVERAGES, Introduced by Stephen Traver who moved for its adoption, seconded by David Deeb: The further review of the discussion for the West Mountain Road facility, tabled until the March 24th regularly scheduled meeting of the Planning Board. Duly adopted this 10th day of March 2015 by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Deeb, Mr. Ferone, Ms. White, Mr. Traver, Mr. Magowan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Ford MR. HUNSINGER-We'll see you in a couple of weeks. Okay. For members of the audience, we did hold the, the public hearing will be held open again at that meeting. On motion meeting was adjourned. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, Chris Hunsinger, Chairman 33