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2008.01.15 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING FIRST REGULAR MEETING JANUARY 15,2008 INDEX Site Plan No. 44-2007 David & MaryLou Dutra Tax Map No. 289.6-1-33 1. Special Use Permit No. 15-2007 Boats By George Tax Map No. 226.12-1-1,37,38 2. Subdivision No. 12-2004 MODIFICATION Hayes Construction Group Tax Map No. 297.13-1-37 3. Site Plan No. 43-2007 Takundewide HOA Tax Map No. 240.5-1-13 4. Site Plan No. 49-2007 Matthew Emmens Tax Map No. 239.15-1-19 29. Site Plan No. 63-2007 Keith & Pam Harris Tax Map No. 265-1-32 34. Site Plan No. 61-2007 Freshwater Wetlands Permit No. 1-2008 The VMJR Companies Tax Map No. 303.15-1-25 44. 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. o (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING FIRST REGULAR MEETING JANUARY 15,2008 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT GRETCHEN STEFFAN, ACTING CHAIRWOMAN DONALD SIPP TANYA BRUNO THOMAS FORD STEPHEN TRAVER MEMBERS ABSENT CHRIS HUNSINGER THOMAS SEGULJIC GIS ADMINISTRATOR-GEORGE HILTON TOWN ENGINEER-VISION ENGNEERING-DAN RYAN STENOGRAPHER-SUE HEMINGWAY MRS. STEFFAN-Good evening, folks. I'd like to call the meeting to order. This is the first meeting of the Town of Queensbury Planning Board for 2008. I want to thank everybody for coming this evening. The rules of engagement. For each application, we'll have the applicant and the agent introduce the project. Then we'll open the public comment period with a five minute limit for comment, and that will also be followed by any letters that have been received. Staff will read those into the minutes, then the Planning Board will ask questions on the project. Just as a reminder, for those folks who have cell phones, if you have them, either please change the setting to vibrate, or turn them off. If you have to take a call during the course of the meeting, please take the call outside. Thank you. I would also like to change the order of our agenda for this evening. We've got a couple of things. Boats By George is going to need to be tabled this evening. So we'll do that first. I would also like to bring Hayes Construction forward in the agenda. Then we will do the Takundewide project. That will be followed by Matthew Emmens, followed by Keith and Pam Harris and followed by VMJ Companies. The agenda will be re-worked a little bit. Okay. The first item on the agenda is the approval of the Planning Board minutes. APPROVAL OF MINUTES October 16, 2007 October 23, 2007 November 1, 2007 November 20, 2007 November 27, 2007 MOTION TO APPROVE THE MINUTES FROM THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING OF OCTOBER 16 & 23 AND NOVEMBER 1, 20, & 27, 2007, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: Duly adopted this 15th day of January, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Sipp, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Steffan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Hunsinger, Mr. Seguljic SITE PLAN NO. 44-2007 SEQRA TYPE UNLISTED DAVID & MARYLOU DUTRA OWNER(S) ETHEL, DAVID & MARYLOU DUTRA ZONING WR-1A LOCATION 28 NACY ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES TO RECONSTRUCT A RETAINING WALL AT THE LAKE EDGE ALONG WITH FILL ACTIVITY WITHIN 50 FEET OF THE 1 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) SHORELINE. CROSS REFERENCE NONE FOUND WARREN CO. PLANNING N/A CRITICAL ENVIRONMENTAL AREA GLEN LAKE CEA LOT SIZE 0.18 +/- ACRES TAX MAP NO. 289.6-1-33 SECTION 179-6-060(D)(2) MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. We've got an issue, Planning Board members, with the application for Site Plan for David and Mary Lou Dutra. They had a, the application was tabled back in November until January. Do we want to give those folks an extension? It was on a retaining wall project. MR. FORD-What communication have we had from the applicants? MR. HILTON-I can only say we haven't received any additional information as requested. Beyond that, I'm not sure. MR. SIPP-I believe he was going to Florida for the winter. That's why it's been tabled originally. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. FORD-Let's assume he'll be back by May. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. Well, how about we give them one more extension and then if they don't come forward with any new information, then we'll deny it without prejudice. Okay. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 44-2007 DAVID & MARY LOU DUTRA, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Donald Sipp: Tabled to March 18th, which is the first Planning Board meeting in March, with submission deadline of February 15th. Duly adopted this 15th day of January, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Ford, Mr. Sipp, Mrs. Steffan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Hunsinger, Mr. Ford SPECIAL USE PERMIT 15-2007 SEQR TYPE UNLISTED BOATS BY GEORGE AGENT(S) MILLER ASSOCIATES OWNER(S) GEORGE PENSEL ZONING WR- 1A LOCATION CLEVER DALE ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES MODIFICATIONS TO AN EXISTING CLASS A MARINA. MODIFICATIONS TO CLASS A MARINAS REQUIRE SPECIAL USE PERMIT BY THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REFERENCE SP 54-96 WARREN CO. PLANNING 4/11/07 APA/CEA/DEC LAKE GEORGE CEA LOT SIZE 2.77 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 226.12-1-1, 37, 38 SECTION 179-10-10 MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. Now we have the issue of Boats By George. This is for a Special Use Permit No. 15-2007. Due to an administrative error, the original application had an incorrect tax map number, so that the neighbors were not properly notified that this project would be on the agenda. So what we need to do is table this for a month so that we can properly notify the neighbors. MOTION TO TABLE SPECIAL USE PERMIT NO. 15-2007 BOATS BY GEORGE, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: To the February 19th meeting, which is the first Planning Board meeting in February. Duly adopted this 15th day of January, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Steffan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Hunsinger, Mr. Seguljic MR. HILTON-And just to state, in case there are any members of the public here for this item, the public hearing is still open and will continue on the February 19th meeting. 2 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MRS. STEFFAN-Thanks, George. Okay. SUBDIVISION NO. 12-2004 [MOD.] SEQR TYPE UNLISTED HAYES CONSTRUCTION GROUP AGENT(S) VAN DUSEN & STEVES OWNER(S) SAME ZONING SFR-1A LOCATION 467 RIDGE ROAD MODIFICATION TO APPROVED SUBDIVISION - MERGE LOT 5 INTO LOTS 4 & 6. MODIFICATIONS TO APPROVED SUBDIVISIONS REQUIRE PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL. CROSS REFERENCE N/A WARREN CO. PLANNING N/A LOT SIZE 15.06 +/- ACRES TAX MAP NO. 297.13-1-37 ORDINANCE A-183 JON LAPPER, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. LAPPER-Thank you. For the record, Jon Lapper with Mickie Hayes. This is the rare case of an applicant seeking to give up a lot, merge Lots Four, Five and Six into two lots. The reason is because the two houses sit better, what's proposed for these two lots sits better the way this is configured now. So the Staff has looked at it and clarified that it is a conforming subdivision after we make this change, and they would just be numbered Lot Four and Lot Six and Lot Five will disappear. MRS. STEFFAN-I have to admit, when I was reading the letter that came from VanDusen and Steves, there was a typo, I believe, and it said to merge Lot Five into Lots Three and Four. So we went on our drive around looking, saying I don't think that can be done. MR. FORD-Is that precipitated by the home that already exists? MR. LAPPER-That was going to be built on two lots, and basically, and Lot Six, just because of the way the line changes on Lot Six, it would have left side setback issues. So it was easier to split that and give some of it to the large house that's there and some of it to the other lot. MR. SIPP-What does this do to the stormwater management easement? MR. LAPPER-Absolutely nothing. MR. SIPP-Nothing. MR. LAPPER-That already was dedicated to the Town, along with the road. MRS. STEFFAN-Any other input from the Board? I was actually happy to see it. I had voted no on this project because I thought it was too dense. So one less lot, I was like. MR. LAPPER-We're glad we could make it better for you. MICKIE HAYES MR. HAYES-You never thought you'd see me up here getting rid of a lot, did you? MRS. STEFFAN-No. MR. FORD-Waiting for the other shoe to drop. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. So we don't have a public hearing for this. We've revisited this. All right. Okay. MOTION TO APPROVE MODIFICATION TO SUBDIVISION NO. 12-2004 HAYES CONSTRUCTION GROUP, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Tanya Bruno: According to the resolution prepared by Staff. Paragraph Five, the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered and the proposed modification does not result in any new or significantly different environmental impacts, and therefore no further SEQRA review is necessary. Duly adopted this 15th day of January, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Sipp, Mr. Ford, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Steffan 3 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Hunsinger, Mr. Seguljic MR. LAPPER-Thank you, and thanks for taking us quickly. Appreciate it. MR. HAYES-Thank you. SITE PLAN NO. 43-2007 SEQR TYPE UNLISTED TAKUNDEWIDE HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION AGENT(S) HUTCHINS ENGINEERING OWNER(S) SAME ZONING WR-1A LOCATION TAKUNDEWIDE APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF A CENTRALIZED WASTEWATER SYSTEM TO SERVICE 11 INDIVIDUAL DWELLINGS. PROPOSED RESIDENTIAL USES IN THE TAKUNDEWIDE DEVELOPMENT REQUIRE SITE PLAN REVIEW AND APPROVAL FROM THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REFERENCE MASTER PLAN ADOPTED 3/23/03 WARREN CO. PLANNING 8/8/07 APA/CEA/DEC LAKE GEORGE CEA LOT SIZE 18.69 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 240.5-1-13 SECTION 179-4-020 MICHAEL O'CONNOR & TOM HUTCHINS, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MRS. STEFFAN-And I believe for this project we're going to have Dan Ryan. MR. RYAN-Yes. If I could, I'd like to wait until the end, hear your comments, and that way if anything comes up, I can respond to it. MRS. STEFFAN-No problem. I just wanted everybody to know you were here. Okay. MR. O'CONNOR-We're back. For the purpose of your record, I'm Michael O'Connor from the law firm of Little & O'Connor, and with me is Tom Hutchins and Bill Mason. This is the project where we proposed a community septic system for 11 units, and we found a lot of neighborhood opposition to it, thinking that the placement of the community septic system would impact what is already known to be an existing stormwater problem. I think it's been reviewed by Mr. Ryan a couple of times. There were questions at the last meeting that I think you wanted to direct to Mr. Ryan. I'm not sure what the questions were. There were also questions that you had as to what was the definition of DEC as to the best engineering practices, and since then we have gotten a letter, which I think was given to you, which explains the DEC position that, in my understanding of it, in my layman's understanding of it, is basically that if you have a conventional system that works, you don't need to go beyond that, and part of their reasoning, I think, is that if you go beyond that, then you end up with a system that needs a lot more maintenance, perhaps would be more likely to failure because of the technical issues that you develop into the system, that you're better off using a conventional system that doesn't need that level of maintenance, for the most part. We really didn't know where you wanted the applicant to go, or what you wanted us to present, so we had Tom present with the mark up on the community system. I think he put the Critical Environmental Area mapping on there. He put the grading on the absorption beds, and he also put the detail of the stormwater information, that's along the two roads that are beside the subdivision. What we had him do is actually do the plans for what we started with, which if you go back to the 2003 Master study that was done of the whole subdivision, was then recommended by the engineers that worked on that part of the system, that if possible you could use conventional septic systems, and the placement of the conventional septic systems, I think they're Eljen systems. You've got a map that shows you the full detail of them. They don't require any variances. They would then put the absorption beds for those three units well below the area that feeds down into the area that the neighbors have the problem with for the stormwater, and, you know, we don't have a resolution for the stormwater. We'd like to go ahead. We think that we're entitled to go ahead. I notice that a couple of the Town Board members are here, at the invitation, I think, of your Chairman, because this is a problem that apparently has existed since 1994, and nothing has been done, and it's a stormwater problem. Mr. Ryan's first report on our system indicated that the community system, as we've proposed it, would have a minimum impact, if any impact, and we also have some minutes, although he's here and I'm not going to try and speak for him. They're minutes of when he addressed the Town Board during the process of our presentations, and talked about this system, and actually talked about what the Town Board might need to do as far as the stormwater. So do you have questions of us that we need to answer, or, we're satisfied to go with either system. We think that the conventional system does work on the three cabins that we've shown it. We've actually had witnessed groundwater tests or testing for groundwater, and I don't know if that's the preference at this point or what. 4 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. FORD-I have a question. When did that meeting occur with the Town Board, you're referring to? MR. O'CONNOR-Okay. I think it was a general meeting with regard to stormwater, and the minutes that I got were 10/22/07, and each area of the Town that has a stormwater problem was reviewed by the Town Engineer at that point. MR. FORD-Because I recall at our last meeting that was a point that I made, that I felt that you should initiate contact with the Town Board, and I understand you have a right to proceed with this, but I see this as an opportunity that we should seize to address a neighborhood issue, particularly with stormwater runoff and all of the associated issues that this mayor may not contribute to or subtract from, but I really hate to see us miss the opportunity to get the Highway Department, the Town Board, etc., involved in this, because there are so many intertwining issues involved in it. MR. O'CONNOR-We are willing to participate, but I don't know if we have anything that motivates the Town Board to undertake anything different than the neighbors have been trying since 1994, I presume they've been trying, and we didn't necessarily initiate this discussion in October, or the inspections that were made in October. There were actually inspections made by Mr. Ryan and by Warren County Soil people, but again, I think we started this in November of 2006, basically to, I won't even say we started in 2006. They started it in 2003, with the Planning Board, when they tried to get a template that would allow people something to rely upon to go forward with the conversion of the cabins that are there, and I think there've been five cabins that have been converted, something like that, and we just happened to fall into the place where we had three more coming on board, but I think if you take a look at the individual plan that was submitted, there's nothing in there that's of a variance nature, and maybe that might be the way that you do it, that we don't put the community septic system up in the back until something else is done with regard to the stormwater. MR. FORD-That does fly in the face of one of the responses, however, from, what was it, DEC or who was it that made the observation that the individual septic systems for six, seven and eight, perhaps where you're recommending they be located isn't the most appropriate. MR. HUTCHINS-I don't think that they said those locations weren't appropriate for individual systems. MR. FORD-I thought they had recommended that they be placed further back from the lake. MR. HUTCHINS-I believe what you're referring to is an implied comparison between the proposed community system, which is 600 feet from the lake, or the three individual systems, the closest of which is 115 feet from the lake. I think that's what you're referring to, the most recent letter from DEC addressed to me, I believe it was right here in the end of that. MR. O'CONNOR-I think they're saying that the soil, being porous, being more porous near the lake than in the back, the effluent may travel faster. MR. FORD-As Lake George receives recharge by groundwater, as well as surface runoff, moving the discharge point further from the lake would be a positive measure. MR. O'CONNOR-Yes. BILL MASON MR. MASON-And they're saying that it's more, the positive nature of the distance outweighs the fact that the soils might be a little bit better closer to the water. MRS. STEFFAN-Correct. MR. MASON-And so they shouldn't, I think are trying to encourage you not to (lost word) frown away from the community system at 600 plus feet from the water, but they're not saying that the 115, 125 foot depth, that those are unacceptable at all. I think if they meet Town Code, then they would function just fine. 5 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. O'CONNOR-And actually those three individual systems have better separation with groundwater than the ones above. They're all in a 45 to 50 inch range. The others were closer to three feet. So there's a balancing thing there. MR. HUTCHINS-The ultimate separation would be the same. MR. O'CONNOR-Okay. MR. TRAVER-In terms of the existing situation, is there a window of opportunity to take a look at this, improving these systems, in the context of the stormwater? In other words, is there a window of time within which we could take a look at, and I say collectively we, the Town, as well as the Association, take a look at addressing both issues, so that the ultimate location of, and improve a new treatment system would be in the context of whatever would be done for the stormwater management. MR. O'CONNOR-I guess I'd answer that in the sense that I have to, that this system has nothing to do with stormwater. It doesn't increase the permeability, or non permeability of anything on that site. MR. TRAVER-I'm really thinking more, not so much addressing specifically the impact on the stormwater of the septic, but rather the idea of the construction aspects, the disturbance aspects of what might be undertaken in order to divert some of the stormwater runoff that we now see going into the lake. Perhaps there might be a plan to do something else with that, and maybe that could be done at the same time, that your plan would be done, and therefore it would reduce the impact on the area in total. MR. O'CONNOR-I think we've tried to build that in by grading the absorption area away from the lake, and putting a small retention area in the back there. I think you'll see that on the common, well, I'm going where I don't want to go, guys. MR. HUTCHINS-We've done what we can do within the area of the proposed community system to address stormwater in as positive as a manner as we can towards that problem area. That problem area, there's a large contributing area involving many owners, the Town, numerous property owners, that are contributing to that area, and Takundewide can't solve that. MR. TRAVER-I understand. MR. HUTCHINS-I think Takundewide's agreed to be involved, to pay attention, but we can't solve that, whether or not we construct this system. MR. TRAVER-I understand that, you know, the stormwater issue is a complex one. In many respects the septic redesign is a relatively simple one, compared to some of the other issues. However, I was glad to hear some indication on your part that you might be willing to work with the bigger picture as well, and so I'm wondering, is there a window of opportunity here where we could explore that, rather than go ahead with one system or the other? To try to approach is comprehensively, and if that doesn't work, or we reach a period of time where either the existing system is not adequate or we need to set aside whatever could be done, perhaps with stormwater, or a decision is made that the stormwater issue is such that it can't be mitigated in the timeframe, whatever timeframe that you have, then certainly we could revisit this, but I'm wondering if it might be worthwhile, on a number of levels, to move forward in kind of a communal way and take a look at both issues simultaneously, understanding that, you know, your contribution to the overall stormwater problem is not, you know, we're not attributing the majority of that problem to you, but anything that goes on in that area certainly has an impact, and I'm just wondering, you know, if there is some kind of a window of time that you would be able to consider, within which some talks could go forward as far as what might be done, and if it could be done concurrently. MRS. BRUNO-What is your perceived schedule for the construction? MR. MASON-My only concern with that is that, this system, this was initiated, doing the community system, was initiated by the Town Board, and I wasn't in favor of it in the beginning because I felt that I'd never be able to get enough people on board, willing to pay for it, on a volunteer basis, that weren't wanting to build new homes. So there was no leverage with them, in order to pay for it, because there was this threshold that we had to reach a certain number, and it's over $100,000. When I put it out to the people at Takundewide, it amazed me that I had eight people, the three that wanted to build, plus five additional people, that were willing to pony up and pay that they're willing to do it 6 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) now. When we address delay, my concern is that if one person leaves, we could probably absorb that, but if I lose two of them, and there’s nothing guaranteeing, there’s nothing holding them like there are with the three. The three that want to build their homes, you kind of have the leverage there, and it’s kind of holding them, but the other five are in here just because they have cess pools that are about 75 feet away from Lake George that are over 50 years old, and they recognize that this is a solution, and probably a good one, and so they’re willing to pay, but I think we’re trying their patience. At some point, I know I’m getting a little muddle here, but I have bills that are ongoing with all of this. With each time we delay it, they go up even more. I’m worried that I’m going to start losing a couple of these people if we get the cost too high. So I think that the window is going to disappear. We’re already out a good year. I started selling this to people last, I believe it was last December I began the sales process to get people lined up. I worked on it all through the summer when they were here. MR. FORD-December of ’06. MR. MASON-Excuse me? MR. FORD-December of ’06. MR. MASON-December of ’06, right, and so now we’re a year into it, plus, and I have no idea, but I would hesitate, and these cess pools do need to be replaced. There is a life expectancy on them as well. MR. SIPP-But I would think that a combination here where we can get the Town to commit themselves to a stormwater survey and do something here. I go back, and Mr. Locke, I don’t think he’s here tonight, there he is, who presented at the first session we had, and in his presentation is a record of a stormwater committee meeting on February of 1996, in which they identified the following areas in three different groups. Hillman Road falls into the second group. Now whatever happened to this committee, whether anything was ever done, I don’t know, but there is a whole section here that C.T. Male put out on different types of drainage systems that could be used, and I would think that for the residents of this development, their beach area, their swimming area, is now receiving the contaminants that are running off, not only road salt, but I assume some coliform bacteria from some raccoon or otherwise, that it would be in your best interest to work with the Town Board, DEC, Soil Conservation, to eliminate this runoff into the lake. When I looked at it, it goes straight from the road into a settling tank into the lake, and there’s no treatment. There’s no sense of infusing this water into the ground, and it would also serve as a back up, I think, for any type of failure within the system of this new sewage plan, if there was a failure, due to a 100 year storm. Because you are so close to this groundwater, it’ll probably work in most cases, but there is also a problem with what could happen. MR. MASON-We don’t disagree, but as you’ve said, that meeting was 1996, and if we tie ourselves to progress based on that timetable on this septic system, we’ll be looking at 2017 or 2018 before we deal with the cess pools that are over 50 years old today. MR. SIPP-You have to appear before the Town Board for a permission to form a transportation corporation. MR. O'CONNOR-Yes, if we do the community septic, yes. MR. SIPP-Does that require a public hearing? MR. O'CONNOR-I don’t know. I don’t know that answer, Mr. Sipp. MR. SIPP-Well, even if it didn’t, you would have the opportunity that the residents, Mr. Locke included, to go before the Board and present your case, and it’s about time, in my way of thinking, that the Town took some responsibility for what is going into that lake, and you can quote me, because it is. MR. O'CONNOR-We have no hesitancy to participate. I suppose the question is, how do you participate? We don’t think we’re contributing to that groundwater or we’re adding to the contribution of what’s there, and we don’t know who else is contributing. I mean, as I understand what’s there, and again, I’m going where I shouldn’t go, probably, there’s a perforated pipe there, and what the separation of that perforated pipe is from those septic systems of those houses that it runs through, is also, those are very small lots, so I’m not sure the source of the problem, of the contamination. I agree with you that it needs to be done. 7 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. FORD-Another way of looking at it is that anyone who drives through that area is a contributor to the problem. Can we agree on that? MR. MASON-Sure. MR. FORD-Okay. MR. O'CONNOR-One way of doing it, although you lose the window of opportunity that Bill worked so hard to put together, is do the three, and we know that we’re going to be back for other units, and you can ask us at that time what have we done to contribute or cooperate in resolving the problem, and that way you have some leverage. I don’t know, though, and I think Bill has to address it, is if we take the three out of the mix, we may not have the funding to do the community system immediately, and you then would look at the other systems on an individual basis. If you go back to the 2003 study, there was a real question by the people that did that study at that time whether you actually needed the community system. The determination by the Zoning Board, when we got Area Variances for the expansion of these three cabins was, one, ask you to make a determination that we are in compliance with the Master Plan that was adopted in 2003, which I think we are, and basically to take a hard look at whether or not a community system is the best solution for septic on this site. Now they worded it differently, and I can read it to you if you haven’t looked at that resolution, but that’s basically what they’re saying, and you certainly have taken a hard look at this thing. Their language was, I would take the motion as was presented, but I would like to add the following caveat to that, and this is the resolution approving the Area Variance on Lot Eight, which is the Jackoski lot, the same language is used in all three units. We will condition the approval for the on site plan as reviewed, after careful review by the Planning Board to effectively determine the consistency with the Master Plan, and this is going to include the impacts and a thorough re-assessment of the community wastewater system or a group wastewater system for these cottages that are nearest to the water, as opposed to the proposed single individual systems, and that’s what you’ve been about I guess. I don’t think there’s any issue that we’re in compliance with the Master Plan, and you go back to the Master Plan, the Master Plan doesn’t call for a community system for these units. Do you want to say that you should have a community system for these units? And if you do, I think Mr. Ryan has actually approved the engineering on the community system. MR. SIPP-I think we’re agreeable that a community system would be the best answer here. I think how we go about it, though, and protect what might happen in the case of catastrophe, and also upgrade your swimming area. You can’t get away from it, that the way it is now, you’re polluting the lake. MR. O'CONNOR-I take exception to that, Mr. Sipp. MR. SIPP-Not you, everybody is polluting the lake. MR. O'CONNOR-The area is contributing to the pollution of the lake. MR. MASON-When it rains, it pollutes, absolutely. MR. SIPP-Right, and, you know, I recommended some kind of sod waterway or waterway to the center portion here, and using a pond or a fountain to aerate liquid, and to take up this water, rather than allow it to do what it’s doing right now, coming down Hillman Road, but anything, in the way of diffusing this water into the ground, rather than into the lake, is going to be a better system. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. We’ve gotten off our path a little bit. Is there anybody in the audience who wants to comment on this application? Okay. Whoever would like to come first. Please, folks, state your name for the record. PUBLIC HEARING OPEN JOHN SALVADOR MR. SALVADOR-Good evening. My name is John Salvador. I really think public comment is a bit premature because I don’t think you’ve outlined the scope of what’s going to happen, but in any case I’ll proceed. The first thing that I’m concerned about, it’s the very design basis of this system, is the fact that it’s been laid out for three bedrooms, and I want to know whether that three bedrooms is the current condition or the condition that would exist after these buildings are expanded, because that 8 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) wastewater treatment works in the design basins for the Lake George basin says that facilities must be designed to meet existing needs only. Now if they have three bedrooms at the present time, that’s all they’re ever allowed to have, and those three bedrooms should be defined. I believe the cottages have two bedrooms and a porch, a screened in porch. A screened in porch can be determined to be sleeping quarters, and that would be the third bedroom. Now if the buildings are expanded, and another bedroom goes to the upper level, then we’re into four bedrooms unless the screened in porch is done away with. So I think that needs clarification, because we’re not allowed to design for the future. It’s kind of a dumb requirement, but it’s there. Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-Is that in their Homeowners Association document or is it? MR. SALVADOR-No. It’s the Design Standards for Wastewater Treatment Works in the Lake George Basin. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. That’s fine. MR. SALVADOR-And the DEC has also indicated that the design as it’s presented represents suitable technology for the size of the plant. However, they do require an effluent filter, and an effluent filter is sort of a requirement for these advanced technology systems. It’s something that’s a part of it, and an effluent filter does require maintenance, and it’s not expected that these homeowners, individual homeowners, are going to take care of that, and that’s why I think, one of the principal reasons, for the requirement for the transportation corporation. The transportation corporation is the organization that’s going to be in the ownership of and care for this facility. If I might take a minute or two, and I think it’s very important that maybe this whole process be tabled until that issue of the transportation corporation is settled with the Town Board. I have Article 10 here of the Transportation Corporation law, and I’d just like to read a couple of paragraphs to you. The first thing that’s got to happen, before the Town Board can approve the Transportation Corporation, is in Section 123, a survey and map must be prepared. Before taking or using any land for its corporate purposes, such corporation shall cause a survey and map to be made of the lands intended to be taken, designating the land of the several owners or occupants thereof. In effect, I think, this transportation corporation is going to condemn land that belongs to others, belongs to the homeowners, and it’s going to put it into the corporation. It’ll be owned by the corporation, and these facilities will be built on that land, and the corporation will be responsible to maintain them, and if they don’t, the Town Board can seize the assets of that corporation and take over. That’s the purpose of the corporation, transportation corporation, is to protect everyone from this system falling into disuse, mismanagement, whatever have you. So it’s a very complicated thing, and before you, you know, go ahead here with all the things you’re considering, if this can’t be done, then the SPDES permit can’t be acquired, because that’s a condition of the SPDES permit, and the project is no go. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you, Mr. Salvador. MR. SALVADOR-I have other here, if you’re. MRS. STEFFAN-I’d like to stick to the limit, thank you. MR. SALVADOR-Well, as long as you have all the information you need to make suitable determination, fine. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you. MR. SALVADOR-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Next, please. MIKE BUCKLEY MR. BUCKLEY-Good evening. My name is Mike Buckley. I’m, with my family, a landowner. It’s part of the property that’s in question. I’ve got a letter here that my sister wrote, who was not able to be here. I drove in from Rochester this morning so I could be here, to be able to read this. So it might sound funny, because it’ll be my sister’s words, I’ll become my sister. “I’m Meg Buckley Goldberg. My family, the Buckleys, have been year round residents at 38 Hillman Road, Cleverdale for 20 years, and prior to that, my mother’s family spent summers here since 1925, and my Great Aunt before that. I submitted a written statement to the Board at its meeting on August 28, 2007, voicing my 9 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) concern concerning the proposed Takundewide Community Sewage System which is to be located directly uphill from our home and from the only stormwater drains on Hillman Road which discharge into Lake George next to our swimming area and drinking water pipe. I also appeared, with several of our neighbors, at the November 20, 2007, meeting to express our concerns to this Board regarding the potential negative impact which this septic system may have on the stormwater problem which already is a source of pollution and contamination around our lakeshore. I have recently reviewed the report of Vision Engineering, LLC, the Town’s consulting engineer dated November 15, 2007. Vision Engineering dismisses our concerns citing the video and pictures taken on August 21, 1994, as an anomaly. The engineer indicated that the rainfall of one inch on August stth 21 preceded by a rainfall of 2.5 inches on August 18 of that year were atypical. I can assure you, as many of my neighbors can assure attest, that our observations over the years indicate that these conditions are not at all unusual and that the pollution continues to flow from the drainage pipe even during periods of moderate rainfalls. At the November 20, 2007,meeting, the Lake George Waterkeeper, Chris Navitsky, called the Board’s attention to the water sample lab report from September 1, 2004, which showed unacceptable levels of Fecal Coliform and Fecal Streptococci. I have enclosed another copy of this lab report for your reference. Mr. Navitsky also cited various statistics indicating that 1994 was not a year of unusually heavy runoff. In fact, Vision Engineering even noted that 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2006 had “similar precipitation patterns” to those in 1994. Vision Engineering acknowledges in their report that “please keep in mind this determination is based on limited observations and data, and limited knowledge of the existing and historical conditions specific to this area. It is possible that other unknown factors, in addition to precipitation levels, have an effect, which cannot be readily determined without an extensive study of the area and problems which exist”. As my August letter cites, we have had a number of water problems on our property over the years – from having to dig a foot and a half trench around the summer cottage during a heavy rainfall in the 60s”, yes, we had six inches coming in the back door, six inches going out the front door on it’s way to the lake, “to spending $10,000 to help with runoff and experiencing 3 foot flood water in the basement in the 1980s. The most recent incident was 6 inches of water in our basement in June 2006 (as referred to by Vision Engineering as a year that had similar rainfall to 1994). We experienced not only a-one time water incident in the basement, but continued wetness throughout the summer. After home inspection found that it was not a structural problem and Town Highway staff checked blockage in the storm drains, it was determined (by Town staff) that a rainy season caused an unusual high water table and it was not filtering through the drains, and therefore, coming into our home as it had nowhere else to go. In addition, I and my family have observed a steady increase in the algae blooms in the vicinity of the discharge pipe, suds and discoloration of the water during wet weather, and ponding of the lawns and roads surrounding our property over the past 10 years (as well as the basement issues mentioned above). Why risk exacerbating this known problem when the proposed community sewage system can be more suitably located on Takundewide’s remaining seventeen acres? We request that this application be denied until the safety of our swimming and drinking water can be assured by the Town, or another suitable proposal is submitted by the Takundewide Association. Very truly yours, Meg Buckley Goldberg” MRS. BRUNO-Where did you say your property is? MR. BUCKLEY-It’s at 38 Hillman Road. MRS. BRUNO-Would you mind stepping up and just, on our map, sorry, give me a general vicinity as to where that is. There’s Hillman. MRS. STEFFAN-This is the lakefront. MRS. BRUNO-Yes, that’s the lakefront, and I think one of these is where. MR. BUCKLEY-We’re not on the map. MRS. BRUNO-So you’re off over here somewhere? MR. BUCKLEY-We’re over here, yes. We’re to the north of the Locke’s property. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. Over here, okay. MR. BUCKLEY-Yes. We’re pretty much directly right in behind these houses here. So it would be right in there. 10 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MRS. BRUNO-Okay. Thank you. MR. BUCKLEY-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-George, do you have a copy of that letter? MR. HILTON-If it was read previously, yes. MR. BUCKLEY-Thank you very much for your time. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you, Mr. Buckley. Would anyone else like to speak to this application? CHARLES LOCKE MR. LOCKE-Good evening. My name is Charles Locke. You’re probably tired of hearing from me. I’ve attended the last two hearings, or public sessions, in connection with this application. I’m not going to repeat everything that I’ve said before. The panel sounds like they’re well aware of the issues. It’s indisputable that there’s contamination flowing into Lake George through the single discharge pipe from the stormwater drains in Hillman Road area. This has been confirmed, not only by the 1994 reports which you had in front of you earlier, which showed extremely high levels that were a result of a failed septic system at the Takundewide properties, not very far uphill from the storm drains, but it’s been confirmed also by the 2004 water sample, I think, that was pulled by the Lake George Water Keeper, Mr. Navitsky, tested by the Darren Freshwater Institute, which showed levels of over 1,000 and over 1700 for coliform and streptococci, I think, respectively, and I understand a more recent sample was pulled just within the last week, and I think Mr. Ryan may address that, so I don’t want to take away from his report. I’ll let him speak for himself, and just for the record, I do take umbrage with Mr. O’Connor’s comments that perhaps it’s the people right around the lakeshore that are producing the contamination, and he mentioned that it’s a perforated pipe that runs down to the storm drain, down from the storm drain at the road down to the lake. I wish to correct that. That’s not correct. It’s a solid pipe. It’s a solid culvert pipe with no other intakes, downhill, after that last cistern, that last collection point. So unless water runs uphill, I can assure Mr. O’Connor that it’s not Mr. Hillman’s house or Mr. Buckley’s house or Mr. Locke’s house that’s leaching into that storm outlet pipe, which is where the water samples are taken. So I hope he can sleep better at night knowing that at least I’m not contaminating Lake George, and we have had a dye test done by the Town as well, which proved negative. So I just wish to address that. As I mentioned also, the high levels that were reported in ’94 were the result of a failure of a small tank, a 250 to 500 gallon tank. One of our concerns is we think the burden is on the applicant to show that in the event of a failure, a 3600 a gallon a day tank, should that fail, it’s not going to create a catastrophic situation. I mean, I had kids that were vomiting and coming out with rashes when we had the other failure. That’s how we detected the failure, quite frankly, because that pipe empties directly into our swimming area and our drinking area. So what we’re looking to this panel for is really protection. We want you to protect our children. We want you to protect us. We want you to protect our properties, our investments. We worry about the lake and we worry about our health. We have no problem with a responsible septic, sewage treatment proposal, assuming it’s responsible. A community system may be appropriate. We, frankly, don’t think it’s appropriate in the location and we’re concerned about taking 3600 gallons a day, which are spread out and dispersed across not all 18 acres, but dispersed across a wide area of lakefront property that Takundewide owns, and to concentrate it all in a single area, which is dead smack in the middle of this mini watershed, which then drains down into the stormwater situation. So Mr. O’Connor is correct and Takundewide’s correct. The stormwater problem hasn’t been just of their making. It’s a community wide problem, but on the other hand, to put a septic system and pump 3600 gallons a day of effluent into this problematic area, it just doesn’t seem very prudent. Now, we took to heart the comments made by, we’ve heard this panel make, this Board make, at the last two sessions, and one of the proposals was, well, I think the comment was made that this panel has jurisdiction over septic systems, but not stormwater management. That’s really within the purview of the Town Board, and we heard that, and we’re laypeople. So we didn’t know, but we listened. We tried to educate ourselves, and we thought, well, we better bring this to the attention of the Town Board. So, two weeks ago, we put together a package very similar to the ones you’ve received, and contacted our elected officials on the Town Board and said, we’ve been sitting through these Planning Board meetings, and we hear that this is maybe under your purview, under your umbrella, would you be willing to talk to us about that, and they said absolutely. Now we’ve been trying to do this for 20 years, off and on, but it’s a new day. It’s a new Board. Things are different, and I 11 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) must say, we’re very pleased with the immediate response. They came out. They said, yes, we’d like to meet with you. We’d like to see the situation. We’re alarmed. This problem needs to be addressed. One of our points was we want to make sure that the Town Board is aware of it, simultaneously with this Board’s activities, because we don’t want this Board to take some action that’s going to interfere with the Town Board’s possible proposal to remedy the stormwater situation, and vice versa. What triggered this was a comment made by someone on the Planning Board at the last meeting that perhaps a workshop, which I had never been aware of, but they mentioned that a possible between the Planning Board and the Town Board might be something that was possible, and again, the neighbors, my neighbors and myself, as I keep saying, we’re not against this septic system per se, but we want to see a global resolution. We’re afraid, you can’t just segment it. You have to keep these, I think you have to consider this application in the context of what the problem is. It’s unfortunate for Takundewide that there’s this problem that exists, but we think, if there’s a global solution to be had, let’s reach it. Let’s let the Town deal with it as a package. If they can resolve it to everybody’s satisfaction, all the better. It’s a win/win for everyone. MR. FORD-Charles, could I ask a question quickly? MR. LOCKE-Sure. MR. FORD-Was this a formal meeting where you made this presentation to the new Board? MR. LOCKE-No. Strictly informal. We presented them with a booklet. MR. FORD-Individually or in a meeting or how did this occur? MR. LOCKE-Well, they each received some materials advising them of just some background materials on the stormwater situation. I then had a telephone call with our Councilman from Ward One, Mr. Metivier. He said he would like to get himself up to speed on the issues and offered to meet with us as quickly as possible, and so we met with he and Representative from Ward Two, and the Town’s Consulting Engineer today, as a matter of fact, and looked at the situation, and we, as neighbors, were very encouraged by what we heard. So I guess what I would ask is that if, the best situation would be for this Board to schedule a workshop, and I know it means differing this project, once again, and a little while longer, but they’ve been waiting since, I forgot what Mr. Mason said, 2003, we’ve been waiting since 1996. If we can wait a few more months, I think, you know, during the summer months and the fall, it sounds like the Town would be able to address this situation. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. Thank you, Mr. Locke. MR. FORD-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Sir, did you have a comment? PAUL ADELE MR. ADELE-My name is Paul Adele. I’m with Spectra Engineering in Albany. I’ve been retained by some of the homeowners neighboring Takundewide. I have a couple of comments, several of which have already come up in a variety of contexts, and so I’ll be echoing some of the things that have already been said quite eloquently, particularly by Mr. Locke. We’ve reviewed the septic design in detail. We’ve had a look at the site. Generally speaking, we concur with the comments that Vision Engineering made regarding the septic system, in terms of some additional notes that are needed on the plans. However, we also feel that there are questions that have not been answered, for example, what’s to happen with the reserve areas that are going to be, reserve areas for individual houses that are going to be lost by the construction of the proposed system, and evaluation of alternative treatment options, which was already discussed, but I have a couple of additional comments there as well. One of the issues that I really think I should focus on is the relationship between the stormwater problem and the septic problem and the jurisdictional issues there. Deferring the septic issue, because of its relationship to stormwater, and the stormwater being under a different jurisdiction is not the most appropriate thing to do. The review process for Takundewide septic improvements is really the only opportunity for the neighboring property owners to obtain relief from a nuisance that’s already occurring, potential health threats caused by the use of the septic system at Takundewide. The Planning Board is addressing proposed changes to Takundewide’s Master Plan overall, and the Master Plan is one of the 12 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) principal mechanism that the Planning Board can use to ensure development progresses in a manner that is respectful of landowners and users in the surrounding area. Rectifying the source problems that are causing sewage odors in the storm system, unacceptable coliform bacteria content in the private and communal swimming areas and degradation of Lake George in general through the Master Plan amendment process is the least disruptive and most cost effective approach for all involved parties. I think that’s evidenced by what we’ve already been advised that this process has been ongoing for 10 to 15 years., and has not come to a satisfactory conclusion. The alternative to having the resolution occur through the review of the Master Plan is, the alternative to that is a lengthy complaint process through the Department of Health, which is really to nobody’s benefit. I’d like to make some comments that are related to things that I’ve been listening to during the evening. A conventional system, conventional septic system, is DEC’s preferred treatment method for the reasons that were stated, but only to the extent that it is consistent with the overall setting, and to the extent that it’s been evaluated with respect to alternative treatments and there may be alternative treatment methods that would be more suitable under the present circumstances, as well as the notion of a transportation district as an alternative or part of the solution. I’m not sure that, to this point in the process, those alternatives have been given adequate consideration. A comment regarding with regards to DEC’s comments regarding the distance of the source of the septic flow from the lake, with respect to the community system, doesn’t address a known source of septic discharge that’s most likely from the units nearest to the Locke property. It’s all well and good to move the community system away from the waterfront, but that doesn’t address several remaining individual septic systems that are right there on the waterfront, and those need to be addressed as well, in this venue, because, as I pointed out earlier, the Board is addressing proposed changes to the Takundewide Master Plan, and that it would be best for the Board to address, to require Takundewide to address all septic issues under the Master Plan, not just the ones that are connected to the community system, as a condition of approving amendments, what amount to amendments, to the Master Plan. MRS. STEFFAN-Mr. Adele, your time is up. MR. ADELE-I’ve come to my conclusion. MR. LOCKE-May I just have one more minute. I won’t be more than one minute, but I just wanted to comment on one last point, and that was when I mentioned the workshop and the global approach to this, there’s a practical side to it, but it’s an important one, and that is, as an example, it may be necessary, just as my parents gave an easement 30 years ago to the Town to run the single pipe from a single storm drain, a solution to the stormwater management situation may necessitate easements from other property owners in the neighborhood, not the least of which may be Takundewide Homeowners Association. Approval of their application for the septic system tonight would certain disincent them from giving an easement six months later to the Town when they’re working assiduously on the stormwater solution. Those are the kind of things that should be put into the mix when you consider whether to do this as a global package or whether to just single these out with a band aid here and a band aid there. Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-And segment. Thank you, Mr. Locke. Is there anyone else that would like to speak? Mr. Metivier? ANTHONY METIVIER MR. METIVIER-Anthony Metivier. I just want to verify that in fact myself, Councilman Montesi, Mike Travis, the Highway Superintendent, Dan Ryan, did meet with some homeowners today over on Hillman Road. We walked the property, and we do feel, and I’m not going to speak out of turn. I’m not an engineer, but we do feel we can come up with a viable solution for the stormwater problems. As it’s been explained, the catch basins right now have no filters. There’s no retention basins. It’s just water that goes from the land straight into the lake, and we think we can come up with a solution that would work, that we could also pay for, which is more important. We, myself, Councilman Montesi, and Councilman Strough, who are all here tonight, are all in agreement we can put together a workshop to work on this problem. We would ask, of course, that Takundewide be present at the workshop so we can work with them for, you know, to come up with a solution. Obviously the homeowners that we met with today would be available, and we discussed even if the Planning Board could be available, but that would be, obviously, at your decision. If you were to approve anything tonight, the two things that we would ask for would be a maintenance program with Takundewide, in that every three year, all the septic systems have to be pumped out, and checked, and that’s the ones that, if it’s a community system, of course, and any system that is not part 13 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) of that community system, just to be sure that these systems aren’t being over-utilized, and also that Takundewide would be willing to work with us if we needed easements to address the stormwater issues that are present now. MRS. STEFFAN-Mr. Metivier, how long would you see a solution happening, if there was a workshop meeting? Are we talking two months? MR. FORD-What’s your timeline, approximately? MR. METIVIER-Our timeline, I mean, we could get together, depending on weather, and the neighbors, some of them who aren’t full-time residents, based on their schedule, we could do something in the next two months, I would think. I mean, you are working in the winter months, but, you know, with this winter, I mean, we had no problem today identifying any of the problems, but there’s no snow cover up there at this point. Two months from now, I can’t be sure that the same would hold true, but I would say we could put something together in the next few months, if everybody’s available, and, you know, it’s really up to all parties involved. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. METIVIER-I mean, we put this meeting together, I had spoke to Mr. Locke last Wednesday, and I gathered everybody up today. We all were able to meet. It was great. MR. FORD-There’s a real motivation factor there of a desire to reach a solution. MR. METIVIER-Well, I think so, and one of the motivations, obviously, is tonight, the fact that, you know, these gentlemen came in today for this meeting tonight, and it just so happens that we were all available to meet, but, you know, the motivation, more than that, is they have a concern with this project, you know, will it have an impact on their stormwater, and I don’t have the answers to that. I don’t know. The engineer’s do, and, you know, Mr. Ryan spoke to us about that today and explained, you know, what he thinks, you know, what the outcome will be with the community septic, but, you know, I guess the motivation was that, you know, these people are concerned that if this is approved it might affect them, but I see it as really two different issues. We do have the issue of what you’re looking at tonight, but their issue is the stormwater management, which truly is a separate issue, and it’s just if this project is going to add to that or not, but I do feel, from what I saw today and with our discussions, we can come up with a viable solution that will ultimately keep that water that’s going into the lake clean. MRS. BRUNO-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Any questions for Mr. Metivier? MR. FORD-I just want to welcome Mr. Metivier back to this forum, even if he is sitting at that table. MR. METIVIER-Thank you very much. It’s good to be welcome. MR. SIPP-Could this be the start of an ongoing program to clean up the rest of the area? MR. METIVER-You know, Mr. Sipp, it’s funny you say that, because we were just talking over there, and, you know, this is a start. I mean, if you saw the amount of water going into the lake today, and the water today was clear. I mean, there’s, you know, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s clean, but it is a start, and, you know, if there are other basins around there with that amount of water flowing into the lake. It could, you know, we could set a precedent for other areas. Absolutely. Absolutely. MR. TRAVER-And there are. There are other areas. MR. METIVIER-Absolutely, but if you saw some of the videos that were taken of the water going in, it raises an eyebrow. So I’m glad that these people took it upon themselves to bring it to our attention, and perhaps it is a start to something good. I truly do believe that. MR. FORD-It’s been our strong desire on this Board to proceed in that direction. That’s for sure. It’s good to hear you respond the way you have. We need to proceed, and we don’t want to hold up this process with Takundewide citizens, but those are the horns of the dilemma that we’re on right now. 14 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. METIVIER-Right. Well, I think it’s important just to note that, you know, the Town Board is behind you in this project. We’re absolutely willing to work with the project to make sure that on the stormwater side we do as much as we can with the funds that we have available to make sure that the project, on that aspect of it, is worked out, and again, they are two different projects, but in total it’s one. So, you know, you have our word that we will do what we can, and the rest is up to Takundewide, and I think that, you know, they’ve obviously brought a lot of information to you and have done their homework as well. So whatever the solution is tonight, or the outcome, I should say, tonight, I absolutely wish them the best. MRS. BRUNO-Were you able to be at the meeting in October, I think it was October, that Mr. Ryan. MR. METIVIER-Actually, I was not. I was probably campaigning at that point. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. MRS. BRUNO-I’m curious how, obviously you can’t answer the question, but how the Tow Board had received all of his information. Maybe he could answer that question when he comes forward. MR. METIVIER-Which information? MRS. BRUNO-Just the information about the difficulties with the stormwater management in different areas of the Town, and if the rest of the Board was as receptive as you are to looking into the issues. MR. METIVIER-Well, I think as long as people bring them to our attention, and we, as a Town Board, are responsive to them, it was not a big deal to go out there today and talk to these people. I was shocked to see what I found. I would have never imagined that that could go on in Lake George, with all of the five different jurisdictions, that that could, you know, be happening, and, you know, I think that people need to do exactly what they did, step up to the plate, give us a call, and we respond. So I can’t answer for what other Town Board members did, but I know that, when it comes to the lake, it’s near and dear to my heart. So, thank you. MRS. BRUNO-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Is there anyone else? Mr. Navitsky. CHRIS NAVITSKY MR. NAVITSKY-Good evening. Chris Navitsky, Lake George Water Keeper. You’re probably lucky. I think everything’s been covered already, but just to reiterate a couple of points. Over the last couple of months, I’ve had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Mason to discuss some of the concerns of the Water Keeper as well as with Tom Hutchins regarding some of the design issues, which I won’t bring up and bore you some of the technical details. I also attempted to reach the Town Engineer but was unable, and I’m glad to hear that the Town Board has met. I was having contact with Dan Stec on this, and Supervisor Stec had recommended a meeting with the Highway Superintendent, and very glad to see that that proceeded. Just as a side note, these issues can be addressed quickly. I actually worked with the Town Highway Department and Warren County Soil and Water on a recent issue on Seeley Road where there is a drainage problem. We went out and surveyed and provided a design to the Town in late Fall, I believe it was in ’05, and in early Spring of ’06 they actually constructed that project out near Holiday Point. So that can work and can work effectively. So a couple of points, regarding stormwater, although the project is claimed to be exempted from stormwater management requirements, and it’s been stated by the Town Engineer that the project will have minimal impacts, there will be impacts through the level of clearing as well as the introduction of effluent into soils increasing the saturation levels. These factors could influence the existing drainage problems in the area. It’s been stated that the issues of stormwater and wastewater are separate. However, under Section 179-9, which describes, addresses Site Plan Review by the Planning Board, the Planning Board does have the ability to review drainage issues and the first item listed under 179-9-100, which has your design criteria, is existing surface and groundwater quality. So I think it is under the purview of the Planning Board to take a look at that. The Water Keeper supports the concept of maximizing sewage treatment areas away from the lake. However, not all lakeside systems are being relocated. We understand there may be a couple of newer ones, but again, if this is to get wastewater away and to maximize that separation, there’s three additional units that are not being included in this capacity. It’s 15 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) designed for 11 houses, 8 are being connected. There’s a three unit discrepancy right now. Concerns about future expansion, if there are units which are close to failure, and that’s why you’re designing for 11 units, why don’t we include all those 11 at this time instead of only 8. It touches to the point Mr. Salvador had on expansion. Somebody referenced to best available technologies and also maintenance. I think that that’s a good condition to tie in, incorporation of effluent filters and also septic tank pumping plan. Another point, I still have concerns about the design and construction. At points these force mains are going within a foot or two of existing fields. What is the potential of leaching into these trenches that are being constructed, and having the wastewater, such as from the laundry area, flow back down the trench and get basically a subsurface conduit back closer to the lake? So we need to take a look at those issues, whether there needs to be some protection, some keyways or barriers put in with clay to protect effluent flowing underneath the ground and in the trenches, and also I believe the Master Plan should be considered as a requirement to be updated, and the existing MOU between Takundewide Association and the Planning Board or the Town. They are impacting proposed reserve areas, and that these issues should be addressed at this time, so that the Master Plan remains working document and can go forward. Thank you for your time. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you. Is there anybody else who wants to speak to this application? KATHY BOZONY MRS. BOZONY-Kathy Bozony from the Lake George Association, referring or responding to Councilman Metivier’s suggestion about a pump out for all the sewage treatment within, not just the new proposed for the 11 units, but the individuals, I presume that’s what discussed, every three years. I don’t know if a sewer district would need to be formed if that were mandated. Also, one thought is, that the Board might want to think about, if, in fact, Mr. Locke was stating that there may be other failed systems, other than the ones that are proposed for this new community system, maybe they, the entire community, Homeowners Association, should have their systems looked at, inspected, pumped, before only 11 units are proposed for this new community system. Maybe there are other ones that have, are in need of being replaced at this same time. We are addressing the eight houses, the eight single family dwellings, three additional, but what about the rest of the community? Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you. Anyone else who would like to speak to this application? Mr. Ryan, can you please come up. MR. RYAN-Good evening. The moment of truth here. My name is Dan Ryan with VISION Engineering, aka Town Engineer. Well, my goal here tonight is not to approve or disapprove of this project, but rather hope to provide some guidance and clarifications, and hopefully some helpful information so that you may do your job. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. RYAN-Well, and you’ll have to let me know if I don’t accomplish that for sure. I have several points to make tonight, some being based on research that I’ve conducted to help, hopefully, with this decision. Other information obviously pertaining to my site visit today and subsequent previous visits that I’ve made there. I’ve met with the applicant a couple of times on site to do test pits and I’ll discuss some of that information as well. I’m very well aware of a lot of the issues that were brought to this Board’s attention for this project. Not having been present at all the meetings pertaining to this application, I do review minutes, just to ensure, as I review projects, that I’m up to speed on all the issues or concerns of residents during public hearings, as well as the Board members. In particular, the residents for this project have concerns regarding drainage, an existing culvert system which is being contaminated whether by runoff or groundwater, which has yet to be determined, but contaminated nonetheless with coliforms, presumably from effluent and also detergents, I believe, were tested positive in ’94, presumably from nearby residents or the laundry facilities. MR. TRAVER-Excuse me, Mr. Ryan. With regard to the coliform, you said presumably? MR. RYAN-Well, they had tests in ’94 that were high, but that was related specifically to a failure. So I’m not sure what testing has occurred since then. I believe Mr. Navitsky did testing in 2004, although I don’t know the levels that were, maybe he can speak to the levels as a result of those tests. 16 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. TRAVER-Are there sources other than septic that could likely be a source? MR. RYAN-When you test positive for coliforms or e-coli, it’s not necessarily human waste. It could be runoff or animal, something within a ditch or something like that, but I’ll get into that a little bit more in detail, as far as what my feelings of the source, and the proximity of the source to the storm drain system. Okay. I will give you some background. I guess to start out, back when this project was initially proposed, I first reviewed the project using the regulations and standards, which included the Lake George basin standards, because that was brought up by previous Town Board members, or Planning Board members as to whether I included that document, which I did. That’s referred to on the first page of SPDES Permit. So, likewise, I used that as part of my review. At that time, these concerns were brought to the attention of the Town Board. So Roger Boor did ask me, being his Ward, to investigate the drainage issues, since the Town Board and myself are intimately involved with many drainage issues throughout the Town. I did do that back, I believe it was in October, and I did report to the Town Board, and we did have a meeting regarding drainage issues in general with this being one of the topics. Based on my initial, and I said this in my second review letter, and summarized somewhat what I determined from, and it was limited observations. I’ve been to the site a couple of times and I’ve not analyzed any type of watershed or checked drainage patterns throughout the entire area, but I did do a site walk of Takundewide, as well as part of Cleverdale and Hillman Avenue, or Hillman Road. At that time, my determination, my initial determination, was that the sewage facility should have limited impacts on the drainage problem that’s being perceived. Obviously you’ve got to split the drainage problem into two categories, one being flooding issues, which you saw in a video from 1994, and part two of that being the contamination of stormwater, whether it be from runoff or groundwater. My initial determination was strictly based on the system that’s being proposed as to stormwater flooding, okay. The flooding that was seen in the video, at least when I took a second look at the video, appears to be a lot of flooding localized within Hillman Road near the Locke residence, Hillman and Buckley. A second look at that video shows that none of, and I could be wrong, but as far as I remember from what I’ve investigated, is none of those drywells during that flooding that was videoed were submerged completely, and it appeared to be more of a conveyance problem, and I don’t know if he has the video. I’d be happy to review that. Conveyance problem to the drywells, rather than the drywells being flooded in that capacity. So that was where my initial determination came from in my second comment letter. The system proposed, we’re well aware of, is a standard absorption trench type system. Obviously probably the most commonly used wastewater treatment system type, especially for residential style construction. The reason it’s the most commonly used is because it normally provides adequate treatment of effluent prior to discharging to groundwater. Typically absorption trenches are permitted for soils that have a less than 60 minute per inch percolation rate, and I think something that seems to be getting out of context is that this system is discharging to soil, not surface waste, and there is several hundred feet of distance between the actual system proposed and the stormwater concerns. The reason separation distances are important is so that there’s adequate soil to treat effluent as it percolates through the soil. Some of the research and studies that I’ve evaluated to help with this particular project review indicate that most pollutants, being coliforms, phosphorus, nitrogen BOD, are removed within two to four feet of soil. Thus, we have a two to four foot separation requirements for most municipalities. That in general provides adequate treatment for effluent prior to discharging to groundwater. Obviously different soils treat effluent at different levels with faster soils obviously having more risk, if there is shallow groundwater. In this particular instance, I believe the percolation rates are between 20 and 30 minutes, which are more, obviously slower than something that would be substantially less for a sandy material. Now, in the Lake George Basin Wastewater Regulations. MR. FORD-So how does that relate, excuse me, but how does that relate to the two to four feet? Would that fit in within those parameters? MR. RYAN-Correct. Actually, the two to four feet is for anything from one minute to sixty minutes, and it is assumed or presumed that that is adequate treatment for anything within that percolation rate zone, okay. So one to sixty is the guideline for a standard absorption system. Okay. MR. FORD-Thanks, Dan. MR. RYAN-Now obviously with shallow groundwater, the risk of contamination increases the closer the groundwater is to the treatment zone. The treatment zone being defined as the soil immediately beneath the subsurface treatment area. Now in order to get the 17 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) magnitude of this particular project, in terms of how much volume of effluent will be pumped to a specific location, based on the calculations and total volumes of wastewater produced, presented by the applicant, presumably they’ll be dosing the fields maybe two times a day, or six times a day, alternating between three fields. I’ve determined that, according to the math, and hopefully I’ve done that correctly, as a total of a quarter inch of fluid, or effluent, per square foot, for an entire day. So that’s the magnitude of the volume that we’re discussing here, is a quarter inch of effluent per day per square foot. Now, there’s been discussions regarding the ability of this area to handle that volume of water. There’s been discussion as to the effects of this system on runoff and stormwater. Now, certainly the antecedent moisture condition will have an effect on the volume of runoff produced from a precipitation event. Now just to go back to my last initiate determination where I did discuss the precipitation in 1994, and there’s been a couple of letters responding to that. Now, what I did state was, at the time, a couple of storms, one to two inches in total precipitation, propagated the issues. Now, those are not large storms by anyone’s standards, but when they follow a month that had a total precipitation of eight inches, I believe that that is substantial, because the soil conditions would be extremely, retain a lot of moisture at that time. So the intent of that was not to say that one or two inches of rain is a lot, but when it follows highly unusual amounts of total precipitation, in fact, that summer there was one month with seven inches, and one month with eight. So the normals are normally between three and four. So that was where that came from, just to clarify some of the people did respond to that. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. RYAN-Now obviously, to provide the most protection for any area with a sewage system, the system has to be properly designed, properly sited, and most importantly, as some people have already brought to your attention, properly maintained. There are several modes of failure with septic systems, and the most common that I see is the lack of maintenance involved, especially with pumping septic tanks. I honestly feel that the system has been designed in accord with all regulations, and according to good engineering practice is a responsible design. Now, that being said, to prevent the possibility, or reduce the potential for failure, I do have a couple of recommendations that I feel might be important. One that already has been reiterated is some type of maintenance plan, and whether it’s enforced by the Town or self-enforced, I’ll leave that up to you. Certainly, especially with summer type homes where people only think about this property for two or three months a year, it may be beneficial to establish a maintenance plan that’s administered by either the Association or overseen by the Town. That’s not the point. The point is that, with proper maintenance, and a properly designed sewage facility, septic system, should have good longevity and properly and adequately treat effluent. Abuse of the system, obviously you run the risk of creating failures, and that would be one preventative measure to avoid that. MRS. BRUNO-When you mention that you’ve seen failures in septic systems, what, besides the fact that it is due to lack of maintenance, how frequently do these systems fail, what’s the probability? MR. RYAN-Well, I guess I’ve never seen a septic system last forever, and they all will ultimately fail at some point. I think the longevity that occurs is highly dependent upon it being properly sized, so that you’re not adding a lot more volume and exceeding the generalized application rate that should be used for that soil. Typically, and most often it’s septic tanks full of sludge to the top and solids getting downstream which ultimately create the problem. Now, other issues have been brought up regarding failure, and in this particular case, I’m not sure there’s much else that can be done, but this system has, is designed, and I’m going off memory here, with three pumps. If one pump was to fail, there are two other pumps that could be utilized until that could be replaced or repaired. So that is one safety mechanism that the applicant is incluidng. Another, I feel above and beyond safety measure, is automatic shutoffs for the water. If the high level alarm is triggered, I believe they’ve given an automatic shutoff for the entire water supply to the Association, which would prevent any overflowing onto surface obviously. So I think with proper maintenance and those other additional safety mechanisms, I think they’ve taken into consideration that potential. MRS. BRUNO-Can I interrupt you one more time? MR. RYAN-Sure. MRS. BRUNO-With proper maintenance, I know you really can’t give a really specific amount of time, but what is the window? Are we talking 50 to 100 years for it to last? 18 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. RYAN-Well, as one of the neighbors stated, they have cess pools that are there for 50 years, probably not even maintained. I guess a lot of times there may not be a specific rhyme or reason, but most septics, you know, it’s hard to say because I see septics that are three years old and follow all the normal guidelines and some that are 20. So I wouldn’t dare guess, especially on a community system. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. MR. RYAN-I guess the objective of that statement is to basically say if we’re going to minimize the potential for an issue, have proper steps been taken place, and ensure that that will happen. So, to give you a little more background on the drainage issue. I did meet with a couple of Town Board members today, as well as residents. I stand by my initial determination that the runoff issue will not be effected by this sewage system. Again, to go back to the video, I’m not sure that flooding was the result of an inadequate volume or discharge rate ability of the system. I think it had to do with conveyance and depressions existing that maybe pooled water prior to getting it to where it needed to go, and again, I’d be happy to review photos or anything if you’ve got any concerns about that. I do feel that the drainage problem is solvable, and I did express that in my October Town Board meeting as well as this afternoon. I’ve also expressed that in e-mails to some of the Town Board members. As you know, I’m intimately involved with the Town Board on many drainage projects, and I would not say for a second that they would not be willing to listen to residents of this Town and potentially come up with a solution. As you’re aware, similar to Meadowbrook Road, these things do take time to study and design. So how you play on that, that’s obviously your prerogative, and I really don’t have any statement specific to how you work or structure any kind of approval, but I do feel the Board is on, is willing to help this residential area, especially from a stormwater standpoint. I do think that there’s some solutions or mitigation measures that can be done to help solve that. So that helps take care of both the contamination side and the runoff side of that particular issue. So I think that’s about it. If I missed anything, I’ll kick myself later, but do you guys have any questions? MR. TRAVER-Yes, I have a question. You’ve obviously listened to our discussions this evening, and understanding your position that the proposed system will have minimal impact on the stormwater runoff, what is your feeling with the idea of having a global approach to solving the Takundewide septic issue along with the stormwater issue? Do you see a downside to doing it that way? Again, I understand that the system is. MR. RYAN-I think, to state the obvious, what we’re talking about is leverage. Do we have leverage against the applicant to force them to participate? I think that’s what I’m hearing from both, from all sides. It’s nice to have leverage, and I think there may be a solution that’s possible that may not require Takundewide property or neighboring properties, I’m not sure of where the property lines are and if it’s strictly a Town road or a right of use. So, without knowing that, there may be a need for them to participate from an easement standpoint, but as far as a global solution, that would be ideal, but again, I don’t feel, if one was to pre-empt the other, that it would matter in either case. MR. TRAVER-All right. MR. SIPP-Do you feel that there’s enough reserve here to add on in the future? MR. RYAN-There was some good points brought to the attention from Mr. Locke’s engineer and some of the residents that there are existing systems on site from some of the non-participating residents, and it probably would be a good idea to locate them, to ensure that we’re not disturbing those or affecting those, and also if, you know, again, the maintenance plan going to being Association wide rather than strictly to those particular residents, but it would be nice to enforce maintenance plans for septic systems Town wide because it’s not just this area where there’s failed systems. MR. SIPP-There was a mention of a filter. MR. RYAN-Effluent filters. MR. SIPP-Yes. MR. RYAN-That’s a great idea. What that does is prevents any solids from getting to the pump station, and subsequently to the leach field. The good thing about it, if they aren’t maintained, is they plug up. So that creates problems for the homeowner before the problem gets down farther, but they do need to be rinsed and all that. So there is some maintenance involved with those. 19 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. FORD-Just to make sure that I understand the connection here. You’re saying that runoff will not affect this system, and this system will not impact the runoff? MR. RYAN-The effects would be minimal. Obviously I think Mr. Navitsky, his claims regarding, you know, changing the topography or changing the cover that’s existing, I think most of this is field now or grass, and I think after will be grass. I’m not sure if there’s any woods being removed. Runoff comes from a lot of different factors, but most importantly the soil type, the cover and the moisture condition of the existing, of the soils. MR. FORD-Now do you foresee any possibility of any solution where the Town is addressing the runoff problem negatively impacting the system that’s being proposed, the sewer system as proposed? MR. RYAN-No, I think, based on what I’ve seen on site, is along Hillman Road there’s roadside ditches, I think on the north side, and there’s culverts on Cleverdale Road which collect upstream water runoff and convey it down Hillman Road along the side, which eventually get to these drywells. That’s probably a couple of hundred feet away from this proposed system. I’m not exactly sure what the dimension is. I know one of my comments for this project initially was that runoff upgradient would travel over the system, and I think since then they’ve diverted that on the east side of the system to go around. So I don’t foresee that as being an issue. It’s a common practice to divert runoff away from sewage systems. MR. FORD-From what you’ve been able to observe, and I know you haven’t studied it in depth, but in previous meetings, there have been a report of so much of the drainage that has to be dealt with there on site comes from well off site. MR. RYAN-I can’t speak to how much of that is, you know, how much upstream or upgradient watershed contributes. MR. FORD-Upgradient has really been the issue I think. MR. RYAN-I mean, there is a big mountainside to the east of Cleverdale. Whether that gets split up and conveyed to different sides of Takundewide I’m not sure. That certainly would be included in this next phase if the Town Board, you know, chooses to move forward with designing something. MR. FORD-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Any other questions for Mr. Ryan? Mr. O’Connor? MR. O'CONNOR-May I ask a question? And Mr. Ryan has reviewed, also, the three individual septic systems that were proposed and does he find those to be adequate, other than some of the minor mapping and notation things that he wrote up? MR. RYAN-Yes. Obviously, the applicant not knowing where this was headed apparently submitted for that alternative, which I did include in my review since it was submitted. I did just have a couple of general comments with that, and I think they’re aware of those, particularly, you know, water lines and other issues. The soils, based on test pits, I don’t want to say better, but had a faster percolation rate, and the depth to groundwater, I don’t remember offhand, I think it was relatively similar. Okay, and as far as the deeper depths, I’m going off memory here, but I think it was fragmented shale as you got deeper, which to me would be courser, and allow quicker infiltration, which I believe would be a negative as DEC has verified as well, but other than that, they do follow the guidelines as far as that goes. MRS. STEFFAN-Anymore questions from the Board? Thank you, Mr. Ryan, we appreciate you being here. MR. RYAN-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the applicant come back up to the table, please. MR. O'CONNOR-I’ll try to make my response quick, because I don’t necessarily think that a lot has been said that says that you can’t go ahead with what we’ve asked you to do, either approve the system for the individual ones or approve the community septic system. A couple of comments, though, for the record. The community system is designed for three bedrooms. Most of the units are two bedroom units with a study, at 20 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) least if you take a look at the plans, the floor plans that were approved for the Jackoski property which is on Lot Eight. It shows two bedrooms, and on the first floor is shows a kitchen, a dining area, a study, and a screened porch. We took the position that we would include the study in the count, and that’s how we have three bedrooms in that particular unit. That’s how you end up with I think three for each of those eleven that we propose in the community system that we propose. Mr. Salvador’s understanding of the transportation corporation law is completely different than mine, but that’s neither here nor there I guess. There is no taking. We, as the developer, when we do, first of all, the DEC requires a transportation corporation, for any community system of this nature. The purpose of that is that if there is a failure of maintenance, by the Town Board approving the formation of the transportation corporation, they agree to then take over the operation of the septic system, get it back into control, into maintenance, in charge of the people that have a benefit of it. It’s almost like a mini sewer district, and that’s the purpose of it. DEC does require annual maintenance of their system when we put it in, and Tom can address that better than I can. MR. FORD-Annual? MR. O'CONNOR-Annual. It’s a regular septic, sewer system. They do require us to file with them a set of plans. You’ve seen the letter, I call it the soft letter, that says that we will approve these plans when you go through the system, or go through the whole process. The Town Boards want that because the Town Boards don’t want to sign on to consenting to the formation of a transportation corporation for a system that’s not going to work. They want to know from DEC that there’s a professional opinion that this system will work. When you get all said and done, and it’s built, we have to do an as built drawing and submit that to DEC, with an engineer’s certification that it was built according to the plans and specifications that we submitted as part of the application. We will then deed an easement on a voluntarily basis to the transportation corporation that will allow the transportation corporation to actually maintain the system, and if there are physical parts of the system, we will give a bill of sale of that, the pump stations, the transportation corporation will actually own the facilities. So they could operate independent of us, and it’s as simple as that. It’s not an eminent domain issue. I’m not sure where we got off into that. My comment as to the perforated pipe was from reading of the engineer’s report. It wasn’t the pipe going to the lake. It’s the pipe connecting, as I understand it, the various catch basins, or collecting water for the catch basins. That is the perforated pipe. There are some septic systems in the neighborhood that are upland of that, aside from the septic systems that are on our property. We have no problem with the maintenance program. If you go back to the Master Plan, that was one of the recommendations of it, and you see attached to the Master Plan the offer that is made by the management of the facility, that they will go in and uncover each of the septic systems for annual inspections, they will pump them, and there’s a fee schedule that’s attached to that. MRS. BRUNO-Is the pumping required, regardless of what they find when they open it, even if it’s under level, is that still required annually, or is there a trigger point? MR. MASON-The pumping is not required. The inspection is required. What happens many times in these systems is we have owners who are only using it four, five weekends the whole year, and so I inspect it, and I find that there’s less than a half an inch, and there’s no solids on the top. There’s nothing in the bottom, and it really makes no sense to pump that. I’ve been told by everybody that that’s silly. So the inspection, though, is the important thing. You want to make sure that you catch it early if you’ve got a problem going on in there, before it gets out and ruins the system, the drain field, the pipes, and so we do that. The decision on whether to pump it or not is one that’s made when we uncover the access ports and take a look inside. MRS. BRUNO-But when you say we, I assume that you’re including a certified company that comes in, it’s not you that puts your boots on and goes out there. MR. MASON-Well, we is me and a worker who do the actual digging to uncover it, and then we hire one of the local septic companies to come in and we get them all uncovered and ready for them, and then they come in and do the whole job, and then we write up a report and keep it for each homeowner for their use in the future, and for me, so that I’ve got a record of what I’ve done. MRS. BRUNO-So he’s the one that determines the threshold at which time, that’s his thing? MR. MASON-Absolutely. 21 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MRS. BRUNO-Okay. Thank you. MR. HUTCHINS-And additionally all the new systems are going to have filters. So that’s going to have to be done once a year as well, open all the filters and clean them, once a year or twice a year, and if they don’t do it, as Dan said, it’ll cause a problem in the house and not outside. MR. O'CONNOR-The effluent system goes in the tank, in the septic tank, the individual septic tank, in addition to the baffle, and that’s apparently something that DEC is now requiring or they seem to be suggesting on any of these community systems. MRS. BRUNO-Remind what the depth to groundwater was up at the site that you’re proposing the system will go in. MR. HUTCHINS-Over seven test holes we had, now these were all seasonal high groundwater table as evidenced by mottling, and we did some of these test holes in season. We didn’t find any water in any of these holes, okay, and some of these were done May 1, which is generally considered the time that, around seasonal high groundwater time, okay. We didn’t see any water in any of these holes at any time, okay, but by mottling, over seven test holes, we had 30 inches, 42 inches, 35 inches, 37 inches, 37 inches, 32 inches, 36 inches. So around three feet, and we’re going to have a three foot separation to groundwater table. So the systems are shallow. The systems are basically at existing grade with fill covering it. MR. O'CONNOR-There will be fill that will be added, and that’s one of the other requirements is that you have to let the fill settle for a period of time before you can actually construct the system. I think it’s 60 days. We were trying to get the fill in place so it would settle, so that we could get this system up and running. MRS. BRUNO-You must go in and scrap off the top layer before you bring the fill in, right? That would definitely affect. MR. O'CONNOR-DOT requires that. We have no problem indicating that we will do a maintenance program for the systems that are hooked up to the community system, and we can require, I don’t think you need annual pumping. You need to open them and look at them, but pumping, once every three years is reasonable. We can agree to that. I can’t sit here and say that the other, what is it, the other 21 that we’re going to annually do them. They are not part of the agreement to pay for this community system and to operate the community system. That’s something separate that we would have to take up with them. We encourage it, because it affects us as much as it affects anybody else, and we’ve had a system since we adopted that Master Plan in 2003 that encourages that every year with everybody, and we do uncover each one of them every year. MRS. BRUNO-We did talk before about having a reserve area, should you decide to enlarge or should there be a failure, right, I think we had talked about? MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. There are other areas that potentially would serve as reserve areas, both to the east, easterly of this system, as well as a number of areas that are outlined for the individual systems. We did not specifically identify an area as a reserve area, but we identified that there are other areas available, and a lot of times what happens with systems such as these, if there is a failure, the replacement is often done in place, but there are areas available, should we wish to replace this at another area. MR. MASON-And that is something that I really should clear up. It’s been brought up a few times where we talk about updating the Master Plan because we’re using areas that were designated for other units. The problem with the Master Plan data is it was drawn when the regulation was that you couldn’t replace a system in the same location, and we actually drew on the Master Plan three boxes for every cottage and they were oversized. The first box is the existing system. The next one was the first replacement area, and the third box was a second replacement area, and we even had enough land on the 21 acres to then include a big box that we said this would be where the community septic area would be and there was space left over. We were trying to demonstrate that with the 21 acres we had plenty of land to do all of these different alternatives depending on what the future brought. As we look at the Master Plan now, if you just go through and erase, just erase one of the boxes from each of the homes, and leave an existing system and a first replacement area system, you have plenty of room for all of the other systems, and to do another community system. It’s 21 acres, two-thirds of an acre per cottage. Land is not our issue. 22 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MRS. BRUNO-That brings up two more questions actually. Somebody had mentioned that the individual reserve areas, back 24, 23, 22, and 21 were lost by the taking of that taking, I use loosely, of that land for the community septic system. Is that, indeed, true, and if so. MR. MASON-This is the issue I’m talking to you about. The plan that was shown on the Master Plan doesn’t necessarily represent where everybody has put their system. In fact, when they come to me, and they say, I need to put a system in, we take a walk and we deal with engineers and we figure out where is the best place to put your system, based on where other systems are, based on the topography and based on the soils, and so the systems aren’t necessarily, nor have they ever been, exactly where they are, because it was difficult the day we drew it to figure out exactly where the existing ones were. They were put in 52 years ago. MRS. STEFFAN-That’s why the community system is a better plan. MR. MASON-It does help from that respect. We’ll know where it is. Like we do know exactly where all the systems we’ve put in over the past 15, 20 years are because we had accurate drawings of exactly where they were supposed to go in the permit process. MR. O'CONNOR-And if you say that you’ve got four units or three units that we’re putting the community system in where their reserve area was, you also have to recognize that we now have 11 units that don’t need the reserve areas that we showed for them, two reserve areas for each one, and there is a restriction that there’s no further units and there’s no subdivision of the property. So this acreage that we’re talking about. MR. FORD-And no additions to the current structures? MR. O'CONNOR-No. The Master Plan says that you can increase the existing structures up to 1536 square feet, I think, you can add a second story. MR. MASON-That’s exactly what we’ve done with each one of the other ones. MRS. STEFFAN-Mr. O’Connor, do you have anymore comments? MR. MASON-I wanted to make one more comment if I could, regarding the back up system. We started to get into it on what we designed in, and I was very proud of this. Tom designed this for me and we worked together figuring out what the best way was to safeguard the lake. We had three pumps in the tank that alternate automatically and back each other up automatically. So there’s no maintenance required to make sure. If a pump fails, it’ll automatically go to Pump Two, Pump Three, and so on, and an alarm goes off, and this is just exactly the way my water system operates up there. It was designed the same way, it works great. If the alarm goes off, it’s a light that I can see from my office, I know I’ve got to get out there and maintain it, I’ve got to do it now because I’m on backup, but we’ve got three pumps doing this, so I can’t see any problem there. We also back it up, we have a back up generator to back up the power to it. So if there’s a power outage, the pumps are still going to operate even in that case, and then last of course the high level. In case it still, for some reason, should reach that high level, all the water is shut off to the property. So we were pretty conscientious with all of that. I thought we were going to spend a lot of time back in August talking about those issues, but anyway, I’m glad to get them in the record. Thank you. MR. O'CONNOR-The other comment is we will aggressively participate in discussions with the Town, based upon being able to go forward here, but we have a real problem with someone saying we’re not going to approve something that should be approved simply to hold leverage on you, and I’m not pointing to anybody in particular. I think you should judge the application based upon what is before you in this application. I think you heard great amplification from the Town Engineer as to where the impacts are or aren’t with regard to the project. As I said before, we have a whole number of owners that aren’t represented here at the table, but we will aggressively pursue them and have them participate with whatever the Town deems to be appropriate and for global solution of the whole thing. MRS. STEFFAN-I think we’re ten minutes shy of two hours on this project, and it’s an important project, and I apologize to the folks who are in the audience waiting for their applications to be heard, but this is a project that’s been ongoing, as you’ve listened to the testimonials tonight. It’s an important project, and it’s an issue that the Town has to invest some time in to do the right thing. I would like t recommend, I certainly think, from 23 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) my point of view, as one member, and of course I’m Chairman tonight, but I’m usually the Secretary of the Planning Board. So in preparation for this meeting, I certainly thought that the community system was a good measure in solving the issues. Our Town Engineer has no support of that particular position, but we’ve also heard some other things from the community, and one of the things that I would like to propose is I’m not comfortable going forward tonight with an approval, just because I’m not ready to do SEQRA, just because of some of the stormwater issues in the area, and I know that we’re talking about separating septic and the stormwater plan that is off of your site, but stormwater does affect your site in some ways, and so in order to do SEQRA, I think we just need some more concrete information. What I would like to do here is to table your application and support you going with the community plan, and between now and when you come back, I will also put forth a resolution for a group meeting because I think it would certainly bring the collective brain power of all these folks together to solve this problem once and for all is the right thing to do for the community. MR. HUTCHINS-I’m sorry. Is that a stormwater meeting or a wastewater meeting, the group meeting? MRS. STEFFAN-The group meeting is on stormwater. MR. HUTCHINS-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-And I think that that’s a differentiation. I don’t know if it’s clear to the audience. I think it’s certainly clear for the Planning Board members that tonight, you know, there is a very big difference between the two issues that we’ve been talking about on and off over the last couple of months, and so that issues that we’re dealing with for this application are absolutely the septic issues, but the stormwater issues do come into play. So what I would like to do is put forth a tabling motion for you to address the th VISION Engineering comments that are in the letter from January 10. MR. O'CONNOR-Those comments all have to do with the three individual systems. Do you want us to address them? Correct me if I’m wrong. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. Hold on. MR. TRAVER-I think with the exception of the vehicle barricade. th MR. FORD-January 11. th MR. O'CONNOR-Is that the letter of January 10? th MR. FORD-Yes, received on the 11. MR. RYAN-I think all those outstanding issues are related to the three alternatives. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. So the tabling motion would be to obtain VISION Engineering signoff, since we’ve decided, am I talking for the Planning Board when I say that the community system is the system that we are in favor of, after the public comment this evening? MR. FORD-I concur. MRS. BRUNO-I do as well. MR. SIPP-Yes. MR. TRAVER-Yes. MR. O'CONNOR-You have a VISION Engineering signoff on the community system th dated November 15. MRS. STEFFAN-But we will need just a couple of other things. We want to include the maintenance agreement, the maintenance plan, and then the automatic shutoffs that Mr. Ryan brought up. MR. O'CONNOR-They’re on the plans. MR. HUTCHINS-He’s describing the plans as it’s on the plan. 24 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. O'CONNOR-It’s on the plan. MR. HUTCHINS-As are the filters. The maintenance plan, that’s not dictated there. We have discussed it and realized that it’s necessary. MRS. STEFFAN-George, does the transportation corporation have to be in place before we approve this? MR. HILTON-I don’t believe so. MR. O'CONNOR-Okay. My answer to you is no, because the transportation corporation has to do with the DEC permit, not with the Town Site Plan. It’s the same thing you condition your approval upon us getting a DEC permit, which will then mean that we will have a transportation corporation in place, but the transportation corporation deals with DEC, not with, Town Board and DEC, not with Site Plan, the Town Board and DEC. If you want to consent to us forming the thing, and we can get away with it, that’s great, it would be one less Board we’d have to go to, but I don’t think that’ll work. It says the executive board or executive, there’s language in the Ordinance that say you go to the Town Board for that approval. MR. SIPP-Is this them meeting as the Board of Health? MR. O'CONNOR-No. It’s the Town Board. I’ve done two of these in the Town of Lake George, and they have a consolidated Board of Health, and the Town Board generally refers the application to the consolidated Board of Health for its approval, and, on its approval, then the Town Board does a separate resolution. MR. SIPP-And we don’t know whether there’s a public hearing attached to that? MR. O'CONNOR-I don’t recall one, to be honest with you. I don’t think I actually attended the Town Board meetings. I attended the consolidated Board of Health meetings. So you’re asking for a narrative comment as to maintenance to appear on the plan? MR. SIPP-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, as identified by our Town Engineer, with three year pump outs, and also the automatic shutoffs for water. MR. MASON-We have that on the plan. The automatic shutoff is on the plans. MR. FORD-Let me just make sure that I understand, because I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, but when you talk about an annual inspection and a three year pump out, I want to make sure that we have down there that in fact that annual inspection indicates that if a greater frequency than three years needs to be employed, then that would occur. MR. HUTCHINS-Well, certainly. If, by opening the tank, we see that pumping is necessary, it behooves us to pump it. If this thing fail, we all have a significant problem. MR. O'CONNOR-Okay. I might have mislead you. The annual inspection and pumping once within three years, we’re talking about the individual septic tanks that are in each, associated with each of the cabins that are going to be served by the community system. Beyond that, there is a reporting system to DEC, at least on the one in Lake George, where we had to do water testing. Did a monitoring well and did some water testing. I don’t know. MR. HUTCHINS-They may or may not require that. MR. O'CONNOR-DEC may require us to report to them on a more frequent basis. I don’t know what they will do, but whatever they want we will. MR. HUTCHINS-But I can summarize, if you want, what we have outlined in concept for a maintenance program for the compliance of this system, and that would be open each tank, service each filter, clean them, check the solids level, open the pump station, verify the pumps, verify there’s not a lot of solids built up within the pumps, check the electronics and open up each D Box at the system and verify we don’t have a lot of solids. MR. FORD-Annually. 25 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. HUTCHINS-Annually. Now, that’s not on the plans, but that’s what we’ve discussed in concept, and I think we’re willing to agree to that as a stipulation to the project. MR. MASON-Absolutely. MR. O'CONNOR-And we’ll put it on the plans. MR. FORD-Yes, and have it on the plan. MRS. STEFFAN-So does the Board feel comfortable going forward with SEQRA, or do you want, what do you want? MR. TRAVER-I would like to see a preliminary report from the workshop on the stormwater issue. MR. SIPP-Yes. MRS. BRUNO-I agree. I feel that the applicant has had a really good faith effort, and the DEC has been positive and the Town Engineer has been, it’s unfortunate that there are external circumstances that are going to affect it, but, clearly to look out for our environment, we really do need to cover all of our bases, and I’m not comfortable with going forward with it. MRS. STEFFAN-Mr. Sipp? MR. SIPP-No, no SEQRA. MRS. STEFFAN-No SEQRA. Mr. Ford? MR. FORD-No SEQRA tonight, but I also don’t want to send the applicant away without a realization that I hope they sense that, at least, I’ll only speak for myself, that I do, that we’re starting to see that glimmer, that light at the end of the tunnel. MR. O'CONNOR-Well, I would ask the Chairman, is the public hearing going to be kept open? Are we going to go through this thing? A lot of tonight was just simple rehash the last two meetings, with due respect to myself and other speakers probably, but is there a necessity to keep the public hearing open at this point? MRS. STEFFAN-What the normal Chairman does is, what Mr. Hunsinger usually does is ask, during public comment on projects that are repeats, is if anybody can offer new information that hasn’t already been presented, and so I’m reluctant to limit public comment, but I certainly think that the Chairman, when he is back, the next time that you come before us, that he can limit that comment. MR. O'CONNOR-Well, the other question I would ask is when are you going to adjourn this to? MRS. STEFFAN-Well, I was, actually I was going to follow the tabling motion for your application with a resolution to the Town Board about getting a meeting together, and what I was going to do is to table your application to the March meeting, with an extended application deadline. My resolution to the Town Board is to get this workshop meeting together in early February, normal submission deadline for March would be thth March 15, I’m sorry, February 15, for the March meetings, but what I was going to do rd is extend the application deadline for you until March 3, which is two weeks before the meeting, so that, based on the outcomes of this workshop, if there’s anything that you would like to add to the project, then that could be done very close to the meeting deadline. MR. O'CONNOR-Okay. Then you’re talking 60 days is presumably and hopefully we would get approval in March. You’re talking 60 days from that time that you have to let the fill settle, and that throws us right into the middle of the season for trying to get this thing constructed, which I think is contrary to the fact that I think everybody has ignored, you’ve got not the best systems there now. I think the difference between tabling it to March and tabling it to February are significant, and I don’t know, will you start it in the Spring if we get an approval in February? MR. MASON-It depends on rain. I’m a little concerned. I wanted to start it now. 26 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. TRAVER-I think in our resolution, our recommendation to the Town Board, we already have the context of your application in that it’s assumed that there is minimal impact on stormwater. So one of the things that they can address very early on in their discussions is to verify that any approach that they might take to stormwater, is it going to, in turn, have any impact on whatever design you might, the community design or involve any complication to the plan as it exists. MR. O'CONNOR-Didn’t you hear from your expert and their expert, though, that it won’t? And I’m not trying to put words in Mr. Ryan’s mouth, for Mr. Ryan, but he’s the one that’s going to advise the Town Board, and I just think we’re, I don’t know what new you’re going to get. I really don’t. You’ve been told by your engineer repeatedly, and our engineer, that we aren’t affecting the issue that you have. We’ve told you, as an applicant, we will cooperate aggressively. Whatever we can do we will try to do. I asked Bill before, and Bill is correct in saying that he doesn’t own the common lands, that the Homeowners Association does it. He can’t sit here, as an officer, and say this is what the Homeowners Association will do, but if there’s a matter of easements for transporting water, not necessarily for treating or retaining water, I think that’s something that we can accommodate through our common areas. So I don’t know, I don’t mean to keep beating a dead horse, but I don’t think you’re going to get anything new on the issue that is going to affect what your SEQRA determinations are going to be for our septic system. MR. FORD-Can we ask them? MRS. STEFFAN-Sure, go ahead. MR. FORD-The Town Board representatives, could we ask a question? Is there any reason that this workshop could not occur during the balance of this month? We’ve got 16 days left in January. Thank you. MR. SIPP-Mr. O’Connor, I feel that these two things are tied inseparably, and we’ve seen in the past, and I quoted from 1996, that they had this meeting and identified all these things and nothing happened. Now, unless we have this meeting, I would not feel like going, and they approve going ahead with their stormwater management program, I don’t feel that I can separate out your project on its own. MR. O'CONNOR-Do what you’ve got to do. MR. SIPP-So I would definitely want to see this meeting with the Town Board, this workshop, come to some agreement before we proceed. MR. FORD-The Town Board meeting will occur, this workshop will occur during the balance of this month. We can give them a reasonable date to respond in February and put them on the last date in February. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. So what are the things? We want them to embellish their maintenance plan at this point. That’s the only change to the current collective stormwater plan, the septic field. That’s the only thing we’re looking for. MR. O'CONNOR-Can we do that by letter to be added to the mylar? As opposed to another 15 sets of this wonderful document that you have? MRS. STEFFAN-George, what do you think? Is a letter sufficient, or does the plat? MR. O'CONNOR-To be added to the mylar that’s signed. MR. HILTON-I think that’s acceptable. I mean, it can just be right added to the plan that would be signed. MRS. STEFFAN-I actually think the letter, because when you put your as built drawings, when the project is finally done, I would imagine that you. MR. HUTCHINS-And this has still got to go to DEC. Chances are the plan you have in front of you is not going to be the one they stamp approved. There’s likely. Remember, we’re trying to go through this process to get our approval here so we can present to DEC, or so we can get, apply for a transportation corporation, so we can apply for a SPDES permit. MRS. BRUNO-But they’ve already had a preliminary look. 27 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. HUTCHINS-They’ve looked at it. MRS. BRUNO-Right. MR. O'CONNOR-There’s a letter here that says that they’ll approve it. MR. SIPP-If they don’t approve it, then do we have to go through this process all over again. MR. O'CONNOR-We will definitely come back with three separate systems then, maybe eleven. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. O'CONNOR-And we will abandon the ship. MRS. STEFFAN-The public hearing will remain open for this application. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 43-2007 TAKUNDEWIDE HOA, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: th Tabled to the February 26 meeting of the Planning Board, giving the applicant a th submission deadline of February 11 so that they will come back to embellish the maintenance plan for this project. Vision Engineering should review those comments and give their signoff. th Duly adopted this 15 day of January, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Sipp, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Steffan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Hunsinger, Mr. Seguljic MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. We will see you in February. MR. O'CONNOR-Okay. Are you doing a second resolution? MRS. STEFFAN-I’m doing a resolution. MOTION TO THE QUEENSBURY TOWN BOARD TO REQUEST THAT THE TAKUNDEWIDE HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION, THE TOWN OF QUEENSBURY TOWN BOARD, THE PLANNING BOARD, THE TOWN ENGINEER AND THE HIGHWAY SUPERINTENDENT GET TOGETHER FOR A WORKSHOP MEETING IN LATE JANUARY TO ADDRESS THE SHORT TERM AND LONG TERM STORMWATER MITIGATION MEASURES FOR THIS AREA TO PROTECT LAKE GEORGE AND THE AREA RESIDENTS’ QUALITY OF LIFE. WE SHOULD ALSO INVITE CONCERNED LAKE AGENCIES, AND ALSO AREA RESIDENTS IN THE VICINITY SHOULD BE INVITED TO THIS WORKSHOP, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: And the outcome of this workshop should include an advisory letter on how to solve the stormwater issues. th Duly adopted this 15 day of January, 2008, by the following vote: MR. TRAVER-I think they also agreed to meet this month. MR. O'CONNOR-Before the end of January, I thought, not early February. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. Let’s amend that to late January versus early February, and also folks that should be invited to that particular workshop are area residents in the vicinity. AYES: Mr. Traver, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mrs. Steffan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Hunsinger, Mr. Seguljic 28 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MRS. STEFFAN-Okay, folks, we will see you in a month. MR. MASON-Does Dan need to be at your next meeting? I’m just concerned. I don’t mean to say this disrespectfully to Mr. Seguljic, but he was the one with the concerns. He wanted to meet with the engineer. If he shows up at your next meeting and Dan is not now here. MRS. STEFFAN-We’ll request Dan to be at the next meeting. We’ll also be requesting counsel to be at our next meeting. Thank you. MR. O'CONNOR-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Sue, can you make sure that that’s part of the minutes, and, George, to make sure that when Takundewide comes back in February we want to have Town Counsel here and we want Dan Ryan, from VISION Engineering, here. Thank you. Dan, thank you very much for coming. We appreciate it. MR. RYAN-No problem. SITE PLAN NO. 49-2007 SEQR TYPE II MATTHEW EMMENS AGENT(S) JARRETT-MARTIN ENGINEERS CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION OWNER(S) SAME ZONING: WR-3A LOCATION 2 HIGHVIEW ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES THE DEMOLITION OF AN EXISTING HOME ALONG WITH THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN ADDITION TO THE REMAINING STRUCTURE, ALONG WITH SITE GRADING, AND STORMWATER CONTROLS. EXPANSION OF NONCONFORMING STRUCTURES IN A CEA REQUIRES SITE PLAN REVIEW AND APPROVAL FROM THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REFERENCE AV 60-07 WARREN CO. PLANNING 9/12/07 APA/CEA/DEC LAKE GEORGE CEA LOT SIZE 0.97 +/- ACRES TAX MAP NO. 239.15-1-19 SECTION 179-4-020, 179-6-060, CHAP. 147 TOM JARRETT & GABE HODGE, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MRS. STEFFAN-Good evening, gentlemen. MR. JARRETT-Good evening. MRS. STEFFAN-For the record. MR. JARRETT-For the record, Tom Jarrett, Gabe Hodge and Bill Dean. You’ve seen the three of us before, and with us tonight is Charlie Spinella, the landscape designer, landscape architect on this project. In November, you asked us to go home and address stormwater runoff during construction, as well as updating the landscaping design, to try to get more native species, especially in the buffer along the waterfront. We have done that. In December we gave you a submission that included the stormwater management plan during construction, and we updated the landscaping design at that time. Subsequent to that, and I know it’s out of order, normally, but subsequent to that, we met with Kathy Bozony at the LGA, and she made a few further suggestions for our plan, and we worked details out with her, and we’ve updated that plan for you that you got last week. We hope and believe that we’ve addressed your concerns, and I guess, having said that, we’ll open it up to questions. MR. HODGE-And we have since been granted our zoning variances as well. MRS. STEFFAN-We did read that. Thank you. MR. FORD-Yes, we saw that. MRS. STEFFAN-Board, questions, comments? MR. SIPP-I searched and searched, and I could not find any test pits done on the areas where the stormwater basins are going to be, the rain gardens. MR. JARRETT-We do have pits in each of those areas. In fact, after the first meeting, you asked us to do additional pits in front of the house, and we did those. MR. SIPP-Yes, I could not find the results. MR. JARRETT-They’re in the package that you received some time ago, and I think we went over that in the November meeting. 29 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. SIPP-But is there enough soil left there before you get to the rock? MR. JARRETT-Yes. MR. SIPP-What’s the bottom of those rain gardens to the rock? MR. JARRETT-That’s actually the deepest soil, I believe we have approximately five feet in that area. I’ll try and look it up. The soil gets deeper as you go to the south, in that rain garden area. MR. SIPP-Okay. That’s what I want. I had visions, some test pits at three feet, as I remember it. MR. JARRETT-The rock is shallowest to the north, and in fact when we went back to investigate the site, we could not bring in heavy equipment to dig in front of the house on the northeast corner. So we abandoned the stormwater in that area. We couldn’t document deep soils. We moved everything further to the south where there’s deep soil. MR. SIPP-No, I’m satisfied with the landscaping. I think you did a good job there. MR. JARRETT-Thank you. Charlie took great pains to try to put together a plan that the clients would be happy with and that the Board would be comfortable with. MR. SIPP-You’ve got more native plants than ornamentals. MRS. STEFFAN-Any other questions, comments from the Board? MR. TRAVER-I think they did a great job. MR. FORD-Going native is good. Thank you. MR. JARRETT-Is that the new mantra of the Board, going native is good? MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. SIPP-From the absent member tonight, I was asked to ask questions about the blasting. Will there be dust? MR. JARRETT-Will there be dust? MR. SIPP-Yes. MR. JARRETT-The blast will be covered by mats. So there’ll be very minimal dust. MR. SIPP-What is going to be the disposition of what you blast out of there? Are you going to remove it from the site? BILL DEAN MR. DEAN-Yes. It would all be trucked out from the site, and we figured approximately two to six hundred yards going out, but it’s hard to gauge it until it’s blasted. Not knowing how the rock is going to break up. MR. JARRETT-We estimated a minimum of 200 and a maximum of about 600. MR. DEAN-Yes, and I would think it would be very minimal dust, due to the high water level there, and that’s the reason we’re doing the blasting is we’re trying to alleviate that. MR. SIPP-You’ve got to blast for the septic system also, don’t you? MR. JARRETT-No. That leaching system we’re building up from the existing. So we’re okay there. MR. SIPP-Now are you going to have to demolish the foundation wall on the west side, south side? MR. JARRETT-No, we’re hoping to maintain that foundation on the south side. 30 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. HODGE-Right. The only foundation that will be removed is in the garage area, the north area of the house. MR. SIPP-The north area, okay. MR. HODGE-Right. MRS. STEFFAN-Any other questions or comments? MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Is there anybody who would like to speak to this application? PUBLIC HEARING OPEN KATHY BOZONY MRS. BOZONY-Thank you. Kathy Bozony from the Lake George Association. One of the comments I did include on my letter was about blasting, and this is no criticism of the design of the home or anything. In other parts of the country, they try to build around the existing natural resources, rock and stone being one of them. This site is a gorgeous site with beautiful ledge rock, and I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be blasted, but I think that if the communities around Lake George start looking at the rock as a natural resource and starting to design their homes around what is already there, there are no blasting regulations, I don’t believe, around Lake George in the watershed. It’s happening everywhere and I’m just wondering if all the towns could start thinking about it, including the architects and all, to start working with the environment. I use Lake Tahoe as an example, just because I recently saw what they were doing, and they build, good or bad, but they build land bridges out to, in order to build on slopes and things like that. So I just wanted to add that for the record. Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Thanks, Mrs. Bozony. Is there anybody else who would like to speak to this application? Okay. Then I’ll close the public hearing. PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED MRS. BRUNO-One quick question that I just remembered. There’s a stone path and stairway, can you just explain that, because usually, right on the lakefront, we don’t like to see, you know, hard surfacing, but I’m guessing that. MR. HODGE-Well, I think that’s why it was done as a path. I think it’s dictated more to be stepping stones. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. MR. HODGE-So it’s not a solid surface, and it replaces an existing pathway that’s already there, that was across the street. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. MR. JARRETT-We’re making it more pervious than it is now. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. All right. Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. Then I will make a motion to approve. MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 49-2007 MATTHEW EMMENS, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: 1. A site plan application has been made to the Queensbury Planning Board for the following: Applicant proposes the demolition of an existing home along with the construction of an addition to the remaining structure, along with site grading, and stormwater controls. Expansion of nonconforming structures in a CEA requires site plan review and approval from the Planning Board. 2. A public hearing is scheduled for 9/25/07, 11/20/07 [PH left open], 1/15/08; and 3. This application is supported with all documentation, public comment and application material in the file of record; 31 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) 4. Pursuant to relevant sections of the Town of Queensbury Zoning Code [Chapter 179], the Planning Board has determined that this proposal complies with the requirements as stated in the Zoning Code; and 5. Final approved plans, in compliance with the Site Plan, must be submitted to the Community Development Department before any further review by the Zoning Administrator or Building and Codes personnel. The applicant must meet with Staff after approval and prior to issuance of Building Permit and/or the beginning of any site work. Subsequent issuance of further permits, including building permits is dependent on compliance with this and all other conditions of this resolution. 6. The applicant will provide as-built plans to certify that the site plan is developed according to the approved plans prior to issuance of the certificate of occupancy; and 7. If applicable, Item 8 to be combined with a letter of credit; and 8. The Sanitary Sewer connection plan must be submitted to the Wastewater Department for its review, approval, permitting and inspection; and 9. MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 49-2007 MATTHEW EMMENS, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: According to the resolution prepared by Staff. Paragraph Four complies. Paragraph Five, this is a Type II Action so SEQRA review is not required [paragraph removed]. This is approved with the condition that the applicant satisfy the VISION Engineering comment. A notation should be added to Drawing C-5 regarding cleaning and removal of the sediment from the proposed temporary basins and traps prior to installation of permanent structures or devices. th Duly adopted this 15 day of January, 2008, by the following vote: MRS. BRUNO-Anything about pesticides? I don’t recall on this if we had asked, did we ask you about pesticides? MR. JARRETT-I don’t remember what discussion we had on it. MRS. BRUNO-Fertilizers. Is that something that the applicant would be willing to agree to, no use of fertilizers or pesticides? MRS. STEFFAN-Did you check the plans to see? MRS. BRUNO-I just went through them, and I didn’t see, then again I don’t. MRS. STEFFAN-Are there any plat notations on that site plan? MR. SIPP-No, we never got that far. That is non use of phosphorus based fertilizer. MRS. STEFFAN-I think we had talked about that. MR. JARRETT-If I remember correctly, we decided that we would allow minimal use of organic fertilizers and no inorganic fertilizers is I think what we discussed at the last meeting. We’d minimize it and use it only where necessary, but make it organic. MR. SIPP-Well, even if it’s organic, it’s still phosphorus. MR. JARRETT-Still fertilizer, but I believe we decided that we would try to minimize it and go to that, if you. MR. SIPP-And the non use of herbicides and pesticides. MR. JARRETT-Right. I don’t recall the discussion beyond that, to be honest with you. MR. SIPP-You haven’t got much grass left MR. JARRETT-Very little. MRS. STEFFAN-I was going to say, most of it’s. 32 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. JARRETT-One little sitting area in front of the house and that’s it. Everything else is naturalized ground covers, natural Adirondack. MR. SIPP-It’s too bad that this house is on such a lousy piece of property as this. It’s a nice house. MR. JARRETT-Well, it’s beautiful from other perspectives. MR. FORD-In the eye of the beholder. MRS. BRUNO-Can we add the minimal? MRS. STEFFAN-Most of it, it’s very little grass. It’s mostly trees and shrubs. How does the rest of the Board feel about it? MR. TRAVER-Regarding the use of organic only for fertilizer? MRS. BRUNO-Regarding putting anything at all on, requiring them to put anything at all on the plans regarding fertilizers? MR. TRAVER-It doesn’t sound like the applicant objects to that. So why don’t we add that? MRS. BRUNO-My only concern, even though it is a small area, is that it is, we’re trying to remain consistent on all properties around the lake. MR. JARRETT-None of us at the table have a problem with that. Unfortunately our client’s not with us tonight, but we don’t have any problem with that tempered resolution. MR. SIPP-I see you noted he’s an avid gardener, and avid gardeners tend to use a lot of nitrogen and all phosphorus, and so I think he should be made aware of our concerns, and some day phosphorus testing will be done on Lake George and we’ll catch up with you people. MR. JARRETT-We can certainly add to it, recommended no use, and. MR. SIPP-Yes. MR. JARRETT-How far do you want to go? MRS. STEFFAN-Within so many feet of the shoreline? This is so steep. MR. FORD-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-I guess one of my concerns is this lot is so steep that if they put fertilizer on something around the house, with the stormwater controls that are in place, with the terracing that’s done, it would be very unlikely that it would get to the water, but I’m. CHARLIE SPINELLA MR. SPINELLA-Let me speak to that. A natural component of any soil is the organic layer, and typically when we plant a native garden like this, we just add, you know, leaf mold, you know, stuff like that. There’s no inorganic fertilizer. The problem with inorganic fertilizers is that they’re made from natural gas, and it adds nitrogen and phosphorus to the ecosystem. Your organic fertilizers, that is not the case. It’s already, it has already been something that’s existed as a plant, and it’s just in another form. So that’s typically what you’ll see. That’s how I would prepare the soil here is by mixing organic material in with that top layer, and that’s, all your dead leaves on the forest floor, that’s what they break down into. It’s just as natural as you’d find in the woods. MR. SIPP-But you don’t, do you classify manure as inorganic, organic? MR. SPINELLA-Manure, well, it depends. Manure is often used to accelerate the breakdown process, but in our case we’re planning on using leaf mold. We will be, we have our own stockpiles of it. MR. SIPP-Because, manure, you can leach out the phosphorus and the nitrogen. 33 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. SPINELLA-That’s right, and that’s why we use leaves, you know, we use dead leaves and they cook down. We use the bacteria on them. It helps to break them down, instead of, you know, manure. So we’re not using manure in our compost. So there would be compost used in the soil normally. I mean, if you say can’t use it, then we wouldn’t. That will affect the success, though, of the, you know, we’re putting a lot of plant material on this site, and a lot of shrubs. You’re going to have root systems that are extending right into all of that and using it, and that’s what keeps a healthy. I mean, that’s going to be the success of it is being able to fertilize it, initially, with compost. So we use leaf mold. MRS. STEFFAN-You know, this particular project has been a model collaboration for the Lake George Association and the applicant, and they’ve done an enhanced landscaping plan, and are protecting the lake, and so, from my point of view, I’d rather not put a condition, just because we can’t enforce it, and in this particular situation, because it’s been a model collaboration, I think that the applicant will do the right thing, but I guess I could be convinced otherwise, but I just don’t think it’s necessary at this point. MRS. BRUNO-Point well made. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. There’s a motion on the table. Do we have a second? MR. FORD-Yes. AYES: Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Steffan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Hunsinger, Mr. Seguljic MR. JARRETT-Thank you very much. MR. FORD-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Good luck on your project. We’ll look forward to seeing it when it’s all done. SITE PLAN NO. 63-2007 SEQR TYPE UNLISTED KEITH & PAM HARRIS AGENT(S) JOHN T. PECK OWNER(S) SAME ZONING LC-10A LOCATION 1671 BAY ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF A POND TO BE USED FOR FIRE PROTECTION, WILDLIFE [STOCK WITH TROUT] AND RECREATION/AESTHETICS. MAJOR STORMWATER PROJECTS IN THE LAKE GEORGE BASIN REQUIRE PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL. CROSS REFERENCE NONE FOUND WARREN CO. PLANNING 1/9/08 LOT SIZE 123.13 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 265-1-32 SECTION 179-4 KEITH & PAM HARRIS, PRESENT MRS. STEFFAN-Good evening. Thank you for waiting. MR. PECK-How are you? MRS. STEFFAN-Good. Can you introduce yourselves, please. MR. HARRIS-I’m Keith Harris. This is my wife, Pam, and we live up on Bay Road, right near Top of the World Road. Our house is relatively away from Bay Road, about six tenths of a mile. We really don’t have an access for a fire hydrant or an extra access for water. I mean, we’re building it for aesthetics, too. John Peck, here, has done a lot of the designing with Jim Hutchins, and we’ve already been through, the DEC, Army Corps of Engineers, the Adirondack Park. John can refresh me because he’s actually been doing the bookwork, Lake George Park Commission, everybody that we kind of, we’re stepping down through the stepping stones here to make sure that we’re crossing our T’s, and the Town more or less washed their hands at the last minute, and realizes that we’re disturbing a little bit more than they could let happen. So that’s why we’re here. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. Good evening. JOHN PECK 34 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. PECK-Good evening. You’ve met my clients. I wanted to let the Planning Board know that this particular venture is a fire protection, wildlife recreation, aesthetic pond. For these folks, it’s very much a family affair and not a commercial venture. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. PECK-Madame Chairman, do I have permission to use your slide? MRS. STEFFAN-Absolutely. George, can you help him. MR. PECK-I just wanted to give you a little bit of background on who I am. My company is JTP Environmental Consulting Incorporated. I just started the company after having a long stint in the public sector with the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District. I was trained by a technician there who built over 200 ponds in his career. I also ran the pond site investigation program there for about 20 years. So I have some understanding of what is involved in making a pond site a good pond site. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. PECK-This particular pond site, there we are. Excuse me. The emphasis here, obviously, is the brand new home in 2004, and this is what we want to protect. In fact, I think in the summer they had a lightening strike within a couple of hundred yards of the house. MR. HARRIS-There was an actual fire there. The fire rangers came up and used our property to get at it. MR. FORD-Caused by the lightening strike? MR. HARRIS-Yes, it was lightening strike and it just kept smoldering. They eventually got it out. MR. PECK-Okay, George. Okay. This is the view from their home. It’s about 200 feet down to the pond site. It’s already a cleared field. MRS. STEFFAN-It’s the area between the cabin and your home? MR. HARRIS-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. PECK-Yes. Go ahead, George. Keith has expressed interest in stocking this with trout, and including, you see those boulders in the foreground there, the home in the back, and there’s a skidder. Those boulders will be used for habitat in the pond, to create structure. Okay. This is the pond site itself, and then the house from the pond site. If you were to sit on the porch, Pam were to sit on her porch with her grandchildren, you can see it’s actually going to enhance this area. This area is classified as a, I forget the classification. Can you help me out, George? Land Conservation Ten, I think, ten acres. MRS. STEFFAN-LC-10, yes. MR. PECK-Yes. So from that porch, you certainly do have an aesthetic view there. MR. FORD-You sure do. Even not on the porch, but in our van it was pretty nice. MRS. STEFFAN-We visited the site on Saturday on our drive around. MR. PECK-Did you? Okay. There’s our boulders again. This site, the pond will go basically in the center of this field, where it’s basically going to be a dug out pond. We’ve purposely kept it below six foot in height so we wouldn’t have to go through the DEC dam permit process. Okay, George. I threw this one in because this is actually going to be a wildlife habitat enhancement in this area. There is a stream there obviously, but collecting water in a pond like that, stocking it with trout, not only will it be available for his children to recreate, but there’s been deer noted in the area and turkeys. In fact, with all those pumpkins out there, he’s probably got a lot more deer. So it definitely will create wildlife habitat. Here’s the deer tracks, as evidence. Okay, George. This is the access road down to that cabin. This would be the road that the fire trucks would come in and we’re actually included in the plan. Let’s see. You’ll see the plan view to my left 35 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) here. Right here we actually have a directional sign for the fire trucks to know where, when they get to the top of the hill, where’s the pond. Okay. MR. HARRIS-We’re going to put a dry hydrant in, too, that they can automatically hook to for water supply. MR. PECK-Yes. This is the old log road down to the stream. This is where we’re planning on putting the inlet structure, down in here. Go ahead. This is the crossing, the old log crossing. This is the area up over to the right, and we’ve got a couple of more pictures of that. This is, just to show you, this is my control for my surveying that I did. I did two or three of these surveying to find out the topography of the land here, and what the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to know was ordinary high water mark, and where was this, this area here is wet beyond it. We will definitely stay out of that, and the ordinary high water mark I believe was around 968, 969. I do have some additional information to hand out to you folks about the pond’s design that’s actually pretty critical. Go ahead, George. This area right in here is where we’re proposing to put the inlet structure. It’s an inlet structure where you can control the amount of water volume that comes into the pond by sliding in, I’ll show you pictures of it later, sliding bars up and down. (Lost words) wanted to make sure that we kept a minimum of two cfs, two cubic feet per second flow, base flow, in the stream, and I’ll show you later that you can actually move the invert of that pipe so you can guarantee that the base flow will remain in the stream. Go ahead. Just upstream of this area, there’s a debris dam that will be removed and this is the area where we’re proposing to put in what’s called a cross vane. I’ll show you later on what a cross vane is. What a cross vane basically does is it digs a pool, and it will carry the sediment past the intake structure so it won’t sediment up. Okay. This is the area where we put the cross vane. I had a member of the Trout Unlimited out there with me to help. He’s been trained by Dave Rosin in the natural stream design. However, he’s not an engineer. So he was providing suggestions to me as to where that should go, and there’s a certain amount of design parameters which you’ll see in the sketches in Appendix E of the plan. Go ahead. Originally I thought we were going to use this as a dam, but after consulting with TU I saw the logic of making sure that the sediment passes by and not collects right by the intake. Okay. This is from upstream. This is the area right here where the intake structure would go. The pipe, there would be a 12 inch intake pipe that would go down that existing log road, and we’ve got at least 10 feet of grade before we come out of the elevation 956, which is one foot above normal pool elevation of 955. Okay. The cross vane that I’ve been talking about would go right in here, and water would fold over this side and fold over this side toward the center, and dig a pool and carry that sediment down through there and above here we would restore the stream to its natural condition. Right now it’s all widened out because of the road, that people have been in here digging the channel out, putting in a dam, and the reason being is they wanted to put a little dam in here to collect water for the cabin. So there’s a lot of black pipes there. So that system is no longer in use. Okay. I believe this spot right there is ordinary high water mark from my surveying. MRS. STEFFAN-When were these pictures taken? MR. PECK-This particular picture I think was taken in either August or September. See all the little water we had this year. It was barely trickling, but you will note that that’s obviously where spring water has come up, what the Trout Unlimited folks call bank full. MRS. BRUNO-What would happen in terms of water quality in the pond and the habitat for the trout if the stream slows down, you have such dry conditions? MR. PECK-Well, if need be, they have a well on site, and we could supplement water to the pond, in the case that base flow would go below the entrance. MR. SIPP-Temperature wise, you keep it up at 65, 66, somewhere around that area/ MR. PECK-Yes. Temperature wise, we want to stock this with trout. So our objective is to have the pond water be 68 or below. While working for the Soil Conservation Service, excuse me, using the USDA Soil Conservation specs, a trout pond needs to be a minimum of eight feet deep, and if it has springs, it could be six feet deep, and we do have the potential of springs in this area. However, it’s considered a cold water pond as long as the surface of the water in August is 72 or less. MR. FORD-Didn’t you indicate you’re only going to go six feet deep in order to get away from the permit requirement? 36 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. PECK-No, that’s the dam height. The dam height, the amount of, well, I’ll have to show you on cross section. MR. FORD-Okay. I just wanted to make sure you were going to have eight feet for the trout. MR. PECK-Yes. Definitely. MR. SIPP-This looks, on the topographic map, it’s an intermittent stream. Therefore does it dry up completely at any time? MR. PECK-No. It doesn’t dry up. It’s classified Double A Special. It goes into Dunham’s Bay. It’s a tributary of Lake George. MR. SIPP-It comes from two different sources. MR. PECK-It’s, bank full flow is 80 cfs. It doesn’t dry up. MRS. STEFFAN-Mr. and Mrs. Harris, how deep is your well for your home? MR. HARRIS-I don’t know. I was thinking it was around 350, around that range. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay, and do you know how many gallons a minute yet? MR. HARRIS-I can find out. It’s right under the cover. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. HARRIS-We’ve never had a problem with water and we actually, this summer my wife watered the lawn quite a bit. MRS. STEFFAN-I have a well, too. So I understand that. MR. HARRIS-Yes. It’s excellent water. MRS. STEFFAN-The reason I asked the question is just for the amount. Obviously you’re using this for two purposes. One’s fire protection. The other is for habitat, and I was just wondering the depth of your well, and what capacity your well had. MR. PECK-In fact, that’s interesting you ask about the well. It was used as my temporary benchmark. Actually it was used by Jim Hutchins to do, he did most of the surveying in this area, and I did the surveying around the inlet and outlet because DEC wanted to know about that for their Article 15 stream disturbance permit. MR. HARRIS-And they wanted to make sure that there was enough water for that immature brook trout that we found. That piece of tent is for, we gravity feed the cabin when we have people there, and I just use that to, it’s not garbage. MR. PECK-This is upstream from where we’re going to put the intake structure, and you’ll note that, go to the next one and I’ll show you. This area right in here is where the Trout Unlimited person, this is actually called a test reach. It’s the reach where you are actually seeing the natural condition on this stream. It’s actually the width of that stream. You’ll note in some of the inlet details, that’s the bank full width. It’s, I don’t recall. I think it’s about six feet. I’d have to look that up, but anyway, this is what we’re trying to recreate down through that, and re-establish, and this would be the cross section that I use to modify an earlier plan that I put in. I had used the inappropriate cross section down by the intake, which was a lot wider and shallower than it should have been. So this is the actual one that the natural stream would be characteristic of the natural stream all the way down through. So that’s why I use this for calculating the hydrology. MRS. STEFFAN-Now is that reflected in the drawings that we have in front of us or are the drawings there different? MR. PECK-No, it’s all in Appendix E. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. PECK-Called Inlet and Outlet Details. 37 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. PECK-Go ahead, and this is where I did the surveying to do that cross section, to figure that out. Okay. Go ahead. I guess I put too many in. MRS. STEFFAN-It’s actually good because we couldn’t walk, well, we didn’t walk back there. We didn’t know exactly where it was. MR. PECK-Okay. This area right here is below the intake structure. The stream actually flows north. So it’s going down, it’s a steep Adirondack stream, and this is where it goes past the log road, and it re-establishes it’s natural condition. Go ahead. This is from the old logging holding up the road. Go ahead. You can see just how, it’s just a typical Adirondack stream. Go ahead. This area right here is where the pipe would come from that intake structure below this area here. There’s a little bit of a hump there, about four, five feet, that we would, you know, dig through and then replace, and that way you don’t have to dig out this whole side area here and seed the whole thing and it’s just going to make it a lot neater and cleaner. The pond itself would be right about there. Okay. This area right here is where we propose to put the dry hydrant. The truck would come in here and I got contacted by the Fire Marshal and they asked for, you know, some technical design changes, which I’ve already made, and I have those revised plans right here. What it did was it changed the capacity of the hydrant from 1,000 gallons per minute to 1500. So for a little bit more investment in an eight inch pipe, versus a six inch pipe, and I talked to them ahead of time and as far as I know, they might have written a letter of support. They are all in favor of it. I know the North Queensbury, Jeff Baertschi and. MRS. STEFFAN-We got the letter that asked for three changes. So we have that. MR. PECK-Yes. MR. HILTON-I can hand them out if you want. MR. PECK-Go ahead, George. This area right here, there’s a natural drainage way that goes down through here, and basically what we’re going to do is put a U shape, small dam, less than six foot, in fact, the only amounted added fill that we’re going to put water against is about zero to two feet, but this will basically, in a sense, plug this up and put the pond here and then the outlet goes down this log road to the stream. So we’re taking water from the stream, putting it into a cold water pond, and then letting it outlet back into the stream. MRS. STEFFAN-Where are the trees that you were going to take down? I saw in the application you were going to take some larger trees down. MR. PECK-Actually it’s basically just these sumacs here. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. Well, it said brush, and then it said a couple of bigger trees. MR. PECK-Yes. Right in this area. That’s where these sumacs are right here, at that same area. MRS. STEFFAN-That’s certainly not a quality tree. MR. PECK-No, all the logging, essentially, has been done for this. We’re going to take the pipes right down the roads. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. PECK-Intake and outlet. MRS. STEFFAN-That’s why I was actually a little confused, because when we looked at the site, I thought the site where the pond was going to be was already clear, and then at the time. MR. PECK-Well, yes, this is the cleared area. This is where the pond’s going right here. We’re putting below it a spoil area, and this area just needs to be cleaned out in order to accommodate some of the spoil, and the reason I wanted to show you this is that when the Army Corps person came out, I had originally proposed that we recreate a trout stream here, and then when the TU person came out and said that would be pretty much next to impossible because in order to recreate that stream, you would have to have a 38 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) pool every four feet using two foot diameter rocks, and it just would be cost prohibitive, and very difficult to do. So we went to the pipe, and when we went to the pipe, he said to me that the pipe would have an added advantage of keeping the water cold, as it goes down through back into the stream. In fact, what was interesting is Emily Zollwig from DEC, the Fisheries person, when she was asked by Rich Spidel from DEC, the permit guy, you know, are you having any concern about, you know, the water going down over ground, and she didn’t have concern with that because of all the trees around creating shade. So now we’ve got it in the ground, it’s going to be even better. Go ahead. Just to hear for a reminder of what the pond’s for. Go ahead. This area right in here is below, down gradient from the small dam, and this is where the spoil will be. It’ll create a new field, and you can see on the grading plan that that new field is, it’s a five to one slope on the back side of the pond dam, and then this field, I think it drops, it’s one on ten, one foot in every ten feet, excuse me, one foot in every twenty feet, and then there’s a two to one slope, stable slope, with plans to put some of those boulders at the bottom to hold up that bank, and this will obviously be all seeded. Go ahead. Those are those sumacs we’re going to get rid of. This is the part of the old log road that the pipe will follow down through. There’s a lot of fall from the pond site down to the outlet. I think it’s, I don’t recall. I know it’s about 30, 40, maybe 50 feet even. Go ahead. This is the way down to the outlet, and when we get to the outlet, you’ll find out why we chose it. Go ahead. We actually, another reminder of what this is all about. Keep going. This is down a fairly steep bank, but we are going to put a pipe down at the level that you want to keep it out of frost. That’s all. Go ahead. You’ll notice this stream shows up. Go ahead. This area right here is in fact where I put my, what’s called a hub for control right down in this area so I could map this whole area. It’s about 890 in this area, 895. Go ahead. This area right here, I was doing the same thing, again, ordinary high water mark for the Army Corps and the DEC folks, but right here, could you back it up, George. Right in this area is where we are proposing to put the water back in, and it would come out of the pipe. There would be an animal guard on there so your rats don’t go up in there and plug the pipe, and there’ll be a foot fall, which is what’s called for in SES specs, and a stilling basin at the Trout Unlimited fellow’s suggestion. A still basin would capture or would dissipate the energy before it goes back into the stream, but you’ll, go ahead, you’ll notice right in here this is a bedrock, all bedrock area where the water would come down into the opposite bank. So this is a pretty conducive spot to putting water back into the stream, even though we have such a grade above it. Go ahead. You’ll see the water going down through here. You’ll see all this is all bedrock. Okay. This is the area just immediately above the bedrock, and you’ll notice my fancy marker right there, an old plastic bottle that marked where we were proposing outlet number one. We actually looked at another outlet, but wasn’t considered feasible by DEC. It was too much of a drop. Go ahead. Go back. Right up through here, there’s another tributary, and that would be a good area, if you do go back to the site, I recommended to keep, if go down there. You can see exactly what we would have had to recreate for our trout stream. It just would not have been possible. Go ahead. Go ahead. You’ll see the water actually comes down through here and over this kind of escarpment, and then back into, go ahead, that’s just another view. Go ahead. This is where the water will outlet down here, and if you can make it out, right here, you’ll notice that the stream is kind of narrow and very deep. That’s what the TU folks, and Roskin, called very deeply embedded. So it’s going to be a flashy, fast narrow stream, and right down in here is where we found that immature brook trout, which actually, it governed when we were going to be able to build the pond. Because it was such a dry year, we were trying to build the pond before the end of August, I mean, excuse me, before the end of October. DEC did grant us a one month extension so we could get in and move dirt and start, at least the inlet and outlet, and that way we could get to working on the pond itself, but that didn’t come to fruition. Go ahead. What we’re doing it for, to protect the home primarily. Go ahead, and just the view you get from Keith and Pam’s house is awesome, especially in the Fall. Thank you, George. MRS. STEFFAN-How many gallons will the pond have in it, any estimate? MR. PECK-It’s below a million gallons, so it does not require a DEC dam permit. It’s .27 acres, eight feet deep. I actually didn’t calculate that. MR. FORD-.27 acres? MR. PECK-.27, yes, 94 by 125. Right here is my fancy length times width calculation, and this is the detail. You’ll see the dry hydrant right here. There is an emergency spillway. At 955 is the outlet pipe. This is the pool. The blue line is the pool, and this is the outlet pipe. I will point out that Mr. Ryan made some comments in a letter that I received. I’ve already gone ahead and put the notes on this plan. 39 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. Mr. and Mrs. Harris and Mr. Peck, one of the things I was going to say is that we’re really going to need to table your application until next month, and actually today is the application deadline for February. So we would have to table this until March, because we’ve got seven VISION Engineering comments which are, it is required that you satisfy those before we can do SEQRA. MR. PECK-If you’ll bear with me, I’ve already satisfied those. I can explain those to you. MRS. STEFFAN-But we would need to have our engineer sign off on those before we, as a Board, can vote on the SEQRA, and so there’s a procedural issue, but, you know, we have to have his validation that these issues have been taken care of and satisfied before we can go through our environmental review criteria. MR. PECK-So I can’t give you the emergency spillway design and tell you what design storm it was and how far we. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, you could tell it to us, but because we’re not engineers, we wouldn’t be able to, you know, to know whether they were correct or not. MR. FORD-Yes, he needs to sign off. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, well, he’s the professional engineer. MR. PECK-So in other words, because I got the letter on Monday, I don’t have a prayer in satisfying those before the meeting? I have done whatever he asked in that letter, and I did it within one day. MRS. STEFFAN-No, we can’t. MR. PECK-No, I didn’t call him. I figured I could do it here. MRS. STEFFAN-No, that’s okay. We won’t be able to approve this tonight. MR. PECK-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-But what we can do, I can push the envelope a little bit here. Today is the application deadline for February’s meeting. MR. PECK-Right. MRS. STEFFAN-But what I could do is extend the submission deadline for you, so that you could make the last meeting in February. We have that ability. So what we’d like to do is table this. MR. PECK-Well, I can give you all the documentation you need tonight. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, what you’ll have to do is provide that documentation to Staff and then they will get it to VISION Engineering. Everything goes through our Staff department. MR. PECK-All right. MRS. STEFFAN-But what we can do is I’ll push the application, or the submission date st for materials to February 1. So that’ll give you about two weeks, and then what we’ll do is we’ll put you on the agenda for the last meeting in February. Okay. MR. PECK-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-So you’ll be back in a month instead of waiting two months. Okay. MR. PECK-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-That’ll give him three weeks to be able to review, for Staff to be able to get the information to him and then comment back. MR. PECK-Just so you know, there is one thing. I did get some comments from the Lake George Water Keeper, and Mr. Ryan asked the existing septic system must be 200 feet from the proposed pond in accordance with Section 139-9C, please verify separation distance. This is the only one that I see that it’s possibly going to be a problem, and all I 40 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) could see is there needs to be some design modification. Let me show you on the cross sections. MR. HARRIS-It’s close to the 200. He asked me if it was 200 and I’d have to really tape measure it. It was dark when I got home. It’s very close to scale. MR. PECK-This distance from the house to the pond is 200 feet, and his septic system is in here, and the reason the septic system shows up on some of the earlier submissions in different areas is because those were conceptual. This is where I had it on the conceptual design. This is where I had it on the stormwater management design. Never did really locate it. It was taken into consideration. The reason being that this, and I’ve worked in soils for 20 years. It’s very sandy. The leachate may or may not reach the pond, but there is quite a drop in topography there, and so we originally proposed, well, this is the proposal to have the liner go up into the dam, come up here and then three feet above, up to 958, three feet about normal water level. This is where you have a trash (lost word) on the outlet, and that’s just got to stay clean, and the emergency spillway is one foot here. So what we could do is extend that liner all the way up here. That way the leachate wouldn’t get into the pond and I don’t think your grandchildren would want to swim in their own waste. MR. HARRIS-The liner that we’re actually using, I don’t know if John has it, but it’s constructed in Colorado, and it’s just basically to make sure the pond doesn’t leak and never rose, possibly the dam going, and in this case here finding out, you know. MR. PECK-The septic being the concern. MR. HARRIS-Whatever is going to be underneath the ground was never going to get into the pond, whatever is in the pond is not going to go only out to spillway so you don’t have an erosion. st MR. PECK-And all those other concerns I can certainly meet before February 1. I’ve even got the emergency spillway detail here. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, those are absolutely the kind of details that the engineer looks at and evaluates, and that’s why he’s paid to do that because we’re not engineers. MR. PECK-Right, and one other, obviously a requirement. I am not an engineer, but I am a certified professional erosion and sediment control. So the erosion and sediment control plan that I have prepared for here you will be rest assured there will not be any significant amount of turbidity from the construction. MRS. STEFFAN-Right. Well, you have Jim Hutchins signing off on your, and he’s a professional engineer. MR. PECK-Yes. MR. HARRIS-He does all my work. MR. PECK-In fact, there is a letter in the letters of him stating that this site is, he did the test pits for soils, conducive to a dug out pond. In fact, we got the test results back, and that’s in some additional information. There’s 37%, passing the 200 siv, which means there’s plenty of fines in that soil to hold back water. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. PECK-Thank you. We’ll get together with Staff and give them the information that they, Mr. Ryan needed and the additional information I have. There was only one other point, if I might indulge you. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes. MR. PECK-This point right here, you’ll notice that that’s where, this is the original ground coming down, and the water level meets it right here. So we’re, at this particular point in the cross section, the profile, we’re not adding any water against added fill. It’s all, this is all dug, and the emergency spillway would, at one foot above the riser, should it go that far, the emergency spillway will take it out and will not take out that dam unless this gets plugged, and even then it would only take out a minor amount because, and the reason being is most of the water will just stay in the hole. 41 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MRS. STEFFAN-George, you had a comment? MR. HILTON-Only that there’s a public hearing scheduled this evening and I’m not sure if there’s anyone here, just to remind you of the public hearing, and you probably should open that. MR. PECK-Okay. Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-No, thank you, George. Is there anybody here to speak to this application this evening? Mr. Navitsky? PUBLIC HEARING OPENED CHRIS NAVITSKY MR. NAVITSKY-I appreciate these applicants probably are, might be more kind than the previous one. Anyway, Chris Navitsky, Lake George Water Keeper. I just have a couple of comments. I’ve spoken or e-mailed with John to try to address some of those. We don’t have any problems with their project, just a couple of clarifications. The first was a comment regarding the septic system, and discussed that with John. The second concern was regarding the outlet structure. Now I know some State agencies have looked at this. Our concern is about the potential of thermal impacts from the pond is you have a pond there. It sits, it has, it’s open to sunlight and what not, no shade around it. We were concerned about thermal stratification in the pond. If you’re discharging from the top, that’s where your highest temperatured waters would be. I think a possible way to get around that, we are suggesting really you have two outlet structures, one inside another one. The outside one will have an outlet halfway down the pond elevation, so that it’ll draw water out from the middle of the pond. Your inside one will have an elevation equal to the pond elevation. So that you draw water out of the lower elevations of the pond. Therefore you’re discharging cooler water down into the stream, not discharging the higher water from the pond, which could have higher temperatures. I’m not sure if that is a problem, if other agencies have signed off, but that’s just a suggestion from us. Where they were excavating the pond, I believe they’re excavating down 10 feet or so by my estimations, off the drawings. I don’t know if they were going to encounter groundwater as they were digging and dumping it in their spoils area, where they were going to make a larger field. I just wanted to know if there’s going to be dewatering methods and what those would be down gradient, to prevent erosion and sediment down in the steep slopes there, and I think there was a clarification. I was confused whether there would be more clearing and a tree line. I think the Chairwoman had expressed that also. It appears that that won’t be a concern, so we just thought a condition of approval would be to delineate that edge of clearing. MR. PECK-It’s already in the application. MR. NAVITSKY-Just suggesting to make sure that everybody knows what it is because sometimes those tend to get expanded. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you, Mr. Navitsky. MR. NAVITSKY-Thanks. MR. PECK-Just so the Planning Board knows, the orange line right there, limits of clearing and grading. In terms of dewatering, if you look on Sheet Four of Twenty, you will see that there is a, in fact, I should say one of the major ways that we are going to control erosion here is by sequencing the construction properly, starting at the outlet, and when we build the pond pool, when we build this pond pool, there will be no water coming in from the inlet stream, okay. So whatever, and we’ll have above this, if you look on that Page Four, it will be right in this area, the diversion ditch that will catch the water from upstream, keep the clean water clean, and this water will go off this way. So the only water you are going to get is right here in the pipe. That amount of water, there will be mud, but we’ll put a sub pit right here, and then we will pump that muddy water out into a surface drain which will have a triangular silt pipes, periodically on it to catch the sediment, and then right in this area, if you will look on that erosion and sediment control plan, there will be a sediment trap, so with all these safeguards and these two to three lines of silt fence, in my professional opinion, it will be adequate. MRS. STEFFAN-We don’t have Drawing Four of Twenty. We have One, Two, and Three of Twenty. 42 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. PECK-It would be in the narrative of this plan. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. I just wanted to clarify. You said it would be in our drawings. MR. PECK-So you know it’s in Appendix E. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. All right. I’m going to make a motion to table. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 63-2007 KEITH & PAM HARRIS, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: th Tabled to the February 26 meeting of the Planning Board, with an extended submission st deadline of February 1, which is a Friday. This is tabled so that the applicant can: 1) Satisfy the VISION Engineering comments in their letter dated January 14, 2008, 2) So that the applicant can also satisfy the Fire Marshal comments in their January th 8 letter, 3) The applicant should also identify de-watering methods, delineate the edge of clearing, and consider the outlet structure as defined by Mr. Navitsky. th Duly adopted this 15 day of January, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Sipp, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Steffan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Hunsinger, Mr. Seguljic MRS. STEFFAN-We will also keep the public hearing open until the next meeting. MR. PECK-Do you think if we satisfy, you said VISION Engineering is your engineer. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes. MR. PECK-Is he like the last hurdle. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes. What we do is we require their signoff so that all of the engineering criteria have been met, and that’s stormwater design and those kinds of th things. You did get the January 14 letter, didn’t you? MR. PECK-Yes, I did. MRS. STEFFAN-And it was some of the details on the design that he would need to make sure all the Town Code requirements are satisfied. MR. PECK-Just to reiterate. Since getting that letter, I’ve met all those. I just need to submit the drawing. MRS. STEFFAN-That often happens, unfortunately there’s just not enough time to get the signoff. So do you want to keep this? MR. PECK-Yes, I need that. So, I just want to make sure. If he’s happy, do you think that you people will be happy? MRS. STEFFAN-Usually, you’ve sat through a couple of application reviews, and so if the engineer signs off on those aspects of the plan, then we are happy with those aspects of the plan, but in Site Plan Review we are looking at many different details. MR. PECK-Okay. MRS. BRUNO-And there are a few people that aren’t here this evening that may end up with more questions, given their background. MR. PECK-Well, thank you for your time. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you, and we’ll see you next month. 43 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. FORD-Thank you. SITE PLAN NO. 61-2007 & FRESHWATER WETLANDS 1-2008 SEQR TYPE I THE VMJR COMPANIES AGENT(S) BERGMANN ASSOCIATES OWNER(S) FOREST ENTERPRISES MGMT. ZONING HC-INTENSIVE LOCATION RT. 254 NW INTERSECTION AT QUAKER RIDGE BLVD. SITE PLAN: APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF A 199,000 SQ. FT. RETAIL BUILDING WITH ASSOCIATED PARKING AND UTILITIES. RETAIL USES IN HC ZONES REQUIRE PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL. FRESHWATER WETLANDS: FILLING WETLANDS TO PROVIDE PARKING AND STORM WATER MANAGEMENT FACILITIES. CROSS REFERENCE UV 27-93, AV 34-93 WARREN CO. PLANNING 1/9/08 APA/CEA/DEC/ACOE NWI WETLAND/ACOE LOT SIZE 37.55 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 303.15-1-25 SECTION 179-4 BOB SWEENEY & VIC MACRI, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. SWEENEY-My name is Bob Sweeney. I’m an attorney for the applicant here. This is Vic Macri on my right, and Mark Petroski, our project engineer from Bergman Associates on my left. You should all have an application document, or I hope you had some exposure to it before we got here, but we have an application for a retail development. It’s 200,000 square feet. It’s on Route 254. We’ll walk you through the site and the details of the application. We have some presentation on the board here to allow us to do that. I think what we’re, procedurally where we are is, and I believe, is this the opening of a public hearing on the Site Plan application? MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, the public hearing is open this evening, and one of the things we need to determine is Lead Agency status for the application. MR. SWEENEY-Right. That would be great if we could get that moving and then the other piece that we’d like to address if we can is that evolving procedures at the Department of Transportation, we’re finding all over the place, is the Department likes to get concurrence from the local municipality on the scope of the traffic study. We’ve been to the Department. You have in your application materials, a scope of what we would like to do for a traffic study for the project, but if we could give that some consideration, and let the Department know that the Town is on board with what we propose to do for a traffic study, we can get that finished and get that in to you. Obviously a critical part of our application. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. SWEENEY-So that’s the other piece that we’d like to take a look at tonight. Why don’t we turn it over to Mark Petroski and his slideshow here, and he can walk you through specifics of the project and the site. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MARK PETROSKI MR. PETROSKI-Thank you. Again, for the record, my name is Mark Petroski with Bergman Associates. I have a presentation to try to basically take the Board through the highlights of our project. I put the presentation together with the intent of orienting you to the project, but also the Warren County Planning Department has already issued some comments and at the time we were putting this together, we had their comments in mind and we hadn’t received the comments from the Town Staff or the Town Engineer yet. So we’re going to address those comments probably more so than the Staff comments, but I think some of the Staff comments paralleled what the County was asking for. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. PETROSKI-So I’ll get right into it here. This is new technology for me. So this is radio controlled. I hope this is going to work. I think we’re all aware of the site location. We’re kind of halfway in between Glens Falls and Hudson Falls on Route 254, and that’s what that orange dot is in the middle of the aerial photograph. You can just see the airport to the north of us. See the runways, the Hudson River going through the middle there. The property is currently zoned HC, Highway Commercial Intensive. The red area on the map is the highway commercial. I think you’re probably familiar with that. This is right from the Town zoning map. The yellow border is our site, where it’s labeled site location. The purplish pink color to the rear is the Light Industrial zoning. So we’re basically bordered on all sides either by Highway Commercial or Light Industrial. The 44 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) principal use being proposed for this site is retail business, as defined by the Code, and the Code really defines retail business by what it’s not. It talks about exchange of goods and services for a fee is retail, but it’s not recreational vehicle sales. It’s not modular homes. It’s not automotive dealerships. So, within the definition, that’s the retail use that we’re proposing is anything that is not, if you understand what I’m saying, okay. We follow a definition of what the Town says is a retail business, and an accessory use to this could be automotive service or a restaurant, all incorporated within the building itself. The next thing I wanted to talk about is wetlands, because that is a question that was raised by the County, and we wanted to orient everybody to where is the big cedar swamp in relation to the site? The County made the assumption that we were right in the swamp, and that’s not really accurate. As you can see from this slide, the Big Cedar Swamp is the green mass up to the northwest of us. That is actually the delineation of the State wetlands as they’re currently defined on the State’s inventory maps, and our site is south of that, and the blue areas represent the direction of drainage. So in fact any drainage is coming towards us as opposed to our site draining towards the swamp itself. There are no State wetlands on the property. We’ve had this confirmed by the DEC. We’ve actually asked them to go out there and field verify it for us, and they’ve sent us correspondence to that effect. This next slide shows the Federal wetlands, fairly similar to the State, but a little bit different. Again you’ll see the Big Cedar Swamp as defined by the National Wetland inventory map. Local to the site, and our site, I didn’t point this out earlier, but it’s that brown patch in the middle with the orange line around it. The site has an actual field delineation. At the time we submitted our application, we did not have the jurisdictional determination from the Corps of Engineers, but as of th December 19, we have that jurisdictional determination. So this, the green area shown immediately within the boundary of the site is what the Army Corps is calling the wetlands, the Federal wetlands. This is a map of our site plan with the Federal wetlands shaded in, kind of a darker green color, just to show you how things overlap relative to the site layout and the parking lot. MR. FORD-What is the lighter green, please? MR. PETROSKI-The lighter green on the outside of the darker green is just green space. It’s not classified as wetlands. It’s just left, it’s remaining green space. MRS. STEFFAN-Open space? MR. PETROSKI-Well, it’s not being graded or anything else. It’s just left the way it is. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. PETROSKI-Just to talk about the site plan a little bit. Now obviously the brown is the building itself. You have parking lot generally in the front of the building. Again, this is the Federal wetlands area. The lighter green is the remaining open space, if you will. This blue area is the detention pond that we’re proposing. The site plan contains 986 parking spaces, which is 10% more than the minimum that the Town requires. It’s not the most. The maximum number of parking spaces is 1,074. That would be 20% over the minimum. So we’re about in the middle, and the reason why I showed the slide was also to indicate here that about 250 of the parking spaces that we have are in that wetland area. So if I go back to the other slide again, even if we were to minimize our parking to 895 spaces, we still are looking at about 160 spaces that are in that wetland area. So we can’t fully remove all of the parking spaces from the wetlands and still satisfy the needs of the Town, the minimum needs of the Town. The property has, or will result in about 55% of the site remaining green, or permeable. We’re well below the FAR ratio, the Floor Area Ratio. We’re at .13. The Town allows up to .3, and also the parking area itself, you require 10% green space. We’re almost at 11% green space. I’ve provided the numbers to Stu so he can verify it, but we’re exceeding all the Town’s requirements. All the setback criteria are more than satisfied, and I guess I would just reiterate what Bob said earlier. The size of the building is about 200,000 square feet. We’re saying it’s 199,000, and the type of operation that it is, we’re asking for approval for a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week. That’s what our application is requesting, and a question that people invariably ask is deliveries. A facility like this could see eight to ten vehicles a day, and there’s no timing to deliveries. They come at all times of the day, but on the average it’s about eight to ten on a given day. I want to talk a few minutes about alternatives. We have already gone through the exercise of looking at alternatives, alternative layouts, alternative designs, and I wanted just to share our thought processes with the Board. This is something that we have to submit to the Army Corps of Engineers with our wetlands application. To file for an individual permit, we have to show both on site alternatives and off site alternatives, alternate sites, and we also have to talk to them about our proposed mitigation. So these are four alternatives that we 45 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) talked about or looked into, I want to talk about. This first one, in regards to topography, this upper north end of the site is much higher in elevation than the remainder of the site. This area in here is, I would say it’s more close to a flat type of topography, but then the grade jumps up in the back. So the site actually drains from this upper northeast corner to the south and then it changes direction and wraps around the corner, and exits the site somewhere over here. MR. FORD-Excuse me. When you say it jumps up, what’s the differential in elevation? MR. PETROSKI-I want to say on the order of 20 feet. So from the back of the store here to this corner, there’s about a 20% change in elevation. MR. FORD-So you don’t have any place where you’ve got the contours actually laid out? MR. PETROSKI-The drawings that are right there on your table, that has all that information. MR. FORD-I’ve looked at those. MR. PETROSKI-Now one of the alternatives we looked at was taking the store and pushing it all the way back into this back corner, and by doing that, we’re fighting the topography, it would require an extensive amount of earthwork in order to raise the grade of the building to conform with the topography, or a major cut into this hillside, which would change the characteristics of this area. We didn’t think it was desirable to make that kind of an impact to the site. Also the fact that the site drains in this direction, we felt it was better to have the store towards the back of the site, generally, so that the drainage wouldn’t be directed towards the store, the drainage would be directed out into the parking lot, kind of a nice flow from the parking lot to the pond leaving the site. It just seemed to make more sense from a drainage standpoint. MR. FORD-Could you use your pointer, please, and point out where the current access road goes back in that has the break in the middle of it. MR. PETROSKI-This right here is Quaker Ridge Boulevard. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. PETROSKI-Yes. I’m sorry, I should have probably pointed that out to you. Right now Quaker Ridge Boulevard actually comes up to here, and it ends. It’s our understanding it’s a Town road. It’s certainly not part of the tax parcel, and we would be looking to extend from the end of the road, which would be a private driveway, basically, that would provide access to the rear of the facility. So, continuing on with alternatives, the next alternative which, if you look at alternatives that would reduce the amount of wetland impact, there’s about an acres worth of green space in the parking field, and if the parking lot was compressed to eliminate that green space, we’d have an acre less impact to the wetlands. It’s an alternative, we’re throwing it out there. Probably the Town might prefer to have green space in the parking lot. So that’s what it is. Alternate Three, we looked at the possibility of going to underground detention, which this pond here is actually in the wetlands and it’s part of the impact. I think our application said somewhere like 7.7 acres, but actually at this present time it’s more like about five and a half is the actual number of amount of disturbance. Depending on which alternative you look at, it ranges from five acres of disturbance to 5.8 acres of disturbance. So we’re around five and a half is the total number, but if we were to eliminate this pond, what we would still have to do is provide some kind of a water quality treatment measure on this end of the parking lot, because we would have to treat the water before we released it, to satisfy the general permit from the DEC for SPDES requirements. MR. FORD-What caused the differential between, the difference between the seven acres and the five point something acres? MR. PETROSKI-We should have corrected the number when we submitted the original EAF, but we didn’t. We were playing around with other alternatives without that number, and we should have corrected it to where this plan represented. So it was basically an error on our part. MRS. BRUNO-That was from a previous plan that you then corrected, but the number just didn’t get updated? 46 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. PETROSKI-In the EAF, yes. So it should be five and a half, as a better guide to where we are right now with the plan. MR. TRAVER-What about moving the parking to the rear of the building? MR. FORD-That’s probably one of the alternates you’re going to explore, right? MR. PETROSKI-Well, we did not look at putting the parking lot behind the store. Only because the grade of that area in the back of the site is so steep that it wouldn’t effectively accommodate parking. MR. TRAVER-What about moving the building forward? MR. PETROSKI-Pushing the building forward? Well, the reason why we didn’t push the building forward is because, as I was saying earlier, it’s mainly because of drainage. We would prefer not to put the store in front of the drainage path. We’d rather have it at the highest area to keep the building dry. We have had problems in the past with flooding in parking lots and it ends up in the front door of the building, and we prefer not to encourage that situation. So ideally having it at the highest part of the topography is better from a drainage standpoint. The other alternatives that we looked at, well, as I was saying, underground detention we looked at, and that would put some kind of underground detention in the parking lot, but we would have to build some kind of water quality feature here which would expand the actual disturbance area further into the wetlands, and we don’t really gain anything. So we would get rid of a pond here, but we’d end up with a water quality feature over here. So the net difference, there is no difference in terms of disturbance. Another alternative we looked at was to change the wetland, or, I’m sorry, the pond, so that this is the water quality feature, so that we can do our water quality treatment in a smaller pond, and then use the wetland for our higher storms. So, like, we would treat the water for a one year or two year storm here, and for anything bigger than that, up to 100 year storm, the overflow would happen into the wetland itself. That’s something that the Army Corps of Engineers would have to buy into and at this point in time we have not actually made an application to the Corps of Engineers. We are at that point where we are ready to make that application. They would not talk to us until we had alternatives, like I just went through with you, and our off site alternatives evaluated, and a mitigation proposal. I think we can basically explain where we are with the mitigation, Vic, probably. MR. MACRI-Currently we’re working with Warren County Airport to try to build a mitigation for both the Airport, the Airport has some plans for development that have some impact on wetlands in their development, which is runway extensions plus other building plans that they have, and we got together to discuss what would be best. Their concern, especially when you get to the back of the property where they are, is that the wetlands get as far removed, whatever replacement wetlands, are as far removed from the flight path as possible, and that’s so that you don’t have fowl and those kinds of things interfering with the aircraft. So we’re looking, in fact, Warren County Airport is currently scouring their property to see what lands would be available that we could create a mitigation bang for both us and them. MR. SIPP-What would be your treatment of the stormwater? How would you remove the oil, the antifreeze and salt? MR. PETROSKI-The New York State DEC has a design manual, which we follow, and the design manual says that if you follow specific designs in your project that those designs satisfy the removal of the pollutants that you’re speaking of. So we use a variety of techniques depending on the layout of the project. That’s why I was running through the different alternatives because a lot of our alternatives are driven by how we manage our stormwater. The idea of putting some kind of a water quality feature here, that’s something where we would put like, it would be like a dry swale normally, but in the middle of the swale there would be a buried pipe, and around the pipe there would be some kind of filter material, so that any pollutant materials captured in the filter sand or filter stone and then the clean water is captured in the pipe and delivered into the stormwater system. MR. SIPP-All right. How is this serviced, then? Is that filter changed ever? MR. PETROSKI-The DEC is actually, in their new stormwater regulations, is asking that we prepare and provide a stormwater maintenance plan. So all that would be incorporated into that document, and actually the new regulations are going to require that deed restrictions be placed on property that require the perpetual maintenance of 47 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) these kinds of things. So, I mean, it all depends on the nature of what it looks like. I mean, the material could be removed and land filled and replaced with clean sand or clean stone, and something that has to be monitored, and we put a schedule together that the applicant is aware of, and they have to monitor on that basis to be in compliance with the permit. MR. SIPP-Well, if you were to move the building forward, could not you put in a stormwater plan that would intercept this water before it got to the building? MR. PETROSKI-We could, absolutely. We could put the building where the parking lot is and the parking lot where the building is. Sure, it could be done, but the building ends up at the low end of the property. There’s not much I can do about that, and we’re saying that we’d prefer not to put the building at the low end of the property. MR. SIPP-Yes, but we have to look at that acre, acres and acres of blacktop. MR. PETROSKI-Well, I’ll tell you what. If you could give me a few more minutes of my presentation, I’ve got something to show you and see what you think, that maybe answers that question. We were aware that the Town, in their Comprehensive Planning process, has a preference of seeing buildings closer to the street and parking lots screened by buildings, and what we tried to show you in the previous slides is that we have a lot of room to work with, but we also have an area in front of the site that is going to be preserved in its green condition. So there’s wetlands in the front of us, and there’s green space and open space that’s going to remain. We put this animation together to show you how that would look in real life, and what you would see from the street to the building. Sorry, no music. This is actually driving into the site at Quaker Ridge Boulevard, and then we’re coming up to the first entrance there turn into the parking lot. You can get a sense here, this is all in three dimensions. So if I go off the embankment, this shows you where the area in the front would be left undisturbed past the toe of the slope. So we do have to do some filling just to get the parking lot slopes to be somewhat reasonable. We’re coming around the side of the site where the detention pond is. Turning in front of the facility. You get a pretty good sense of hw the green space lays out in the parking lot. These are representative of mature trees of the type that are called out on the landscaping plan. I’m sorry, I’m cutting across islands here. Now, in answer to the gentleman’s question here about what things look like, I’m trying to back up enough to show you the separation distance between the store and the street. The store is actually set back 700 feet from the road, and the distance between the road and the parking lot is probably in the order of about 300 feet. So you’ve got a 300 foot green space in front of the parking lot. Now, I’m going to try to show you what it looks like, if you’re in a car driving along the frontage along Quaker Road. I’m about car height. This goes a little fast, but I can go across a couple of times. That’s the Quaker Ridge Boulevard entrance point, and one of the things we talked about was creating some gaps in the trees, so we can see through, because if you actually go out there right now, it’s trees all the way along the frontage. The height of these trees is representative of what’s out there. We tried to place trees into the footprint of the aerial photograph, so that they represent where these trees are located. Obviously it’s not an exact recreation of what’s out there, but it’s pretty close. There’s another viewpoint, and a third viewpoint, and if I just turn my view, if you’re coming from Dix Avenue and you’re driving up Quaker, the first shot you see is that kind of a view of the building, and what we’re trying to show you is that you never get a full view of the whole parking lot, you never get a full view of the whole building, because you’re screened by the vegetation that’s along Quaker Road. MR. TRAVER-Are the trees in the parking lot in this simulation representative of the size that they would be at the time that they would be planted? MR. PETROSKI-These are all existing trees. MR. TRAVER-The ones in the parking lot. MR. PETROSKI-No, those are mature trees. That’s what I was saying earlier, those are mature trees. MR. FORD-Those are trees that are actually in those locations right now? MR. PETROSKI-Yes. MRS. BRUNO-We’re talking about two different things. MR. PETROSKI-Right. 48 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. TRAVER-Yes, I’m sorry. My question was regarding the trees that are in the parking lot. I know you have some landscaping plans that reflect those trees. My question is, at the time that this parking lot were to be constructed, does your simulation reflect the size of the trees at that time? MR. PETROSKI-No. MR. TRAVER-Or is this after some period of years have gone by? MR. PETROSKI-This is after some period of years, yes. MR. TRAVER-Thank you. MR. SIPP-Would you back that up so we get to the, no, the other way, towards Dix Avenue, so we see the greenhouses in relation to this project. MR. PETROSKI-The greenhouses are there, but they’re not brought up in the 3-D. Those white, those are where the greenhouses are. MR. SIPP-Now we drove in there, on the back end of those greenhouses, those rows of greenhouses, and looked out at the trees, and I said there’s about 40 dead ones for every live one sticking up there. Because that’s wet. MRS. STEFFAN-There’s also quite a drop off from where the greenhouses are to the project site. MR. PETROSKI-I’m trying to find the greenhouses. There we go. Sorry. That gives you a better view of where the greenhouses are relative to the site. The trees are in a Federal wetland. Whether they’re alive or dead, it’s what’s naturally occurring. Now if you go out there in the Spring and the summertime, the foliage on the tree will not let you see through to the site. If you go out there in the wintertime, yes, the leaves falling off of the, they’re mainly deciduous trees. You’re going to see a lot of branches, but you still have a substantial blocking of the full perspective of the site. MRS. STEFFAN-Is your property line very close to the greenhouses, or is it, does it split that green space between the retention pond and the greenhouses? MR. PETROSKI-The property line is, see this row of trees here? It’s just about on those row of trees. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. PETROSKI-I have a few more slides to go through, unless you wanted to see anything else on this simulation. MRS. STEFFAN-That simulation was very helpful. Thank you. MR. PETROSKI-Okay. As Bob referred to earlier, we were looking to get some confirmation on the scope of our traffic study. When we originally went to talk to the State of New York, they told us to take a look at this intersection with Quaker Ridge, intersection at Dix Avenue, and the intersection here, which I think it’s Route 32, and the Lower Warren Street. They only asked us to look at four intersections. We went to the County, and the County said, well, we’d like you to expand that, because we have jurisdiction over Quaker Road. They said we want you to look at six more intersections. So right now we have 10 different intersections that we’ve been asked to study. What we’ve done is, in the traffic study that’s in the engineer’s report, we’ve done traffic counts morning, noon, and night, Friday and Saturday, at all 10 of those intersections. Normally we would only count Friday PM and a Saturday midday, but just to make sure that everything is covered and there’s no questions. MR. FORD-What are those times again, please. MR. PETROSKI-The morning, noon, and afternoon. Morning is generally around eight o’clock in the morning. Noon is noon, and then afternoon is like around five, six o’clock. There’s a two hour band that we actually count at each one of those time slots. I would say it’s standard traffic engineering, based on the type of use that we’re looking at and when the peak traffic occurs. That’s why we count those time slots. 49 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MRS. BRUNO-And which days was that going to be? MR. PETROSKI-We counted Friday and Saturday because Friday is typically the peak of the week on the weekday, and then Saturday, well, Saturday is it’s own entity. It doesn’t have the same characteristics as a weekday. MRS. BRUNO-Right. MR. SWEENEY-The morning peak hour based on that two hour band, is seven thirty to eight thirty AM. The noon peak hour is twelve to one. The evening peak hour is four fifteen to five fifteen, and Saturday is eleven forty-five to twelve forty-five. MR. FORD-Is it just one on Saturday? MR. SWEENEY-Yes. On that particular road, traffic’s very low in the morning. There’s no commute period on Saturday. So it’s basically a retail or commercial peak, and that’s pretty much midday. MR. FORD-And what seasons of the year does that entail? MR. SWEENEY-These were, again, these two hour bands where they measure all the nd traffic and then pick out the highest concentration, were done Friday, November 2 of rd 2007, and Saturday November 3. So that’s a fairly heavy traffic period. MR. FORD-There were just those two dates in November? MR. SWEENEY-Yes. MR. FORD-So we don’t have summer traffic or winter traffic or any of that information? MR. PETROSKI-Well, we do have that information. What the State does is the State keeps track of counts throughout the year, and then they look at the variations from month to month, and then there’s an adjustment factor applied to get to the average conditions for the year. So we know, from the State’s records, where we fall in the cycle over an entire year. So, yes, we do, we do know. MR. FORD-So is that an average? MR. PETROSKI-When we go to study the impacts, we look at the peak hour conditions. MR. FORD-But is that an average for that, those peak hours? MR. PETROSKI-Yes. We started an average. MR. FORD-For the whole year? MR. PETROSKI-We start at an average condition, and then we apply the trip generation rates to determine the impact of traffic during the peak hour. MR. SWEENEY-The State will impose what they call a seasonal adjustment. The idea of a traffic study is to take a peak hour, and they have a formula that they use for a seasonal adjustment. So if you’re summer traffic, and that’s probably what you’re thinking is heavier than November, the State does give our traffic engineer an adjustment for that. Before they approve the format of a traffic study, they will address all the parameters of it. There’s pass-by trips and credits, seasonal adjustments, but there are various things that they do with the traffic engineer that they’ve done with our traffic engineer, to come to a number that they’re satisfied represents a peak hour condition, and I can’t tell you whether that’s, it’s not the 100% highest traffic day of the whole year. MR. FORD-Would it be an average peak hour condition, or no? MR. SWEENEY-No, it’s not. I think it’s higher than average. You take the peak hour and you make adjustments to it. MR. FORD-But we don’t know where it falls in this zero to one hundred percent from least traffic period time to the very maximum? 50 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. SWEENEY-Well, you have a pretty good idea. It’s a peak hour. It’s not a 50% hour. It’s a peak hour, with adjustments made to it. MR. PETROSKI-Well, I think we have to be careful. The counts that are taken are taken during the peak hour. MR. FORD-I understand that. MR. PETROSKI-So we’re starting at the peak. MR. FORD-I’m just trying to determine, and you seem to have difficulty grasping this, and that’s probably my problem not communicating. I’m trying to gather whether or not during any, take a peak hour, this 12 o’clock or 12:30, whatever, that number, is that an average, or what would be considered an average, for that peak hour, for 12 months of the year? MR. PETROSKI-That’s the starting point that we get to. By going out there and counting traffic during that peak hour, and comparing it to the statistical information that the State has for the entire year, and we adjust that count to be the average peak hour for the year, and then apply our traffic volumes to it. That’s just the normal starting point for a traffic study. MR. FORD-Thank you. MRS. BRUNO-And the method of adjustment is a set formula between the average and then when you bring your numbers in? MR. PETROSKI-It’s not a set formula. It’s all based on the statistical information. The adjustments to the peak, the adjustments to average condition could change from location to location. Like if I go to Buffalo, New York, they could have different kinds of seasonal adjustments than you have here in Queensbury, or Albany or Binghamton or anyplace else. It’s a locally dependent thing because your traffic patterns are going to change. You have a lot of summer activity. So your seasonal adjustment for the summer, if I take counts in the summer, I’m probably going to have higher counts at that time than I would in November, but I adjust it to a seasonal condition and then I apply my trip generations to that number. We do look at how radical of a change between the summer and the winter, just to make sure that we properly account for the peak hour conditions. Sometimes seasonal factors weigh in and we have to take that into account and add more trips to that average condition to bump it up a little bit before we apply our trips. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. MR. TRAVER-Are there any plans, beyond the retail facility that you’ve shown us, for additional expansion in this area? Have you considered auxiliary facilities outside of this site that should be considered, perhaps, for traffic impact, down the road? MR. PETROSKI-Well, we’ve contacted the Town and asked them if there’s any other applications before the Town in the immediate vicinity of this project, to include in our background traffic. So, even if they’re not built, we add those to the background traffic before we apply our traffic to it. So that is incorporated into the initial analysis that’s been done to this point. I’d have to sit here and read through it to get the specifics, but that is part of the process. MR. TRAVER-So then we’re to understand that you have no plans, at this point, to do any additional development adjacent to this site? MR. SWEENEY-And we’ll let Vic speak to this. He does own the property to the rear. I’m sure you know he’s been pursuing the development of an office or commercial park. I’ll let him define it. So that is out there. That traffic is not included in there. There really isn’t a development or a generation of traffic vehicle that we could use to add that at this point, but let me have Vic explain it. MR. MACRI-Currently we have a grant from New York State to get the site to the rear of this property shovel ready, and we’re working to do that. Our hopes are that we will have that completed possibly by the end of this year or early 2009. At that point, the site’s shovel ready, and if someone comes along, one, two, ten individuals, depending on the size of the project they want to put back there, the land will be available for development. We are not planning a specific development at this point. That would happen once the 51 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) tenancy is determined. So the land is zoned Industrial Commercial. It will be developed Industrial Commercial. There are Empire Zone benefits back there which make it attractive. We are working with the Airport and EDC now on a foreign trade zone which would incorporate this property. So there’s a bunch of things happening in the back, but there are no plans at this point. MR. TRAVER-I understand, and I guess my question is in the context of the traffic study. Anticipating that at some point in the future someone is likely to be interested in the, you know, your shovel ready property with the advantages that it offers tax wise and so on, should that not be considered in doing this study, in terms of the road and possible impact of additional signals that might be required and so on and so on? MR. MACRI-I’m not a traffic engineer, but in my years of being involved in this stuff and sitting on this Planning Board, typically what’s taken into account is what is planned for future development by the Town, and those are put in with the trip generations, and I think something Mark was trying to explain before, maybe we had a November trip generation, but if we had an August trip generation or let’s say the weekend of the Balloon Festival, those numbers would be adjusted down to work those peak traffic numbers. So it’s either adjustment up or adjustment down, and, you know, those things about future development are typically taken into account as to what’s the best guess, you know, and I would say if someone wanted to put, you know, a 13 acre warehouse back there, you know, whatever that trip generation would be, you know, would be what the development would be, but I can’t say that. I mean, I can’t say that today, and, I mean, I know it’s difficult to wrestle with that to make sure that we’re taking care of the traffic, but I think we are, you know, and I think the engineers are taking into account anything that would be necessary for future growth or expansion in that area. MR. TRAVER-So basically you’re saying that you take the traffic studies, you get rid of the outliers, you make an adjustment for seasonality, and you end up with some numbers that you use to anticipate what to expect. MR. MACRI-I would say that’s the way a traffic engineer typically operates, and any reports you typically get from an engineer would do that. Am I right, Mark? MR. PETROSKI-Yes. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. PETROSKI-You did a good job, Vic. MRS. BRUNO-I’m just curious, too, about the NiMo easement, because really isn’t your other piece of property, and this probably isn’t something you get into at 11:30 at night, but wouldn’t that be basically landlocked? MR. MACRI-No. We have right of way. MRS. BRUNO-You already have. MR. PETROSKI-The National Grid/NiMo easement is this property right here that you’re referring to? MRS. BRUNO-Right. MR. FORD-Yes, how much more of your formal presentation? MR. PETROSKI-I only have probably about four slides to finish up. Well, I have maybe more than four slides, but we can go as fast as you like, or I can stop right now. MR. SIPP-How many acres of wetlands are you going to cover, excavate? MR. PETROSKI-Well, right now this current plan shows about five and a half acres of disturbance of wetlands. MR. SIPP-Five and a half. MR. PETROSKI-Yes. MR. SIPP-Now, you had no simulation for moving that building up front in your flier on there. You had no picture of the building in the front and the parking lot in the back. 52 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. PETROSKI-That’s correct. MR. SIPP-So we don’t know how it’s going to look. MR. PETROSKI-Well, the simulation shows you how it would look, the way it’s presently designed. MR. SIPP-I still say there’s too much blacktop to be looking at, in the middle of the winter when you have no leaves on what remaining trees are there. We have one just down the corner from there, K-Mart, which looks like a landing field for small planes. MR. PETROSKI-Well, you know, I would say that on that site they don’t have the advantage of having a 300 foot green space buffer around their facility, and I think that would make a heck of a difference if they left that amount of space there. MR. MACRI-Nor do they have the elevation difference. Here you’re looking across, the property and the property is elevated, and I have concern, too, being the developer of this property, that we don’t look like (lost words) and we want to make sure that this development (lost words). MR. SIPP-Why is there 10% or 20% excess parking spaces? Why did you put them in there? MR. PETROSKI-Because the Town has a requirement less than what the retailers typically require. Most retailers of this size are looking at five parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of building. So that’s pushing us above what the Town’s minimum requirement is, but I understand that you have in your regulations the ability to go up to 20% more than the minimum. So we’re at 10% more than the minimum. MRS. BRUNO-I can tell you what struck me absolutely first is that in the Town of Queensbury we keep seeing applications that max out difficult sites. Part of that is because we’re only running into difficult sites as we develop, but it really seems like rather than, as someone in an early application said, rather than building the building to the site, we’re trying to build the site to the building, and this amount of disturbance to the wetland is in direct contrast to what we’re trying to achieve with the new visions of Queensbury. It just, it’s starting, and I’m willing to see all of the engineering reports and everything, but it’s just, like I said, my initial reaction was that we’re maxing the site out. We’re putting too much into a place that just cannot accept it. I’m willing to see everything you’ve got, though. MR. PETROSKI-Well, I absolutely understand, and. MR. FORD-Let’s see the rest of your slides, please. MR. PETROSKI-Okay. I’ll try to go through these quickly. I just want to identify that we understand that there’s going to be mitigation at the intersection of Quaker Ridge Boulevard and Quaker Road. We’re proposing that we would install a traffic signal. There’s probably going to be some kind of left turn lanes, some kind of geometry changes there to accommodate a traffic signal and the turning movements. We don’t know what that is until we’ve finished the traffic study, but that, we think, is a given. MRS. BRUNO-Do you have your traffic engineers right in-house? MR. PETROSKI-Yes. Well, Gordon Stansbury is the consultant that’s been doing the traffic analysis for us. He’s not part of our firm, but he only does the traffic analysis, and then either Bergman Associates or somebody else will help us do the actual design layout. This here shows the two access points to the site itself, off of Quaker Ridge Boulevard, and there was a question raised at the County Planning Board meeting about emergency and why don’t we have another point of access, and I just want to demonstrate to the Board that we’ve thought through this a little bit, and it just wasn’t an accident of a site plan. The red circle represents a spot where there could be a road blockage of some kind. So, in the event that there is some kind of blockage on one side of Quaker Ridge Boulevard, each side of the median is 20 feet wide, and each side can accommodate two way vehicles. So if one side is blocked, you still have the other side that could funnel two way traffic in and out of that section of the road, and if some kind of blockage occurred right at the intersection, there’s a frontage road that goes along, parallel to Quaker Road, heads to the northwest, and then it has an access point back onto Quaker Road. So there’s another alternative location for vehicles to exit the site or 53 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) enter, as well as emergency vehicles, and if some kind of blockage occurred at one or the other entrances, we still have a means to get traffic in and out of the site, or emergency vehicles through the development. So, I think these being the most likely or worst case conditions for some kind of an accident, there is ways to still continue to get traffic in and out of the property and still get emergency vehicles in and out of the site. We’re trying to do something to help grow the pedestrian access to this part of the Town. We are certainly willing, and our application shows a sidewalk construction along Quaker Ridge Boulevard, as well as along Quaker Road. There could be some argument as to where, precisely, that sidewalk would go. The closer into the site it goes, the more wetland impact we have. So that’s something that is a consideration, but we did this graphic here to show you that, within a half mile radius of the site, the only identifying pedestrian accommodations we can find are over here, over towards Hudson Falls, and there’s a residential neighborhood here, and there’s some other pedestrian accommodations here. So there’s nothing where we can find to connect it to, but, hey, start some place and build from there. So we’re certainly willing to help the Town try to achieve that goal. This, again, was the elevation that was submitted with the plans, and you saw that in simulation. This is an item that was brought up by the County about the FAA notifications. I just wanted to let you know that we did check this out. The site being here, the end of the runway being here, there’s a calculation. Bottom line is we’re below the threshold that is required to notify the FAA of our project. So there is no filing required on our part, and we’ll share that information with the County as well. There is, we would probably be in the flight path at some point in time. I’m not exactly sure of the precise alignment of the flight path, but it looks like it’s pretty close, but there’s no notification requirements, as far as the FAA is concerned. This is a question that was asked earlier about what’s the future hold, and the one statement I would add to what Vic was saying is that there’s no functional dependence of this project on any other development that may or may not occur in and around this property. This stands on its own merits. The mitigation that’s required will be addressed by this project. So whatever traffic improvements are needed we will address. Whatever utility infrastructure requirements are there we’ll address. Whatever wetland impacts there are, we’ll address, and this is my last slide, and I just wanted to just finish it up by saying that we met with the Town Staff, prior to making our application, to make sure that we had a complete application. These are all just checklist items from the Town’s standard checklist. I just wanted to talk for one second about lighting. In the EAF, Stu caught that we put a variance in for something, and we were originally thinking of coming in and asking for a variance on the lighting. We decided to go ahead and design the site plan with the 20 foot pole height and the two and a half foot candle average lighting intensity that’s required, and it turns out to be probably three times more poles than we would normally put in a project like this, and probably four times the number of actual light fixtures themselves. The energy consumption on that is quite a bit more than what we would recommend. The amount of lights is more than we would recommend, but that’s the Town standard. We have designed it that way. We’re showing it to you, and maybe there’s room for some future discussion, but that’s the way it’s submitted at the present time, and just to finish up by saying that we’re not asking, then, for any variances. We’re not asking for any waivers. Everything complies with the Town Code, and we’re really hoping that, if there’s anymore questions in the traffic scope, that at least we could get your input here and take that to the DOT and say, okay, the Town has had their input, can we now finish the report based on what you and the County have told us, and we can get that turned around and back to you with that whole part of the application. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. PETROSKI-And with that. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you for your presentation. Is there anybody in the audience who wants to comment on this application? PUBLIC HEARING OPENED MARK DONOHUE MR. DONOHUE-My name is Mark Donohue. I am the Chief Financial Officer of Community Workshop Resources and Community Work and Independence. We are the neighboring property to the development directly in front of Binleys. We obviously do support the development, but have some concerns as to how this will impact us. First of all the traffic impact and the traffic studies are very important to us. There’s concern on our part. Obviously we have substantial bus traffic in and out of our facilities, in that facility in general, Monday to Friday, mornings and afternoons. So that lays a concern, not so much the traffic on Quaker Road, but the accessibility in and out of our building 54 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) has an impact to us. The bigger concern is the wetland development. We do have a septic system on our property for that building that houses roughly 60 individuals, Monday to Friday during the day. At times the water table is already high. We have concerns, obviously any impact of changes to the area and those wetlands, will that impact the flow of water on our property and impact our septic system. Our septic system, obviously, would be monitored by you, but we are regulated and funded by the State of New York. So it’s even further scrutinized for health and safety of the individuals we serve. So we do have some concerns as to how this progresses and how the wetlands could impact our property. MR. FORD-Mark, could you delineate a little more what the water issues are currently? MR. DONOHUE-Well, obviously we have an adequate septic system. That’s not the issue. At certain times of the year, the water table rises, obviously because we’re near the wetlands. MR. FORD-How does that impact you? MR. DONOHUE-The property, like in front of our building, inappropriate drainage raises the water table, concerns the pumping of our tank, so forth and so on. MR. FORD-How about interior to the building? MR. DONOHUE-Interior to the building we have to limit water usage at times. Obviously when we do that the State is notified and has to be involved in that because of the consumers we’re serving. So any additional disruption in that immediate area is a serious concern to us, and if that water table continues to rise, what will it do to the septic system of our property? MRS. STEFFAN-How often does that happen in the course of a year? MR. DONOHUE-Usually twice. Usually twice, but unfortunately we are not hooked up to the Town. We are, that is a septic system for our property at that site. So, thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you. MR. FORD-Thanks, Mark. MRS. STEFFAN-Would anyone else like to comment on this application? Sir? JOHN CAFFRY MR. CAFFRY-I’m John Caffry. I’m an attorney with Caffry and Flower in Glens Falls. I represent the Big Cedar Swamp Coalition. I have for the last twenty plus years done so. That includes the Glens Falls/Saratoga Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club, the Southern Adirondack Audubon Society and others. We first got involved, some of the groups have been involved with the Big Cedar Swamp for over 25 years, ever since Earletown proposed to put in a peat farm, then they dropped that and came out with their big Planned Unit Development project, which was going to drain the entire Big Cedar Swamp, and put in golf courses, condos, all that. We wound up having to sue the Town when they approved it. The State sued the Town. That finally killed the project and it went away. Mr. Macri has picked up the pieces from Earletown Corporation, bought up most of the land. The wetlands on this site are contrary to what the engineer just said recently, part of this historic Big Cedar Swamp. I skimmed through the application today, and I didn’t see anything in there about the wetlands. We did have a presentation today, but if that information’s not in the application yet, then the application is not yet complete. With regard to alternatives, they didn’t address the obvious alternative which is to make the building smaller. I mean, that’s a two, four acre building. Just the building alone takes up four acres. So you could avoid some wetlands that way. I think they should find a way to scrunch it down, all the different aspects of the project, to avoid the wetlands in their entirety. When they talk about mitigation sites, it should also be kept in mind that because Mr. Macri owns other land elsewhere that was, historically, part of the Big Cedar Swamp, may not be designated wetlands now, that mitigation site could be on his property and be built closer to the site of this property if that’s what occurs. It should also be pointed out that the Big Cedar Swamp is a State priority land protection project, and the New York State Open Space Plan, which has been approved by DEC and the Office of Parks, Recreation, Historic Preservation, has been for many years. Even though there’s no DEC wetlands on this site, there can’t be much doubt that these are ecologically connected to the overall Big Cedar Swamp. Among our other concerns, the 55 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) applicant says there’s no species of interest on the property, but the Big Cedar Swamp historically supported the Red Shouldered Hawk which is a listed species. There is other information available, which we’ll provide, about flora and fauna in the Big Cedar Swamp. The lighting, I don’t know what the Town standards are that the gentleman was just referring to, but there should be a way to direct it away from the Swamp and avoid causing light impacts to the wildlife of the Swamp. Traffic, I think the biggest question I didn’t hear addressed was will the level of traffic generated by this project, and whatever else Mr. Macri has planned, be so much that it’s going to require widening Quaker Road? Several years ago it was widened, as far as Ridge Road. At some point, somebody’s going to want to widen it between Ridge Road and Dix Avenue. Is this the project that’s going to push it over that? Because when that happens, that’s going to require filling several acres of wetlands to widen Quaker Road, and I think that’s an issue that should be looked at in this EIS. I also think it’s premature to do the scope on the traffic study right now. That should be done as part of the public scoping process for the Environmental Impact Statement. I think they’re putting the cart before the horse until they see whether or not there’s going to be an EIS, and, you know, make it part of that SEQRA process. I think there’s other intersections that could be studied. You think about how people are going to come to this. They’re going to come up Quaker Road. What about Bay and Quaker, which is already a very heavy used intersection. They’re going to come through there. People are going to come from South Glens Falls, from western Queensbury. They’re going to come through Glens Falls. They’re going to go through the roundabout, where they’ll come up Ridge Street and turn onto Dix Avenue. Those intersections ought to be included. With regard to soils, the soil types on this site, almost all of them have severe limitations for development, and that was not mentioned tonight, and that needs to be taken into account. Then there’s the larger question of why does Queensbury need another big box store? I don’t think it does. We’ve got plenty of them, and I think it was really sad to see Mr. Macri quoted in the newspaper peddling the old fable that these are artificial wetlands that were created by Quaker Road when Quaker Road was built. Earletown made the same claim over 20 years ago. We disproved that. Earletown had to back away from it, and I don’t know why he’s dredging that up again. The Big Cedar Swamp has up to 14 feet of peat in it, that only forms over thousands of years in a wetland. There’s maps going back to the 1700’s and 1800’s showing the Big Cedar Swamp when it went almost as far south as where Dix Avenue is now, and so this was all originally a wetland. Then it got drained for agriculture, and once the agriculture was abandoned, the wetlands have been returning. So for Mr. Macri to say this kind of thing in the Post Star is just mindboggling to see that, and we’ll provide that information to the Board so we can do away with this myth again. Regardless, even if it was an artificially created wetland, it’s still protected by Town law, Army Corps law, and all the other wetlands laws. Finally, if the Board does become the Lead Agency, we would request that you do a Positive Declaration, require an Environmental Impact Statement. An Environmental Impact Statement is a great way to explore alternatives, such as making the building smaller. Explore the wetland impacts. If they fill five acres, in my opinion, that’s probably going to be the largest wetland destruction in Queensbury, since the wetland rules were adopted in the 70’s. No project has filled anywhere near that amount of wetlands in Queensbury in that time. I think the EIS should also examine traffic impacts, soils, and those impacts. With regard to the stormwater, I think there may be ways to engineer, to put an underground stormwater treatment beneath the parking lot. I’m not an engineer, but I have heard of that kind of thing occurring, and then you could eliminate the pond, perhaps, or at least make it smaller, and also with the traffic from whatever Mr. Macri has in mind behind there, an EIS, you can look at something under a worst case scenario, pick a hypothetical level based on maximum build out of what’s back there, and filter that into the traffic study. So it’s not that there’s no way to do it. You look at what it’s zoned for. You look at what it allows, and he’s certainly shown a penchant for maxing out his property, and factor that into the traffic study, especially right there at that corner of Quaker Ridge Boulevard, much of which was built on filled wetlands, without a permit, and address that traffic issue, so you don’t have them coming back later saying, well, we want to build and bring in this warehouse and we’ve got the EDC behind it and it’s an international trade zone and all this other stuff, and you’re not going to let a little traffic study get in the way, are you? You ought to look at it all now, look at it comprehensively, not let them segment whatever it is they’re up to, and we would request that you keep the public hearing open because obviously this one has a long ways to go. So, thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you, Mr. Caffry. Mr. Strough? JOHN STROUGH MR. STROUGH-John Strough, Queensbury. Yes, that software blew me away. I like that. That was pretty nice, but we all remember when Mr. Macri came to us and asked 56 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) for a re-zoning. We had a band along Quaker Road, and his argument was that, listen, the band that you have allocated me for Highway Commercial, is all wetland. I can’t develop on that. Well, we understood. So we allowed him, beyond what the others have been allowed, to go inland a considerable distance with Highway Commercial, but that wasn’t the only reason. The other reason was he had a concept plan. His concept plan was that this retail personal service development would encourage and sister on the Light Industrial development in back of him, which he also owns, and that sounded good. Yes, we all liked that. So, you know, we usually don’t re-zone Light Industrial, but for him we did, and one of the primary reasons was that so he could develop, in a commercial way, in a retail development way, and not impact the wetlands, as he had stated. All right. MRS. BRUNO-And when was that? You’re saying we all should remember, but. MR. STROUGH-That was during the re-zoning. That was, I don’t know, three months ago, Vic? MR. SWEENEY-The re-zoning was in July. MR. STROUGH-Six months ago. It wasn’t long ago. MR. SWEENEY-We applied for that maybe 15 months before that, and it occurred in July. MR. STROUGH-And I’m well aware because, not only did he bring it to the PORC Committee, which we agreed we’d support him, he brought it to the Town Board, and of course we did support him, but part of the deal was we’d extend it inland so the wetlands wouldn’t be impacted. All right. Now we also know, being on the PORC Committee, and also we know that the parking allocation is what we felt a little bit excessive for these commercial properties. We’ve seen it, of course, with K-Mart, but we also got the Aviation Mall to reduce their parking. There hasn’t been any problem. We even got Wal- Mart to reduce the number of spots of what they wanted, and, you know what, I’ll admit I’m a regular Wal-Mart shopper. I was there tonight, and even in the Christmas season, which the traffic study doesn’t address, but they’re never full. They never use all their parking spots. Even when the RV’s are there they don’t use them. All right. We don’t need that, so if he cut the number of parking spots in half, I think he’d have enough. He’d be out of the wetlands, and go ahead and develop, but I do have another issue and Steve got me thinking about this. In Vic’s original plan, he showed an access road to his Light Industrial because remember these were supposed to be kind of a symbiotic relationship, one encouraging the other. This doesn’t seem to be the concept plan, but it’s his property. Okay, but now, is this, Quaker Boulevard, going to be the only access to this 200,000 square foot big box and all that Light Industrial in back of there? As Steve was suggesting, are we looking at this in a segmented way? I mean, we’re talking one boulevard, and we always have concerns about that, accidents happening there and blocking traffic. Yes, admittedly it’s a boulevard. So that’s a little bit better. That mitigates it somewhat, but what happens if we develop that Light Industrial? Where is the access to that Light Industrial? I imagine it’s going to be this Boulevard. I don’t see it. I’m just assuming it’s going to be this Boulevard. Well, if that’s the case, then what’s the development potential, as Steve was trying to ask, of this Light Industrial in back of him, and if they’re going to be using this Boulevard, shouldn’t we throw this into the concept here? Shouldn’t we throw this into the mix? We’ve got a signalized intersection, you know, are we going to need to add turning lanes or what? I mean, what’s the ultimate traffic count going to be on this little Boulevard, or there may be another access to his Light Industrial he’s going to use. I’d like to know one way or the other. Also, interconnects, I don’t see any showing of potential interconnects on here. We’ve got Wally Hirsch’s place on the corner. Schermerhorn wants to develop his property where he’s got the Dunkin Donuts now. He owns all that in back of that. This buts up to it. Any potential interconnect there, I mean, so we can keep some of this traffic off of the main roads, and people that want to drive from one place to another, we all know that, if we had to do it all over again, we would have encouraged this along Quaker Road a long time ago and it would have solved a lot of problems. So, well, we’re a little bit late in getting on the bandwagon, but let’s take a look at it. Have we looked at putting the building in the middle, maybe a little parking up in the front and a little parking out in the back, probably a lot less than what they’re proposing, but stay out of the wetlands. So, in any event, those are just my concerns up front. Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you, John. Anyone else want to speak to this application? Mr. Troelstra? 57 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) FRED TROELSTRA MR. TROELSTRA-Fred Troelstra, Queensbury. I’m going to be the shortest one on address tonight. I just want to put a positive note towards this particular application. I would hope and encourage the Board to look diligently and completely at this matter, and we’ve had a lot of experience on Quaker Road. I think we’re one of the original businesspeople on that end of Quaker Road, in terms of Gardentime, and we’ve seen, I’ll speak personally. There’s occasion of double standards out there. Within the last five years there’s a major car dealer, a lot of the same issues came up. They were LI, rezoned to Commercial. They’ve got 30 foot light poles. These people want 20’s. So I would just hope that it’s treated fairly across the board, and that everything does get reviewed and completely looked at, so, favorable for this application. Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you, Mr. Troelstra. Anybody else like to speak to this application? Would the applicants come back to the table, please. Have you folks received a copy of the Staff Notes and the VISION Engineering comments? MR. SWEENEY-Yes, we have. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. At this point, I think what we should do, we will obviously keep the public hearing open, and I have a motion here for the Planning Board to accept Lead Agency Status, and then we’d like to table the application, so that you can come back and satisfy some of the requirements that were in some of the written correspondence, which will help us move forward and you could make some changes to the site plan and satisfy some of the issues. Does that sound like the right approach? MR. SWEENEY-Absolutely. MRS. STEFFAN-Does it sound reasonable to the Planning Board members? MRS. BRUNO-Yes. MR. FORD-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. HILTON-Just to clarify. I believe you’re seeking Lead Agency Status, and not accepting this evening. MRS. STEFFAN-Sorry. MR. HILTON-That’s okay. I just wanted to. MRS. STEFFAN-Too late. Okay. I’d like to read this Record of Resolution prepared by Staff, so that the Planning Board can seek Lead Agency Status. MOTION THAT THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD SEEKS LEAD AGENCY STATUS FOR SITE PLAN NO. 61-2007 & FRESHWATER WETLANDS PERMIT NO. 1- 2008 VMJR COMPANIES, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Tanya Bruno: WHEREAS, the Town Planning Board is in receipt of a Site Plan and Freshwater Wetlands application for and Site Plan: Applicant proposes construction of a 199,000 sq. ft. retail building with associated parking and utilities. Retail uses in HC zones require Planning Board review and approval. Freshwater Wetlands: Filling wetlands to provide parking and storm water management facilities WHEREAS, the Planning Board of the Town of Queensbury has determined to begin an environmental review process under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), and WHEREAS, the Planning Board of the Town of Queensbury has identified the projects to be a Unlisted action for the purposes of SEQRA review pursuant to 6 NYCRR 617, and WHEREAS, the Planning Board is the agency most directly responsible for approving the actions because of its responsibility for approving the land uses for the property, and NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, 58 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) The Planning Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby indicates its desire to be Lead Agency for SEQRA review of this action and authorizes and directs the Zoning Administrator to notify any other potentially involved agencies of such intent. That Part I of the SEQRA will be sent to the following agencies [as identified in EAF]: Warren Co. Planning Board, Warren Co. DPW, NYS DEC, NYS DOT, NYS DOH, and ACOE. MOTION THAT THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD SEEKS LEAD AGENCY STATUS FOR SITE PLAN NO. 61-2007 & FRESHWATER WETLANDS PERMIT NO. 1- 2008 VMJR COMPANIES, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Tanya Bruno: WHEREAS, the Town Planning Board is in receipt of a Site Plan and Freshwater Wetlands application for and Site Plan: Applicant proposes construction of a 199,000 sq. ft. retail building with associated parking and utilities. Retail uses in HC zones require Planning Board review and approval. Freshwater Wetlands: Filling wetlands to provide parking and storm water management facilities. The rest of the resolution as identified. th Duly adopted this 15 day of January, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Traver, Mr. Ford, Mr. Sipp, Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Steffan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Hunsinger, Mr. Seguljic MRS. STEFFAN-Now, does the applicant think that they could satisfy the conditions that are in the VISION Engineering comment letter as well as Staff Notes for the, by February thth 15? Because we would table it to the March meeting, if you can meet the February 15 deadline. MR. SWEENEY-That would be the traffic study also? MRS. STEFFAN-Well, one of the issues that is of concern, and I thought we should actually table it to the April meeting, we’ve got a couple of conditions. We’ve got those two letters, but we also have the issue of the Warren County Planning Board denying without prejudice. They’ve asked for five items. They recommended that you provide them with information on five items, and I don’t know what the status of that is for you. MR. SWEENEY-Well, the significant one there is the traffic report, and we would like to get moving forward with that, so we can get back to them with that piece of information, and to this Board. This Board is going to have to evaluate the potential for significant impacts under SEQRA, and the way you do that, obviously, is to have the information not deny the record the information, in order to make that decision. So we would like to get going with the traffic report, both for you and for the County, and we can’t go back there until we get that done. So if we can have your authorization to have the report prepared, we will do that. We can certainly respond to the County’s comments more fully and to your, both your engineer and your Staff comments for the next meeting. MR. FORD-Okay. I would just like to comment that I think it’s premature to proceed with the traffic study. I don’t have that same sense of urgency. I don’t know what modifications may be made to the site, and to access and egress, and therefore I think it’s premature to proceed with the traffic study, until we have a much better handle on what the site configurations will actually be. MR. SWEENEY-If I can respond. Some of that is determined by the traffic study. Obviously you’re going to get levels of service and proposed modifications to existing and proposed improvements based on the results of a traffic study. If there is, thereafter, some changes made to the site configuration, we could provide you further traffic information with that, but the way to figure out what you need for access lanes and so forth is to get your traffic study. MRS. STEFFAN-Other comment? MR. FORD-I can appreciate what he’s saying, but I disagree with it. MR. TRAVER-Yes, I guess, again, in the context of the traffic study, when we get to the point where we’re considering issues surrounding SEQRA, if we find that the traffic study that’s done now does not provide us all the information we need, can we then go back and ask for additional? In other words, if we say go ahead with your traffic study now, 59 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) we can have an understanding that it may very well be incomplete, or does it essentially need to be? MR. SWEENEY-If we can not call it incomplete, but, yes, there’s nothing unusual about a Board requesting a supplemental piece of information to evaluate either an alternative or something that comes up during the process, and if that’s what the process calls for, we will certainly do that. MR. TRAVER-Because I think for me, my concern about saying going ahead with the traffic study, is that we’re then somehow narrowed to the results of that study, and that limits what we might be able to consider as we move forward with looking at some of the other issues that have been talked about this evening. MR. SWEENEY-Yes, we would certainly agree that if additional information is required, as the application process evolves, our traffic engineer would supply that. We have no problem with that at all. I think we can deliver you a complete traffic study, based on the project as proposed, which is what we’re supposed to do, and it will be the result of the expertise of our traffic engineer, the County’s input, and State DOT isn’t going to let us do that traffic report until they’re satisfied with the parameters of it, which, and they have said, can you get the Town’s concurrence to the parameters that you’ve laid out in Appendix Nine of your application here, the study that’s in here. So, again, to go back to where I was, if there’s more information needed from our traffic engineer, you’re going to get it as quickly as we can get it to you. That’s what our job is to satisfy those inquiries, but we can deliver a complete traffic report, which will give you a fair picture of what we’re proposing, for the project, for traffic improvements, for levels of service at 10 intersections, and again, if we add another access point or the Board feels something else is necessary, obviously, we’re here to do that. That’s what we’re here for. MRS. STEFFAN-I guess one of the things, I’m a little uncomfortable with the word permission. We don’t need to give you permission to do a traffic study. One of the things, obviously that’s part of the package that you will have to present to us for the proposal. MR. SWEENEY-Yes. If I used the word permission, I didn’t mean that, and this is relatively new. DOT is, and I’m experiencing this in other municipalities, saying we’d like the Town to look at what we normally look at, and also concur or allow you to proceed with this scope of traffic study. It’s not, usually they dictate what you’re going to do and you go ahead and do it and present it to the Town, but they have begun to do this. This is the third place that I’ve seen it, but the study that you will see will be the study as required by DOT for this particular site, and, within the judgment of our traffic expert as to what’s required for a fair analysis of traffic impacts from the project, but again, the DOT has said, asked the Town if they, let’s use the word concur or agree with the scope of the study, so you can get going on it. MR. FORD-I still believe it’s premature because, as of right now, when we talk about scope, we don’t even know the scope of the project, and therefore to determine, at this point, or try to determine what the scope of the impact on traffic will be, I think it’s premature. When we’re talking, we’ve raised issues about size of the building, size of the parking lot, wetland issues, so many things that could impact the size of this project, and I believe that the size of the project is going to directly impact the traffic study. MR. SWEENEY-You can’t disagree with that, but for you to evaluate it in an initial stage and this is not something unusual. I’m sure you see it all the time, that you get a traffic study with your application, so you know what you’re evaluating. I don’t think, as was suggested by one of the commenters, that the way to evaluate the impacts of the project is to deny that information from the record. We’re proposing a project. It’s a 199,000 square feet. It has a certain traffic configuration, and we want you to know what the traffic, potential traffic impacts are from that, and what improvements we’re proposing to make sure that you’re comfortable that the levels of service will be maintained and that we won’t have a significant impact, and we want you to have that information, and as we said, if the project gets reduced in size or reconfigured and it requires supplement to that traffic analysis, we’ll be right out in front trying to get that done for you. MRS. STEFFAN-The Warren County Planning Board identified what they are looking for, traffic data coordinating efforts with the County DPW, New York State DOT in regards to requirements and our comments, including emergency access, and/or alternate access for customers and delivery, and so they’ve identified some of the issues that they’re looking for. 60 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) MR. SWEENEY-Right. MR. MACRI-Right, but I think what Bob is saying is currently DOT won’t let us proceed with that study until you concur with the scope that we’ve provided for the traffic study. MRS. BRUNO-It’s a great Catch-22. It’s a circular logic. MR. MACRI-It is. I mean, that’s the problem we had in front of the Warren County Planning Board was you want a traffic study, but I can’t get a traffic study until I go to the Planning Board. I can’t go to the Planning Board until I see you guys. So, what are we going to do? So that’s why they’ve denied us. MR. FORD-Let’s back off the traffic study for a moment. Because I want to make an additional point. We know that wetlands are so vital to the balance of our environment, that for health and safety reasons, for ecological reasons, our community guards our wetlands, and I believe that we’re the last line of defense for that, and I think we’ve shared a lot of concerns about wetland destruction and degradation, and those are issues that, to me, must be addressed before we start talking about the impact that this substantial project would have on traffic on Quaker Road. MRS. STEFFAN-Agreement? MRS. BRUNO-I agree. MRS. STEFFAN-So I guess that means we’re not outlining exactly the requirements that we’re looking for in the traffic study, but we can go ahead with a motion, so that you can satisfy some of the other comments, but I believe the VISION Engineering letter. MRS. BRUNO-George, is this something that someone in the Planning Department can discuss with the County, as to why they’ve started going in this manner, you know, and explaining to them that it really makes a Catch-22, puts everyone in a difficult position. MR. SWEENEY-It’s actually the State DOT, not the County. MRS. BRUNO-I’m sorry. MR. HILTON-I guess I’d be looking for the State DOT to educate me or our office, because that’s something that’s new to me. Typically, as has been stated, not just this applicant, but any applicant would submit the information to DOT and DOT would respond and say here’s what we want you to do. This is very unfamiliar to me. MRS. BRUNO-Do we have a particular contact? MR. HILTON-Yes. We can certainly contact them, you know, call them. MRS. BRUNO-Thank you. That would be great. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. I need to put together the tabling motion. If the traffic study is th not included, do you think you can have a package together by February 15, or do you want to wait until, for the March meeting, I’m sorry, or do you want to wait until the April meeting? th MR. SWEENEY-We will be ready by February 15. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. I will leave the public hearing open. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 61-2007 & FRESHWATER WETLANDS PERMIT NO. 1-2008 VMJR COMPANIES, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: 1) So that the applicant can satisfy the VISION Engineering comments in the letter of January 14, 2008. 2) So that the applicant can address and satisfy the Staff comments which represent Planning Board concerns and review criteria for this project. 3) So that the applicant can satisfy the request of the Warren County Planning Board recommendations in their memo of January 9, 2008. There are five recommendations. 61 (Queensbury Planning Board 1/15/08) 4) So that the applicant can satisfy Mike Shaw, the Director of Wastewater for the Town of Queensbury, his comments in his memo of December 6, 2007. 5) So that the applicant can show potential interconnects on their plans. 6) So that the applicant can address segmentation issues with the Light Industrial development. th 7) This application is tabled to the March 18 meeting with an application deadline th of February 15. th Duly adopted this 15 day of January, 2008, by the following vote: MR. FORD-Have we stipulated in there the destruction of wetland and the project’s impact on that? MRS. STEFFAN-In the Staff Notes there is a significant amount of information on wetlands for right now. MR. FORD-Yes, that’ll be a good entry point. AYES: Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Steffan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Hunsinger, Mr. Seguljic MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. Thank you all for coming. I know it’s been a long night. We appreciate your hanging in there. MR. SWEENEY-Thank you very much. MRS. STEFFAN-I’ll make a motion to adjourn. MOTION TO ADJOURN THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING OF JANUARY 15, 2008, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Tanya Bruno: th Duly adopted this 15 day of January, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Traver, Mr. Ford, Mr. Sipp, Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Steffan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Hunsinger, Mr. Seguljic On motion meeting was adjourned. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, Gretchen Steffan, Acting Chairwoman 62